Post by Jim Newman

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David Sloan Wilson through Huff Post is promoting what he calls a “modern version” or the “new kid on the block” (which is it?) of evolution research, Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS). Why the acronym? Trademark?

There are several puzzling aspects to his article.

He claims:

“atheism is a disbelief in gods”. And “…new atheists are an exceptionally active group…”.

Atheism is not a disbelief in gods. Atheism is the knowledge, certainty, and trust there are no gods; there is insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that there are gods. By using the term disbelief Sloan poorly defines atheism. Atheism is not just another belief. To quote Cristina Rad, I am as sure there are no gods as I am sure there aren’t invisible elves living up my ass; I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there are no elves there. Atheism is the knowledge, certainty, and trust that, due to lack of sufficient evidence, that there are no gods. Unless you wish to support epistemological relativity (no truth), or subjective idealism (no material reality), you’re going to have to admit atheists have knowledge and not belief as best as science can provide.

The Four Horsemen (FH, or Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens) are not exceptionally activist scientists; in the same activist way Sloan and EO Wilson promote their book, “The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time,” they too wish to apply scholarship to public affairs. Einstein and Dr Partho Sarothi Ray were/are exceptionally activist scientists (EAS). Carl Sagan was an EAS. Galileo was an EAS, succumbing to house arrest for years to support his heretical thesis, though he loved the church. Good company these folks.

Shawn Otto in Scientific American’s, “Good Science Always Has Political Ramifications” notes

“Why? Because a scientifically testable claim can be shown to be either most probably true or false, whether the claim is made by a king or a president, a Pope, a Congressperson, or a common citizen.”

The term activist scientist is used pejoratively by conservative groups to beat up climate scientists, who insist they must speak publically because their research is not being accepted.

Sloan asserts the need for a “new” field of study called Evolutionary Religious Studies.

“Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS) is the scholarly study of religion from an evolutionary perspective.”

Sloan mentions Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, and himself as the new kids on the block. Yet, he dismisses Dan Dennett (DD or D squared) who famously said in his book that religion should be studied like any other phenomenon and the fact that it isn’t is the problem. Dan famously insists that religion should be taught in public schools.

“It is high time that we subject religion as a global phenomenon to the most intensive multidisciplinary research we can muster calling on the best minds of the planet.”

Indeed, all of the so called activist atheist scientists (AAS or is that EAS?) have asked, demanded, begged, and cajoled for more research, not less. What they contest are current conclusions based on dogma and an incredible lack of credible evidence. What they contest is some obvious stupidity to which people hold dear for what might be politics, ideology, economics, tradition, or some other cognitive biases. But it’s a democracy, go for the Templeton prize, but expect ridicule.

Sloan lists three steps for justifying his “new” field. The first is to accept a personal god as legitimate to research–as if it hadn’t been already, to death. But hey, find the money, get a grant, and have at it. Go for a Templeton prize. But hey try to stay honest.

“They are alike in their rejection of the “actively intervening god” hypothesis. I am choosing my words carefully here. The concept of supernatural agents that actively intervene in the laws of nature and affairs of people is a perfectly good scientific hypothesis that occupied center stage for centuries.”

A PGH (perfectly good hypothesis) is not the issue. Any assertion worded properly is a PGH, I guess. The “world is flat hypothesis”  (WFH) is a PGH but is long proven false. No one is saying to absolutely stop studying miracles, parapsychology, personal agency, or faith healing. What we are all tired of is having to prove the world is not flat over and over and over again, or that god cured, talked, appeared to them, because religion so imbues our culture they refuse to accept any material evidence. We’re tired of people insisting that we believe their nonsense when we need to solve bigger issues than a fetus is a person, to support antiabortion. Victor Stenger has long shown that miracles are physically impossible. Having a baby is not a miracle, nor the feeling that god is talking to you. Both are parsimoniously explained by biology and neuroscience.

James Randi, Joe Nickell, and Tom Flynn have long investigated these claims and continue to do so—in spite of the extraordinary amount of evidence showing it to be false. Tarsky and Kahneman solidified the field of Behavioral Economics and showed how heuristic biases are prevalent. Leon Festinger, back in 1956, detailed how cognitive dissonance affects critical thinking negatively.

