…is that too often newspapers think you don’t need a science journalist to write it. Any ol’ hack will do. Take this article on evolution in the Vancouver Sun, which distills modern evolutionary biology into 12 theories, which happens to include Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy as well as Intelligent Design creationism — which, at least, is pairing intellectual equals. The author, Douglas Todd, is speaking High Crackbrain and making stuff up. It’s all garbage from a buffoon who knows nothing about the field. What, you have to wonder, qualifies him to be writing on science?
He has twice taken first place in the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, which goes to the top religion reporter in the secular media in North America. Todd is the only Canadian to have received the Templeton.
Hey, the Templeton Foundation puts it right at the top of their web page: they are SUPPORTING SCIENCE. They are all about sponsoring the reconciliation of science and religion (although, perhaps, that should be written as “science and RELIGION“, since we all know where the emphasis lies). It’s just too bad that the results so often belie their claims.
Science, religion, they’re practically the same thing, after all.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Well to be fair to Templeton, in a battle of wits between science and religion, religion is the one that’s going to need the extra help.
(Of course religion’s political power severely outstrips its wits, and since it’s perfectly willing to use its political power in a battle of wits to bludgeon the opposition to death at every opportunity it really doesn’t need that much help.)
Lol the irony.
Here’s one man’s attempt to balance honoring “thy mother and father”, with “thou shalt not kill”.
http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/dissing-mom/
Enjoy.
Problem 1. The powers that be have practically exterminated journalist specialization: they are too expensive and their articles not very marketable.
Problem 2. If they happen to know about what they are writing about, chances are the will lose their jobs.
Solution? Stop: they will fire you if you mention any solutions.
A few weeks ago that same idiot published an article calling Palin and Beck “religious titans”
(the full article was called “Thank the Pacific Northwest for two radical religious titans”).
I of course couldn’t resist and sent an email to the Today’s Letter (their section where reader write to chime in) and you wouldn’t know but I got phone calls of very offended idiots. And I just called them liars since I knew stronger words wouldn’t get my little letter published!
Urk. Even if we strip the 12 theories down to those that Todd considers “purely scientific”, we get vast confusion.
The four “scientific” alternatives to neodarwinism (by which Todd apparently means mainstream biology) are cooperation (in the person of Lynn Margulis, and for bonus points Carl Sagan, of all people, gets coopted), complexity theory, and something called “directionalism”, whatever that means. Yes, I know that’s only three. But Todd apparently doesn’t.
Now, the first two are fully compatible with neodarwinism. I know Margulis doesn’t think so, but symbiosis is a standard part of evolutionary theory. Unless you think it explains everything, and then you get into weird stuff like explaining insect metamorphosis by hybridizing a velvet worm and a grasshopper. Similarly, complexity theory doesn’t pretend to explain most of what natural selection does.
I still have no clear idea what directionalism, but it seems to be limited to social scientists, which is not a mark in its favor. And the only name suggested is Robert Wright, who appears to be a journalist, not a scientist.
All this, by the way, isn’t original to Todd at all, but is taken from an article by someone named Carter Phipps in a “journal” called EnlightenNext, which appears to be a magazine devoted to New Age wackitude. Rupert Sheldrake likes it.
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/mag/transform.asp?ppc-google-mag
I’m sure the point’s been made before, but assuming that science and religion can be reconciled, and adopting a position to pursue that goal, is inherently and fundamentally anti-science. All of your research and argument from that point forward is, pretty much by definition, ex post facto. Now, asking if science and religion can be reconciled is a scientific question – just not a very interesting one, and easily answered:
NO.
The V. Sun article is shockingly bad. This in particular made me shudder a bit:
‘“Process philosophy” is another member of this group blending science and spirituality. Biologists such as Charles Birch and progressive Christian theologians such as John Cobb maintain the divine is “the creative advance into novelty,” the source of the universe’s process of change.’
Yes. We should all believe John Cobb.
/sarcasm
Oh, here’s a link the the real (meaning “original”, nothing more) article, by Phipps:
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j35/real-evolution-debate-intro.asp
Todd appears to have garbled his source a bit, but not too badly.
Journalism is dead. All hail E! Hollywood Journalism!
:-p This isn’t just an issue of science, it’s an issue of politics and of history and of practically any other form of printed media. The media isn’t interested in publishing events, particularly when said events make some sub-section of the reader base upset.
So you get this kind of thin gruel, meant to gather eyeballs without disturbing anyone’s delicate sensibilities. I’m just glad they managed to shoe-horn an article about evolution in between all that Tiger Woods coverage.
I live in Vancouver and I have tried, tried, TRIED to read Mr. Todd. I’m an atheist and I believe we should engage sincere religionists, but he is a fuzzy-headed moron, really. When The God Delusion came out I turned eagerly to his review, hoping to find some good arguments, valid points, something to make me THINK.
Alas, no. It was all, “Dawkins is MEAN! And he asks for EVIDENCE! (sniff) THAT’S not what religion is ABOUT!” and the usual courtier’s reply, ad nauseam, ad barfeum.
Religion is, sadly, an important and influential part of our society, and I would appreciate and read a religion journalist who would really examine the questions on both sides, look to consequences of actions, identify areas of common ground, you know, encourage and facilitate communication, awareness, and co-operation between groups with divergent views.
But . . . no. We get pap. And underdone, regurgitated crap at that.
So much for stigmatising crack heads.. As if they all write such bullocks. Shame on you PZ!
*Chuckles at the curly RELIGION font*
:D
Where the fuck did he get this stuff from? Did he attend that Creationist Science Fair in St Paul last month? Where’s his accompanying bible verse?
No, not likely.
See what he did there? Ouch!
Does it matter that the article was published one year ago?
He gets it wrong with the first sentence. The world didn’t evolve into being. The world condensed, cooled and then life originated. After that life began to evolve.
