Burnee links for Thursday

An illustration for the wisdom of conservatism (theological and otherwise)
Randal Rauser rues his impetuosity (but shares it for our benefit).

The Betrayal of Reason « Choice in Dying
Catching up with Eric MacDonald's blog — read his serious reservations about Templeton in the light of his (and his wife's) experiences with regard to the Anglican stance on assisted dying.

Roman Catholicism: The Sick Soul of the World « Choice in Dying
The RC Church is "...a fringe fanatic movement of no more interest to humanity than the Jehovah’s Witnesses."

God, Genocide and William Lane Craig « Choice in Dying
As far as I'm concerned, William Lane Craig is history. His recent debates with Lawrence Krauss and Sam Harris clearly demonstrated that his "apologetic" is worthless, and the current raking-over of his familiar but despicable version of divine command theory confirms the vacuity of his supposed "moral foundation". What he says from now on need no longer be considered of any consequence.

Some disorganised thoughts on René Descartes and his Method

Rummaging around some dusty corner of my hard disk recently I came across this note that at the time had the potential to become the basis of something more substantial. It's 18 months old now, so the references to my "new" Kindle are a bit irrelevant (the restrictions have been partially lifted, and the Kindle 2 itself has been superseded by its cheaper third incarnation). Nevertheless I'm posting the note here rather than consigning it to the bit-bucket.

Of an evening I have a choice: I can watch TV, or I can read. Currently I'm reading — I have a machine that watches TV for me (and I hope to get around to watching those programmes soon). My reading is mostly off a computer screen, as it consists of news and blogs. I wouldn't want to read a whole book on the computer.

But I now have a Kindle — Amazon's "wireless reading device" — and though the service Amazon provides for the Kindle's international (non-US) users seems unnecessarily and arbitrarily restricted, there are sufficient advantages to make it a worthwhile proposition (plus it's a gadget, and I like gadgets).

A big advantage for me is that the Kindle gives me convenient access to many public domain classics — such as those available at Project Gutenberg — in a format that doesn't require reading off a computer screen. And they're free, if you download them to your computer and transfer them to the Kindle using the supplied USB cable. So I'm revisiting one particular classic that I originally explored decades ago in my then quest for philosophical justification of the theistic mindset.

René Descartes' Discourse on the Method, containing the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am", held out the promise of a rational proof of the existence of God, based on his initial rejection of everything that could not be shown to be true, or was not self-evident. On my first reading of the Discourse I was impressed by the Method, but underwhelmed by some of the unjustifiable leaps of logic Descartes makes. I thought it would be instructive to revisit this seminal work in the light of my more recent exploration of the various "proofs" of God (see my series of blogposts, "Arguments for Fred").

The first problem I notice on re-reading the Discourse is the gradual edging towards what I now know as the ontological argument, and Descartes' problematic use of the word "perfect".

And that's where it stops. I recall that I did continue with my re-reading of Descartes, but I can't find any other thoughts, other than notes and highlights on the Kindle itself:

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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 113-15 | Added on Sunday, November 01, 2009, 03:28 PM

And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 153-56 | Added on Sunday, November 01, 2009, 03:47 PM

the sciences contained in books (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations), composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 396-98 | Added on Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 12:23 AM

from reflecting on the circumstance that I doubted, and that consequently my being was not wholly perfect (for I clearly saw that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt), I was led to inquire whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself;
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 442-44 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:17 PM

Finally, if there be still persons who are not sufficiently persuaded of the existence of God and of the soul, by the reasons I have adduced, I am desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain;
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 471-74 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:24 PM

And because our reasonings are never so clear or so complete during sleep as when we are awake, although sometimes the acts of our imagination are then as lively and distinct, if not more so than in our waking moments, reason further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of our partial imperfection, those possessing truth must infallibly be found in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Note Loc. 503 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:30 PM

Enough with the double negatives already!
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 527-28 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:35 PM

things purely material might, in course of time, have become such as we observe them at present;
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 527-29 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:36 PM

things purely material might, in course of time, have become such as we observe them at present; and their nature is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming in this manner gradually into existence, than when they are only considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 648-49 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:56 PM

