Skepticism in the Church

Is skepticism antithetical to the Church? I think that the answer is a qualified no. Obviously the Church makes claims that lay mainly in the realm of faith. Also, Church members come from diverse backgrounds and have different levels of tolerance for free-thinking and skepticism, especially when applied to Church history, leaders, or doctrine. However there is a significant amount of official Church discourse that encourages members to eschew radical claims or fads. Policy statements on medical issues often include the admonition to consider the judgment of "competent medical authority." And although the Church teaches that God communicates with man, it does so with caution. For example, the First Presidency under Joseph F. Smith wrote:

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In secular as well as spiritual affairs, Saints may receive Divine guidance and revelation affecting themselves, but this does not convey authority to direct others, and is not to be accepted when contrary to Church covenants, doctrine or discipline, or to known facts, demonstrated truths, or good common sense. No person has the right to induce his fellow members of the Church to engage in speculations or take stock in ventures of any kind on the specious [deceptive] claim of Divine revelation or vision or dream, especially when it is in opposition to the voice of recognized authority, local or general.

Consider these examples of skepticism displayed by Church leaders or official publications:

1. I've noted previously a couple of instances of skeptical treatment of Old Testament stories in the CES OT manual.

2. Joseph F. Smith:

The danger and power for evil in witchcraft is not so much in the witchcraft itself as in the foolish credulence that superstitious people give to the claims made in its behalf. It is outrageous to believe that the devil can hurt or injure an innocent man or woman, especially if they are members of the Church of Christ—[unless] that man or woman has faith that he or she can be harmed by such an influence and by such means. If they entertain such an idea, then they are liable to succumb to their own superstitions. There is no power in witchcraft itself, only as it is believed in and accepted.

3. Dallin H. Oaks:

Another category of miracles, so-called, are the tricks that some magicians and religious practitioners stage in order to produce astonishing events in aid of their professions or ministries. You will remember that the magicians in Pharaoh’s court duplicated some of the miracles Moses produced through the power of God (see Ex. 7–8). Perhaps these magicians were servants of the devil, using his power, but I think it more likely that they were simply skilled practitioners of magic tricks that they used to reinforce their position in Pharaoh’s court.

Religious practitioners have employed similar deceptions in our own day....Before we are too critical of such techniques, we should remember that we engage in similar deceptions whenever we exaggerate a happening in order to dazzle an audience into thinking we have experienced a miracle or to enhance our stature in other ways. Warning!

4. While the Church has not taken an official position on the matter, Church leaders are apparently comfortable referring interested people to publications by FARMS and others that emphasize the limited geography model of the Book of Mormon and backpedal on the words "principal ancestors" from the introduction.

Other issues that we are encouraged to be skeptical about include:

Speculative doctrines--even those taught by Church leaders
"Faith-promoting stories"--particularly those that circulate as rumors
Excessive (relative to the mainstream Church) religious practices

Most of these examples don't really involve "scientific" skepticism. However what I want to establish here is that skepticism is not necessarily a bad word, even in the realm of LDS religion.

(If you can think of additional examples, please add to my list in the comments.)

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I Shall Henceforth Be Known As...

It has come to my attention that there is a least one other person in the bloggernacle going by the name of "Jared." Obviously this could lead to some confusion in the various comment threads. Although I think I was the first to claim the name in the bloggernacle, it's not in my nature to tell the others to change their screen-name or get lost.

I see two options:

1. Change nothing. Having raised the issue, the bloggernacle regulars will be on notice and figure it out.
2. Append a signifier to my name.

If I were to do the second, my proposals are:

1. Jared LDSSR
2. Jared LSR
3. Something simple like, Jared*
4. I'm open to suggestions, but I'm ruling out Jared the Jerk, or variations thereof.

I am soliciting comment from the community.

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Permission to Speak Freely?

STOP: This exhibit is about animal thinking. It contains some things you may agree with, some you may disagree with, and others that may even trouble you. Come explore and see what you think.

