Podcast Appearance Update

It’s taken me way too long to post this.  The episodes of the Apologia podcast on which I appear have been posted and are available to stream or download from the links provided below or through the iTunes store for free.  As a reminded, the show is a great round table discussion between theists and atheists moderated by Dr. Zach Moore from the North Texas Church of Freethought. 

 Darwin

Galileo

The subjects were chosen to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his publication of “On the Origin of Species” and the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical observations (also celebrated by the International Year of Astronomy) . 

One of the panelists who participated in both discussions (and participates in most Apologia discussions), Kevin Harris, with whom I’ve had an ongoing back and forth about morality, gave me some kind compliments on my writing.  I assured everyone after the shows had been recorded, that I found myself a much better writer than a talker.  My nerves really got the best of me, which typically does happen when I’m in the company of many people with whom I am not very familiar.   I also had some personal issues going on that were all too on my mind (about which I plan on writing soon).  I was really gun shy during the discussion on Darwin but got more into a groove during the Galileo discussion.  Luckily , I have been invited back two record two more discussions.  I’ll post the details on those when they become available…and this time I mean it!

 

The Republican Party and Science

During the presidential election last year John McCain criticized Barrack Obama for voting for earmarking money for a $3 million “overhead projector” which actually was a very sophisticated piece of planetarium equipment that will be used to inspire children to embrace an education in science and technology, on which roughly 90% of our economy is based.  

Then, also during the election, Sarah Palin criticized government spending money on projects that have “little or nothing to do with the public good. . . things like fruit fly research in Paris, France” which turned out to be research looking for genetic markers and causes of autism. 

 Now Bobby Jindal, the new rising star of the party, has taken issue with “something called volcano monitoring” which actually turned out to be monitoring volcanoes THAT SOMETIMES GO ALL ASSPLODY!!!!!

From these three public statements made by major players it seems the Republican party has a hateful disdain for science that does things like encourage children to be investigative, cure diseases, or protect Americans from huge, natural explosions that shoot fire and lava at them.  But I think a better explanation in that there are two factors at play: Republicans are against wasteful spending to the point of an ideological belief and the American public is so uninformed about science that it is easy to make a convincing case that it is useless.

 

Podcast Appearance

I am going to be a participant on the Apologia podcast, a great round table discussion between theists and atheists moderated by Dr. Zach Moore from the North Texas Church of Freethought.  I will post an update as soon as I know when the episode will be available for download.

 

Correction

A quick correction to my last post.  The reason the child was unvaccinated was not because of the anti-vaccination movement.  As a friend pointed out, it was due to a shortage of  vaccines.  While this recent story doesn’t speak to the safety of vaccines (this recent study does) it does speak of their necessity and abilty to save young lives.

 

Sad News

As reported by Dr. Phil Plait for Skepticblog, as a result of the anti-vaccination scare, a 7 month old child died in a 2008 preventable disease outbreak .

 

Very Superstitious

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way”

From ”Superstition” by Stevie Wonder

Yesterday my family got together at my parents’ house to eat lunch and hang out.  After eating we all sat in the living room to watch the NFC championship game between the Arizona Cardinals and Philadelphia Eagles.  Everyone in the family was rooting for the Cardinals because Kurt Warner, their quarterback, lives in our hometown Saint Louis and previously played for the Saint Louis Rams who he led to a Super Bowl victory in 1999. 

During the first half of the game the Cardinals performed very well on both sides of the ball.  The beginning of the second half they didn’t perform as well and the Eagles’ game was starting to pick up.  To what did my family attribute this?  Was it due to the 24-6 score at half time that mentally caused the Cardinals to slow down and the Eagles to perform harder?  Did the Cardinals coach tell the team in their locker room to concentrate on running the clock down while the Eagles coach reminded his athletes they were competing for a chance to play in their sport’s biggest game?  Nope. 

During the first half of the game I was sitting in a chair on the right of my parents’ couch.  At halftime I used the bathroom and sat on the left side of the couch.  When the Cardinals started under performing my family decided my position in the room, which is in the Saint Louis area, had to be causing an effect on the Cardinals, a football team in Arizona.  My family members each begged me to switch back to my original seat and I refused because I was comfortable and I just wanted to watch the game without being forced to participate in some superstition.  My sister and sister-in-law each even got mad and said I was going to be the cause of the Cardinals’ impending loss.  I told them I would maintain my position until anyone could give a plausible way I could possibly affect the game.  From that point on, each time the Kurt Warner threw an incomplete pass or got sacked, I got a sneering look from someone and a plea to move which I refused.  So was my family right?  Did my position in the living room cause the Cardinals to lose?  The final score:  Cardinals – 32   Eagles – 25

The error in logic made by my family is called an a post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “after this therefore because of this”, fallacy.  They saw two events that loosely correlated to each other and created a causal relationship of one onto the other.  Sometimes this fallacy can be harmless, like someone believing if they can throw a wadded piece of paper into a trashcan across the room they’ll get a promotion at work.  Other times this fallacy can cause little harm, like forcing an innocent man to move when he just wants to watch some freaking football!!!!!  Other times still this fallacy can be extremely harmful, like when ancient civilizations believed human sacrifice would lead to a bountiful harvest.