Sloan negates methodological naturalism (material reality). But the choice then is to endorse a kind of subjective idealism (material things do not exist), which though championed by George Berkley and FH Bradley a long time ago doesn’t work. Pyrrhonis and skeptical empiricism (no truth and it’s only experiential) are as dead as the idea of ether being space. Can’t we better spend our money elsewhere? We have populations issues, wars, resource shortages and we’re busy proving if there is a personal god or not and whether it had evolutionary utility or is collateral? Right now, here and now, belief in a personal god is killing us because we can’t agree on an epistemology that produces evidence we can all follow to success.

The reason we need to decide on these issues is because bad science, pseudo-science, and nonscience are causing us to make egregious decisions concerning personal liberty, group governance, and resolutions to real-world problems. If I had a shred of evidence that praying to god would solve a worldly problem I’d be on my knees every damned day all day long. Insisting that prayer works, is valid, prevents people from doing what does work. If it were harmless, left as personal, and made private we wouldn’t care so much. When a president prays to god he or she might as well cut up a chicken and rorschach its guts.

Sloan then asserts:

“As a scholarly discipline, ERS is agnostic about what gets done with the knowledge that is created. The New Atheism is oriented toward action.

All scholarly research and all science tries to be objective in spite of the fact that all people have biases, positions, and ideologies. All science leads to action. Every publication is an action. Every hypothesis is an assertion to action. That is the entire point. To find the truth no matter where it be and then use it to make our lives better. The more activist you are in this the better.

Sloan says in step 3.

“Whenever New Atheists make claims about religion as a human phenomenon, their claims should respect the authority of empirical evidence. Insofar as the new discipline of ERS has added to empirical knowledge of religion, the New Atheists should be paying close attention to ERS.

The New Atheists are the source of your “new” field. They are the ones that said let’s study evolution (LSE). Let’s see why or what makes people believe in a god, think the world is flat, or use god and church to help in impulse control. Hell, there are some still trying to get why there is a current Flat Earth Society (FES). It’s a trite truism noted by damn near everyone the obvious motivational benefit of thinking an all-powerful god is on your side—until you are crushed for your incorrect assumption, your delusional optimism, and your poor lack of planning, because your depression, fear of defeat, caused you to choose a quick but less effective remedy.

Hell, exceptionally activist atheists (EAA) noted the horrors of postmodernists pouring water on EO Wilson’s head and claiming there is no DNA while the idiot SJ Gould pugnaciously accommodated the pernicious dual magisteria theory (PDMT) to gain traction in his accolades and prestige. His punctuated evolution was easy fodder for the religious to assert a nonsensical godly intervention. It makes more sense that aliens embedded bacteria to start life than god did it.

You, and your “new” ERS, stand on the shoulders of your predecessors and then shit.

Dan Dennett has repeatedly recommended that people read Pascal Boyer “Religion Explained”.

“religious concepts and activities hijack our cognitive resources.”

And Boyer has supported DD. DD is on your side and you don’t get it.

Even the “scholar” so loved by apologists, like Jonathan Haidt, Emil Durkheim, noted the benefits conveyed by religion would be better done by secular institutions and had explanations not requiring the supernatural. From wiki

In this definition, Durkheim avoids references to supernatural or God.^[68] Durkheim argued that the concept of supernatural is relatively new, tied to the development of science and separation of supernatural—that which cannot be rationally explained—from natural, that which can.^[69] Thus, according to Durkheim, for early humans, everything was supernatural.^[69] Similarly, he points out that religions which give little importance to the concept of god exist, such as Buddhism, where the Four Noble Truths is much more important than any individual deity.^[69] With that, Durkheim argues, we are left with the following three concepts: the sacred (the ideas that cannot be properly explained, inspire awe and are considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion), the beliefs and practices (which create highly emotional state—collective effervescence—and invest symbols with sacred importance), and the moral community (a group of people sharing a common moral philosophy).^{[38][69][70][71]} Out of those three concepts, Durkheim focused on the sacred, noting that it is at the very core of a religion.^[69] He defined sacred things as:

…simply collective ideals that have fixed themselves on material objects… they are only collective forces hypostasized, that is to say, moral forces; they are made up of the ideas and sentiments awakened in us by the spectacle of society, and not of sensations coming from the physical world.