Such persons will look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is incomparably better arranged, and adequate to movements more admirable than is any machine of human invention.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Note Loc. 657 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 06:58 PM

Turing test!
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Note Loc. 689 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 09:34 PM

So far, these are merely assertions.
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Discourse on the Method (René Descartes)
- Highlight Loc. 790-91 | Added on Friday, December 25, 2009, 09:49 PM

I have never met with a single critic of my opinions who did not appear to me either less rigorous or less equitable than myself.

This ability to add notes and highlights on the fly is a useful feature of the Kindle — it's equivalent to writing in the margins of the book you're reading, except in the digital version you're unlikely to run out of space.

Incidentally, Melvyn Bragg's weekly BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time covered Descartes recently:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010mvcp

(It appears that IOT is archived in its entirety, with full audio available for every episode — a most valuable resource.)

P. Z. Myers at TAM London 2010

For many attendees of TAM London 2010 the appearance of "godless liberal" P. Z. Myers would have been one of the anticipated highlights of the weekend. For those who had not previously heard him speak (on podcasts or via YouTube), his relatively mild manner would have been at odds with the surgical invective of his well-trafficked blog Pharyngula. He may have a reputation as the world's most aggressive atheist, but in person he is calm and reasonable. The media tend to focus on specific actions of his that they deem incendiary (the episode known as Crackergate is an example), but they usually — and wilfully — miss the point he's making. (Read his Pharyngula post on the culmination of Crackergate to see an example of such a point.)

We now know that P. Z. is writing a book, and those of us who consider ourselves his fans are eagerly awaiting its publication. His TAM talk was a rallying call to all atheists: he advocates ridicule appropriate to ridiculous beliefs, followed by constructive criticism — purposeful (rather than gratuitous) obnoxiousness.

Radio drama: "The Iron Curtain" — based on the diaries of Paula Kirby

All this week BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a serialised dramatisation of the diaries of Paula Kirby — she who reviewed with such perspicuity a batch of "flea books" published in response to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Paula writes regularly for the Washington Post On Faith column (her latest being on secular ritual). I've listened to the first of the five 15-minute episodes and I'm looking forward to the rest.

Part of the Writing the Century strand and broadcast as the Woman's Hour Drama, the series is called The Iron Curtain:

The series which explores the 20th century through the diaries and correspondence of real people, returns with "The Iron Curtain" by Nell Leyshon. The drama is inspired by the diaries of Paula Kirby, who went to teach English in East Germany in the 1980s, and her correspondence with paediatric surgeon Knut Löffler.
Fresh out of university, 21 year old Paula Kirby settles into her new home and job, teaching English at the University in Dresden but finds herself attracted to one of her students, a Dr Knut Löffler.
Cast:
Paula ...... Charlotte Emmerson
Knut ...... Jonathan Keeble
Sarah ...... Danielle Henry
Woman on train ...... Melissa Jane Sinden
Directed by Susan Roberts

Paula & Knut January 1988 when Paula was back in the GDR for a visit

(The Woman's Hour Drama will be available on the iPlayer for about a week after broadcast.)

Burnee links for Sunday

The Blog : Why I’d Rather Not Speak About Torture : Sam Harris
Is Sam Harris calling it quits? His point seems to be that there are some matters of ethics that it is impossible to discuss rationally.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a pompous old gasbag who doesn’t understand evolution « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne appears to blow a gasket over one theologian's review of another. (This is what theologians do. Nobody else is listening, so let them get on with it.)

The Edinburgh Science Festival, Creationism and the Centre for Intelligent Design | Wonderful Life
The Centre for Intelligent Design plays fast and loose with definitions — corrected here.
(Via BCSE.)

Wait, I thought they believed in an absolute morality? : Pharyngula
Greta Christina rightly condemned William Lane Craig's twisted morality. P Z Myers follows suit. The fact that Craig thinks his position is moral (when anyone with a gram of moral sense clearly knows it isn't) illustrates perfectly the corrupting influence of scripture.