Along similar lines it seems that every time there’s a snowstorm somewhere the cartoonist for the Chicago Sun Times does a “joke” about global warming as if 1) weather and climate are the same thing 2) if global warming was true there would be no more snow period. They’ve been told about it and it still continues to happen.
I thought that the Templeton Foundation was an opponent of Intelligent Design creationism.
Or is that just when there are scientists in the audience?
Not really. If it had been published 100 years ago, it would still have been ignorant, outdated drivel.
littlejohn here.
As a journalisst, I can easily answer your question.
Newspapers pay terribly. If you just got out of college with your shiny new BA in journalism or English, and if you’re lucky enough to find a paper to hire you, you’ll get $20k a year with virtually no fringe benefits.
Somebody with, say, a master’s in biology isn’t going to work for that kind of pay, even if she likes newspaper work. She can literally make more money teaching science in the public schools – and she’ll get summers off with pay.
Even the big famous papers pay poorly. Consequently, it is the rare paper that has anyone on staff really qualified to write about scientific or technical matters.
And as the innertubes put more and more newspaper journalists out of work, the situation will simply get worse.
How embarrassing. I never read the Sun when I lived in Vancouver (the first 28 years of my life) but now I’ll have to rail against it to family and friends back home.
MURGH.
So, if you approach the question “how can we get more people to accept evolution?” as a political question, the simple answer is to give people a nice variety of evolutions to choose from. Sort of like you can get a crowd to all select the pizza for dinner if you have a really huge pizza buffet with every kind of topping available, and include some pizzas without crust, or without any cheese or tomatoes, or seasoned in an unusual way so that you’d never guess it’s actually pizza. That way, everyone gets to eat what they want, and you still sell the pizza.
This is basically how you get people on board with accepting faith. Not any particular faith, of course, just faith in general, as a high value. Set out a smorgasbord of religions and ‘spiritualities’ and let people pick what works for them.
They have the RIGHT to BELIEVE whatever they WANT. It has been so decreed.
On the other side, lies bigotry and scientism. And NOT LETTING people BELIEVE what they WANT.
Why can’t science, be more like religion? Buffets have something for every want.
As a Vancouverite, I will be making a pretty big stink about this. I’ll keep everyone updated regarding responses I get.
@#8
This is not true at all. Science and “religion” are actually easily reconciled. Because while science is based on an empirical study of evidence, “religion” is generally based on some combination of mythology, tradition and philosophy. Science generally points at a single answer for things, but there are all kinds of religions out there. So because of that the answer to “can science and religion be reconciled” is “depends on the religion”.
It’s actually fairly trivial to construct a version of Christianity that has no problems at all with science. You just throw out a literal interpretation of the Bible and insist that most of it is meant to be read “metaphorically”, or better yet in the context of the time it was written. And make sure that you haven’t accidentally made your description of God testable and falsifiable. Many Christian sects do this currently. Most of the mainstream, liberal sects are perfectly fine with science and roll their eyes at their fundamentalist co-religionists who insist on making a division where they don’t see one existing.
Alverant at #18, that would be Jack Higgins. He is your typical neo-conservative in cartoon form. In the nineties, he had plenty of Clinton making deals with Satan BS. During the contested Bush/Gore debacle of 2000, he had dozens of cartoons playing Gore as the obstructionist. During the height of the madness surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, he had Terri with a face of anguish with a crucifix next to her bed, he had Christ with the same face of anguish.
Imagine if Mallard Fillmore won a Pulitzer Prize. That is Jack Higgins.
Hey PZ see if some one could hook you up with Hitchens so you could write articles for… I don’t know be a real science journalist where the masses will read. It can work because you can be a “sesationalist”. This is after your book comes out.
Please point out the ones that have dropped “Omnipotent”, “Omniscient” and “Omnibenevolent” (or even “loves you” if you’re not a fan of that term) from descriptors of God. Because if those are there, the Problem of Evil is a trivial test/falsification.
jerthebarbarian #25 wrote:
No, I think it’s more important to look at what we mean by the term “reconciled.”
You can soft-reconcile any religion with any scientific finding by simply saying “and this is how God did it.” The religion is backing down and ceding territory, but you can fix that problem by adding in “and this makes God even better, and faith in God, even stronger. Praise the Lord!”
But the meaning of ‘reconciled’ that really matters, is the hard-reconciliation. Turn the methods of science onto religion itself. How does God stand up, as a hypothesis? Are the truth claims that religion makes, consistent with our scientific model of reality? Would we ever derive them, from a scientific approach?
After all, if someone claimed that you can ‘reconcile’ homeopathy with modern chemistry, you would expect them to demonstrate good scientific evidence that water has a way of ‘remembering’ the substances it comes in contact with, and fit this into one consistent model of chemistry. You wouldn’t be satisfied with a chemist who uses one theory of chemistry in the lab, and another theory of chemistry when he takes his homeopathic remedy, and claims that there’s no conflict, because his own, personal theory of chemistry is that BOTH systems are true, and don’t conflict, and can be put together and he feels just fine, thanks.
@jerthebarbarian
That’s because you use a very weak definition of “compatible”.
See this thread, for example. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/comity_and_reconciliation.php
High school students have enough trouble learning the standard evolutionary model, throw 11 alternatives in there and they will not learn anything.
On the other hand, every time the creationists say “teach the controversy”, we can insist on all 12 (or 20 or whatever number someone comes up with).
Not if you add “ineffable”, as Christianity usually (perhaps always) does. That’s a killer argument that makes falsification completely impossible and leaves only parsimony (…though it outright begs for the principle of parsimony to be applied).
I read the Vancouver Sun article about halfway through, thinking okay, this is trite but nothing egregious, and then it took a sharp turn from trite into wacko land.
