Simon Singh to appeal

It's great news that Simon Singh is to appeal the nonsensical ruling in the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. We know that quack-merchants often resort to law when challenged, rather than produce evidence to support their claims. This diversionary tactic needs to be exposed.

English libel law is not an appropriate tool in such disputes, but I wonder if perhaps it has been unfairly mis-characterised. Some maintain that Singh is being asked to prove a negative, when all sceptics know that the burden of proof rests on those making the claim. But in this case Singh did make a public claim, that the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments" - and the BCA has demanded, in a court of law, that he prove his claim. That the BCA would have difficulty in proving their own claims for the efficacy of chiropractic is a separate issue - strictly it's not their claims that are under examination here.

Singh's claim, however, is clearly justified: the treatments to which he refers are promoted by the BCA (and presumably they wouldn't promote these treatments if they weren't "happy" with such promotion), and plenty of trials, studies and surveys have shown that these specific treatments are indeed "bogus" - that is, "not genuine or true" (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, eleventh edition). The BCA may dispute the plethora of evidence that their treatments are bogus, and as a result may sincerely believe in the efficacy of the treatments, but bogus they remain. Contrary to the judge's interpretation, Singh made no claim in his Guardian article as to whether or not the BCA was knowingly promoting treatments that don't work.

It will be a scandal if Singh loses this appeal, because such a result would reinforce the erroneous idea that libel law is an appropriate instrument for quashing dissent and scientific scrutiny.

I think Simon Singh has a good case for defence - but I am not a lawyer. For comprehensive insight from someone who his, check out Jack of Kent. To sign the statement of support, go to Sense About Science.

Did Darwin Kill God?

Looking through some two-month-old notes I found something I scribbled in response to a BBC TV programme shown on March 31, "Did Darwin Kill God?" Part of the BBC's Darwin programming, it was presented by Conor Cunningham. This is what I wrote (copy-edited for a modicum of clarity):

A mess. Hardly surprising - Conor Cunningham describes himself as a philosopher and theologian. He claims that literal interpretation of the Bible is not mainstream, and never has been. The conflicting stories in Genesis (Adam and Eve created together vs. Adam, then Eve) are stories intended to deliver deeper truths, and should be read thus.

So what's stopping anyone interpreting the Bible as a story whose deeper truth is that God is a figment of human imagination?

Theology is made up. It's like a lesser form of literary criticism. At least literary critics acknowledge that what they're studying is fiction. How would you react to a long, in-depth critique of Harry Potter that started from the presumption that J. K. Rowling's stories were historical fact?

A couple of days later the programme came up for discussion on RD.net, to which I added the following comment:

This programme rang alarm bells as soon as Cunningham stated he was a philosopher and theologian. Maybe he's right about the historicity of the interpreted understanding of the Bible - I don't know enough about it to agree or disagree. But as all theologians do, he started his interpretation with the assumption that God exists. (He had to; without this assumption, all of theology crumbles to dust.)

To go a little further in interpreting the "apparently" contradictory stories in Genesis ("Adam and Eve" vs. "Adam, then Eve") - if these stories are not to be taken literally (which they can't be if they contradict each other), and instead are intended to be fables that reveal deeper truths, one might come to the conclusion that Adam and Eve never existed as real people.

Nor, then, did the talking snake exist, nor the fruit, nor the tree. Perhaps none of the characters portrayed in either story actually existed in the literal, or any, sense. An allegorical or metaphorical reading of Genesis, according to Cunningham's argument, does not require the reader to take any of it literally, including the existence of one other character in the stories - God.

Later in the same thread, user "lazarus" posted a link to the BBC message boards discussion of the programme, and the programme itself is apparently available via BitTorrent. Incidentally, I've aired my opinion of theology previously on this blog.