Secular rituals the honest choice - On Faith - The Washington Post

"Why devalue a promise of commitment by making it in the name of a deity in which we do not believe?"

Paula Kirby on the importance of staying true to your principles when it comes to rites of passage.

With friends like these: Atheists against the New Atheism - ABC Religion & Ethics - Opinion
Russell Blackford on the New Atheism backlash.

Why do Americans still dislike atheists? - The Washington Post
It's a good question. Less of a problem in the UK, but even here, as in America, there are some in the public eye who are openly contemptuous of atheists. That doesn't mean they're representative, it just means that the media seeks them out.

Creation Science Movement - News - BCSE and Ekklesia Seek to Restrict Basic Freedom in Schools
But the CSM wants creationism to be taught as "fact" — or at the very least as something that is equivalent to evolution, when it clearly isn't. We've seen what happens when creationism is merely restricted to RE lessons (for example in Muslim schools the children don't believe what they're told in science classes, for the simple reason that in RE they're told that the science contradicts scripture). The creationists have the remedy in their own hands. Go out and do some research to show that creationism is scientifically valid, and get it published in respected, peer-reviewed science journals. Creationism will then be given the chance it deserves (as, indeed, it is given now).

Catholicism a Blood Cult – Official! : Atheism
Yuk. (Follow the link at the post, to the BBC article.)

Enough of the whining about New Atheists! - steve's posterous
Steve Zara on the faux "reasonableness" of Karla McLaren's recent post attacking the Gnus.

1 in 20 don't give a monkey's about Darwin - News - TES Connect
"Many first-year biology students reject evolution, survey finds." This Times Educational Supplement article bizarrely concludes with an ID proponent:

"Alastair Noble, director of the Centre for Intelligent Design, said if the message of the research was that students should have more opportunity to assess the scientific evidence for the various positions around origins, no one would disagree with that."

But the message of the research is that 5 percent of undergraduate biology intake is woefully ignorant of the fundamental principles of biology. If the schools won't fix this, the universities must. Noble goes on to imply that evolution is a non-intuitive, dogmatic religious position, while intelligent design attempts to "account for the sophistication we find in natural and living systems in terms of mind, as well as matter and energy”. Leaving aside Noble's total inversion of the facts here, this isn't what intelligent design does; ID is merely an argument from ignorance: "it's all too complicated, therefore [insert myth here] must have done it". There's no account or explanation in ID. It ought to be crystal clear by now: intelligent design is not science.
(Via BCSE.)

Phillip E. Johnson — father of ID — lax, unpersuasive and simply wrong

I'm now up to chapter 13 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, which is approximately one-eighth of the way through its "50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science". As I feared, it's proving a tedious affair. Given that this is a recent book I'd hoped it might contain some really good up-to-date arguments, or at least a challenge of some sort. So far, however, it's been disappointing. The first section, The Question of Philosophy, should have been challenging, but seems to comprise what I (a non-philosopher) can only describe as philosophically bankrupt arguments. The current section, The Question of Science, appears to be all over the place; some of its chapters don't offer an argument at all, so I fail to see how they count towards the "50 Arguments".

Nor do I understand why every one of the first 13 chapters is either identical or very similar to an article on 4truth.net. That website doesn't reference the book, and the book only briefly references the website (in the introduction) as a place to find "still more articles". Shouldn't there be at least an acknowledgement that the book contains reprints? Or that the website does? (At this stage I'll not be surprised to discover that the whole book is available on the website, which could explain why there's nothing new.)

