Sen. Chris Buttars on KUER

Utah Senator Chris Buttars was recently interviewed on KUER. You can listen to the interview here. Most of the program concerns homosexuality, but Buttars' bill dealing with evolution in schools is discussed 37.5 min into the program.

Suprisingly he conceeds that intelligent design is a faith issue. Nevertheless he sounds deeply confused on evolution. He lumps the origin of the cosmos, life, and species into one big ball. (No one thinks that humans or life originated in the big bang, and what does "evolution between species" mean?)

My impression was that this whole thing will blow over. I hope I'm right.

(via Clark Goble on Eyring-L.)

Continue reading...

Two Items on Global Warming

I thought this article in the New York Times was interesting. I quote some of it below. (Note: breaks in the article are not shown.)

Continue Reading

For decades, Kerry Emanuel, the meteorologist and hurricane specialist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was known as a cautious centrist on questions of global warming and hurricane ferocity.

Professor Emanuel asserted often that no firm link had been established between warming and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.

But in August, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Professor Emanuel wrote in the journal Nature that he had discovered statistical evidence that hurricanes were indeed affected by global warming. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the oceans.

Q. Because last year's hurricane season was so intense, many people declared: "Ah, ha! Global warming!" Were they right?

A. My answer is, Not so fast. That may have been a contributor. But the fact we had such a bad season was mostly a matter of chance. On the other hand, though the number of storms globally remained nearly constant, the frequency of Atlantic storms has been rising in concert with tropical ocean temperature, probably because of global warming.

There is no doubt that in the last 20 years, the earth has been warming up. And it's warming up much too fast to ascribe to any natural process we know about.

We still don't have a good grasp of how clouds and water vapor, the two big feedbacks in the climate system, will respond to global warming. What we are seeing is a modest increase in the intensity of hurricanes.

I predicted years ago that if you warmed the tropical oceans by a degree Centigrade, you should see something on the order of a 5 percent increase in the wind speed during hurricanes. We've seen a larger increase, more like 10 percent, for an ocean temperature increase of only one-half degree Centigrade.

Q. There are scientists who say of fossil fuel consumption and global warming, We may not have all the evidence yet, but we ought to be acting as if the worst could happen. Do you agree?

A. It's always struck me as odd that this country hasn't put far more resources into research on alternative energy. Europeans are. France has managed to go 85 percent nuclear in its electrical generation. And the Europeans have gotten together to fund a major nuclear fusion project. It almost offends my pride as a U.S. scientist that we've fallen down so badly in this competition.

Q. Would you ever buy a house on the beach?

A. I'd love to! But if I could do that, I'd insist on paying for my risk. And I'd do what is now being called "the Fire Island option," which involves putting up flimsy houses that you don't mind losing to a storm. You don't insure them.

And then there is this post by Carl Zimmer. Here's the first paragraph.

Last year was the hottest on record, or the second hottest, depending on the records climatologists look at. The planet has warmed .8 degrees C over the past 150 years, and scientists are generally agreed that greenhouse gases have played a major part in that warming. They also agree that the warming will continue in the decades to come. Many experts are concerned that warming may make two unpleasant things more common: extinctions and diseases.

Continue reading...

Phenomenal Cosmic [Knowledge]; Itty-Bitty Living Space

Cleon Skousen passed away a few days ago. (Hat-tip to This Mormon Life.) He was a well known LDS author and teacher, and there's a reasonable chance that your ward library has one of his books. He was probably most well known for his ideas about the Atonement, where all matter contains intelligence and Christ suffered in order to satisfy the demands of justice of all of those little intelligences in the universe, thus making them willing to continue their obedience to God. (Skousen is the only person I know of to attempt to explain how the Atonement actually works.)

Continue Reading

The idea of all element having intelligence apparently comes from some of the early brethren such as Brigham Young and Orson Pratt. For Skousen this connection explained not only the Atonement, but miracles as well. Under the oxymoronic subtitle "The Science of Miracles," he writes,

"These intelligences love the Father and the Son. They honor them, and therefore they obey them...When the intelligences obey, the matter which is attached to them automatically follows. They are merely responding to the voice of their Creators or Master Organizers." (Days of the Living Christ Vol. 1, p. 124)

So for any command given, the relevant intelligences with their element:

1. Have senses and reasoning ability.
2. Have some idea of what God envisions in his commands.
3. Know how to interact with the other elements in order to get into the proper formation.
4. According to Skousen they also have emotions and agency--they choose to obey.

In addition it would seem that these intelligences have infinite knowledge. How else can they organize themselves into whatever God commands? How would the intelligent elements of, say, water know how to form wine--and good tasting wine at that?