That is the text of a disclaimer that is posted at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, according to this Geotimes article, which describes the challenges of communicating science to the general public. (via EvolutionBlog)

Coincidentally, this makes for a nice introduction for something I was planning on mentioning here. A couple of weeks ago my wife took our daughter to the zoo and they made their way to the apes. A woman on staff brought out some skulls (human, gorilla, orangutan) for them to look at and compare. When my wife asked a question about them the woman said, "In order to answer your question I have to talk about evolution." My wife chuckled, gave her consent, and the discussion proceeded.

You just know that the warning is due to people getting irate and argumentative about being exposed to evolution. I can just hear it: "My tax dollars should not be spent on indoctrinating my children when we're just trying to have a nice day at the zoo. The zoo shouldn't favor one particular view."

(And just for the record, my little sunbeam's general refusal to say prayers began before she went to the zoo!)

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Pluto: No Pizza for You!

Pluto is no longer a planet. In a reversal from a week ago, when we came close to adding several planets to the solar system, Pluto has been re-classified as a "dwarf planet." The Bad Astronomer has more info.

My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas.

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ID Propaganda in My Mailbox

Because of where my wife used to work, we had a free subscription to Human Events, a politically conservative newsletter. I wouldn't say it is total-nutball conservative, but definately partisan. Anyway, we got a renewal ad in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It offers (with renewal) a free copy of Jonathan Wells's new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Wells, of course, is part of the Discovery Institute and author of Icons of Evolution--a book that has received harsh reviews. I thought the ad was entertaining so I've scanned it and posted it below. This paragraph is pretty representative:

Dr. Wells, a biologist and senior fellow at the respected Discovery Institute, begins by explaining the basic tenets of Darwinism, and the evidence both for and against it. He reveals, for instance, that the fossil record, which according to Darwin should be teeming with "transitional" fossils showing the development of one species to the next, so far hasn't produced a single incontestable example.

The rest of the ad is like that; it's littered with distortions. I haven't seen the actual book, but it apparently makes the following mind-numblingly stupid argument: That influenza virus is designed to be killed by UV light. I'm not making that up--you can read about it at Aetiology. And these people want access to public schools!

So if you get a kick out of reading this kind of stuff, have a look at the actual ad. It's below the fold.

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Dark Matter Observed

New evidence for dark matter was announced yesterday. From MSNBC.com:

Clowe and colleagues used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556, which contains a bullet-shaped cloud of superheated gas. X-rays show the shape was produced by cosmic winds created in a high-speed collision of two clusters of galaxies.

Other telescopes were used to locate and quantify the mass of the clusters. They measured the effect of gravitational lensing, in which gravity from the clusters distorts light from background galaxies, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

The dark matter is not seen, but its gravity has a predictable effect on the observations. The resulting blue color in a composite image released Monday represents the gravity fields observed by noting how the light from each background galaxy is distorted.

Here's what the image reveals:

The hot gas — normal matter — was slowed by a drag force described as the cosmic equivalent of air resistance. But the dark matter was not slowed by this effect, presumably because it does not interact with normal matter, as theory had predicted.

So the normal matter and dark matter became separated.

So to be clear, the pink is the normal observable matter and the blue represents the gravity fields. You can't have gravity without matter, so this is further evidence for dark matter.

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Skepticism of the Churches

Within the broad domain of religion there is much to be skeptical about: faith healers, speaking in tongues, mystical experiences, weeping statues, stigmata, demonic influences, mystical types of energy, reincarnation, oracles, predictions of the future, doomsday preachers, and holy books. The claims to supernatural power and knowledge are so many and varied, it is no wonder that they are treated with skepticism. The skeptical view has been reinforced by the failure of many such claims to withstand scientific scrutiny. (Others have either not been tested or are not testable.)

Our own religion has varying degrees of conflict or consonance with such phenomena. When I read or listen to the debunking of such phenomena I feel a little bit like a kid, laughing with the cool kids at the nerds, yet a little uneasy because I recognize some qualities of the nerds in myself.

Sometimes the discussion turns specifically to Mormonism. When it does, I take some consolation in the fact that portrayals of Mormonism usually miss important details. For example, the eleven witnesses who claimed to have seen the golden plates are often overlooked; the story is thus reduced to the claim of a single person. Not that such people would likely find the story any more believable, but if Mormonism is to be debunked it should at least be done accurately. Unfortunately it is not uncommon that, as Daniel Peterson has observed, "...Mormon history and doctrine are plainly deemed too patently absurd to justify much effort at accuracy." Furthermore, Peterson writes:

I believe that secular anti-Mormonism, which I often find much more interesting and intellectually challenging, will constitute the real locus of action in coming years....

