Tag Archives: science

If You Wonder Why I’m Always in a Bad Mood…

Here are a few of the things that make me want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head. (H/T to Juanita Jean and the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Parlor).

Furious parents and citizens of Oklahoma took to the streets early Thursday, protesting against Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos.  Protesters allege the show is blatantly promoting an anti-Creationist agenda and is ‘standing against the Judeo-Christian moors and values of the Saddleback Township community and others nationwide.”

The fact that they can’t spell “mores” is the least of it…The fact that they can’t tell the difference between science and religion is infinitely depressing.

And another “Christian” heard from, this time from Virginia.

Virginia GOP state delegate and congressional candidate Bob Marshall is standing by his claim that disabled children are God’s punishment for women who have an abortion. “Nature takes its vengeance on subsequent children,” Marshall said in 2010. “It’s a special punishment, Christians would suggest.”

I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, the kind of God who would get back at “sinful” women by punishing innocent children really doesn’t seem worth worshipping…

Impressively crazy as those entrants are, South Carolina isn’t about to give up its hopes of winning the All-batshit competition.

On Thursday, a Senate committee in South Carolina voted to expand the state’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” law to approve the use of deadly force to protect a fetus. The proposal would grant pregnant women protection from prosecution if they were defending their “unborn children,” defined as “the offspring of human beings from conception until birth.”

At least they didn’t vote to arm each fetus. They must be libruls…

South Carolina’s legislature is also having a heated debate over a proposal–triggered by a third-grader who is clearly more scientifically literate than many S.C. lawmakers–to name the wooly mammoth the “State Fossil.”

Sen. Kevin Bryant, a pharmacist and self-described born-again Christian who has compared President Obama with Osama bin Laden, voted to sustain a veto by Governor Nikki Haley of funding for a rape crisis center, and called climate change a “hoax,” proposed amending the bill to include three verses from the Book of Genesis detailing God’s creation of the Earth and its living inhabitants—including mammoths.

The proposal has subsequently been bogged down as legislators debate the additional language.

Meanwhile, Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports that the Louisiana legislature wants to pass a law making the King James Version of the Bible the official state book, and Miami-Dade County in Florida is closing all the bathrooms in polling places. And then there’s this.

And Indiana Governor Mike Pence really thinks he could be President.

We’re doomed. Really.

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It’s Only a Theory! Or Texas Idiocy Strikes Again….

Well, I see that the crackpot members of the Texas Board of Education are at it again.

Gee, it seems like only yesterday that a previous panel removed Thomas Jefferson from several of the state history standards, and substituted Thomas Aquinas. (Because Aquinas was so integral to development of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution…)

Of course the real target of these doofuses has been and continues to be science, especially evolution. In 2007, Rick Perry appointed a young earth creationist to chair the Texas Board, and in 2009, science standards were considerably weakened. Efforts to substitute fundamentalist biblical beliefs for science have continued, with some setbacks (in 2011, creationists tried to get religious “supplemental materials” offered in Texas science classes, but were unsuccessful.)

But of course, they’re back. This time, the Board has asked “experts” (i.e. creationists) to weigh in on the merits of high school biology textbooks. My favorite response:

“I understand the National Academy of Science’s strong support of the theory of evolution. At the same time, this is just a theory. As an educator, parent and grandparent, I feel very firmly that ‘creation science’ based upon biblical principles should be incorporated into every Biology book that is up for adoption.”

Ignore, for the moment, the fact that every court that has considered the issue has ruled that ‘creation science’ isn’t science; it’s religion, and religion cannot constitutionally be taught in public school science classes.

No, what drives me bonkers is the incredible ignorance shown by the repeated accusation that evolution is “just a theory.”

In normal conversation, we use the term theory to mean “an educated guess.” But in science, the word has a very different meaning; a scientific theory is anything but a guess. The scientific method involves summarizing a group of hypotheses that have been successfully and repeatedly tested. Once enough empirical evidence accumulates to support those hypotheses, a theory is developed that can explain that particular phenomenon. Scientific theories begin with and are based on careful examination of observed–and observable– facts.

Furthermore–unlike religious dogma–scientific theories are always open to revision based upon new observations or newly discovered facts. That process is called falsification.

Falsification is an essential characteristic of a scientific hypothesis or theory. Basically, a falsifiable assertion is one that can be empirically refuted or disproved. Falsifiability means that the hypothesis or theory is testable by empirical experiment. Merely because something is “falsifiable” does not mean it is false; rather it means that if it is false, then observation or experiment will at some point demonstrate its falsity.  Many things may be true, or generally accepted as true, without being falsifiable. Observing that a woman or a sunset is beautiful, asserting that you feel sad, declaring that you are in love and similar statements may be true or not, but they aren’t science, because they can be neither empirically proved nor disproved. Similarly, God may exist, but that existence is not falsifiable—God cannot be dragged into a laboratory and tested. One either believes in His (or Her) existence or not. That’s why religious belief is called faith.

