Dobson gives us a message of hope and joy on this day

This will put a smile on your face — James Dobson is in despair.

The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action. […]

[W]e made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?

Knowing Dobson’s definition of what is ‘evil’, I am overjoyed to be awash in it. Keep on discouraging these sour old dogmatists!

Michael Ruse: incoherent and annoying

The CFI World Congress had Michael Ruse speak on science education and religion, which I could have told anyone would be a ghastly mistake. The guy has got some very peculiar notions that, if more widely accepted, would destroy science education in this country. Larry Moran was annoyed to find that scientists aren’t being asked to speak on this issue, while Kristine Harley seems appalled at some of his specific answers.

Then, Michael Ruse drew the analogy that a science teacher who taught evolution without mentioning the Bible or God, but nevertheless caused a conflict within a student who was indoctrinated by creationism, was attacking that student’s beliefs (actually that student’s parents’ beliefs) and therefore violating the Constitution!

Using this argument, Michael Ruse then compared the above science teacher to a teacher who taught the students that “some animals with certain genitals are inferior to other animals with different genitals,” and then claimed, “Oh, I said nothing about men and women! I didn’t teach one was inferior to another!” Now, I ask you, is that analogy apt? Considering I was the only woman who asked a question, and it didn’t get answered?

Well, a man asked him if a teacher taught that the value of pi was 3.14 but a parent believes that it is three (as it is in the Bible), if the teacher was, according to Ruse, violating the Constitution. Ruse said yes! (Then he attempted to spin it and accused Tabash again of being dishonest.)

Then he said, “I agree with Eddie Tabash! I don’t want The Flood taught in schools!” ignoring the obvious fact that, by what he claimed above, any teacher teaching geology would, according to Ruse, be attacking theology, rendering the teaching of geology “unconstitutional” and allowing that parent to block the subject or remove the child.

See what I mean? If we interpreted Constitutional restriction on the endorsement of religion in the classroom to mean that we could never teach anything that contradicts a religion somewhere, we could teach nothing at all.

Ken Miller’s talk

Sad news: I was not able to make it to Miller’s talk at St. Catherine’s last night. We’re down to one car right now, and the choice was between me indulging myself with a long drive and a Ken Miller talk at the end of it, or my wife could have the vehicle so she could do the responsible thing and go to work. She won.

However, I have received some email about it (maybe I’ll get permission to post some of it), and there is one account on the web. It sounds like it was about what I expected: almost entirely good stuff, with a few wacky bits around the edges about his weird cult’s beliefs. He did have the advantage of one creationist in the Q&A throwing him one of their softball questions…usually, the creationists don’t bother to come in the door at my talks, so I’m a little jealous.

If anyone else managed to make it, tell us about it.

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Building an argument on emotional biases happens, but that doesn’t make it true

Gene Roddenberry has often pissed me off. He didn’t invent the stereotype, but he certainly crystallized it in popular culture with his Star Trek character, Mr Spock. What is the end result of intelligence and education? Why, an emotionless robot who assesses impossible probabilities instantaneously in his head and denies love and friendship. It’s a caricature I run into all the time — I’ve lost count of the number of emails I’ve received informing me that True Scientists™ do not get angry about anything, and therefore everything I say is invalid. It’s annoying, but mainly what it tells me is that the correspondent doesn’t know any scientists at all.

Guess what, people? Scientists are human beings! We’re even aware of it, because there human/emotional/fun/expressive/imaginative things we like to do! This is also true of atheists, who contrary to popular opinion, are not grim and bloodless beings out to grind feelings out of existence. (You can imagine the kinds of fantasies about their existence that godless scientists hear all the time.)

The latest perpetrator of this idiotic and tiresome canard is that epitome of dull-witted mediocrity, the columnist David Brooks. And it’s not just the atheist scientists he snipes at, but a lot of other things, as you might guess from the presumptuous title of his latest column, The End of Philosophy. The reason for his argument? The amazing (to him) discovery that human beings are not rational, which leads him to conclude that reason isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It seems Mr Brooks has just now discovered the work of Jonathan Haidt, who has found that many moral judgments are not the product of reason, but of emotional responses — the reasoning is after the fact, and is usually nothing but an exercise in rationalizing a decision that was already made. This is not surprising, an assessment which is not intended to denigrate Haidt’s work, which has done a good job of testing and affirming that idea. We are not rational actors, and we know this … even those of us who are supposed to don pointy ears and pretend to be a Vulcan.

Where Brooks falls flat on his face is his unthinking adoption of the naturalistic fallacy — the idea that if many of our moral decisions are the product of snap judgments built on emotional responses, then all that hoity-toity philosophy and thinking about what is good and what is right to do are irrelevant and wrong. Reason just doesn’t matter, emotion is primal and dominant, and therefore, this is the way we should think.

I would like to suggest some remedial reading in the philosophy of reason vs. emotion; I strongly recommend that classic treatise in the subject, Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. It’s beautifully written and clear, and most of us — even us atheist scientists — learned the story in kindergarten. There seems to be a gap in Mr Brooks’ education.

That is the real problem here. You won’t get any argument from me that most moral decisions are built more on wishful thinking or disgust or blind prejudice — I will concede that point, and throw in many examples that I know about to support it further. The question is whether that is the best way to make decisions, and I would say that in many cases it is not, that it leads us astray, and that what this property of human nature tells us is that we need philosophy and reason even more to help us correct a flaw in our makeup.