Recently, I read Christopher Hitchens’ god Is Not Great, which in my opinion has remarkable abilities to clear one’s head. Now I have to read it again to offset this.
Oh well.
I blew my cookies as soon as he called Carl Sagan “Lynn Margulis’ late husband.” She divorced him after only a few years of marriage, although they remained friends. If he can’t get an easily checked detail right, how can he come close to the big picture?
The evolution article is a new age-y embarrassment, but clicking through some of his other articles (presumably the ones that got him the Templeton recognition, as well as awards from another group) are reasonably good. There is one that dicusses criticism of Mother Theresa and the tradition of valorizing pain in Christianity, and of course, “Biblical Sex: It could knock your socks off”.
I certainly enjoyed reading the responses to his article, anyway.
I’d just like to know why PZ has been coming up with Canadian examples of this stupid lately…
I mean, dammit, aren’t there any loopy Norwegians he can pick on, or somethin’?
Please don’t tell me this is going to continue. It’s embarrassing. We’ve already got the survivors of a prairie youth ministry gone (more) wrong for a government. We just don’t need the additional humiliation…
(/This is revenge over the Olympic hockey final, isn’t it?)
A pity: I only comprehend Low Fundie. I’ve been meaning to learn High Crackbrain for a while now, but I’ve just been so busy. Do you think it’s really worth my time to learn, and if so, do you know any places I can learn it quickly? Or am I just better off saving myself the time and energy of learning yet another dialect of Nutterspeak?
David, you know this already. If you add ineffable, now you have to answer to how you can know this being is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent. If you apply the “ineffable” descriptor along with any other, you’ve contradicted your own position. It doesn’t help their position unless people refuse to point that out.
The fact that nobody is willing to point that out in the press is a different matter. It does not make the statement any stronger, or any less wrong, simply uncontested.
Yes, and we trust that you have learned your lesson, and this will not happen again!
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I clicked through from Jerry Coyne’s article to read Peter Medawar’s classic take-down of Teilhard de Chardin (in the form of a review of The Phenomenon of Man). Now, that’s good, brain-clearing stuff.
@AJ Milne
Well, it’s not over…
This just out : Kenney blocked gay rights in citizenship guide: documents
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/773841–kenney-blocked-gay-rights-in-citizenship-guide-documents
http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2010/03/congratulations_to_chris_moone.php
PZ: I think you got the Templeton foundation all wrong; I can still see a little science in there where there should be none.
@Bloodtoes that’s funny – Mooney has his own apologists to do his job.
Re #43. Who is this Abel Pharmboy? This is what he claims:
How is it that 2% of the world population is Jewish yet 27% and 28% of Nobel laureates in Physiology/Medicine or Chemistry, respectively, are Jewish? Seems more consistent, although not causal, that a little religion helps your science.
Doesn’t he realize that a. those Nobels may very well come more from Jewish culture than from Jewish faith? and b. Lots of those Jews who got the Nobel, like Richard Feynman, were CULTURAL Jews who were actually atheists?
Only if your “religion” is precisely as the quote would suggest – not really religion.
In other words, if you subscribe to a trivialized version of Christianity – the soft and gooey “we’re-more-about-the-philosophy-than-the-god-stuff” version. Which is just silly fluff. If you want philosophy, study philosophy, not a watered-down religion that has tried to adapt by making itself non-falsifiable and in doing so loses all relevance.
I almost(I said almost!) have more respect for the fire-and-brimstone literalists. They might be wrong, but by GOD they stick to their guns in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The version of “religion” you describe (but, may I hope, do not actually subscribe to?) has literally nothing to offer, since it’s rendered God completely irrelevant. Which, you know, it is… so… yeah…
Hi everyone,
My name is Carter Phipps. I’m the source of the article in this thread. I don’t know Todd, but he obviously took his article from the article in the magazine. Incidentally PZ, the article referred to above was about evolution in science, philosophy and spirituality. It wasn’t a dissection of biology. Very important distinction…Obviously that would have been different.
That being said, I’m happy to answer any questions about it…
I have to echo the irony of this coming to light so soon after Mooney’s fellowship award. It looks like he’s in good company.
Until science discovers something that conflicts with the religion. Then what do you do? If you accept the religion over the science, then they aren’t compatible. If you accept the science over the religion, why have the religion in the first place?
Which also makes it unobservable, and that raises the question “how does the religion know?” Making shit up isn’t compatible with science, either.
Posted by: AJ Milne | March 2, 2010 3:02 PM
I’d just like to know why PZ has been coming up with Canadian examples of this stupid lately…
I mean, dammit, aren’t there any loopy Norwegians he can pick on, or somethin’?
Please don’t tell me this is going to continue. It’s embarrassing. We’ve already got the survivors of a prairie youth ministry gone (more) wrong for a government. We just don’t need the additional humiliation…
(/This is revenge over the Olympic hockey final, isn’t it?)
no its not its because US and CD culture intertwine with the high creationist rates and norway like others has become secular by popular demand
My name is Carter Phipps. I’m the source of the article in this thread. I’m happy to answer any questions about it
Okay. Are you willfully ignorant, or merely a crackpot? Here’s what you wrote about Madame Blavatsky:
In her same theosophical writing, Madame Blavatsky also expounded on her belief of the superiority of the Aryan race and that,
And, contrary to your protest that your article isn’t about evolution is science, you put this person’s ideas and intelligent design on an equal footing with scientific facts about biology.
That’s the trouble with modern discourse: not enough said about the proponents for Aryan superiority and our Atlantisian ancestors. Good on you for correcting this.
Blavatsky also thought that the lost Pacific island of Lemuria was occupied by the “Third Root Race”, described as about seven foot tall, sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying, mentally undeveloped and spiritually more pure than the following “Root Races”.
