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Help defend science: flunked not expelled
Author: cbit on April 18 2008 Viewed 6973 times. 29 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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Apologies, a completely non-music related post.
The creationist/ID friendly pseudo documentary called Expelled will be screening near you soon. In the film, Ben Stein claims that scientists critical of the theory of evolution are being silenced by the powers behind "big science". Through ham fisted montages the film also tries to establish a link between the theory of evolution and Nazism and other genocidal ideologies.
Christian fundamentalists are lobbying hard to promote this film, even offering incentives to school groups to go and see it.
A counter site has been launched by the national center for science education that lists, and refutes, the lies and important omissions of the expelled film.
Publishing hyperlinks to the expelled exposed site, using 'expelled' as the visible link text, will help make the counter site more visible in search engines, and help ensure that people really do hear 'both sides' of the story. If you can, please help out.
Here's a review of the film:
link
Digging this page will help spread the word too (there's a subtle digg link beneath this blog post)
edit: "help defend science" == shorthand for 'help protect people from being robbed of the chance to understand the scientific method, to understand the crucial importance of evidence based reason in evaluating truth claims, to understand the principles or critical thought, to appreciate the enormous weight of evidence in support of evolutionary theory.' | |
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04/22/08
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crabster
cbit: Are you a praya hata?
Thank you, thank you, try the veal.
04/22/08
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cbit
cymbalcrashlol!
04/22/08
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flies
dach said: "A third viewpoint is of course that Santa Claus exists not as a physical person, but as a spirit of giving, as a force of inspiration that makes both children and parents happy, and that is a definite existence despite the lack of physical evidence. This is the Myth of Santa Claus. Religion often understands this type of existence implicitly, while externally appearing to be like the simplistic child saying "The presents appear, therefore Santa Claus exists!". Bad science, but right conclusion! Science, with the focus on proof and evidence and logic regularly fails to understand this.
The existence of Santa Claus then is not a universal Truth you can give a yes/no answer to. It just depends on your viewpoint. The real issue here is does the older child have the right to proclaim themselves as authorative on the matter, and do they have the right to (mis)inform the younger child of their conclusions? I wonder if their sense of disappointment with their truth motivates them to take the truth away from the younger child. If Santa Claus doesn't exist for them, why should he exist for anyone else..
This is why I have come to dislike science, despite its wonders."
i have to say that my own views are quite close to this. I see god as a powerful, and real psychological force, an archetype as well as a meme. god doesn't exist except in hearts and minds. god has no power to turn coke to pepsi. god has the power to transform lives. this power in my experience is not always a good thing.
You framed the question as to whether the older child (sally) should tell the younger one (fred) that santa 'doesn't exist' as whether sally should have the 'right' to claim 'authority'. Certainly sally has 'the right' to claim whatever she wants beyond slander. Is her authority valid? Well, sally would be correct in stating that any statements about santa are to be interpreted metaphorically and not literally. Someone who says, 'santa brings you presents', is using poetic language.
Claims that god parted the red sea, or that jesus raised lazarus from the dead are, on the one hand, simply false. Such events are not physically possible, violating the second law of thermodynamics. On the other hand, the story of moses is a real and powerful testament on the human condition. The story isn't one of my favorites. It doesn't contain 'divine wisdom', it contains 'the wisdom of our forebears'. This is the problem. Simply acknowledging that
The question of whether fred should be told that 'santa doesn't exist' is really a question of whether it benefits him to be told this. The answer IMO is yes. If the kid grows up not being able to distinguish between myth and reality then he's in trouble. This is exactly the trouble that religion gets us in. The bible has some interesting parables in it, but people have it in their head that the stories in there are somehow divinely ordained and infallible. Fred should know that santa expresses the 'spirit' of christmas, that his is a metaphorical existence.
04/22/08
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tantan
At a talk I attended years ago, the novelist Tim O'Brien characterized truth as existing outside of physical reality, that it exists somewhere beyond our narratives, and that any medium we use to get at it -- whether scientific or metaphoric -- are equally valid. Whether Santa Claus is "real" is beside the point. Is there a kernel of spiritual value in the joy (and fear, ha) that he brings to children? Certainly, there was for me, and there still is. I don't care whether he's "real." Empirical reality is often overrated. If some people choose to use mythology as their gateways to enlightenment or whatever you want to call it, I see no harm in this so long as the mythology is recognized for what it is.