If something isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t science.

Appointing people who don’t even know what science is to review science textbooks is a foolproof way to tell the rest of the world that yours is a state of fools–and a guarantee that your educational system will be hard pressed to maintain its current (abysmal) rank of 45th among the states.

Do you suppose Mexico would take these yahoos back?

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A Welcome Statement

A couple of weeks ago, I criticized Ball State University for hiring a prominent creationist to teach science courses. Coming after complaints alleging that another science faculty member had taught a course from an “intelligent design” perspective, the hire raised troubling questions about the quality of scholarship at the University.

Yesterday, a friend on the BSU faculty shared with me a strong statement on the controversy just issued by President JoAnn Gora.

The money quote:

As this coverage has unfolded, some have asked if teaching intelligent design in a science course is a matter of academic freedom. On this point, I want to be very clear. Teaching intelligent design as a scientific theory is not a matter of academic freedom – it is an issue of academic integrity. As I noted, the scientific community has overwhelmingly rejected intelligent design as a scientific theory. Therefore, it does not represent the best standards of the discipline as determined by the scholars of those disciplines. Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.

Precisely.

The statement made no reference to the prominent creationist who was hired, but it was unambiguous in recognizing that “intelligent design” is neither academically appropriate nor scientifically accepted, and assuring the faculty and alumni that religious doctrine will not be taught in science classes at Ball State.

A failure to clarify its continued commitment to intellectual integrity would have significantly diminished BSU’s academic reputation, so the issuance of this statement was a welcome relief (if unaccountably tardy).

But better late than never.

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Playing the Odds

My post a few days back ignited a pretty lively discussion of climate change. But here’s what I don’t understand: let’s say the science is far less compelling than I think it actually is. Let’s say it’s 50/50, rather than 98/2. It would still make sense to take steps to ameliorate it.

There are zero negatives to cleaning up the environment. No downsides–even if we are wrong. For our efforts we get an investment in cleaner air and water, and we create a lot of new jobs. On the other hand, if we do nothing and climate change continues at its current pace, we face increasing numbers of disasters–hurricanes, tsunamis, rising sea levels…Aside from the human suffering such effects would cause, they will require massive outlays of money and other resources–far more than an investment in green energy and environmentally-friendly technologies.

I understand why those with a financial stake in coal, oil and other pollutants are advocating that we ignore the science. But wouldn’t good policy require that we play the odds, even if they were far less lopsided than they are?

If you lived beneath a volcano and were told it only had a 50-50 chance of erupting, would you keep your family there?

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Do You See What I See?

A couple of days ago, an email from the Human Rights Campaign began with the following paragraph:

“Just yesterday, one of Mitt Romney’s highest profile supporters, and a member of the GOP platform committee, said same-sex marriage is something the government should condemn – along with drug use and polygamy.”

The rest of the message teemed with righteous indignation, and ended with a predictable plea for money.

Now, I fully understand how demeaning that statement feels. But I also understand where it comes from. A few years ago, during my sabbatical, I did research that later became my book God and Country. I was curious about the ways in which religious cultures and beliefs shaped people’s positions on various policies–not just hot-button social issues, but also policies we think of as wholly secular, like welfare, the environment, criminal justice.

The research was fascinating–and enlightening. It turns out that our religious socialization affects the way in which we categorize issues. So–when it comes to sexual orientation, for example–research suggests that Christians and Jews tend to classify the issue differently. Jews are more likely to classify sexual orientation as one aspect of identity, like eye color or intellectual capacity; for most Christians, on the other hand, sex is classified as a behavior–like drug use or polygamy. This initial classification doesn’t necessarily prevent Christians from drawing moral distinctions between different behaviors, and many Christians do not consider homosexuality to be immoral. But the evaluation process proceeds from different starting points.

Cultural assumptions can be changed over time, of course, and changing the way people classify sexual orientation initially is one of the great triumphs of the gay civil rights movement.

We can see it in the language: the term “sexual preference” is rarely used these days (except by the likes of a Micah Clark or Sarah Palin); it has been replaced by “sexual orientation.” The first term suggests a behavioral choice; the second, an immutable characteristic. It is an incredibly important distinction; immutable characteristics–like gender or eye color or skin color–are by definition morally neutral.

You can choose to use drugs, you can choose to be a polygamist. But science has exploded the myth that people choose to be gay, and most Americans–whatever their religious socialization–have come to understand and accept the fact that sexual orientation is not chosen.

It’s not a fluke that the people who compare homosexuality to drug use are also anti-science.

There are many ways to slice and dice the American electorate, but I am increasingly convinced that the fundamental (no pun intended) fault line is between those who accept science and modernity and can live with the resulting ambiguities, and those who don’t and can’t–those who find change threatening and ambiguity terrifying, and who cling more and more tightly to the comforting categories and certainties of the (re-imagined) past.

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