Boyer writes:

 As I have pointed out repeatedly the building of religious concepts requires mental systems and capacities that are there anyway, religious concepts or not. Religious morality uses moral intuitions, religious notions of supernatural agents recruit our intuitions about agency in general, and so on. This is why I said that religious concepts are parasitic upon other mental capacities. Our capacities to play music, paint pictures or even make sense of printed ink-patterns on a page are also parasitic in this sense. This means that we can explain how people play music, paint pictures and learn to read by examining how mental capacities are recruited by these activities. The same goes for religion. Because the concepts require all sorts of specific human capacities (an intuitive psychology, a tendency to attend to some counterintuitive concepts, as well as various social mind adaptations), we can explain religion by describing how these various capacities get recruited, how they contribute to the features of religion that we find in so many different cultures. We do not need to assume that there is a special way of functioning that occurs only when processing religious thoughts.

Sloan effaces himself and says he hasn’t nor is he inclined to review all of the New Atheist literature but looks forward to someone doing it. Perhaps he should do more basic reading then. He spends the next few hundred words claiming that New Atheists aren’t doing legitimate science. This is like claiming Einstein wasn’t a legitimate scientist because he had a hard time accepting Quantum theory as the complete picture (imagine Einstein saying god doesn’t play dice), and that he shouldn’t have pleaded not to use the A bomb because that was too activist.

I had some respect for Sloan and his alliance with EO Wilson and particularly some research into group theory but now I wouldn’t trust him if he told me what time it is. Show me the data. I want to see your watch.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com and www.frontiersofreason.com

Post by Jim Newman

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Daniel Dennett has upped the bar on meme machines in his new article “The Social Cell, What do debutante balls, the Japanese tea ceremony, Ponzi schemes and doubting clergy all have in common?” Daniel Dennett and researcher Linda LaScola investigated:

the curious, sad phenomenon of closeted non-believing clergy – wellmeaning, hard-working pastors who find they do not believe the creed of their denomination, but also find that they cannot just blow the whistle and abandon the pulpit.

How does this happen?

Here is how it often works: teenagers glowing with enthusiasm decide to devote their lives to a career of helping others and, looking around in their rather sheltered communities, they see no better, purer option than going into the clergy. When they get to seminary they find themselves being taught things that nobody told them in Sunday school. The more they learn of theology and the history of the composition of the Bible, the less believable they find their creed. Eventually they cease to believe altogether. But, alas, they have already made a substantial commitment in social capital – telling their families and communities about their goals – so the pressure is strong to find an accommodation, or at least to imagine that if they hang in there they will find one. Only a lucky few find either the energy or the right moment to break free. Those who don’t break free then learn the tricks of the trade, the difference between what you can say from the pulpit and what you can say in the sanctum of the seminary, or in your heart. Some, of course, are unfazed by this.

Dennett proposes this happens for Darwinistic reasons found in convergent evolution. Churches are social cells. They have the three basic attributes of a cell:

• A way of capturing energy (a metabolism)
• A way of reproducing (genes or something like genes)
• A membrane that lets in what needs to come in and keeps out the rest.

Other social groups have similar social-cell attributes. In particular, he looks at Japanese Tea Ceremonies, Debutante balls, and Ponzi schemes:

Some cultural phenomena bear a striking resemblance to the cells of cell biology, actively preserving themselves in their social environments, finding the nutrients they need and fending off the causes of their dissolution.

Indeed this follows Emil Durkheim’s Moral foundations where a specific social group follows a structure.

• Disciplinary, forcing or administrating discipline
•  Cohesive, bringing people together, a strong bond
•  Vitalizing, to make livelier or vigorous, vitalise, boost spirit
•  Euphoric, a good feeling, happiness, confidence, well-being

More importantly, the structure allows a group to establish a particular ceremony, ritual, or practice that insulates itself from the rest of a society. It not only fulfills the social function but protects itself and then replicates itself. The social cell can also mutate to meet new evolutionary pressures. But it won’t go away and the original may remain intact. Like a bacteria it can evolve to be useful or it can evolve to be parasitical, or not evolve at all. Indeed, to preserve energy it would rather not evolve at all.