In other words, Blavatsky was nuts.
That said, she did give her name to a great “prog pop” band, Madame Blavatsky Overdrive.
No heddle yet? He’s a good person to ask for an explanation of how (in the mind of one kind of Christian who works in a scientific field) religion and science can be compatible.
By no means do I consider his explanations to be in any way compelling, mind you – it seems to boil down to redefining what the words ‘science’, ‘religion’ and (especially) ‘incompatible’ actually mean – but he’s an example of the fact there are avenues down which they can attempt to take the argument.
Obviously, ‘it’s because our god exists but, contrary to what we usually claim, is a lying ass and enjoys dishonesty and the misery humanity experiences as a result of it’ is the most logical – but you rarely hear them admit it.
I didn’t know this already, and I still don’t quite understand it. The other 3 attributes can be “known” the same way anything is “known” in religion – because it says so in the book/because someone told me. “Ineffable” doesn’t mean “nothing can be understood even in part”, it means “the whole can’t be understood entirely”. What have I overlooked?
What is evolution doing in philosophy, let alone spirituality? Who dragged it where it doesn’t belong?
Here is another article I wrote about intelligent design that might be of interest…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carter-phipps/whatever-happened-to-trut_b_191925.html
I think you guys may need to dinstinguish more between things you should be really upset about like ID, and things you may disagree with, but isn’t worth the same vehemence, like my article on evolutionary thought. That artice isn’t anti-science or anti-reason–some things really are.
Anyway, appreciate the chance to come on here and say my bit…
ineffable: incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible
I would argue that “omnipotent”, “omniscient” and “omnibenevolent” are effing the ineffable. I would also argue that “god” falls in that category as well.
But it’s not clear if he means it. From his own comment 6:
David,
Ineffable means it’s not expressible, not that it can’t be understood.
Your article on evolutionary thought is bad evolution, bad science, bad history, bad philosophy. You’re in the position of coming here to tell us all that your article was merely a small nugget of crap, not lumpy crap or smeared crap or rancid crap or runny crap, and that we should focus or ire on those other kinds of crap…but unfortunately, we’re just generically anti-crap.
yes, Blavatsky had a lot of crazy ideas…so do a lot of people….she still was very influential, and has some ideas about evolution and spirit that influenced poeple whose ideas weren’t so strange…I wasn’t trying to make an endorsement of Blavatsky…I was making an historical point of fact.
It’s interesting and predictable that eveyone is focused on that one small part of the article…the group of thinkers i call the esoteric evolutionists…yes, many of them were a little crazy, but heck, it was the 19th century…and some of them had some not so crazy ideas that were important as well.
That still means what I said: the whole can’t be expressed in its entirety, but small parts might.
Lǎozi said “[the] dào [which] can [be called] dào [is] not [the] eternal dào” and then went on to talk about it at length anyway. I don’t see a contradiction.
I disagree. The very first sentence in the article:
The implication is that all 12 theories are equally supported. Coincidentally (or not), this is precisely the tact taken by Intelligent Design proponents when they preach “teach the controversy”. In other words, the very same thing that makes ID bad science makes this article bad science.
Besides, as has already pointed out, “the world evolved into being” is already wrong in itself. Evolution means “descent with heritable modification”. Worlds don’t reproduce and don’t inherit…
The amount of logical fail there is reaching maximum density
come on
What exactly do spiritual “explanations” [read: mental masturbation] have to do with the actual science of evolution?
I knew the guy’s was a real clown when I read the article he wrote about crackergate:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2bb6dace-2f30-4b43-a738-0d0f62fe3cc8
From the article: “Dominique is over-zealous in his militant atheism. But he’s also one of those teenagers that many Catholic clergy, used to feeling ignored, often find fascinating. After all, such clergy remember Jesus’ apostle Paul also hated Christians and their beliefs — before he converted and became the faith’s leading exponent.”
Yeah Mr. Todd, it’s payback time.
I’m hearing a Deepak Chopra warning when it comes to Mr. Phipps!
Carter, you have a tough audience here; if your not a regular reader, you might not realize this place is more like a biker bar than a senior common room. I’ll be surprised if you get much more than invective. Still it is kind of you to volunteer to answer questions about the article.
By “source”, do you mean that you digested a longer article by Chuck Todd? In any case I think that a lot of readers will find it confusing that different philosophies about the meaning of evolution are called theories “of” evolution. And as interesting as some of them are, I don’t see any of them belonging in a science classroom, which is the context of the article.
Carter:
Your article claimed to have something to do with science. If you now want to retract that, I suspect nobody will bother you much. Most people around here accept the right of anyone to say any sort of nonsense they want about “spirituality”; they just ask you to keep your hands off science.
And in fact none of what you say about science is correct. It’s all filtered through some kind of New Age prism. There are controversies in science. But I don’t think you correctly characterize any of them. For example, any attempt to put Sean Carroll and Rupert Sheldrake into the same pigeonhole is seriously misguided. You also seem to have trouble distinguishing between scientists and journalists.
P-Zed Myers (#60):
Damn. There goes my Coke Zero, all over the place.
Carter #56 wrote:
We’re responding to the Douglas Todd article, which was apparently based on your (much) longer article — which I haven’t yet read (sorry), so I can’t say whether you’re guilty of the same errors as Todd. He may have misinterpreted you.
I did read your “Whatever Happened to Truth?” article you linked, though, and so I am confused. It seems to me that Todd is guilty of just what you argue against, that
Todd appears to be doing just this, offering up a smorgasbord of different kinds of evolutionary “viewpoints” and — not just describing them or relating them to the history of public understanding — but endorsing them, as choices that ought to be presented to the public, so that they may be encouraged to accept evolution, each in their own way.