Curious though that is, what of chapter 13? It's titled "Darwin's Battleship — Status Report on the Leaks This Ship Has Sprung" and is by Discovery Institute co-founder and major intelligent design proponent Phillip E. Johnson. He begins by citing his 1993 book Darwin on Trial, quoting the epilogue in which he predicts that ID will win out over evolution. He then goes on to list how he perceives progress in this regard. It's actually a bit comical:

Science organizations regularly mischaracterize ID, calling it "creationism in a cheap tuxedo." They dream up conspiracies and make false accusations. They try to make sure that no one who is friendly to ID is allowed to publish articles in the peer-reviewed literature and then use the lack of such articles to prove that ID is not science. They try to prevent ID-friendly scientists from attaining research or teaching positions. They enter into local school district decision-making processes to make sure that Darwinism is not allowed to be questioned in any way, bringing in the ACLU if there is any attempt to offer an even-handed approach to the teaching of evolution. (p. 74)

Who's "dreaming up conspiracies and making false accusations" here? I seem to remember a somewhat disreputable film (that's putting it mildly) called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that was chock-full of conspiracy theories, every one of which was promptly debunked by people who actually investigated the facts.

Johnson goes on to state that the "Darwinian mechanism of evolution" has no explanation of how the complex living world came about. This is just plain false. Anyone who reads Richard Dawkins' latest, beautifully illustrated book, The Greatest Show on Earth, cannot fail to understand the stunning simplicity and elegance of Darwin's idea. As for explaining "how life came into being from chemicals" — Johnson must surely know that evolutionary theory has practically nothing to say on the subject because that's not what it's about. He complains that Edward O. Wilson gives no concrete examples of evolution in an article in Harvard magazine, while providing no examples himself — nor does he provide a reference to Wilson's article. In fact the only reference Johnson gives is to his own book. His final paragraph is telling:

Recently, Harvard opened a new major research project, especially to study the origin of life. This may be in response to the criticisms of the Intelligent Design movement. Other recent articles suggest that scientists in the biological establishment are doing research specifically to answer the challenges raised by ID. If this is the case, it should be seen as a good thing by everyone. We in the ID movement are proponents of good science. If our criticisms and questions lead to better research, we are unafraid of the results. In the meantime, our current concern is to keep evolutionary scientists honest about the current state of the evidence and to allow young people to understand why there is a controversy about the subject of evolution. (p. 75)

It sounds entirely reasonable, until the last sentence. In evolutionary science — the kind supported by peer-reviewed research — there isn't a controversy about the subject of evolution. The controversy is entirely in the minds of ID proponents who want biological science to be based on a religious idea.

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4truth.net
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952913

"What Genetics Can Really Tell Us" — Adam Rutherford — Winchester SitP

The ubiquitous Adam Rutherford gave a fascinating talk at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on Thursday evening. Ubiquitous? Well, he's been on telly this week, and last, with his new BBC Four series The Gene Code (which reminds me — I wonder if there are any of those fridge magnets left...), and his previous series The Cell began a re-run that very evening. Also he's had several recent Radio 4 appearances: Science Betrayed, for instance, and last week's Start the Week with Andrew Marr.

Adam's appearance at TAM London 2010 detailed his experiences on the Alpha Course, but on Thursday he was on his own territory with a talk entitled "What Genetics Can Really Tell Us". We learned, for instance, that compared to indigenous Africans the majority of western humanity is extraordinarily inbred. We learned that except in a very few cases there isn't a "single gene" responsible for specific human attributes — or diseases. This is something the tabloid press (or at least the Daily Mail) hasn't yet caught on to, and we saw slides of several articles that claimed that "the gene for" various specific things had been found. Bizarrely, several of these disparate characteristics were attributed, in different articles, to the same gene. Adam also managed to outline the history of genetics (including the scientific principles) in about 20 minutes, which is no mean feat.

I should also mention that despite this being the first time Adam had delivered this talk he was engaging and funny throughout. While he may or may not keep the bingo cards (don't ask) in subsequent talks, if you get the chance to hear him on this subject don't pass it up. It's unlikely, however, that he'll be able to arrange a flypast of the International Space Station every time he delivers his talk. (During the break we all paraded into the pub car park to watch the ISS go by.)

Winchester SitP's regular venue, The Roebuck — now under new management — has been done up, which contributed to the general success of the evening.