Collins in Christianity Today

I am committed to more brevity, so I must resist the temptation to draw out my greatsword, chop this into bloody chunks, and stomp the gobbets into gooey red smears while howling, “There are nooooo gods!!!”, but I will take exception to one small piece of Francis Collins’ interview in Christianity Today.

I encounter many young people who have been raised in homes where faith was practiced and who have encountered the evidence from science about the age of the earth and about evolution and who are in crisis. They are led to believe by what they are hearing from atheistic scientists on the one hand and fundamentalist believers on the other that they have to make a choice. This is a terrible thing to ask of a young person.

I have to ask…

  • What’s wrong with confronting young people with a crisis? It’s pretty much their nature to be in a constant state of crisis anyway.

  • As young people’s crises go, the conflict between science and religion is a small one. Why not encourage more intellectual anguish than the usual “So-and-so doesn’t want to go to the dance with me!”?

  • Why is making a choice a terrible thing to ask? Get used to it. There are lots of choices you have to make in this life.

  • The only terrible response they might make is to turn away from science, and by pandering to blind faith, Collins is promoting that. Why does Collins continue to encourage people to believe in baseless superstition? He’s supposed to be a scientist!

  • Does Collins think it would be a terrible thing for more young people to choose atheism? Why? I think it would be wonderful if more people realized they do have a choice about whether to believe the dogma of their forefathers, or to think anew and learn more about the real universe.

There is more pablum in the interview, but not much, if anyone else wants to hack at it. This was the part that was least likely to put me in berserkergang.

I have good news, and I have bad news

I’ve hinted before that I’ve been puttering away at a book, and the latest hint is that there is a possibility of some very serious interest in it—no promises yet, merely the whisper of potential, but still…this could be a big step. At the same time, that potential comes with things like serious pressure and deadlines of some urgency and a great deal of work thumping down on my head abruptly. I’m also, of course, plunging into a new term, and the first few weeks (and the last few weeks!) are always the most work, so I’m facing a traumatic time-crunch. And there’s a new Seed column due in a few weeks.

So, the blog. Hmmm. It takes up time I can scarely spare right now.

I’m going to have to re-prioritize for some indefinite time in the near future, and unfortunately, Pharyngula has been pushed down in the stack a ways. Don’t worry, I’m not going to pull a Bérubé and yank the plug on it; I have a grand time with it all, and it’s not for a lack of interest that I’m going to have to cut back. I’m also counting on bouncing back up once the howling maws demanding my time are sated, and I won’t be able to resist occasionally indulging in a little substantial blog-writing. I just need to be able to say now and then, “I will not even look at the interweb for this 12 hour period of time, because I need to write eleventy-seven thousand words right now.”

It seems a shame, because there’s this great big audience coming here every day (you know this, you’re part of it), and I know you’re a fickle lot and if I’m not constantly throwing out bloody bits of raw meat you’ll just wander away, won’t you, and find someone else to pay attention to your appetites. Well, I’ll help you.

I’ll keep throwing new material up, as long as you send it to me. I already get lots of links in email; I’ll try to be more assiduous in dumping those links in short posts to the blog. If you don’t have a blog, but you’ve got some wonderful rant you’ve written up and would love to post in a prominent place, send it to me, and if I like it, it’ll appear here, with your name. Just keep on sending the stuff to me, and I’ll use the soapbox to plug your ideas. Maybe my current audience will stumble over to your site as the next Pharyngula (do come back someday, though!). Just to help me out a little further, you might try letting me know the general subject in your subject line, and you should be aware by now of the Big Three topics I tend to favor: Biology, Godlessness, and Creationism.

This will be temporary, and I’m not going to go cold turkey on the blogging business—just be sympathetic while I hammer away at some rather important behind-the-scenes intellectual infrastructure here.

An altie fundamentalist Muslim!

This odd duck, discovered by Phil, has an amazing theory, which is his:

Abd Al-Baset Al-Sayyid: This is because the magnetic force is concentrated there, which affects people’s blood and the biological movement of life. It has been proven that if magnetism, anywhere, exceeds 1,000 gauss, which equals one tenth of a tesla, it affects the ability of the hemoglobin in the blood to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues, the ability of the blood to carry oxygen to the tissues.

Interviewer: In other words, the ability to live…

Abd Al-Baset Al-Sayyid: Yes, to live… This means is that when you are in Mecca, the ability of the blood to carry oxygen to the tissues is greater than anywhere else in the world.

Now these ideas are crazy enough—magnetic fields can’t have that much of an effect, or as Phil mentions, MRIs would be fatal—but the real topper is why this loon is making the argument: in order to justify changing the world standard time from a Greenwich Mean Time standard to Mecca time. Why the magnetic fields at one place would be an argument for changing an arbitrary standard is unclear. Why this would affect the ability of people at the North and South Poles to make the pilgrimage to Mecca is even murkier. This kook makes the assertions anyway — no non sequitur is too far-fetched for the True Loon, you know.

Another item to add to your calendar

On Saturday and Sunday, 17-18 February, it’s the Twin Cities Creation “Science” Association’s Science Fair…held that week in honor of Charles Darwin’s birthday, I’m sure. Unfortunately, I’m making the drive to Minneapolis twice that week already, so I’m going to have to pass on making a third trip.

