2012 Cosmophobia

December is upon us, so it's a good time to take a quick look at why some people think that the world may end a year from now. For several years there have been claims on the Internet that a planet--Nibiru or Planet X--will collide with Earth (or make a catastrophic near-miss) in December of 2012. This planet allegedly orbits the sun every 3600 years, and that the collision coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar is just a bonus.

NASA has some nice material on this, especially the "Ask an Astrobiologist" web-page. Whether you are concerned about this yourself, or are just interested in what types of things people get themselves worked up over, head on over and read the Q&A. The short version is that no such planet exists.

You'll also find these two videos.





To put an LDS twist on this, some people think Nibiru or Planet X could be implicated in this statement by Joseph Smith:

There will be wars and rumors of wars, signs in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, the sun turned into darkness and the moon to blood, earthquakes in divers places, the seas heaving beyond their bounds; then will appear one grand sign of the Son of Man in heaven. But what will the world do? They will say it is a planet, a comet, &c. But the Son of Man will come as the sign of the coming of the Son of Man, which will be as the light of the morning cometh out of the east [History of The Church, 5:336-37].

Whatever Joseph's statement means, I think it's pretty safe to say that it has nothing to do with Nibiru or Planet X...since no such planet exists.


And just for fun, I'll end with Robert Frost's poem, "Fire and Ice."

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

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Climategate 2

Two years ago, emails among climate scientists taken from the servers of the University of East Anglia were released to the world, which sparked a pseudo-scandal known as 'Climategate.' The emails, some taken severely out of context, were used to tar the whole field of research and create the impression that climate scientists are an insular group who break the law, falsify data, and suppress opposition in order to keep the global warming hoax alive so that [insert nefarious rationale]. In the intervening time, investigations have largely cleared the scientists swept up in the whirlwind, and the temperature record was recently re-affirmed by an independent analysis. Nevertheless, the storm of controversy had effects that can be seen to this day, with attempts to get all of Michael Mann's emails and files from the University of Virginia working their way through the courts, and commentators like Rush Limbaugh continuing to cite the emails as proof that global warming is a scam.

Now, in time for the holiday season, a new batch of emails has been released. However, like most sequels, Climategate 2 looks likely to be disappointing for those interested in stirring up controversy. The emails appear to be left-overs from the first batch released, and you can bet the scientists involved won't be caught flat-footed this time.

A quick digression: This business of trolling through emails looking for something salacious is understandable. After all, these are supposed to be the unguarded real thoughts of the people involved, and sometimes internal communications really do contain damning information (see: tobacco companies). But it's always struck me how this kind of storm could envelope any area of research. Every field has its contested concepts, its grandstanders, and its controversial figures. Scientific papers are not handed to us on tablets written by God, they are written by people who have to hash out the best way to tell the story--where to put the emphasis, what data to include, and how to contextualize it. In that respect it's a little bit like journalism or the law. (Hey, there's an idea. Imagine the stories we could get out of the internal communications of a decent sized law firm!) Probably nobody will ever care about my own work, but I sometimes imagine what kind of controversy could be spun out of my communications.

Hopefully we're all a little wiser this time. (But maybe not.)


More details:

The Guardian

BBC

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Evolution is an Eternal Principle

Over at NDBF, R. Gary pits evolution against the Millennium: "Evolution requires death and, beginning with the Millennium, there will be no death anywhere on earth." Ergo, evolution will cease. However, this isn't quite right and it gives us an opportunity to think about this a little more in depth.

You only need three conditions for evolution to occur:

1. Variation in traits
2. Heritability of the variation
3. Differential reproduction (i.e. varying degrees of success in passing on the traits)

Natural selection gets most of the attention when it comes to #3, hence the association of evolution with death. (Well, fossils contribute to that, too.) But besides the fact that there is more to natural selection than death, natural selection is only one mechanism of evolution. There are others like sexual selection, where the preference of males or females for certain traits leads to those traits becoming more common. Another one is genetic drift, where simply by random luck some genes become prevalent and others disappear.

Death or no death, when it comes to the Millennium, will variation in traits cease? Will reproduction of those traits cease? Will all traits be maintained in the population in the same proportions? Unless you can answer 'yes' to one of those questions, there will be evolution.

The hymn "If You Could Hie to Kolob" says, "There is no end to race." As long as there is variation, heritability of variation, and differential perpetuation of that variation, there will be no end to evolution.