You wrote:
Doesn’t it seem to you, that this is just what Todd is doing here? Has he misinterpreted the intent of your own article? Or have I misinterpreted your point?
No….you weren’t making an historical point of fact.As some journalists are wont to do you write about the most titillating, strange ideas which take precedence for their shock value, without true context of their ideas within the framework of their true historical significance.In the case of Mme Blavatsky the significance of the ideas themselves is dubious at best.
DM, quoting Abel Pharmboy:
Uh-oh. Sounds like a severe case of Ladenitis. It must be spreading through SciBlogs.
Paul, I think this is just demogoguery on your part. I have spoken to two Templeton recipients, and neither of them claimed that the Templeton Foundation had in any way tried to influence their work, either in terms of the direction it went, or the content of it. So, as far as I can tell, your objection boils down to “They are talking about religion!” I know you don’t like that, but surely there’s nothing wrong about that in the abstract?
Wild claims that people must be taking religion’s side in what it is entirely unclear to me is a case of mutually exclusive choices do nothing at all to make your views look sensible and rational. If you have evidence that Templeton money comes with strings, present it, and we will all point in “J’accuse” fashion at them. Otherwise, your attack seems to be merely that anyone who does not exclude religion from civil discourse is a poopyhead. Which makes me one.
I should apply for a Templeton grant just to annoy you…
Ineffable means that a thing cannot be expressed.
No, it means “inexpressable in any respect.” It’s one of the reasons Jews do not write “God” – they write “G-d” instead. The term is both prescriptive and proscriptive in that one cannot assign any attribute to God without providing a limitation, and God is not supposed to have any limitations. Even naming God is supposed to be blasphemous because it shows disrespect for the ineffable.
Of course, that’s also the reason it’s inherently incompatible with scientific thought, too; the foundation of all science is having independent verification of facts. If a thing is inexpressible, then it also cannot be independently verified. This does not hold for a thing that cannot be expressed in its entirety, since the purpose of investigation is to discover new things to express. What ineffability essentially means is that a thing that can be discovered cannot be expressed, and that concept in of itself is antithetical to scientific progress.
John S. Wilkins, #74 wrote:
In a post – The Templeton Bribe – from a few days ago, Jerry Coyne goes into some specifics about Templeton shenanigans; have you read what he’s written?
John S. Wilkins #74 wrote:
As far as I can tell, PZ’s objection boils down to “they’re talking about bad science!”
Bad science being, of course, a cardinal sin in these parts… if not the only sin.
John, that wouldn’t annoy me. It would disappoint me.
Templeton will not give money to critics of religion — it’s all a one way street there. You’d have to suck up to them to get it. And no, they don’t put contractual strings on the money, but only sociopaths would feel no obligation to them after accepting their money. Even I would, if I were to accept Templeton money…and that’s why I wouldn’t. I’m sure you’ve read Carroll’s and Horgan’s writings about their experiences with Templeton. Are they demagogues, too, or is it just me?
Besides, do you really want to join the ranks of the Douglas Todds of the world?
@Wilko, aren’t you assuming bad faith on PZ’s part by accusing him of demagoguery? A straightforwrd reading is that PZ is against the Templeton Foundation’s prizemoney for reconciling science and religion because it rewards bad science journalism as found in this guy’s article, not that it’s forcing it.
Who said they need strings? Why not find people who are, let’s say “reliable”, and subsidize them?
Wait, so Carl Sagan wife made important contributions to evolutionary theory which have become part of neo-darwinian theory therefore Carl Sagan disagreed with neo-darwinism? Thus the author is able to justify putting up a photo of a great critic of pseudo-science in his article about how pseudo-science is valid and of course Sagan can’t tell him where to shove his stupid article because he’s dead.
And “selfish genes” again? Reading the title of a book is not the same as reading the book.
Words published in Vancouver’s newspapers deserve, I think, more than the average pinch of salt.
The Province (the other main circulating paper in British Columbia) not too long ago published an article from our local climate denialist in which he claimed that scientists should either give up their scientific careers to pursue politics or never comment on public policy again.
Here’s another of Todd’s articles on evolution, from last year’s Sun.. He’s just a really bad writer.
(And I mean “bad” in the sense of incoherent and getting all of his facts wrong. Alfred Wallace believed in a universe that was “billions of years old?”)
I hate cluttering up my hard drive with junk pdfs. Is there a web-readable version somewhere?
I feel myself simultaneously channeling Madame Blavatsky, David Irving, and Carter Phipps all at once …. aaaurgH!
yes, Hitler had a lot of crazy ideas…so do a lot of people….he still was very influential, and has some ideas about evolution and spirit that influenced poeple whose ideas weren’t so strange…I wasn’t trying to make an endorsement of Hitler…I was making an historical point of fact.
Here’s another of Todd’s articles on evolution, from last year’s Sun.. He’s just a really bad writer.
Wow, what a mish-mash of slop that one is.
I was a regular reader of Todd’s columns when I was in Vancouver. The man is clever, but not half as clever as he thinks he is. On the surface, he comes across as a religious apologist in the vein of Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria, but dig a little deeper and you will find a snarky, sniping undertone of an anti-science worldview in his writing.
I left the following comment on Todd’s page:
Bombus: So Mooney writes for “The Province”, then?
I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I am, in fact, a sociopath, and would love nothing more than an immense Templeton Grant to allow me the freedom to write the epic poem “Religion is the mother of all evil”, or–failing that–to translate Hitchens’ “God is not great” into Burma Shave signs running the length of Rt. 66:
Informed by Science
This I sing:
Religion poisons
Everything.
–Burma Shave
@ 91:
No, Jon Ferry. Mooney may have and I never noticed. But that paper will publish damn near anything, so I would be entirely unsurprised if Mooney had contributed at some point.