The Debutante Ball was a coming of age ceremony for the upper class to introduce or debut a new member. Originally it was meant to introduce a girl to appropriate upper class suitors and their families in the prospect of finding a mate within the right class. It began as a means of maintaining class stratification.

As the upper class weakened it became a means of upper middle class families to assert their class, as if they could be the upper class—and at least they aren’t the lower class. National Geographic recently published an article on Hispanic based debutante balls in Texas.

So on a blustery Friday night in February, a stage has been transformed into a replica of the Washingtons’ drawing room, right down to the twinkling crystal sconces and the pale green, period-hued walls. Seventeen local belles make their debuts, teetering across the stage in elaborate gowns while a narrator praises Martha Washington’s simple virtues with a solemnity that would satisfy the finickiest member of a First Family of Virginia.

The gowns can cost $35,000 and weigh 85 pounds.

Here in West Virginia, every year there is Cotillion, a fancy formal ball. It too serves as kind of coming out party for the better classes.

Among the upper classes it functioned as the presentation and ritualization of their status through grace of body and display of fine clothing and jewels. Among the lower, it could become competitive, enhancing ones reputation in the community. Personal ability, sophistication of taste, and availability of new material as well as social standing, region, and environment all affected dance interpretation and performance.

The quincinera is another mutation of this social cell. It is the fifteenth birthday formal celebration of a young woman in Latin American. It marks the transition from girl to woman hood.

In the US and Canada the Sweet Sixteen party was also about class but is now more a special occasion marking adulthood. As you might expect these two dates are colliding into one tradition.

One of he oldest still preserved but modified (allows girls now) version of this social cell are the Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvah.

Catholics practice confirmation.

All of these versions of the coming of age ceremony, where being of the right class is important, reflect changes in their culture and but nevertheless preserve themselves.

If you are rich enough, and arriviste, you want your daughters to “come out” to society, and expend considerable effort and sums of money manoeuvring into position to accomplish this initiation. If your family arrived generations ago, you may still feel the pressure to preserve your position in society by participating in the prolonged and expensive rituals, something you might think you owed to your daughters, however ungratefully they respond to the pressure. A look at the website of the National League of Junior Cotillions (nljc.com) shows much the same structure as the Japanese tea ceremony: “chapters” in place of “circles”, a hierarchy of volunteers, assistants and (paid) instructors, and – most interestingly – a “strong emphasis on volunteerism, patriotism and involvement in community activities”. Biologists know that you can infer much about the dangers in an organism’s environment by studying its defences, which have been crafted to protect it from the most salient challenges. The entire debutante tradition is threatened by the spreading opinion that it is a superannuated cultural parasite, so it is sporting its good-works overcoat, instead of a mink stole, to protect its high status, on which its life depends.

It is important to remember that there is very little inertia in culture; an art form or practice (or language or institution) can become extinct in a generation if its elements aren’t assiduously reproduced and reproduced. Not so many years ago, most city newspapers in the US devoted an entire section to “Society” and covered the ceremonies of debutantes with the same respectful care still accorded weddings and funerals. Today’s coverage tends to make note of the diminishing numbers of debutantes taking part, and often has the same snarky tone of amusement and withheld approval that distinguishes Hollywood gossip – except that the people named are not celebrities. Farewell, debutantes, except in Texas, where they will no doubt hold out for another decade or two.

In modern society where there is so much diversity, though class is still present, it is difficult to see how a debutante ball is useful or marks anything other than snobbery. So now it is just a party or it has a social worth. But I don’t think it will go away quickly. It meets too common a need, like stomach bacteria, to have a means of separating one’s self from the riff raff. There is even a blog community called Cotillion. No doubt, virtual means of establishing in/out groups will continue. Families will seek marking their children’s adulthood as a means of getting them to be adults. Its purpose will morph from class preservation to engendering responsibility.

My son’s 18th birthday came and went. While we had a bigger birthday than usual, it was mostly because it is his last year at home, with college on the horizon. I teased him that if he gets arrested now, they won’t call his parents.

Nevertheless, for many, the Debutante Ball with all its regalia is preserved—it hasn’t morphed but remained intact. The fact that most people don’t remember that it was originally a debut for the upper class girls shows how well it is a selfprotective ritual, blindly preserved for reasons utterly different than originally intended.