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Awesome Honesty (About Dishonesty)

This xkcd is good, but the quote when you arrow over the comic is priceless. Regarding CVS pharmacy stocking homeopathic remedies:

Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you're not, because you want their money, isn't just lying--it's like an example you'd make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

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Mormonism's Conflicted View of Scientific Evidence

[A draft of this post has been hanging around for a couple of years, waiting to see the light of day. I finally decided to dust it off and set it free. My plan is to use it as a springboard for some further discussion.]

In his 1991 book, The Lord's Way, Elder Dallin H. Oaks devoted a chapter to "signs and science." After surveying the scriptures he concluded that although the Bible is ambivalent on whether signs should be used in conversion, modern revelation--especially the Doctrine and Covenants--forbids it.

In our day, God does not use miracles or signs as a way of teaching or convincing the unbeliever. As a result, we should not ask for signs for this purpose, and we should be deeply suspicious of the so-called spiritual evidences of those who do. [p. 86]

But for Elder Oaks, 'signs' are not limited to miracles. He went on to assert that scientific evidences are a type of sign, and a discussion of the inadequacies of science to deal with gospel truths followed. One problem is that scientific evidence must be open and shared, but individual communication with the Spirit cannot (and sometimes should not) be. More importantly for the purposes of this post, he wrote,

This helps us understand why the methods of science are not applicable to establishing the truthfulness of the gospel, the fact of the Restoration, or the origin and truth of the Book of Mormon. President Ezra Taft Benson has declared: "It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the studies of the learned will prove the Book of Mormon true or false. The origin, preparation, translation, and verification of the truth of the Book of Mormon have all been retained in the hands of the Lord." [p. 91]

Yet as Terryl Givens detailed in By the Hand of Mormon, the early Saints--including Joseph Smith--very much viewed discoveries in American archaeology and antiquities as vindicating the Book of Mormon.

For the time being [mid-late nineteenth century], it appears, Mormons valued the Book of Mormon as faithful history of their own continent, secure in the belief that its historical validity was amply confirmed by the abundant ruins so general throughout the lands of Mesoamerica. [p. 106]

However, caution emerged as New World studies progressed and began to challenge the Book of Mormon. Although some leaders remained optimistic that further research would support the Book of Mormon, the sentiment expressed more recently by President Benson and Elder Oaks grew. But such caution has been difficult to wholeheartedly embrace. Givens again:

Still, even as Mormon scholars affirm on the one hand that no amount of scientific evidence can prove the Book of Mormon true, it is hard to shake the heritage of Joseph Smith's famous claim that "the Lord has a hand in bringing to pass his strange act, and proving the Book of Mormon true in the eyes of all the people. . . . Surely 'facts are stubborn things.' It will be and ever has been, the world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial evidence, in experimentis, as they did Moses and Elijah. (p.118)

Indeed. Hugh Nibley, for example, in his preface to Since Cumorah stated that the Book of Mormon is "asking for a fight" and is "delightfully falsifiable."

And so we are left with competing expectations about how the Book of Mormon and other religious claims are tied to reality--whether they are scientifically verifiable or falsifiable, even in principle.

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Newsflash: Climate Scientists Knew What They Were Doing

The 'climategate' pseudo-scandal two years ago shook a lot of people's confidence in climate science--to the point that some skeptics questioned whether the instrumental record actually showed a warming trend. Occasionally someone would claim that the record had been fabricated, but more often suspicions were expressed that the data were manipulated to give a false warming trend.

Then there was Anthony Watts, who enlisted volunteers to find land temperature stations and made a big deal about how many of them were near asphalt, air conditioners, BBQ grills, and other warm objects. According to Watts, the warming trend is actually temperature contamination.

Enter physicist Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team, whose aim was to re-analyze the temperature records to find the true story. Today they announced their results.

On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkely Earth's founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.

"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K.," Muller said. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."

Previous studies, cared out by NOAA, NASA, and the Hadley Center, also found that land warming was approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s, and that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results. But their findings were criticized by skeptics who worried that they relied on ad-hoc techniques that meant that the findings could not be duplicated. Robert Rohde, lead scientist for Berkeley Earth, noted that "the Berkeley Earth analysis is the first study to address the issue of data selection bias, by using nearly all of the available data, which includes about 5 times as many station locations as were reviewed by prior groups."

Well, OK then.

(See also The Economist: The heat is on.)