...secularist anti-Mormonism is doing real damage to many fragile testimonies...and an adequate response has still not materialized. This is a challenge that apologists...urgently need to address.

I think that he is right. I don't think that we can deny that scientific skepticism has a legitimate role to play in investigating religious claims. Even from a purely theological view we have a stake in seeing that false religious teachers and miracles are revealed for what they are. The challenge is trying to convince others that the foundational claims of Mormonism are not a priori part of the bathwater.

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Prudence and Skepticism

With the "baloney detection kit" in hand, it can be tempting to approach the world with the enthusiasm of a boy who gets a hatchet for Christmas and begins to chop everything in sight. Scientific skepticism can also be used as cover for poor behavior; some people are basically jerks posing as skeptics. Carl Sagan recognized this potential.

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Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contempuous? Certainly. I've even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue. Even when it's applied sensitively, scientific skepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic, heartless, and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of others....When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based--or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug--it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault....

There is some cost-benefit analysis which must be applied, and if the comfort, consolation and hope delivered by mysticism and superstition is high, and the dangers of belief comparatively low, should we not keep our misgivings to ourselves? But the issue is tricky. ...if we offer too much silent assent...we abet a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom. (The Demon-Haunted World, p. 297-298)

The cost-benefit analysis must surely include whether the topic under scrutiny is a public issue or merely private belief--although when private belief becomes widespread it can become a public issue. The Enlightenment gave us science, and it also gave us the Constitution, which provides certain guarantees to the exercise of personal belief. But I think it is quite reasonable to expect that where private beliefs affect the general public, that those beliefs should be born out by public methods of investigation, ie. science. (Since this bleeds into the political and legal arena I will leave it where it is.)

Nevertheless, ideally the process of skeptical investigation should be an exercise in respect and persuasion.

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China's One Child Policy

There is a new study out that looked at the sex ratio in China and how it has been affected by the one child policy. An accompanying commentary had some interesting information.

Rapid population growth is an unforgiving task master. Even with the one child policy—as a result of the high birth rate a generation before—China still has one million more births than deaths every five weeks. The Chinese State Council launched the policy in 1979, "so the rate of population growth may be brought under control as soon as possible." However, the root cause of the policy lay back in the 1960s with Mao Zedong's belief that "the more people, the stronger we are"—an ideology that prevented China from developing the highly successful voluntary family planning programmes that countries such as South Korea and Taiwan had put in place in the 1960s.

Deng Xiao-ping, the acknowledged architect of China's contemporary economic miracle, was a major sponsor of the 1979 policy. He said that unless the birth rate fell rapidly, "we will not be able to develop our economy, and raise the living standards of our people." Economists and demographers now recognise that a falling birth rate offers a demographic dividend, as the economically productive proportion of the population grows more rapidly than the general population. Without a rapid decline in fertility, China's economy would not have grown by 7-8% a year over the past decade; such growth has lifted an unprecedented 150 million people out of abject poverty....

Undoubtedly, the one child policy caused great individual pain and it has been heavily criticised. For people in the United States especially, the idea that society's long term interests could ever be more important than individual rights was anathema. A veritable media industry has arisen in the US criticising the one child policy, although it chooses to overlook the tens of millions of coercive pregnancies in other countries where family planning and legal abortion are not available. The Bush administration refuses to fund the United Nations Population Fund because it works in China, even though this fund has never supported the one child policy.

The Chinese demographic crisis arose because between 1960 and 1973 the population grew by 2% or more each year. Today, the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, along with Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, have population growth rates of at least 2%. Between now and 2050 the population of Niger, West Africa, is projected to grow fivefold from 14 to 53 million. As the World Bank acknowledges, without a rapid decline in fertility, tens of millions of Nigeriens will be uneducated, unemployed, and desperately poor; they will either starve or be fed by Western humanitarian aid.

The birthrate has fallen in Western countries, something both secular and Church leaders (pdf) have noticed.