Besides, it just makes me sad to see kids told they have to put bible verses on their science projects.

Thanks, Jim Drummond. Thanks a lot.

Last week, the Star Tribune published an article on global warming that included this foolish statement:

“If we compare the debate over the theory of evolution with the debate over the theory of global warming — global warming’s a whole lot more certain at the moment,” said Jim Drummond, a University of Toronto physics professor and chief investigator for the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change.

I’m sure Dr Drummond is a credible authority on climate, but reading that reminded me that even senior scientists can be pompous asses when speaking well outside their expertise. He’s completely wrong: there is no credible debate over the theory of evolution, and it’s as well-established if not more so than global warming. It’s simply absurd to argue otherwise.

When I saw that, I sort of groaned inwardly and predicted to myself that there’s a quote we’ll see repeated over and over again in the creationist literature. I didn’t realize it would take a mere five days.

That’s how long it took Doug Tice, former editorial writer at the Pioneer Press, current political editor at the Star Tribune, and religious apologist, to turn it into part of an anti-evolution screed. You can tell he’s rather giddy with delight, overjoyed to have a scientist casually belittling evolution.

What’s most intriguing here is not what Drummond says about global warming. It’s what he says about evolution.

The theory of global warming is “a whole lot more certain” than the theory of evolution? Is the theory of evolution not certain?

Are there doubts about evolution among scientists like Drummond? Haven’t courts ruled, for practical purposes, that’s it’s unconstitutional for American science teachers to suggest to students that there are scientifically credible doubts or alternatives where biological history is concerned? Don’t those making sport of evolution’s critics routinely liken the status of the theory of evolution to the status of the theory of gravity?

No.

Scientifically credible arguments are good things that should be presented in science classes, where they fit into the curriculum and don’t distract from the important business of learning the basics. The objection to Intelligent Design or “Scientific” creationism isn’t that they’re alternative theories—it’s that they aren’t theories at all, they are unsupported unscientifically, and what they are actually rooted in is good ol’ old-time religion.

I should also point out that while Drummond actually is a scientist, he has very little authority and at this point zero credibility in the discipline of biology. He’s a physicist. This is an extremely difficult point to get across to creationists, but physicists usually take no biology classes at all in their academic career, and may not even have any interest in biology (hard to believe, but it’s true). Similarly, biologists typically take very little physics, and I wouldn’t understand nine tenths (speaking generously) of what Drummond does for a living. His word on evolution has about as much authority as my word on string theory.

I was going to say I know a guy at U Toronto who could take Drummond over his knee, but he already has his comeuppance. Doug Tice didn’t stop with crowing over the expression of doubt about evolution…he goes on to say that if evolution is dubious, then maybe this global warming stuff is all a crock, too. In fact, Tice sneers quite a bit at Drummond, and lumps him with former University of Minnesota president Ken Keller, who had argued that it was foolish to argue against a solid scientific theory like evolution.

But there is an unbecoming sloppiness, almost a bullying quality, about polemical flourishes like Drummond’s and Keller’s. They seem a little like warnings that anyone who questions anything about othodoxies like global warming theory or evolutionary theory runs the risk of being labeled a kook. They seem, in a word, dogmatic.

It’s not dogmatic to point out that an ignorant person quarreling with a scientific theory on the basis of his religious beliefs is a kook, pretty much by definition. You can question scientific ideas all you want — that’s pretty much an operational definition of doing science, actually — but unless you’re doing it on a foundation of knowledge, if you’re just denying a scientific idea because it makes you uncomfortable, or clashes with the words of some long dead patriarch from your holy book, then sure, you’re a kook. A kook like Doug Tice.

Zzzzzzzzzz.

So Obama is running for president. I’m not a fan (too pious and too unaccomplished), but what hurt most about the article is this:

Mr. Obama, 45, was elected to the Senate two years ago. He becomes the fifth Democrat to enter the race, joining Senators Joseph R. Biden of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut as well as former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and Tom Vilsack, who stepped down this month as governor of Iowa.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is expected to join the Democratic field soon and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said he would make his decision known by the end of the month. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts also is weighing another run.

BOOOOORRRING. The only ones with a hint of charisma are Obama (who I will not support) and Edwards; the others just put me to sleep. I guess we just wait to see which drone will receive the DNC coronation—and it won’t be the most interesting candidate, or the one who promises to shake anything up—and we pull the lever for not-Giuliani or not-McCain.

Basics: What is a gene?

I mulled over some of the suggestions in my request for basic topics to cover, and I realized that there is no such thing as a simple concept in biology. Some of the ideas required a lot of background in molecular biology, others demand understanding of the philosophy of science, and what I am interested in is teetering way out at the edge of what we know, where definitions often start to break down. Sorry, I have to give up.

Seriously, though, I think that what does exist are simple treatments of complex subjects, so that is what I’m aiming for here: I talk a lot about genes, so let’s just step way back and give a useful definition of a gene. I admit right up front, though, that there are two limitations: I’m going to give a very simplified explanation that fits with a molecular genetics focus (pure geneticists define genes very differently), and I’m going to talk only about eukaryotic/metazoan genes. I tell you right now that if I asked a half dozen different biologists to help me out with this, they’d rip into it and add a thousand qualifiers, and it would never get done. So let’s plunge in and see what a simple version of a gene is.

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