Burnee links for Wednesday

A delayed and sparse list of links this week:

DC’s Improbable Science - Prince of Wales Foundation for magic medicine: spin on the meaning of ‘integrated’

Why I’m watching the Hubble repairs so intently | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Ghost Hunter Patrick Burns Pens Ghost Hunting for Teens Book | Center for Inquiry

New Humanist Blog: Simon Singh hopes to appeal chiropracty libel ruling, but can't confirm yet

Modern day Isaacs : Pharyngula

NeuroLogica Blog » License for Homeopathic Pill in UK

BHA - Lords criticise Census question on religion as "flawed" and discriminatory

Darwin, Humanism and Science

On June 6th the British Humanist Association is hosting a one-day conference at Conway Hall in London on evolution - its teaching in schools, and the conflict between evolution and creationism. Until recently I would have been surprised to see a whole day devoted to this topic, as I wasn't aware that in Britain we had much of a problem with creationism. Then I discovered a creation museum within ten miles of where I live.

When I realised I could attend this event without taking time off work I decided that in view of my recent visit to said creation museum I really ought to go. It's now sold out, but fortunately I was in time to get a ticket. I hope to be reporting on the event here.

The programme, in brief, is as follows.

Welcome from Polly Toynbee, president of the BHA

‘Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution’
Professor Richard Dawkins

Teaching of evolution in European schools
Professor Charles Susanne, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Insidious Creationism: the intellectual abuse of children through creationist books, comics and literature
James Williams, University of Sussex, England

Lost in education: on the cognitive biases that impede our acceptance of evolutionary theory
Johan De Smedt, University of Ghent, Belgium

“Evolutionary Humanism”: How to cope with the ‘moral’ arguments against evolution
Dr Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Giordano-Bruno Foundation, Germany

Hinduism and the Myth of Evolution
Babu Gogineni, International Humanist and Ethical Union, India

‘Humanism and Science’
Professor A C Grayling, Birkbeck College, London, England

This should be a comprehensive overview. The detailed schedule on the BHA website indicates there will be opportunities for questions.

The myth of "explanatory power"

A few weeks ago I watched a BBC TV programme entitled "The Narnia Code" in which Dr. Michael Ward, a C. S. Lewis expert, expounded his theory that Lewis's Christian allegory series of children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia, contain disguised references to medieval cosmology. It was fascinating stuff, as far as it went, though blown out of all proportion to its somewhat peripheral literary significance. But Dr. Ward has a book to promote, so I don't blame him for opportunistic hyperbole.

The TV show is due to be repeated tomorrow (May 18) at 7:30 pm on BBC Four:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aPQmoyzXx8



Unfortunately the final ten minutes of the show goes unnecessarily god-cute, bringing on such dubious luminaries as John Polkinghorne, who beamingly mumbles some trite non sequiturs – in particular the irrelevant notion that the idea of God as Creator is more "explanatory" than the naturalistic model.

What, pray, does the idea of a creator-god explain? The naturalistic thesis attempts to propose mechanisms of how things happen (or happened), to suggest explanations in terms of scientific knowledge we already have, in an effort to further that knowledge. How does saying "Goddidit" explain anything? At all? Tell me, please – I really would like to know.

Polkinghorne and other god-bods often use the phrase "explanatory power" when contending that the god hypothesis is more useful than scientific uncertainty, but it's high time such vacuous buzz-wordology was challenged and sent packing. I've no objection, in philosophical terms, to people of faith holding to their idea of a first cause for the universe – I think there's no evidence for such a view, though I appreciate some people subscribe to it. But if anyone says such a view offers any kind of "explanatory power" my response will be, "give me an explanation."

Saying that for whatever reason we can't possibly understand the supreme transcendent complexity of God's act of creation does not offer even a scrap of "explanatory power", and theists should stop claiming it does.

Burnee links for Saturday

Irish Atheists Speak Out! | AnAtheist.Net

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Who'd be female under Islamic law? - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Commentators - The Independent

Jacob Dickerman: Swines and Birds and Homeopaths, Oh My!