I'm inclined to take an Ecclesiastes view: there is a time to multiply like rabbits, and a time to refrain from multiplying--as much.

(There was a discussion of birthrate at the Bloggernacle Times almost a year ago.)

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Skepticism Kick-Off

I recently finished reading Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In the book Sagan extolls the virtues of the scientific method and how its use helps us to overcome human biases in the search for truth. Along the way he discusses topics ranging from alien abductions to the atomic bomb to the need for better science education. His discussion of midieval beliefs about demons and the ensuing witch hunts is sobering. Perhaps the book is best known for Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit," a set of principles and logical rules to keep in mind when investigating claims.

One of the most prominent leading light's of the modern skeptical movement is James Randi, a former magician who has devoted his life to uncovering deception (honest and dishonest.) Then there is Michael Shermer, who writes a column in Scientific American and is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine and the executive director of the Skeptics Society.

I've also enjoyed listening to a podcast called "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" (available free at iTunes). Topics of discussion run the gamut: aliens, conspiracy theories, creationism, alternative medicine, political correctness, astrology, faith healers, scientific discoveries, and so forth.

The goal of all of the above is to separate truth from fiction, and science from pseudoscience, as best as is humanly possible. In many ways it is a commendable effort; we are constantly bombarded with messages that claim to represent truth, so we need ways to protect ourselves from con-men, determine what public policies should be supported, and just plain figure out what the truth is.

Of course the tools of skepticism are also often turned against religion. In a forthcoming series of posts I plan to discuss skepticism and its intersection with religion--ours especially. I have not written the posts yet, and right now I only have a rough outline of the material I want to cover. Hopefully it will be an exercise worth doing, and worth reading.

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How Many Planets?

It is not official yet, but it's looking like we will soon say that there are 12 planets in our solar system. The status of Pluto has been under debate for some time and, as I understand it, the choice is to either demote Pluto or add more planets.

The Bad Astronomer explains.

I'm sure this can only mean good things for astrology.

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The Spawning of a New Lifeform

Evolution skeptics sometimes pose mocking questions like, "When has a dog ever produced something that is not a dog?" The foundation of such a question is flawed, but amazingly we can now say that such a thing has happened!

A few days ago Carl Zimmer highlighted a paper that just came out in Cell. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) in an infectious tumor that is spread in dogs by sexual contact, as well as biting and sniffing. It has been known for years that infectious viruses can cause tumors, but that is not the case here. The agents of CTVT transmission are the tumor cells themselves. When scientists looked at tumor DNA, they found that it did not match that of host dogs. Furthermore, all of the tumors examined were closely related genetically. The scientists estimate that the tumor arose in wolves or east Asian dogs somewhere between 200 and 2500 years ago.

So essentially this dog tumor seems to have become its own parasitic lifeform. That's way cool if you ask me!

Abstract:

The transmissible agent causing canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is thought to be the tumor cell itself. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed genetic markers including major histocompatibility (MHC) genes, microsatellites, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in naturally occurring tumors and matched blood samples. In each case, the tumor is genetically distinct from its host. Moreover, tumors collected from 40 dogs in 5 continents are derived from a single neoplastic clone that has diverged into two subclades. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that CTVT most likely originated from a wolf or an East Asian breed of dog between 200 and 2500 years ago. Although CTVT is highly aneuploid, it has a remarkably stable genotype. During progressive growth, CTVT downmodulates MHC antigen expression. Our findings have implications for understanding genome instability in cancer, natural transplantation of allografts, and the capacity of a somatic cell to evolve into a transmissible parasite.

(FYI, the tumor is derived from histiocytes, which as far as I can tell is just another name for macrophages.)

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Nephite Genetics: Moving the Discussion Forward

There has been another flare-up of discussion of the DNA:Book of Mormon issue. Dave at DMI has a discussion on some of the latest. I think he makes some good points, and a few of the comments have some good points as well.

Additionally, Simon Southerton has updated his main response page. The most noteworthy change has been item #7. It used to state:

In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites, say less than thirty, entered such a massive native population, it would be very hard to detect their genes today. However, such a scenario does not square with what the Book of Mormon plainly states and with what the prophets have taught for 175 years.

This statement has recently been turned against him, and may be why it has been removed.