It’s the same thing biologists have been saying since Darwin. Nature may be a bloody tyrant that is ruthless in its execution, but that does not imply that human beings must model their behavior after natural selection. Rather, what we should do as sentient beings is act to create a society that balances the harshness of evolution with a culture that tries to elevate virtues like reason and social justice and equality. Similarly, if emotion tells us to recoil from harmless behaviors, maybe we should counter that with practiced reason, rather than simply succumbing to our biases.

Maybe, if David Brooks were not embracing any excuse to justify his prejudices and were instead trying to think rationally, he would hesitate before saying stupid things like this:

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

There’s that cartoon again. The atheists are not convinced of the purity of their reasoning — we know the human mind is flawed and easily twisted askew from reality. That’s precisely why we demand verifiable, empirical evidence for truth claims. It is not enough to simply say you know the answer and it is right, we expect you to show your work, and we’re going to reject claims, like those of faith, that insist on an unwarranted certainty of the possession of knowledge. The idea that humans are emotional and make choices on weak grounds is not at all antithetical to our goals, but instead explains why it is more important that we critically self-analyze and inspect all of these religious arguments with more skepticism.

I hate to admit it, but it’s also not a strike against Talmudic reasoning, which tries to ground decisions in law and tradition. That is also an ongoing effort to overcome the fallacies of the appeal to transient passions. (I would argue that the focus on old texts is invalid, however, so don’t imagine that I’ve gone soft on Judaism.)

And finally, Brooks closes with a whole string of nonsense.

Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

He begins by approvingly citing Jonathan Haidt, whose work is describing the emotional basis of moral decision-making. Now he tells us that scientists are challenged and struggling. Mr Brooks: Jonathan Haidt is a scientist. Think about it.

Feelings of transcendence exist, and no one denies it. Those feelings seem to be rather easily triggered by a whole host of phenomena, from a focal seizure to a morning in ritual to a beautiful sunset. We don’t neglect the phenomenon, but it does seem to be a poor mechanism for achieving an understanding of physics. There is more to the universe than morality and feelings, you see, and what I would argue is not that emotions like those listed don’t exist or are unimportant, but that they have a place, and it is not as sufficient evidence for how the world works.

As for this strange idea that the evolutionary approach says nothing about individual responsibility…I have no idea what the man is talking about, other than that he is blithering ignorantly. I strongly urge that Mr Brooks try using his cerebral cortex in addition to his brain stem and hypothalamus when writing — that’s another of those areas where emotional prejudices need to be supplemented with reason and knowledge.

Nebraska faces limited choices

A retraction: I’ve talked with Lanny Boswell, and he is most definitely NOT a creationist. I’ve edited the post below.

Candidates are busy running for election to the Lincoln school board in Nebraska right now, and guess what’s been found? Creationists! Running for election! A newspaper story neatly summarizes the positions of many of the candidates, and here is a set you Nebraskans should not vote for.

  • Kevin Keller “wished creationism was taught in place of evolution, but should at least be taught alongside evolution”…although now that he has been exposed, he is frantically backtracking.

  • “Kirby Young, a candidate for the District 1 seat, and Andrew Ringsmuth, a candidate for the District 7 seat, said creationism should be taught as a theory alongside evolution.”

  • “Gregory Wiltshire, a candidate for the District 1 seat, said he doesn’t believe creationism should be taught in science classes, but schools should give students the chance to explore their interest in creationism.”

  • “Norman Dority, seeking the District 5 seat, said schools should present theories of creationism and evolution but should not dictate how they are taught.”

  • “Andrew Ringsmuth: candidate for District 7 seat: Ringsmuth said, at the high school level, evolution should be taught as a theory that many, but not all, scientists support. He said teachers should be allowed to give students a chance to explore creationism, intelligent design and evolution and decide for themselves which theory they support.”

Keller is a particularly interesting case: he was endorsed by the Lincoln Education Association’s PAC. They’re trying to rationalize it away now, but I think they should send a clearer message and remove their endorsement. I’m sorry, but people as ignorant as the ones listed above have no place in managing a school system.

All is not lost — there are a few candidates with sensible positions. These are the ones you should vote for, Nebraska.

  • “Kathy Danek: candidate for re-election to her District 1 seat: She doesn’t support incorporating creationism, which she considers a religious belief, in science curriculum. She said she could see creationism being used as a topic in a student debate class or activity.”

  • “Barb Baier: candidate for District 3 seat: Baier said creationism should not be taught in science classes. She said she considers it a philosophy, not a form of science, but could see it being taught in a philosophy or literature course.”

  • “Don Mayhew: candidate for re-election to his district 7 seat: Mayhew said neither creationism nor intelligent design is based on the scientific method and that he doesn’t support teaching either concept in science classes.”

  • “Lanny Boswell, a candidate for the District 5 seat, said creationism shouldn’t be taught in science classes, but those classes should teach students to be critical thinkers and consider divergent viewpoints.”

Three Four people gave good answers, and four seats are open. It sounds like at least one useless dingleberry is going to get a voice in Nebraska education.

Hey, in addition to voting for pro-science candidates, maybe a few more of you scientifically minded Nebraskans need to start running for these positions. The kooks always seem anxious to rise up and poison education, but the sensible people always assume it’s going to be fine and that they don’t need to exert themselves.

“The Pope is either stupid, ignorant or dim”

Richard Dawkins did it again, clearly stating his opinion of the Pope’s policy on birth control and AIDS prevention. One problem: he left out another possibility. The Pope could be evil.

I tend to favor a combination of all of the above.

I have received a communique from Richard Dawkins in which he protests that he was misquoted in the Telegraph. What he actually said was,

The Pope is either stupid, ignorant or wicked.

Much better.