04/22/08
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tantan
BTW, I've more or less restated what flies had to say. 
04/22/08
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mlbot
So if Ben Stein wanted to come to your local gradeschool and teach that Santa Claus is empirically real, would anyone here regail him as some sort of Rock-n-Roll anti-establishment hero??
because, all the fooey (pardon my expression) about the relative Truths of truths vs Truths and the Myth of Existance and all, this blog was initally about should people be allowed (or even legally required) teach a literal interpretation of the bible (or any religious text) in public school science class, and if you think they shouldn't, are you willing to stop them?
04/22/08
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dach
Did the atrocities of auschwitz occur? It just depends on your viewpoint
Is the capital of England, London? That depends on whether you think it is or not.
Is 2+2=5 Yes, if you believe it is.
Yes to all of these.
1. as far as I know, yes. I've read about it and seen pictures in books and films, and heard frm ppl who were there.
2. Yes. What about Tibet? seperate nation or provence of china? it depends who you ask
3. 2+2=5 yes, for certain values of 2. You have not specified that we are dealing with integer addition according to peano axions.
4. does santa claus exist? are we talking about an archtype or psychological force, a cultural phenomonen or a fat guy with flying reindeer?
5. god.. are we talking about a beardy old dude looking down or some strange attractor that lies ahead of us in time that powers the novelty conservation engine of the universe? gimme the defintion first, before i say if it exists or not.
The answers are all yes, and no, and simply depend upon what we believe. This is a key point. Belief comes first, followed by supporting evidence, and ignorance of contradictory evidence. Religion will gladly ignore a lot of evidence put forward by science. Your rock solid faith that science is true is also subject to ignoring very obvious things.
There was an interesting tangent mentioned earlier about putting consciousness as a primary force, followed by the rest of existence. This I think is true. I have been unable to observe any part of the universe without finding my conscious mind at that spot, observing it. In the sum total of every single observation of the universe that I have made, and in my observations of other peoples observations, and also observations carried out through time (ie speculation on the formation of the solar system) I find my conscious mind to be present, doing the speculating. So by my reckoning at least, consciousness appears to be an omnipresent force. You may continue to ignore this fact if you want. Does the universe exist while I sleep? it appears to. i do not confuse this with yes.
Can we say that the solar system existed a billion years ago as lifeless balls of rock and dust orbiting the sun, without observations being involved? There cannot be an answer to this question that is not simply speculative, and speculation is the realm of philosophers. Sciene has nothing to say about that, given that it deals with empirical measures and means, experimental evidence and logically developed theories (structured speculation).
Consciousness is an integral part of the observation, the reasoning about, the visualising and imagining of things, and although its mechanics are not understood in the slightest, I do not think its ok to dismiss the fact that it is _a common variable in absolutely everything_.
I do not wish to bog the conversation down in quantum mechanics, it should suffice to say that an objective observer is questioned even within sicence, but mostly ignored (like relativity is ignored, like chaos theory butterfly effects are ignored). But just because these are awkward does not mean we shouldnt keep an open mind on it.
Questions such as the existence of Santa Claus, or of Gods, are also matters of fact, exactly like these. It might feel good to believe that these magical people exist, and we might want to pretend that they do for that reason, but when we're thinking clearly we don't asses truth claims based on how good they make us feel.
How I feel has nothing to do with my belief in santa claus. I know he exists, as an archetype or myth. Your definiton of existence is narrowminded. Do you know any object oriented programming? I think there are useful metaphors there, where the physical, measurable existing (as you define it) world coincides with instantiated classes, and archetypes appear as abstract superclasses. Santa Claus is an abstract parent class that many other abstract classes inherit (different countries have different santa claus myths), and these derived classes are then instantiated by various families in the giving of gifts. I don't see how you could possibly dismiss this as non-existent, that's about as idiotic as saying the earth is 6000 years old.
The abstract super classes have a very definite existence, but as they are not instantiated, they lie outside the scope of pointers (evidence). But they none the less exist. This extends to many things in science.. what about a meter? or a kilogram? these exist only as abstract concepts, or nonphysical definitions, but there are no perfect existing examples you can point to and say "that is exactly one meter". The relative speed of the observer, the amount of dust, the ambient light causing a photoelectric effect on the surface, particle pairs appearing and disappearing cause the boundaries to blur, you cannot say that this item is exactly one meter long. What about the curvature of spacetime at that particular point? Surely if that fat man over there walks across the room, the length of the meter bar will change...
