The religion post

I was sent an article the other day and I felt it was laughably bad enough to share.

http://whatiamtobe.blogspot.com/2009/02/god-vs-science.html

""Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand."

OK, So an atheist professor of philosophy... moving on, science doesn't have a problem with religion any more than it has a problem with pseudoscience.  Science is not an entity that has problems or real contradictions, it is a set of tools that we use to measure and understand our world and our body of knowledge about it.  It's other things that have issues with the findings of science.

"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?"

Yeah, faith healing does not work.  Study after study finds that prayer does not heal people.  It is no wonder though that you will keep hearing stories about people who prayed and were 'miraculously' cured.  There are nearly 7 billion people in the world and the vast majority of them have some kind of religion.  Since many diseases (such as cancer) can spontaneously go into remission a certain percentage of people who pray will be cured, completely independent of the prayer.  I truly wish that praying were all it would take to cure disease but that is unfortunately not the case.  Does this research invalidate religions?  only if your religion hinges on the idea that god answers every prayer.  That can be disproved by praying for anything tangible, like asking to have a moment like any of these..

"Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith."

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?"

"Yes."

"And is there such a thing as cold?"

"Yes, son, there's cold too."

"No sir, there isn't."

Heat is a measure of energy.  Energy, or the absence of, creates a specific measurable effect on the world around it.  We don't need to have faith that energy has an effect on the world, we can observe it.  The same thing goes for the argument with light and darkness, darkness is simply the absence of light in the visible spectrum.  There is always some kind of electro-magnetic wave.  Microwave radiation permeates the entire universe so really there is no absence of light anywhere.

"You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains. "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is t o be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it.

"Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"

"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."

"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"

Researchers have made some very good ground on understanding human though.  Even if it couldn't explain it we can still measure it’s effects directly using things such as FMRI machines.  This goes for every other thing that science can't explain currently.  We can find a lot of very clever ways to measure, directly or indirectly, just about anything.  Many people thought we would not be able to measure the chemical composition of stars, some making grand declarations of it.  Then spectroscopy came along and now we can accurately tell what a star is made of.  Making a loud declaration of what science cannot ever do is something that is sure to get you in a science textbook as an example of irony.

Saying that something cannot be measured is another way of telling me that it does not exist.  If it exists and has some influence on the world then it can be measured in some way.  Because otherwise if it has no influence on the world then it does not matter if it exists.  The methods to detect that influence may not be known at the time but you cannot categorically say that we will forever be in the dark on that subject.

A quick aside on the Subject of evolution… I plan on having a lot of posts about because as mentioned it is one of my favorite concepts.  The idea that we MUST directly observe something in order for it to be real  is ridiculous, see my post about Australia.  We can measure the effects of those forces and concepts indirectly.  We do this with many parts of science and many technologies rely specifically on that science being right.  Although, evolution is one of those things that can be directly observed.

So yes, we have directly seen evolution, we have used it to make predictions, and we continue to build up evidence for it.  When people attack evolution because it conflicts with their religion it reminds me of a phrase I once heard whose source unfortunately escapes me at the moment.  "If a religion taught that the sky was green, and this was widely held to be true, when the students came into their science classroom the professor would not expound on how wrong their religion was, or the inadequacies of their faith.  The professor would merely ask them to look up and judge for themselves."  That is the essence of science, using what can be measured to build an understanding of the world.  Checking those measurements against earlier measurements and when they don't agree figure out why. 

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

Evil is a concept that people came up with, it is actually less a concept than cold or darkness, because light or heat can be directly measured.  Good cannot be measured,  it is a sliding scale that exists only in our minds.  So this is a false analogy (Some may argue that because the effects of good can be measured, i.e. in the prosperity of a community, it is not a false analogy.  I dislike this argument mostly due to the concept of good being a subjective term and would point out that many societies have prospered that have been seen as incredibly evil by other societies).  The professor in this piece is a straw man, pure and simple.  An atheist professor of philosophy would most certainly have already heard these tired arguments before and have simply refuted them as easily as I have.  As for the student.

The student was Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein did write a book titled God vs. Science in 1921.

Albert Einstein was an atheist (the quote from Einstein "I do not believe in any personal god" comes to mind), he was born Jewish (so I truly have no idea where the idea that he believed in Jesus came from),  and he never published a book call 'God vs. Science'.  Even if it was an actual story about Einstein it would only prove that Einstein could be wrong.  Although Einstein is almost the icon of science to some people he was still human and had his flaws like everyone else.  Arguing otherwise is just an argument from authority.  Before Einstein's theories Newton was seen as an unimpeachable authority, Einstein proved him wrong and that is why we hold Einstein in high regard.  The person who proves Einstein wrong will be seen in much the same light.  (Though modern physics has already got to the point of needing entire teams of people working on problems to solve them).

