Am I Making Myself Clear?

With a predator beneath you, looking up to see your shadow,
It is good to be transparent, so the light just passes through
But a nearby light’s reflection makes you sparkle like a diamond,
So a darker pigmentation is the better thing to do.
Those are two competing strategies, and mutually exclusive
Each has fatal flaws, so choosing “clear or solid?” is a bitch;
But now Japatella heathi and Onychoteuthis banksii
Have evolved the best of both worlds—in an instant, they can switch!

Story, after the jump: [Read more…]

Headline Muse, 11/9

It’s the smallest one ever—by far!
And its structure (to me) looks bizarre
There was nowhere to park
And so, just as a lark,
They made a molecular car!

Headline: Single-molecule ‘electric car’ taken for test drive

(Very cool illustration at link)

Ok, nanotechnology may be the key to fitting more cars into the same parking lot, but a single-molecule car is not going to be helpful for carpooling. I think I’ll stick to my bike.

Last Tuesdayism

So I’ve been having a bit of fun at a tiny little internet backwater. Hey, it’s what I do sometimes. Don’t judge me!

Anyway, I noticed today that somebody invoked the idea of “Last Tuesdayism” which (by the blog author’s argument) all of us, in order to be intellectually consistent, must remain agnostic about. Thus, today’s little ditty.

Only last Tuesday, a quarter past four,
The universe was, when it wasn’t before!
The whole of the universe started to be,
Which it hadn’t at all, at a quarter past three.
Existence itself, in the blink of an eye;
No reason for billions of years to go by.

Of course, it looks old—that’s the way it was done,
Looking old from the instant it all had begun;
The universe looks like it has a real past,
And one that seems incomprehensively vast
It seems there are billions of years to explore
But it started last Tuesday, a quarter past four.

The earth and the heavens, the sun and the stars,
The mountains, the oceans, the cities, the cars,
The falsified memories that seem to be real,
Each trip to the doctor, each holiday meal,
Each nursery school freeze-tag or hide-and-go-seek,
Each one an illusion from early last week.

Each fossil was planted, and each sacred scroll,
Each childhood memory, made up in whole,
Your very first friend, and the first one you kissed
Another illusion to add to the list.
No God whatsoever creating a scene,
And nothing at all from before 4:15.

There is no “last month”, and there is no “last year”,
Just Tuesday and later, that’s perfectly clear.
The scientists’ “billions of years” is a guess,
Like the people who say it’s six thousand or less—
They each claim their evidence tells them what’s true,
And they haven’t a clue that they haven’t a clue.

So how do I know what I’m telling you now?
If it’s all manufactured last Tuesday, then how?
You can’t trust the science; religion is bunk;
You can’t trust your senses, cos all of it’s junk;
No possible way that the real truth can show,
So how do I know it? That’s it—I just know.

Religion and science are two different ways
We can look at the world—that’s what everyone says.
But really, why limit ourselves just to these?
My Tuesdayist view is as good, if you please!
It’s as old as the others, so please don’t ignore—
Cos they all started Tuesday, a quarter past four.

As usual, more after yon jumpage: [Read more…]

Haughtiness

Could a rock achieve awareness, if its faith was strong enough?
(Clearly, faith would be the only way, since logic might be tough)
Could a frog achieve enlightenment? What argument convinces?
(It’s established in the literature that magic makes them princes)
Could a man conceive of heaven, while he’s here on earth, below?
Might his faith be mere delusion? How is man supposed to know?

As I’ve said elsewhere, after watching John Haught’s presentation, in his debate with Jerry Coyne, I thought Coyne should have simply taken the mic and said “See?”. (I see Ophelia Benson has just put up her own reaction, which sounds about right to me, too.)

Haught, I think, did a very good job of describing his view. The religious view he defends grew out of Plato’s notions of a hierarchy of existence, from matter to plants to animals to mankind to angels to god. The creatures on any given rung of the ladder cannot comprehend the levels above them, but may comprehend those below and beside them. The study of physics and chemistry, Haught notes, does not prepare one to speak of life, or mind, or god.

Unless I missed it, though, theologians are stuck here on the same rung as the rest of us.

Ah, but that’s where faith comes in. When you are aware of being in the grasp of something greater than yourself… that’s faith. Knowledge attained through faith cannot be spoken of literally; the language of symbol and metaphor is, however, appropriate.

Fortunately, sharing this “human” rung of the ladder with us are scientists who study human experience. Experimental psychologists, among others, can speak to the reliability of Haught’s “data”. (I wonder whether Haught chose to highlight physics and chemistry in order to draw attention away from the sciences that can and do meaningfully critique his view.) And it seems that our sensory, perceptual, memory and cognitive faculties cannot be counted on to winnow delusional chaff from heavenly wheat. Think about it–how could we possibly know which thoughts were false and which godly, unless we had some external way of knowing that we could compare our subjective assessment to?

Haught did, I think, a fantastic job of describing his world view. Unfortunately for him, by his own description, theology cannot be fact-checked against any evidence. Not only can it not be “objective”, it can’t even hope for intersubjective agreement. One person has a vision, and founds a church; another has a vision and sees a psychiatrist. The raw materials for both are the same.

Kill! Kill! Kill!