04/22/08
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mlbot
dach said: "
Can we say that the solar system existed a billion years ago as lifeless balls of rock and dust orbiting the sun, without observations being involved? There cannot be an answer to this question that is not simply speculative, and speculation is the realm of philosophers. Sciene has nothing to say about that, given that it deals with empirical measures and means, experimental evidence and logically developed theories (structured speculation).
"
This is pretty much wrong, and was already brought up earlier. Can we only belive in what we see?
By your own logic, we can't even believe in what we see becuase we can simply redefine "seeing" as we see fit.
i don't have to be 500 years old to know the earth is older than 500 years old. i can look at geneological records, and while I have to make some assumptions (no one lied, no one lived to be 6000 years old nor gave birth at the age of 2) to come to the conclusion the earth is older than 500 years old.
To say that the universe isn't really really old, or really really big, just because you can't measure it all is Fortean Logic. might as well believe Santa is a space alien living on Venus, just because you can't disprove it. At some point, people have to come together and say "blue is blue" and not get bogged dowen in shades of cyan, the particle properties of light waves, etc...
04/22/08
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mlbot
which is to say, science does have empirical evidence that the Universe is both old and big.
04/22/08
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cbit
mlbot said: "because, all the fooey (pardon my expression) about the relative Truths of truths vs Truths and the Myth of Existance and all, this blog was initally about should people be allowed (or even legally required) teach a literal interpretation of the bible (or any religious text) in public school science class, and if you think they shouldn't, are you willing to stop them?"
Seconded. That goes out to all religious types and postmodern relativists too.
04/22/08
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cbit
dach said: "This is a key point. Belief comes first, followed by supporting evidence, and ignorance of contradictory evidence."
No, and this is a *crucial* point: Mind-independent existence comes first, consciousness and its products, concepts and higher order things like beliefs, all follow from that.
dach said: "Your rock solid faith that science is true is also subject to ignoring very obvious things."
What on earth do you mean by 'science is true' (or false for that matter)? This is unintelligible.
dach said: "Yes to all of these."
So you'd disagree with someone who said auschwitz did not happen, even though you consider that truth is simply a matter of opinion. Can you see the absurdity in that? You're stuck in the hole you've dug with your relativistic shovel.
dach said: "There was an interesting tangent mentioned earlier about putting consciousness as a primary force, followed by the rest of existence. This I think is true. I have been unable to observe any part of the universe without finding my conscious mind at that spot, observing it."
Then you didn't understand the point: Your consciousness *exists* thus existence necessarily comes first. You end up with the stolen concept fallacy if you try to reverse this arrangement, as you are doing here.
So by my reckoning at least, consciousness appears to be an omnipresent force. You may continue to ignore this fact if you want. Does the universe exist while I sleep? it appears to. i do not confuse this with yes.
Neither do I. The difference is that you overlook the fact that your consciousness *exists*. You're confusing consciousness' axiomatic status (it is axiomatic) with metaphysical primacy. Here's some background reading on objectivist metaphysics that's relevant link
How I feel has nothing to do with my belief in santa claus. I know he exists, as an archetype or myth. Your definiton of existence is narrowminded.
"I know he exists as an archetype or myth" is something completely different to a kid's belief that santa exists, and you know it.
I *know* that santa, god etc exist as concepts. That's trivially true, uninteresting. When someone says 'i believe God/santa exists', and they don't qualify that with 'as a concept', 'as a source of comfort' etc, when that's actually what they mean, then they're being deeply disingenuous and unnecessarily muddying the water. Please don't do it! communication is difficult enough already.
04/22/08
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cbit
cbit said: "I *know* that santa, god etc exist as concepts. That's trivially true, uninteresting. When someone says 'i believe God/santa exists', and they don't qualify that with 'as a concept', 'as a source of comfort' etc, when that's actually what they mean, then they're being deeply disingenuous and unnecessarily muddying the water. Please don't do it! communication is difficult enough already."
And what's more if you say that "Santa Claus doesn't exist" this already implicitly ackowledges that santa claus exists as a concept (otherwise you wouldn't know what you are denying the existence of), so this does not need pointing out. "Santa claus exists (as a concept)" is an absolutely useless utterance.
04/22/08
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fakeBlooper
they see me prayin.
they hatin'
04/22/08
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dach
hooray for santa claus
04/22/08
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dach
ok cbit you win, happy now?
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