This article is not about attacking religion, the trouble is that religious people will sometimes tell stories like this or insist that their beliefs be taught in public schools.  When the tools of science are applied to their religion, the cracks begin to appear.  The religious claims that are sometimes made can be tested by science,  and are proven false.  When people argue that the ten commandments should be in the courthouse or creationism should be taught in schools they make a claim that they have to prove.  When they speak of these things in their church they are not called on them to prove them, and they expect the same ‘courtesy’ extended to them in the realm of politics.

Things like the earth only being 10,000 years old can be so completely disproven by any number of methods.  But creationists still teach this to their children as inerrant truth.  When people point out the inconsistencies in it or the evidence against it we are told that we cannot criticize their religion (The idea that religion holds a place that is beyond criticism is without merit, read the god delusion for more on that.).  We aren't criticizing the ideals of that religion, merely the claims that do not hold up with reality.  Teaching that the world is only 10,000 years old is the same as teaching that the sky is green, although it just takes different ways of looking to prove it wrong.

One criticism that I keep hearing is that carbon dating is inaccurate.  We don't use Carbon dating to get an accurate date on anything older than 60,000 years.  The reason for this is that different elements decay at different rates and so the further back we go we have to switch elements to get a more accurate date.

When we date something that is 400 million years old, our dating comes up as being anywhere from 390 million to 410 million years old.  People will point out that a 20 million year window is not very accurate, but accuracy also has to do with the scale we are using.  A 20 million year window on a scale of 400 million years is only a 5 percent window.  5 percent is terrific accuracy at a scale of, compare that to the 'estimates' that people make for the worlds age based on the bible.  6,000 to 10,000 years, that is a 50 percent window there.  But the same people who pan different dating techniques are fine with those numbers because even though the percentage is high the numbers are small.

Why does the religious community attack things like evolution and modern geology?  One of my friends went to church with his in laws one day, he was sitting through a lecture about how Darwin had come up with his theory of evolution specifically to overshadow the creation of their denomination (7th day adventists) and lead people away from the revelation of the true sabbath.  I doubt that Charles Darwin had even heard of that denomination in the first place, let alone would release his theory of natural selection merely to distract people.  You might as well say that the Large Hadron Collider is to distract people from the Pope.  Attacking science and it's methods will not help them in the long run.  Think back into history about when religion denied the findings of science, Galileo and his treatment by the church is a obvious mistake now.  How big a mistake will it show to be in the future looking back at the religious  arguments against scientific ideas like evolution.  Science is not infallible, not many people claim that science is perfect, but when our understanding of the world has been shown to be wrong it was the tools and methods of science that did the overturning

It’s pressure on a nerve… or something….

So far the only real specific issue I have talked about as being pseudoscience is Astrology, which is kind of like picking out the slow and the weak from the herd of pseudo-sciences. Lets move up the ladder to something more prevalent and much more accepted.

Chiropractors.

Here is what the mayo clinic has to say about Chiropractic treatment:

“Clinical trials indicate that chiropractic care is as safe and effective as conventional treatments — which may include pain medication, rest or exercise. But that may not be saying much. Low back pain typically improves within a matter of weeks, even for people who seek no treatment at all.

Low back pain is often caused by injuries or strains, and there's no magic cure. It simply takes time for your back to heal. But treatment of some type — either chiropractic or conventional — might make you more comfortable as you wait for this healing to occur.”

Reading this quote may lead one to believe that all chiropractic may be no more than placebo and massage. while that is a matter for research it is generally accepted that chiropractic can be used to treat back pain. Quackwatch actually has an interesting article on picking a good chiropractor.

What makes me target chiropractic and not homeopathy (for now at least) is the claims that they make that have no evidence and no true merit. It is hard to find a placebo for chiropractic care, although acupuncture (which is practiced at many chiropractic offices) did have a resounding refutation recently. Chiropractors will sometimes make claims that they can cure things like colic, high blood pressure, and even bedwetting. I even met one chiropractor who claimed to be able to cure bad breath. I took this picture on my way home from work the other day and I think it proves my point.

Autism? seriously? When I first saw this sign I wanted to go into the office and just ask them “HOW?!?”. But this would not likely get me an answer much like anytime I see a new natural food or health store and want to ask them to justify the claims of their products and vitamin worship.