One wonders about how a universe of knowledge could be stored in such a small space. The issue of information storage is already an interesting question as it pertains to God's omniscience. (See this paper (pdf) by David H. Bailey for an interesting discussion.) Skousen's ideas seem to imply a universe of knowledge in each particle of the universe.

I certainly don't understand the powers of God--he can accomplish his purposes--but intelligent elements are not high on my list of suspects.


(BTW, the title is derived from Disney's Aladin.)

Continue reading...

Science Post Purge

It's time to purge. I've collected a number of science blog posts that I have intended to point out or comment on but have not. So here they are; feel free to comment on them.


Continue Reading

First John Hawks lays out the basics between the Multiregional vs. Out of Africa hypotheses concerning human origins and expansion.

Both hypotheses have to account for the same basic set of facts:

-Humans first left Africa and established populations in other parts of the world (first southern Asia, China, and Java, later Europe) by 1.8 million years ago.

-Humans today are quite different anatomically and behaviorally from archaic people (that is, most humans before 40,000 years ago) anywhere in the world. Recent people are called "modern" humans.

-Human populations today are genetically very similar to each other.

-African populations today are more genetically diverse than populations in other parts of the world.

-Recent humans in Europe and Asia share a few features with the ancient archaic people who lived in those places before 40,000 years ago.

Carl Zimmer reports on a talk by Alan Templeton arguing (if I understand it correcty) that the truth may lie between these two poles. This post is worth checking out for the graphic illustrating human gene flow at the bottom.

While I'm referencing Carl Zimmer, I want to point out a few more of his posts. Here he discusses a recent paper on how the various members of the cat family relate to each other. Then there is a discussion of pandas, thumbs, and the funny paths of evolution. I've been holding onto this one since September, but it may be the most fascinating. In fact, I quote the opening paragraph to give you a taste.

A lot of people think of viruses and bacteria in our bodies as nothing more than pests. It's certainly true that a lot of them do an excellent job of making us ill. But some viruses and bacteria merged with our ancestors over the course of billions of years, and if you were to have them removed from your body today, you'd die faster than if you'd gotten a massive dose of Ebola.

At The Panda's Thumb there is a discussion of "junk DNA."

Pharyngula summarizes a paper about a transitional fossil and its meaning for limb evoution.

Finally, Michael Ruse discusses several approaches to the question, "were humans inevitable?"

(I apologize for using the word "discuss" a lot. Maybe next time I'll consult a thesaurus.)

Continue reading...

Grandeur for Grandeur's Sake

There is an interesting discussion going on at Times and Seasons about Alma and whether all things denote there is a God. There have been some good comments; I especially have enjoyed Otto's and was struck by this one:

Continue Reading

[Eric Robert Paul’s Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology] suggests that for Mormons science is inherently a spiritual undertaking (and the implication that I take from that is that for many if not most Mormon scientists, that inherent spiritual content obviates the need to dress science in religious rhetoric or bend it to religious ends).

I'm sure it is not uncommon for Mormon scientists to feel pressure to do just such a thing--at least when talking to other LDS non-scientists. To those open to new ideas, making religion connections can be fun. But sometimes it feels like a requirement to certify orthodoxy and as cheap and empty as a televangelist saying "praise Jesus!"

Darwin's Origin of Species ends with this sentence:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

The first version did not contain the words "by the Creator." I read somewhere that it was added later to mollify religious critics.

Such is life, I guess.

Continue reading...

Estrogen and Brain Development in Mice

Scientific American.com has a news story about a new article coming out in Nature Neuroscience that shows the importance of estrogen in brain development of mice. But there is a twist: exposure of the brain to estrogen leads to male brain development. These otherwise female mice acted like males, including how they interacted with other mice sexually.

In primates, including humans, androgen--not estrogen--plays the key role in making men's brains masculine and AFP does not bind to estrogens. But the appropriately named sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) may play a similar role to that of AFP, Bakker notes, keeping women feminine and allowing baby boys develop masculine behavior.

Continue reading...

Court Decision Summary

If you don't want to read the full 139 page decision of the Dover intelligent design trial, you can read a good summary here.

While I'm on the topic of intelligent design, The Pandas Thumb provided an interesting quotation:

“The analogy which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art, and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.

You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between every thing which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation.”

These paragraphs were written in 1814 in response to William Paley's Natural Theology. Perhaps the argument over intelligent design will die down for a little while, but I think that first paragraph is worth keeping in mind because ID proponents almost exclusively argue by analogy to man-made things.

Continue reading...

Sen. Buttars' Bill Released

I'm back from the holiday. During the blogging hiatus, the text of a new bill put forth by Utah senator Chris Buttars was released and is available here.

There is no mention of intelligent design (formerly referred to by Buttars as "divine design"). For some critical analysis see here.

Continue reading...