No matter the outcome of fallacious thinking, it’s always good to be familiar with the different forms of logical fallacies.  Below I’ve listed some online resources to help better understand them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/logicalfallacies.asp

http://www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=38

 

Anti-vaxxers Cause Measles Outbreak

The UK news outlet Sky News is reporting the goal of completely ridding Europe of measles by 2010 has been thwarted by fears continuing to be stoked by long discredited anti-vaccination propaganda that has led to more than 12,000 cases of the disease, mostly in 5 European countries. 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Measles-Europe-Unlikely-To-Meet-2010-Ellimination-Target-After-MMR-Vaccination-Slump/Article/200901115198694?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15198694_Measles%3A_Europe_Unlikely_To_Meet_2010_Ellimination_Target_After_MMR_Vaccination_Slump

 

Egnor Rants – Part 2

Dr. Michael Egnor has made his latest post in his continuing blargument with Dr. Steven Novella.  In his opening paragraph, Egnor says:

Although the mind and brain correlate to a high degree, the mind is ontologically irreducible to the brain.

Hmm…I wonder if Egnor would also argue that, although conversations correlate to a high degree with when a person makes verbal contact with another person, the second person processes the words of the first and in turn responds, conversations are ontologically irreducible to people because he can’t find the words spoken by either person.  Someone should inform Egnor the mind emerges from interactions within the brain just as conversations emerge from interactions between people. 

The rest of Egnor’s post goes further southward into the sea of dumb.

Traditional emergent and higher-order phenomena, such as the ‘wetness’ of water that emerges when individual water molecules aggregate or the characteristics of statistical mechanics that emerge from individual atoms of a gas, always relate third-person objective phenomena to to other third person objective phenomena, and never invoke different ontologies.  Emergence theory proposes, for example, that molecules aggregate in ways that yield movement not readily predicted by the properties of individual molecules, but emergence theory doesn’t propose that molecules themselves begin to see colors, smell coffee, or form opinions about philosophical issues. 

 Dr Egnor seems to suggest we materialists argue that individual brain cells can see, smell, or form opinions, disregarding the countless interactions within the brain to he should draw his attention. 

Egnor’s sparring partner, Dr. Steven Novella, just seems to have a better grasp on understanding how the brain works.  Maybe it’s because Novella is a neuroscientist, who spends his time continually developing an understanding how the brain works andEgnor is a neurosurgeon who cracks skulls open, sees a big grey blob, and wonders how the stuff works.  I’m sure that’s an unfair characterization but, judging from Egnor’s writing, I don’t know how far off it actually is.

 

Finally

Intelligent Design (ID) proponents have long argued their idea is not religion in disguise but just a matter of scientific investigation, an argument with which skeptics have always taken issue.  Steve Fuller at Uncommon Descent, one of the more prominent  pro ID blogs, bravely counters the ID mantra in his latest post:

…amidst the boneheadedness and bigotry that characterise most attacks on ID, the ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ argument needs to be taken seriously. After all, what good is a theory of ‘intelligent design’ if it has nothing to say about the nature of the designer?  ID supporters are susceptible to the charge of ‘Pastafarianism’ because of their reluctance to speak openly about God – understandably, in a scientific culture that is so actively hostile to the very idea. (Also, religious scruples are probably in play.) Nevertheless, the most natural way to make sense, say, Dembski’s ‘explanatory filter’ and Behe’s ‘irreducible complexity’ is as saying something about, respectively, God’s bandwidth and God’s building blocks. Moreover, these are things that people can argue about reasonably, using logic and evidence, just as they would about any other comprehensive explanatory principle, such as ‘natural selection’. But it means returning to the original science of design, or ‘theodicy’, a branch of theology that became increasingly unfashionable after Kant and effectively died after Darwin.

Thank you, Mr. Fuller.

 

What’s The Harm?

At my family’s Christmas get together my sister broke out a little, pink, peppermint flavored candy pig and a small metal hammer which she bought while visiting family in New York state.  The reason she bought these weird little items was not because the candy was at all tasty or the hammer particularly useful, but because they are part of a superstitious good luck ritual.  (Click here for the backstory.)  My family, being a rather superstitious bunch, decided to take part in the ritual which entails putting the candy pig in an included sack and passing it around a group of people who each take a whack at it with the little metal hammer. 

I don’t particularly like wasting time and energy on superstitious nonsense and showed my reluctance to participate.  In response my dad asked, “So what if it doesn’t actually do  anything?  What could it hurt?”  In the case of the peppermint pig, not much harm is done: hard earned money was spent on a piece of candy because it was believed it held magical properties, the resources that were put into making the candy could have been used for something more productive, and the act all around promotes magical thinking.  There are other cases in which asking “What could it hurt?” will get much more serious responses.  These cases inspired the owners of www.whatstheharm.net to start their site. 

The site collects stories of people who were harmed financially, injured, or even killed by beliefs that they thought were beneficial at best and harmless at worst.  The stories are separated into categories ranging from medical (i.e. acupuncture, alternative medicine, chiropractic, psychic surgery, vaccine denial, etc), paranormal (exorcisms, faith healing, witchcraft, etc), religion, pseudo-science, and even multi level marketing scams. 

I highly recommend this site to anyone who knows someone who believes in any type of woo and asks “What’s the harm?”