On an overcast day off of west-coast Australia
A man, from his boat, took a dive
But he’d chosen a spot that’s a diner for sharks
So he never would surface alive.

The order has come now, to search and destroy
Permission to kill them on sight
It’s sharks being sharks, in their home habitat
So it’s time we should kill the great white.

When humans meet sharks in the blue of the ocean
And blood will be shed in the dark
One is the planet’s most dangerous killer;
The other of these is a shark.
[Read more…]

The False Divide

The faithful and the faithless are identical, in ways,
And it’s silliness to tease the two apart
The parsing of their language, the dissection of a phrase,
Needn’t mean they take these differences to heart
Denying evolution, or contending God’s behind it
Is just one of many issues, don’t you see?
If you simply look around you, why, agreement’s where you find it
And there’s lots of stuff on which we all agree.

Why, there’s levers, wedges, pulleys, all that simple physics stuff,
And the useful things that chemistry can find
And cellular biology—and isn’t that enough?
The important things that God Himself designed!
Though the evidence is plentiful, we part at evolution
And the big bang theory’s more than we can take
If we say that God’s behind it, that’s a reasonable solution
Though that’s not a move the atheists might make

Yes, the faithful and the faithless are identical, in ways,
Like bipedal locomotion, for a start.
There appears to be an equal part their nervous system plays
And they mostly have four chambers in their heart
We can list the similarities, though most of them are trivial,
Cos “trivial” is not the same as “wrong”
And claim that there’s no reason that we can’t all be convivial
No reason that we cannot get along

The majority of Christians have no qualms respecting science
Which apologists take pains to often note
The problem is, their tribal faith is where they put reliance
When their leadership reminds them how to vote.

Context and blather, after the jump:
[Read more…]

Do Not Taunt The Bionic Monkey

When historians of later years look back, as well they may,
It’s clear the reign of cybermonkeys had its start today
Electrodes let a monkey’s brain control a robot’s arm—
It’s scientific progress! There’s no reason for alarm!

My comment for the scientists: I’m questioning the need
For monkeys that can fling their shit at hypersonic speed
I’m not against technology; that’s not my major fuss;
It’s just… shit-flinging monkeys are already too like us.

Real story, after the jump:
[Read more…]

…Therefore, Jesus

It’s possible some entity which cannot be detected,
Outside of our experience despite how we’ve inspected,
Was the first cause of the universe, and first began to move it
It’s possible, by which I mean that no one can disprove it.

And that’s why I, specifically,
Believe in Christ of Galilee

Beyond the grasp of scientists, beyond our poor sensations
Beyond the reach of telescopes, which all have limitations
Before the birth of matter, and of energy’s first pulse
There may have been intelligence—you cannot prove it false.

Believing in the Christian God
Is, therefore, not the least bit odd

The beauty of the universe holds all of us in thrall
No scientist would be so bold as claim we know it all
The open-minded person will admit that, just perhaps,
Some unseen causal entity lies hidden in the gaps

It cannot, therefore, be denied
It’s for our sins that Jesus died

A bit of bread, a sip of wine
Are flesh and blood, by will divine

A savior-king, of virgin birth
Who holds dominion over Earth

Belief in whom must hold the key
To heaven and eternity

Without whose love and magic spell
You’ll spend forever, trapped in hell

A god so strong, and so complex
He cares with whom we might have sex

We’ve never seen the evidence, and frankly never will
Another gap will open up for every one we fill
The less a god is visible, the more that god is strong:
As long as God does nothing, why, you cannot prove Him wrong.

Evolutionary Biology Valentines Day Poem

I have been reading quite a bit about Evolutionary Bio and Evo-Psych explanations of human behavior, of whether or not it is appropriate to apply these theoretical models to people–especially to the behavior of individuals, and all that. If I had the time, I’d probably write something coherent about it, and include this poem. But the truth is, I just (for very odd reasons) had occasion to read it to someone here in real life, and I realized that I had not put it up on the new digs yet.

In sociobiology,
Why I love you and you love me—
Which anyone can plainly see—
Is mostly in our genes.
No, not the ones you buy in stores,
But what a scientist explores–
I like the way you look in yours,
And you know what that means.

What subtly-coded stimulus
Takes you and me, and makes us “us”
And makes us feel ‘twas ever thus?
The list of suspects narrows.
No longer are we all a-shiver
From some Cupid with a quiver
Out of which he might deliver
Fusillades of Eros.

Nor Dopamine, nor Serotonin
Tell us why our hearts are moanin’
Though they serve to help us hone in
On–not why, but how;
The parasympathetic blush,
Adrenaline to bring a rush,
Are how, not why, I’ve got a crush
On you, my darling, now.

But if old Charles Darwin’s right,
The reason that the merest sight
Of you will always give delight
Is…reproductive fitness.
Throughout our species’ family tree,
Producing proper progeny
Is what determined you and me
And Darwin was the witness.

Is thinking that you’re oh so sweet
And how you’ll make my life complete
Some trick to make our gametes meet?
It seems it may be so.
I feel the way I feel today
Because some bit of DNA
Sees your genetics on display
And wants to say “hello.”

But think of this, for what it’s worth:
Millennia before my birth
That DNA had roamed the earth,
In residents thereof;
The neat thing is, it’s really true,
The feeling that I have for you
Although, of course, it feels brand-new
Is truly ageless love.