General Comments

I'm rooting for the apologists, but let me put on my curmudgeon hat for a moment. The general discussion seems to be at a stalemate. The critics point out the lack of DNA evidence and view it as a strike against the Book of Mormon. Apologists conceed the science, but argue that the founding population was small and therefore we should not expect to find DNA evidence. The principle argument at the moment seems to be over how the Book of Mormon should be interpreted in regard to the success of the founders' reproduction and the inter-mixing with natives.

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But I'm not yet convinced that we should not (in theory) expect to find DNA evidence. Most of the discussion has focused on mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. Those have been studied first because they are easiest to deal with, but a Y chromosome is only 1/46 of the male genome (by chromosome count). It is easy for me to believe that the few Y chromosomes and mitochondrial lineages that would have been introduced by the Nephites did not make it. It is harder for me to believe that no trace of the other chromosomes should be expected to have survived.

This is not to say that those traces should be easy to spot, but that is a technical/sampling issue. DNA recovery methods are improving and whole-genome sequencing is getting faster and cheaper. The resolution of the global genetic structure is going to keep improving which will make spotting non-Asian traces easier. On what grounds are we to believe that no Nephite/Lamanite traces exist?

I have not read Southerton's book, and I haven't read all of the commentary yet, but so far I have not seen anybody put up any back-of-the-envelope calculations as to what we ought to find. What I think we need are some general calculations under different assumptions (including known history) to give us some idea of what kind of boundaries the probablilites have. For the sake of argument, let's say that each founding Nephite/Lamanite chromosome had five theoretically identifiable markers. What kind of assumptions would lead to complete extinction of all of the markers today, and are those assumptions reasonable?

Yes, I know that the details of history and the storyline of the Book of Mormon are fuzzy, but I think such an exercise is needed. I think it would lend greater credibility to assertions that we should not expect to find Nephite/Lamanite DNA and it might also help guide us in interpreting the Book of Mormon. For example, it seems to me that having the Nephites/Lamanites intermixing with natives from the get-go has much different implications for expected findings than if the Nephites and Lamanites remained mostly separate from any surrounding groups.

Unfortunately I am not the person to do this. I think I have a reasonable grasp on population genetics concepts, but I don't have any real training in it, and I would really be out of my league in trying to generate any basic models. I'll be watching with interest to see if anybody takes on the task.

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Sinking the Ships of Tarshish

Yesterday I browsed through the most recent FARMS Journal of Book of Mormon Studies (Volume 14 Issue 2, 2005) and noticed the article, "'Upon All the Ships of the Sea, and Upon All the Ships of Tarshish': Revisiting 2 Nephi 12:16 and Isaiah 2:16." [pdf, html]

The Book of Mormon renders this Isaiah passage a little differently from the King James Version, and a footnote to the 2 Nephi passage states:

"The Greek (Septuagint) has 'ships of the sea.' The Hebrew has 'ships of Tarshish.' The Book of Mormon has both, showing that the brass plates had lost neither phrase."

I remember when I was a missionary that on at least one occasion I cited this passage in support of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, and it's been in my mental bin of positive evidences since. It looks like I will now have to move it to the "questionable" bin. The article explains that the scriptural footnote appears to be based on Sidney Sperry's reasoning but that it glosses over some problematic details.

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My first skim of the article put me in a sour mood and I expected to have negative things to write about it. It wasn't the fact that a preconception was put into question (though that isn't necessarily fun), but more the apologetic approach. Having read it all the way through I feel better about it. I may need to read it again to fully digest it, but overall I like the article. Below I discuss a criticism, a mixed criticism/compliment, and a compliment.

Criticism: The first endnote states in part:

We began discussing the topic of this article many years ago. Our determination to finish and publish this article was motivated, in part, by two relatively recent publications that employ Isaiah 2:16 // 2 Nephi 12:16 as part of their authors' efforts to raise questions about the means by which the Prophet Joseph Smith brought forth the Book of Mormon.

To me this translates as "We've known about this for a while, but we were worried that it would weaken faith and people might run out of the room screaming. But since critics are on to it we are forced to discuss it." Maybe that's a little cynical, but my point is that this kind of stuff should be brought out regardless of the critics' awareness of it. To do otherwise is to allow us to collectively walk around with our fly open, hoping that nobody else will notice.