JREF - Shouting Fire
Dispassionate analysis of the ethics of the anti-vaccination lobby

Derren Brown Blog » Blog Archive » Wolverhampton
A tale of ultimate redemption

The Santa Barbara Independent - Reading, Writing, and Original Sin
Another example of how religious evangelists consider that "the end justifies the means"

Accommodationism and All That : EvolutionBlog

Go-faster shark skin swim suits - Creation Science Movement

The science of imitating nature to produce more effective designs is called biomimetics (3). There are many applications, including robotic arms, variable geometry aircraft wings, and this one. It seems that as so often is the case, God got there first!

It seems that as so often is the case, creationists simply ignore the overwhelming evidence for evolution.

Rumours of God's return are greatly exaggerated | David Aaronovitch - Times Online

The Tale of the Twelve Officers - vuletic.com
(via Modusoperandi commenting at Daylight Atheism)

This is what might be called a parable about the "problem of evil". My own take on the POE (or theodicy, in its supposedly reconciled form) is that it isn't much of a concern. For the problem of evil actually to be a problem, you have to believe in a good god. Those of us who don't believe in the existence of gods of any kind do not find our worldviews confounded by something as illogical as theodicy. In the same way we do not concern ourselves with statistical analysis of the likely average length of the typical unicorn's horn, nor with the wing-folding techniques most probably employed by angels who dance on the head of a pin.

Non-overlapping scepticism

Within what might loosely be called the sceptical community there is a faction holding that scepticism should be confined to matters of "woo-woo" – in general such things as alternative medicine, astrology, lay-lines, dowsing, claims of psychic ability, spiritual mediumship, alien abduction and so forth, and should not be concerned with religion. Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic, in his 2007 essay "Where Do We Go From Here?" – an impassioned rallying cry to sceptical endeavour – suggested that the atheism/theism debate was diverting scepticism from its true concerns, and urged a return to those concerns. (Incidentally you can hear him deliver the essay in episode 63 of the Skepticality podcast. Note also that there is now a follow-up publication, "What Do I Do Next?")

To me, this partitioning of religious scrutiny has a flavour of Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), an idea suggesting that science and religion are separate disciplines addressing different things: science being concerned with the material, physical realities of the universe, and religion with the spiritual, moral aspects of human life. I find this to be a false distinction, and it can be seen as such by looking at religious claims (and their tacit assumptions). For example the Catholic Church recently complained that Reiki, a form of "energy healing", isn't backed up by scientific evidence. It's hard to believe that those Catholics behind this statement don't see the huge irony of what they are saying.

From the scientific point of view NOMA would be just fine – science isn't concerned with the spiritual or moral aspects of life. At least, not until religion attempts its own overlapping on to the scientific side – which it does all the time (see the Catholics' objections to embryonic stem-cell research, or the Pope's claim that condom use increases the incidence of HIV in Africa, for example). NOMA is all very well, but "you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone" only works if both sides play by the rules. They don't, and the biggest offender is the religious side.

Science, I admit, does encroach on to the "spiritual" side occasionally, but usually only as a result of specific challenges. Scientists have little incentive to keep to their own side when religion is so blatant about not doing so itself.

Another problem with confining scepticism, as a movement, to "woo-woo" is the tricky matter of delineation. Does excluding religion also exclude spiritual mediumship? I think it does. But the existence of communicating spirits, or of ghosts in general (or faeries, or aliens for that matter) are clearly matters warranting scientific investigation. As is, therefore, the existence of a god.

Jerry Coyne fueled the debate recently with a blog-post entitled "Truckling to the Faithful: A Spoonful of Jesus Helps Darwin Go Down" in which he took issue with the US National Academy of Science and the National Center for Science Education's "accommodationist" stance regarding the compatibility of science and religion.

Coyne's post may be incendiary, but when we're dealing with what's true and what's false, clouding the issues with equivocation will be ultimately counterproductive.