We see the same thing in the social cell called Conservative. Where no one really knows what it means to be a conservative but it is of the utmost importance to be part of that group for reasons having nothing to do with original conservative philosophy.

What’s important here is that, like memes, they replicate themselves but unlike memes they have a physical social structure.

Churches used to be the only way communities could gather or be governed. Now they are obsolete and megachurches have to advertise weight loss classes, boats for rent, and child care to attract members. It is no longer a place of worship. That is a less important aspect of its culture.

How many moderates do you know that go to church because of community or family, who don’t believe a word of it? Why keep going?

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com and www.frontiersofreason.com

He thinks that laws should be based on the bible.  He also thinks that the bible is a science book.  He should not hold any office.

via Evolving Scientist.

He wrote this three page letter about evolution and sent it the Kentucky Board of Education.  It is full of crazy but it is actually well written and is an easy read.  I have put the first page below for you to read.  The other two pages (oh and seven pages of attachments) can be found at Evolving Scientist.  The really good part is the response from the Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday!

So…. One full page to tell us that evolution is “just” a theory and he will take a stand!  Yeah for Ricky.

Now you can read the response from Terry Holliday.

Dear Ricky,

Thank you for your patience in waiting for our response to your attached letter expressing concerns on the end-of-course exam content for biology. We wanted to give you a thorough and accurate response, and it took some time for research to be completed by our legal and curriculum staffs. I am copying the members of the Kentucky Board of Education on the response, since they also were e-mailed a copy of your letter.

In science, a theory is a statement of general ideas that explains many observations by natural means. To a scientist, the word “theory” is a very precise term to identify a concept that has great utility in explaining phenomena in the natural world. Ideas only rise to the level of a theory in science if they have withstood much scrutiny and are exceptionally useful in explaining a wide variety of independent observations. Any theory can be altered or replaced if new observations or new scientific evidence cannot be adequately explained by it. In science, facts never become theories. Rather, theories explain facts. No theory is immune to revision or replacement should new evidence surface. There is a substantial difference between the “everyday” meaning of the word “theory” and the scientific meaning of the word. An idea is often labeled a theory for the purpose of painting it as little more than a guess. This use of “theory” demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scientific meaning of the term. Referring to biological evolution as a theory for the purpose of contesting it would be counterproductive, since scientists only grant the status of theory to well-tested ideas.

Additionally, science is not a system of belief. To ask if a scientist ‘believes’ in the theory of evolution is an improper question because the term ‘belief’ implies a position or opinion based on faith. A biologist would properly say he/she understands and acknowledges the evidence supporting the theory of evolution. Belief is an act of faith and is not necessarily concerned with the availability of supporting evidence. For this reason, beliefs are not considered to be within the realm of science.  Moreover, the federal courts have ruled that creation science, a religious concept or belief, is not science at all.  [See Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F.Supp.2d 707, 764 (E.D.Pa.2005); McLean v. Ark. Bd. of Educ., 529 F.Supp. 1255, 1259 (E.D.Ark.1982) (dismissing “creation science” as “simply not a science”).]  Therefore, it is not considered relevant content for a purely science classroom.

Since college and career readiness is our goal for all students, we would be doing them a disservice by denying them the opportunity to learn science concepts required to obtain that goal. Evolutionary theory is one of the foundational components of modern biology, and it most certainly plays a significant part in college biology coursework.  The ACT QualityCore® biology end-of-course objectives are designed to reflect research-based college- and career-ready standards as well as promote more rigor and depth in traditional courses.

Finally, Kentucky’s Core Academic Standards for Science and Core Content for Science Assessment, version 4.1, outline the minimum required content that all students should have the opportunity to learn in order to graduate. The QualityCore® end-of-course test for biology does expand from our current minimum standards. The Kentucky Core Academic Standards and Core Content for Assessment 4.1 contain two (of seven) Big Ideas that are reported under the category Life Science. Those Big Ideas are Unity & Diversity (UD) and Biological Change (BC). The Big Idea of Biological Change contains only content standards related to biological evolution. The concept of evolution already exists within these standards and has been assessed in the Commonwealth since those standards were adopted in 2006.

I appreciate your viewpoint and hope this information assists you in understanding KDE’s position. Thank you for all that you do to positively impact the lives of the students in your school district.

 Sincerely,

Terry Holliday