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Mormon Matters Evolution Podcast

I almost forgot to mention this: In August the Mormon Matters podcast had an episode devoted to Mormonism and evolution with participants including James McLachlan (professor of philosophy and religion Western Carolina University), Steven Peck (SteveP; professor of biology at BYU), and Duane Jeffery (emeritus professor of zoology at BYU). The discussion runs through a basic history of the interaction of evolution with the Church and BYU, and then turns to a collection of auxiliary issues. It's a nice discussion and I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.

I've never met or corresponded with Duane Jeffery, but I always enjoy listening to what he has to say and am a fan of his efforts. (Got that? Good.) So let me shift and say that I think he made three questionable claims that need better substantiation.

They are:

1. That the Improvement Era 1910 Priesthood Quorums Table came from the First Presidency (@ 30:00). The basis for this claim seems to come from the fact that Joseph F. Smith was one of the editors of the magazine. However, although we often disagree, I agree with R. Gary that the evidence that the statement represents the position of the First Presidency, or even just Joseph F. Smith, is weak. I do think its publication was significant--Joseph F. Smith could have stopped it or later published a repudiation of it. So my interpretation is that Joseph F. Smith and the First Presidency did not find it objectionable, but that it did not have their imprimatur.

2. That the 1925 First Presidency statement, "Mormon View of Evolution," is the official church position: (@ 32:00) "If there is an official church position, this has got to be it." The basis for this claim seems to be that because the statement is more recent than the 1909 statement, it has priority. The 1925 statement consists entirely of quotes from the 1909 statement, but never mentions it. So it makes sense to think of the 1925 statement as representing the most current (!) position, and I think Jeffery's statement would have been uncontroversial in, say, 1928.

However, as a practical matter I think it is a difficult position to defend because i) the Feb 2002 issue of the Ensign published the 1909 statement as the Church's official position, ii) the 1909 statement has at times been distributed to people inquiring of the Church's position, and iii) the 1925 statement is pretty much ignored as a reference in Church manuals, in contrast to the 1909 statement.

I imagine Jeffery might defend his statement as follows: In a presentation given in 2004, he said that the publication of the 1909 statement in the Ensign was somewhat controversial behind the scenes, and that BYU was assured by the First Presidency that it's publication did not supersede the BYU evolution packet. And as published in his book, Mormonism and Evolution, inquiries to the Church are not always answered with the 1909 statement. So I can see where he might be coming from.

My opinion--and I speculate that Jeffery would agree with me--is that the question of the Church's position on evolution is not resolvable to a single sentence or to one statement. It is better represented by the BYU packet, which consists of several statements made or authorized by the First Presidency, preferably informed by a sense of the history.

3. That the traditional Mormon view of natural law has largely been abandoned since the mid-1950's (@ 1:25:00), partially because of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie. I would be interested in a fuller justification for this statement. As I recently pointed out, Joseph Fielding Smith and James E. Talmage wrote almost identical passages regarding miracles and natural law. I'm open to Jeffery's statement--anecdotally it seems true, and perhaps it boils down to a matter of interpretation--but I would like to see more evidence that such is the case.

Again, I'm a fan of Duane Jeffery, but these are things that I would not be comfortable repeating to others without better evidence.

All that aside, give the podcast a listen. I think you'll enjoy the conversation.

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Getting Gods Out of Genesis

Over at Times and Seasons, Ben S. has a post up about how translation of the Old Testament into English doesn't necessarily convey the original meaning because of the differing cultural contexts. You should read the whole thing, but I especially liked this part and want to post it here as part of my own collection.

Several times in Genesis 1, curious circumlocutions appear. There’s no mention of the sun or moon, but “greater light” and “lesser light.”... And lastly, though we have the world bifurcated into water and dry land, the seas are mysteriously plural. All of these are explainable via polemical context. First, both the sun (shemesh) and moon (yareach) were also the names of those deities outside Israel, just as Ra designated both sun and sun-god in Egypt. We can see echoes of shemeshas the name of a (solar) deity in Israelite place names like bet-shemesh (Joshua 15:10), ir-shemesh (Joshua 19:41), and en-shemesh (Joshua 18:17), as well as in Sampson (shimshon). Genesis polemicizes against these deities; Not only are they creations, as opposed to co-creators as in some accounts, but their names are not even mentioned to avoid any hint of polytheism.

Similarly, the name for the sea (”yam”) was also the name of a prominent deity. Hebrew, as far as we can tell, did not have a full range of words for different-sized bodies as ocean, sea, lake, pond, puddle, etc. (think: Sea of Galillee), so it couldn’t simply substitute another term, but instead pluralizes to seas, yammim.

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