Chiropractic just does not have any good solid evidence for it’s usefulness in those areas. In a terrific show of shooting themselves in the foot the British Chiropractor Association (BCA) sued Simon Singh after he called them out on their claims that they could cure diseases like asthma and ear infections. Apart from being an affront to free speech the lawsuit brings science back into the courtroom. People should learn by now that science is very good at proving it’s case, really that’s what it is used for. The suit has prompted a wave of calls for libel reform in Britain and it’s notoriety has brought the BCA into the public light, looking like the villains in the case for trying to abuse a legal system to stifle another persons freedom to express their ideas.

You will notice that on the BCA’s website you cannot find any mention of colic or… really anything else mentioned before in this article, well let’s take a step into the wayback machine and see what their site showed January 11th 2007 (the date was just one of the random ones i pulled up)

“As children grow, chiropractic can help not only with the strains caused by the rough and tumble of life but also with some of the problems that children can suffer in their first years:
Colic – sleeping and feeding problems – frequent ear infections – asthma – prolonged crying.”

Those are the EXACT things Simon Singh called bogus! They took them off their site, why might that be? maybe because the evidence does not support those claims. The claims are still there in the July 28th 2008 version of the page (the most recent that archive.org has, sometimes the archives will not show up for some months or longer). Simons article was written on April 19th 2008. So these claims were removed AFTER they filed their lawsuit. Likely when public scrutiny began to be brought into the case.

I know people who swear by chiropractic, even for the crazy stuff. But there may be a simple way to save your money. Exercise, particularly Yoga and stretches can really help certain joint, back or neck pain. These serve much the same effect as chiropractic or a massage (stretching the muscles, reducing pressure) but are free to do and in the end healthier for you to get into.

On the origin of Australia

Australia! Land of myth and legend! A land filled with convicts and crocodile related personalities (five pop culture references in two sentences, I’m impressed with myself). But does this land really exist? Could there really be a land where the reply to ‘which animals here are not dangerous’ is “Some of the sheep.”

Why am I asking whether Australia exists? Well in a recent “discussion” with someone, regarding my requirement for evidence and proof for the things that he was claiming, He decided to pull out the tried and un-true argument that all a skeptic is is a doubter. That unless I have seen it with my own eyes I cannot say it is real (I actually treat my own eyes as not very reliable as I believe that human perception is fallible.) and since I have not been to Australia I must not believe in it either.

Well there is a lot of evidence that Australia does exist. I know people who have lived in Australia, seen countless images of the place, and can even view it from space using Google. So why do I accept this evidence that Australia exists when I have never been there, and even if I had couldn’t it have been an elaborate hoax. Couldn’t it have been a Truman Show like conspiracy to keep me from knowing? Where do I, or anyone else for that matter, set our bar for acceptable evidence?

I set my bar depending on what the claim is. It’s that simple, and while this may sound like a double standard, bear with me for a second and I can explain it. We judge a claim first by it’s plausibility, the claim that there is a piece of land called Australia is completely plausible. There is nothing that breaks my worldview in this assertion. So the bar for evidence is very low. Make a claim about a continent called Atlantis and the bar is also low. Make continued claims that Atlantis had lasers and used crystals to harness the energy of the cosmos and the bar of evidence shoots right back up again. The difference between Australia and Atlantis is that there is ample proof to exceed my evidence bar for Australia, and not enough (none) for the existence of Atlantis. The existence of Atlantis is further complicated by the size it is claimed to be in Plato’s writings (larger than all of northern Africa) A mass of land this big in the Atlantic would have profound implications on our current theory of continental drift.

Is the claim that an island once existed that has now been lost to the waves as ludicrous as claiming that a teapot floats between mars and the earth? No, it isn’t. It’s the other claims that surround Atlantis that make it ridiculous. If someone claims something extraordinary they better be able to back it up with some proof.

I have heard the argument against this reasoning, people claiming that if we required proof of all claims that we would believe nothing and things like Newton’s laws would be ignored by science. This is ludicrous. Newton did not come up with the how of gravity. if he had only come up with the idea that everything with mass was attracted to each other thing, both in the heavens and on the earth, then his ideas would have been shelved until he had some proof. He came up with the math to prove it (and with few exceptions the math did hold very true).

So it is because of this that I do accept that Australia exists. There are literally millions of pieces of good evidence that Australia exists, and none that Atlantis exists.

Hey, I made it an entire post about the requirement for evidence without quoting “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Well, almost a full post I guess…

Quantum strangeness

So, I linked to a video in the last post and wanted to clarify something about it.  Right around four minutes and thirty seconds into the video it explains that the electron “decides” which slit it goes through “As if it were aware it was being watched”.  Electrons are not aware of anything and they certainly don’t decide which path to take.