The article in question is “PhDs should run for office to push policy” by Jon Ferry, which is available through google’s cache but not The Province’s archives…
Yeah, that’d be great! Then I could chose the science that gave me faster-than-light travel and a starship…! Woot!
@ WowbaggerOM #76 wrote:
Let me prove that I do not, in fact, suffer from Ladenitis.
I hereby acknowledge that my attempt at humor failed, that no one else is to blame, and that I’ll do my best to learn from it.
You’re just saying that because that last guy with Ladenitis got his kneecaps taken out.
The Todd article talks of QUOTE physicists such as Ervin Laszlo UNQUOTE. Is Ervin Laszlo really a physicist? Looks like a crank to me.
That article was a steaming pile of bovine excrement. Out of the 12 accounts, 11 were just false and blasphemous theories. I already told My people all you need to know about My creation.
@windsurfer4944 #89:
Also, Thomas Jefferson.
Even the brightest among us (ha ha ha) have very weird ideas, sometimes. If you want to get to know a real weirdo, read up on Nikola Tesla. He was a real piece of work.
@ #100
Even the brightest among us (ha ha ha) have very weird ideas, sometimes.
Why do you think panspermia is such a weird idea? It’s certainly far more likely than what most of America believes about the origin of life on earth.
I don’t really, though I don’t think it’s quite likely that life itself came from space. It’s more likely that certain catalytic agents may have come from there, though. I was referring more to the idea that in Edison’s day, the idea was very far out there.
This isn’t science journalism. It’s a teach the controversy article by a religion and ethics journalist. One of the most confused things I’ve ever seen him write.
From my perspective, his attempts at presenting balanced viewpoints fail when they are given as if he held each in turn, himself.
Also, I’ve never yet seen him present a reasonable characterisation of an atheist’s point of view. Reading him is always frustrating.
Makes me wonder what all those awards judges saw in him.
wowbagger @76, and PZ @ 79:
Yes I had read that. Coyne’s critique seems to be this:
If you accept Templeton money, which is designed to fund people to reconcile science and religion, you have already decided what you will say, and that it is consonant with the Foundation’s expectations.
This is, it seems to me, true. Likewise, if I accepted funding from the World Wildlife Foundation to write on, say, extinction rates amongst amphibians, it would be expected that I would not say, nor that I would apply for funding from them if I expected to say, that amphibians really don’t matter ecologically.
But if I do think that science can be reconciled with religion, and as it happens I sort of do (in that religion had better deal with science as it is – that’s all the reconciliation I need), is it therefore wrong to seek their money? They do not, as I understand it (and despite the Christian bias related by Coyne) micromanage the conclusions their researchers come to. I happen to have a project about theistic evolution – if I sought and got money and came to the conclusion I already think is right, that there can be ways that God and Darwinian evolution are consistent, would that be me swallowing the Koolaid? I don’t think so.
Chris thinks that journalism about science need not be critical of religion per se, although I am going to bet he would attack antiscience religion as much as anyone. So he’s hardly giving up his principles when he accepts that funding. So, what is the problem?
i’m noticing a lot more news items coming from the great white north. I’m wondering if PZ has his sights on getting out of Minnesota
Thomas Edison wasn’t a biologist.
No! Not the Papyrus! IT BURNS!
Hmm, John, most modern computer systems have a way of dealing with this clutter; often it is a called ‘the trash’ or ‘the delete command’ or something of that sort. I’m told it usually works quite well.
@ John Wilkins:
Come on, John. Do you really not understand the relationship of expectations one gets into when one takes money from an advocacy organization or a particular industry? Do you really think everything’s just fine so long as the recipient doesn’t sign a statement saying “I agree to Toe the Party Line?” I don’t think you’re so naive as not to recognize that influence works more subtly than that.
Your example of taking money from the WWF doesn’t disprove this point. Of course one would be expected not to say “amphibians don’t matter” when one gets a grant from WWF. That’s true, but trivially so. And it’s not the problem.
The problem is that if one holds one’s self out as a disinterested journalist or researcher, one has to be free to come to conclusions that are at odds with the views of advocacy organizations. So, yes, I would say that I wouldn’t trust someone to come to the most objective conclusion about the worth of amphibians if that someone were being paid by an organization that advocates preserving amphibians. How in the world is this controversial? If Mooney wants to be an advocacy journalist, he certainly may. But then he needs to stop posing as if his pronouncements on the relationship between science and faith are wholly his own thoughts, untainted by his associations or those who pay him.
What we’re objecting to with Chris Mooney and his Templeton grant is that he presents himself as a journalist and a champion of science, but he’s taking money from an organization with a documented policy position that says “science and religion are reconcilable.” Not John, in the trivial sense you describe, the sense that “both of them must talk to each other.” In the very much more contentious epistemological way. I refuse to believe you don’t know the difference. No, we don’t trust Mooney to make sound, unbiased statements about science, science communication, or the epistemological friction between science and religion, when he’s on Templeton’s payroll. And I think you get that, even if your own sympathies make it difficult for you acknowledge that Mooney’s critics have a legitimate point.
There’s a reason why Consumer Reports doesn’t accept advertising, and that they rely only on donations from readers to find their projects. They recognize that money from companies whose products and claims they evaluate is not compatible with the claim that they are unbiased and interest-free. This is so elementary.
I was referring more to the idea that in Edison’s day, the idea was very far out there.
I don’t know about that. By the time Edison came along, it had been known for over a hundred years that the universe contained an untold number of galaxies, similar to the Milky Way. By 1790 or so, William Herschel had not only discovered these “island universes”, but also deciphered deep time, as he realized that the light he saw from these galaxies had traveled for millions of years, making the universe both large and old beyond imagination.
Though he didn’t have the tools to prove it, Herschel also postulated innumerable worlds around other stars and assumed these were populated as ours was. For someone like Edison, who rejected the supernatural, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch to think that life on earth might have come from elsewhere.