Mixed: The conclusion states:

...we have observed that some Latter-day Saints blithely cite 2 Nephi 12:16 as a tangible vindication of Joseph Smith's prophetic call without sufficient consideration of the complexities involved in dealing with the ancient Hebrew and Greek versions of this verse. Furthermore, we are concerned that Sperry's explanation has been too readily and uncritically accepted by Latter-day Saints and that 2 Nephi 12:16 footnote 16a in the current edition of the Book of Mormon continues to encourage the oversimplification of this issue.

My criticsm here is the reference to uncritical acceptance by Latter-day Saints. The vast majority of Latter-day Saints are not informed enough to think critically about the issue, nor would I say that critical evaluation of scriptural guides--particularly those printed in the scriptures--is encouraged. My compliment is for putting the blame where it should be (if not as clearly as I think it should be): the scriptural footnote and, to a lesser extent, the Old Testament CES manual (mentioned earlier in the article).

Compliment: Even when I was grumpier about the article, I planned on giving FARMS full kudos for publishing it. Not only does it knock a (popular?) argument down a few pegs, but one that is printed in the scriptures. It shows that FARMS is willing to print less-than-rosy information, and I think they are to be commended for it. I think that this is a model article: honest and straight scholarship with assumptions clearly marked.

I don't expect that this article will be the last word on the issue; I would not be surprised if someone (like Donald Parry) puts forth arguments--perhaps convincing--in defense of Sperry's line of reasoning. But even if this does mark the death of that particular argument, it may open doors to better understanding Joseph's translation process, and I tend to think that is a good thing.

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Book Review: The Whole Shebang

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris

Cosmology--the study of the origin and structure of the universe--is a topic that can seem forbidding. Full of counter-intuitive concepts best understood with mathematics, and covering time and distances unimaginably removed from our planet, it is easily brushed off as irrelevant speculation. To make matters worse, popular culture and science fiction often use scientific-sounding terms like "big bang," "quantum mechanics," "relativity" or "dark matter" in a way that confuses rather than enlightens the average person. The Whole Shebang cuts through a lot of the garbage and explains what the big bang is all about.

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Timothy Ferris tells the story of how the current cosmological model came to be. His general approach is to explain the observations that led to current thinking as well as to touch on alternative ideas and the basis for them. Along the way we get glimpses into how science works and the personalities behind the discoveries. He writes that "the line dividing fact from fancy is not always as clear as in other fields." (p. 12) Yet in spite of being introduced to contradicting views or data, I still felt that I had a sense for where the more solid footing lay. His even-handed approach extends to more philosophical areas as well. For example the final chapter, which discusses the meaning of cosmology for God (his answer: cosmology tells us nothing about God) and some of the arguments for and against him, contains this statement: "...when the cosmological arguments propounded by atheists are subjected to reasoned criticism, they fare no better than the comparable arguments of believers." (p.310)

The reading is not all easy going; a few of the chapters in the middle felt like I was reading the scientific equivalent of Isaiah. However I thought that most of the book was interesting and understandable.

While reading this book I began to realize how much knowledge I take for granted everyday. It was only in the mid-1920's that Edwin Hubble determined that galaxies composed of individual stars existed outside the Milky Way. Now we receive stunning images of deep space from the telescope named after him, we have put men on the moon, and we've sent probes to study close-up what to us are specks in the sky. All of this, and we have not even scratched the surface of exploration.

You can read a article-length summary of the book here. Also, one whole chapter is available here.

Finally, here are a few passages that I enjoyed.