When describing Quantum physics to people sometimes I will say things like “if it is not observed then it does not have a definite position.”, but saying observed might give too much credence to the thought that our minds are special to the universe, interact might be a better term than observe.  Until it interacts with something then it does not have a definite position.  This might seem strange and it is.  Quantum physics is very counter-intuitive, but is is certainly not magical.

Dr. Chopra (remember that believing someone just because they have a degree is the argument from authority logical fallacy) uses the word quantum like so many other new age con artists and quacks, as a way to make themselves seem more legitimate.  They try to hijack the term to use it in their pseudoscience. --

Wait, let me go on a tangent for a second.  Pseudoscience might be too forgiving of a word.  it might imply that what they do offers some but not all the benefits of science.  So lets stop using that and just call it what it is. --

They try to hijack the term to use it in their scam.  How do I know that it is a scam?  They are selling books aren’t they?  Books that claim to hold the secrets to wellness, success, and fulfillment? Have they proved that their product works in a double blind study with a large test group?  Did they publish any papers on it in peer reviewed science journals?  Can they truly alleviate anything that a placebo cannot?  If they have not done these things then odds are it’s being sold two booths down from a crystal harvested from Atlantis.

Sure, some other fields use the world quantum.  It is Latin and it’s not like anyone owns the phrase.  But we have to be aware that quantum mechanics is ridiculously complex and take with a grain of salt when people try to sell us something based on it.  There may be legitimate products some time in the future based on quantum physics, but now the only thing legitimate about quantum mechanics available to consumers are books explaining how it works. (I have not read those last two yet but have heard good things.  I do heartily recommend the first one)

The skeptical toolkit.

How do we determine what is science and what is just bunk and what is actual science? There are tools and methods that are used in science that help us draw the line.

The first step is to make a prediction or hypothesis. I hypothesize that if we shoot a laser through two slits in a piece of paper that we will see two points of the laser on the other side.

Now, we set up an experiment. This is easy enough to do in this case. It is a famous physics experiment called the double slit experiment. (Please note the poster in the background of the video is for a movie called “What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?” I recommend NOT watching that movie as it actually has very little to do with science, and much more with pseudo-science)

Well the experiment proved that my hypothesis was wrong, then comes the next phase. I need a hypothesis that explains the results of my experiment. I might come up with several hypotheses and will need to narrow it down, we do that by finding how each one could be tested and find what things might prove one more plausible than another. We then run those experiments and the hypothesis that is left standing is then sent to another person.

Why another person you ask? Well it is important to rule out that maybe your experiment is flawed or that the equipment you are using is not contaminated in some way. So you would send it to other labs to be tested there. If they can confirm your results then comes the peer review process.

We publish our results in a scientific paper or journal and let our colleagues tear it apart. Although human nature is to want our ideas to succeed, we must be willing to accept when they have been found to be flawed. Many pseudo-scientists fail at this step, then claim that the “scientific establishment” wants to keep out new ideas. This was popular among intelligent design proponents a couple of years ago, and even got Ben Stein to make a movie about it.

Once you have made it through peer review then congratulations… well maybe. There is still work to be done and it is possible that later evidence will turn up showing that your hypothesis is wrong or that it still does not explain everything regarding it’s subject. there may even be a competing hypothesis that made it through the same process and is trying to explain the same things. (Although it can be argued that the two are actually really looking at the same underlying principle from two angles… it could also be said that neither is truly falsifiable at our current state of technology)

That is how we narrow down what is scientific from what is not scientific. But what about things that cannot be tested? For those we have another set of tool aside from the scientific method.

Logical fallacies are used to determine when you are not making a logical argument. Some of these have their niche that they get used in most. In politics (especially talking head opinion shows) the Ad hominem fallacy and the Straw man rear their head at short intervals.

In pseudo-science we see a lot of "Moving the goalpost” (Stating that gaps need to be filled in the evolution of man before you would accept evolution then when those gaps are filled just switching to a different gap or saying that the fossil is simply not good enough.), “Special pleading” (ESP, ghost phenomena, and telekinesis all use special pleading commonly.), and “Argument from popularity” (Millions of people wouldn’t believe in astrology if it wasn’t real)

There is simply too much to talk about fallacies in one post. there is a lot of good information on them on the internet, as well as an unending list of examples of them (see the comments section of any video on YouTube or a political blog for all the logical fallacies you need)