Janine @ 26:
The very first sentence of the Wiki article:
“Mallard Fillmore is a comic[citation needed] strip written and illustrated by Bruce Tinsley.”
I got a chuckle anyway.
John S. Wilkins, #104:
The way you phrase it sounds more like you having already swallowed the Koolaid. I happen to like Koolaid (but not really the green stuff), so maybe I can help you plan your “research” about the consistency of God and evolution.
Step 1: Assume “God” exists and can do lots of neato “Godly” things. It doesn’t matter so much what those are yet, because that part can wait for Step 2.
Step 2: After coming up with a few half-baked or utterly false notions about evolution and the scientific method, victoriously conclude that GODDIDIT. It still doesn’t matter what it is “God” supposedly does*, so long as we desperately try to squeeze him/her/it in somewhere.
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!! (from the Templeton Foundation and book sales to idiots across the globe)
*because, well… perhaps you already realize this, but… We don’t know a god exists. Even if it does and we could be fairly certain of that fact, we would still know nothing about him/her/it. We could “research” this nothingness people call “God” for millions of years, and continue to find nothingness. In the meantime, that money will not be spent on actual science or other beneficial endeavors. If all you want to do is con people out of money, there are less harmful ways of doing it.
I remember reading this article a year ago and letting out an exasperated sigh. At least a lot of people wrote in afterwards and pointed out Douglas Todd’s mistakes, not that I think he would have changed his mind since then.
@deriamis #100
@windsurfer4944 #89:
Thomas Edison Believed Panspermia was Likely
Also, Thomas Jefferson.
Hum…..Not that this might not be true. I’ve read quite a bit on Jefferson. Was it in his writings? Can you, or anyone, direct me to were I might find something on this?
Er, wrong, tomh (#110) – galaxies were not recognized as such until the early 20th century. Up until then they were thought to be stellar nebulae which were part of the Milky Way, which was supposedly the entire universe.
As for this article from Vancouver, if there were any justice its author would be banned from writing anything including grocery lists for the rest of his life!
Hello folks,
I’m Douglas Todd, the spirituality and ethics writer who wrote The Vancouver Sun column with which many of you are having so much fun.
I must admit it’s not a great feeling to read so many contemptuous comments about my column, headlined “Join the real Darwin debate,” which was an attempt to start a dialogue — not a biker gang war (as one commentator here so aptly put it). But what can you do when that is often the tenor of comments on the world wide web?
When that column and others first appeared last year, there was also great discussion in British Columbia. I responded with a couple of follow-up pieces to clear up confusion, which included a column headlined: “Paradigm shift occurring in science, philosophy and spirituality.”
Like Carter Phipps, who has tried to engage some of you on on this comment thread, I was not advocating for all 12 of these scientific, philosophical and spiritual variations on evolution. That would be impossible, since some are contradictory while others are complementary to Darwin.
I was, however, urging that, just as many spiritual thinkers and philosophers are working hard to understand science more thoroughly, perhaps more scientists could start being more open to the insights of philosophy and even metaphysics, the latter of which is often not too different from theoretical physics.
One of my intellectual heroes, the late Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician-philosopher at Harvard University and father of process philosophy, was a leader in this dialogue, writing a book titled Science and the Modern World. Process philosophy is one of the 12 perspectives on evolution mentioned in Carter Phipps’ useful series in EnlightenNext magazine.
Here is the introduction to a follow-up piece headlined, “Paradigm shift occurring in science, philosophy and spirituality:”
By Douglas Todd
“I do not blame North American natural scientists for feeling under siege by the Religious Right over evolution.
Nasty legal and political battles have been plaguing the US as Biblical literalists crusade, sometimes successfully, to bring the teaching of Creationism and Intelligent Design into the public school system.
Unfortunately, this sledgehammer culture war between the scientific establishment and Biblical literalists has been diverting many from a more subtle and far-reaching discussion among scientists, philosophers and theologians.
A few scientists have been offering either support for my recent arguments that we should move toward a synthesis of the realms of science, philosophy and spirituality, particularly around evolution.
But many other scientists and their allies have blasted me for suggesting there are some valuable perspectives on evolution that are not strictly neo-Darwinistic (which I and others define as atheistic).
Before going further, I want to respond to those who have mistakenly accused me of:
* believing all natural scientists are atheists.
* disagreeing with general evolutionary theory.
* not respecting the scientific method.
Beginning with the first misunderstanding: I am well aware that many natural scientists are not atheists.
A 2005 survey of 1,600 North American natural scientists at research universities found 40 per cent did not believe in God.
That suggests two out of three research scientists do believe in divinity in some form. Other surveys of scientists’ spiritual beliefs generally back up this study by Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at State University of New York.
I also believe Darwin’s general views on random mutation and natural selection add up to solid, independently and repeatedly confirmed science (including through genetics).
I join virtually all mainstream scientists in believing the universe began some 14 billion years ago and that life evolved into the species currently present, including human beings.
I also want to emphasize I admire the scientific method, which emphasizes observation, empiricism and testable hypotheses.
But, like the prominent American scientists Francis Collins and Owen Gingrich, who happen to be Christian, I think science can only study phenomena that the human senses and their technological extensions can measure.
There are limits to what can be known through the scientific method. Natural scientists, philosophers and spiritually inclined thinkers could grow more sophisticated in their realms by engaging in dialogue.
I’m struck by how the acclaimed French theoretical physicist Bernard d’Espagnat, said this year, after receiving the $1.7 million Cdn. Templeton Prize, that he was was troubled by how little the field of science was addressing the philosophical questions raised by, for instance, quantum theory.
d’Espagnat suggested that a key insight of quantum theory is that science does not provide a view of “ultimate reality as it really is,” but rather “as it appears to us, accounting for the limitations of our own mind and our own sensibilities.”