The empirical spirit on which the Western democratic societies were founded is currently under attack, and not just by such traditional adversaries as religious fundamentalists and devotees of the occult. Serious scholars claim that there is no such thing as progress and assert that science is but a collection of opinions, as socially conditioned as the weathervane world of Paris couture. Far too many students accept the easy belief that they need not bother learning much science, since a revolution will soon disprove all that is currently accepted anyway. In such a climate it may be worth affirming that science really is progressive and cumulative, and that well-established theories, though they may turn out to be subsets of larger and farther-reaching ones--as happened when Newtonian mechanics was incorporated by Einstein into general relativity--are seldom proved wrong. As the physicist Steven Weinberg writes, "One can imagine a category of experiments that refute well-accepted theories, theories that have become part of the standard consensus of physics. Under this category I can find no examples whatever in the past one hundred years." Science is not perfect, but neither is it just one more sounding board for human folly. (p.13)

One product of the interaction between cosmology and daily life is the Declaration of Independence. Impressed by the elegant, clockwork precision of planetary motions revealed in Netwon's laws, Western thinkers of a liberal bent dismissed God from his old role of personal intervention--since his services were no longer required to move the planets around--while retaining the concept of God as Creator of the universe. Having done so, they increasingly turned their attention to the study of nature as a way of appreciating God's marvelous design. From this concentration on natural law it was a short step to John Locke's assertion that there are also natural laws that address human beings and their governance. The thrust of these laws is, as Locke put it, that "the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule." By the late eighteenth century Locke's ideas were so much in the air as to be echoed by Thomas Jefferson in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence: When Jefferson wrote of "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" a people, he meant that human equalitiy and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural laws, based in nature as are Newton's law of gravity.
(p. 19-20)

Trouble brews...whenever scientists confuse constraining a phenomenon with explaining it. If they think they have explained it by showing it to be necessary to life, they may be discouraged from seeking a deeper and more productive explanation. This has already happened. The phenomenon in question was the isotropy of the universe--the fact that it looks the same in all directions....In 1973, Stephen Hawking and Barry Collins...invoked the anthropic principle to "explain" cosmic isotropy by noting that if the universe were not highly isotropic it would have been difficult for stars and planets to form and, therefore, for life to exist. Fortunately, this argument was not accepted as final, and soon thereafter, isotropy was accounted for in a much more natural and elegant fashion, as resulting from inflation. So we need to be careful that anthropic constraints don't blind us to deeper explanations. If, for instance, the value of the gravitational constant is not an accident but the inevitable consequence of a deep natural structure to be revealed by superstring or some other theory, the anthropic principle will at best have been a red herring when it comes to understanding gravity. (p. 300)

Quoting cosmologist James Hartle:

History becomes predictive and testable when we predict that further present records will be consistent with those already found. Texts yet to be discovered are predicted to be consistent with the story of Caesar....In such ways history becomes a predictive science. (p. 256-257)

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I.D. in the News

Since the Kitzmiller decision in Dover, PA the hub-bub over intelligent design has quieted somewhat. It's back in the news today because of primary elections for the Kansas Board of Education. Most recently the board has favored including language (aided by the Discovery Institute) that would call for evidence against evolution to be taught. Although sounding open minded and fair, it is seen by many scientists as just another method to sneak ID into the class. (One ID supporter apparently admitted as much.) Over the years the progression has looked like this in response to court decisions:

creationism --> scientific creationism --> intelligent design --> teach the evidence for and against

[Update: It looks like the ID-friendly board members will now be in the minority.]


So while we're on the topic, I'll just point out a few other things.

1. Barbara Forrest has an online article desribing her experience as an expert witness in the trial last fall.

2. John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, has a post on why I.D. is bad science even on its own terms.

3. A post on The Panda's Thumb announced an upcoming meeting at Cold Spring Harbor called "Engineering Principles in Biological Systems," and rightly pointed out that the I.D. folks ought to be all over a meeting like that--that is, if they are serious about their claims. The post ellicited this comment from someone who claims to be in the field of bio-medical engineering.

The issue is, at least in my undergrad university we were first trained in engineering and biology/medicine seperately, then trained to put the two together. So I learned to think like an engineer before I learned to apply that thinking to biological and medical issues. Engineers are, of course, designers. When looking at anything, we are trained to ask “why is it designed like this”. This becomes extremely frustrating when dealing with biological systems. This question is useful in many instances. But for biolgical systems an annoyingly large amount of the time there is no answer to the question. It is how it is because of some random thing that means it couldn’t have been any other way. It is the exact opposite of human design, and it makes the human designers I know extremely frustrated. It seems very hard for engineers to accept this, it goes against everything I was trained and it appears what others I know were trained as well. But it is painfully obvious when looking at biological systems in any sort of detail, and is something we have all had to come to terms with.

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