Etcetera
The full column can be found at http://tinyurl.com/cjeb3z
I had trouble getting past this:
Yes, and the fundamental teaching of the theory of gravity is that my pencil just fell on the floor. After all, what else could we possibly be interested in?
Alec.
Twelve theories of evolution … twelve Zodiac signs. I think we can make it work! As a Sagittarius I should be a believer in evolution number nine, the Esoteric Evolutionist. AKA Blavatsky Evolution.
Okay, maybe not.
And? Do you have a point?
That’s a remarkable claim. Evidence, please.
So… what can we do about that?
Douglas,
Nobody has any trouble with you discussing controversies in science. Nobody has any trouble with you discussing New Age nonsense. The problems arise when you present non-existent controversies as if they were respectable threads within science, or discuss the afore-mentioned New Age nonsense as if it had anything to contribute to science.
Now in fact you have garbled Phipps’ 12 theories in several respects, and Phipps hasn’t managed to characterize a single one of the real controversies within evolutionary biology. There is no such paradigm shift happening; it’s all in your imagination. And that’s fine as long as you leave it there. Don’t try to make pronouncements on subjects you know nothing about, and everyone will be happy.
@Douglas Todd #116
What insights would they be? I’m not asking to be a jackass, but simply because it’s impossible for me to judge what you’re saying when the statement is as vague as this.
I don’t see how this could result in anything other than a dilution of science and therefore of truth.
Well, first, you and others are wrong. Evolutionary theory does not address the question of god. Evolution, and science in general, is atheistic to the same degree that a cake recipe is atheistic: it doesn’t mention, deal with or require a god.
And, again, what are these valuable perspectives that science apparently can’t come up with on its own?
Maybe this is a result of you copying a column intended for a different audience, but name dropping will get you nowhere here.
Obviously. What’s your point?
Science is indeed limited. Its limitation is that it can only study things that actually exist.
My point is, I’m sure that philosophy and metaphysics can provide insight into many things. What I’m doubting is whether they can provide insight into anything real.
If a phenomenon cannot in any way, technologically augmented or not, be perceived by our senses, how do you justify considering it part of objective reality?
More importantly, are you suggesting that there are other methods to reliably determine the truth? If so, what are they?
For a person who is interested in ascertaining the truth, what method, beyond scientific investigation, do you suggest?
Douglas Todd
and
BUT
So, what’s your point ? We should do such and such but cannot do such and such. Why even bother with it then ?
I repeat : WHY should scientists address philosophical questions ?
BTW, I read your other article posted by Anton Mates @84. Such a load of rubbish.
In case you don’t get it, each one of these sentences shows you are ignorant on the subject.
Douglas Todd #116 wrote:
By “more open,” you must mean that scientists should approach these insights of philosophy and metaphysics as if they were scientific hypotheses, formulate them clearly enough to make falsifiable predictions, and run some tests. Otherwise, there is nothing “open” about these insights.
What you’re talking about instead is deciding that God/Spirit/Higher Consciousness/Creative-Force-Driving-Change-Upward exists, and looking for ways to shoehorn actual scientific discoveries into being “in support” of this. Or suggestive of it. Or not actually contradicting it.
You can call that an intersection of science and religion. But it’s not an interesting intersection. Or a very honest one. The last thing it is, is “open.”
Just left this comment over on the follow-up story:
David Marjanović: On the other hand, there are some who think the author of the daodejing meant much the same thing as what Heraclitus did by some of his famous aphorisms. In other words, that reality is in constant flux.
tomh: Wasn’t it only in the 20th century that Hubble worked out that the “nebulae” were often other galaxies?
Douglas Todd: I’m a philosopher by training (who appreciated your piece on Peter Danielson’s roboethics class 10 or so years ago – I was a student in it). I am certainly in agreement that one can connect metaphysics with science, but that metaphysics itself should be consistent with and fed by the best scientific research. For example, the work of Mario Bunge, David Armstrong and others. The work (including, alas, that of Whitehead) that you mention does not meet this requirement.
hznfrst wrote @ #115
Er, wrong, tomh (#110) – galaxies were not recognized as such until the early 20th century. Up until then they were thought to be stellar nebulae which were part of the Milky Way, which was supposedly the entire universe
Herschel studied nebulae for several years and in 1785 his paper on “The Construction of the Heavens” was published, where he gave the results and his theories. Herschel’s view was that our galactic system was strictly limited in extent, not the entire universe, and correctly identified many of the nebula as external galaxies. He included in his paper a sketch of the Milky Way, which his measurements showed to be disc shaped, and, while not accurate of course, was in the modern ballpark.
He considered the Milky Way, “our nebula” as he called it, to be like an island in the ocean, and other nebula to be similar to ours. He would not categorically affirm his measurements, “but considering the little depth of the stratum in all those places which have been actually gauged, to which must be added all the intermediate parts that have been viewed and found to be much like the rest, there is but little room to expect a connection between our nebula and any of the neighbouring ones.” He absolutely hypothesized that these nebula were external galaxies. In a letter from the same year he wrote that he had discovered fifteen hundred universes, “fifteen hundred whole sidereal systems, some of which might well outvie our Milky Way in grandeur”.
It’s true that over the next twenty years he modified his theories, especially since he was able to resolve a single star in a nebula and realized that it was “a star which is involved in a shining fluid of a nature totally unknown to us.” However, for most of the nineteenth century, textbooks and popular science magazines drew upon his original paper, which is why I made my point (and I do have one) that Edison might well have been aware of these theories and they may have led him to panspermia for the origin of life on earth.
I think science can only study phenomena that the human senses and their technological extensions can measure.
That is tantamount to saying there can be no progress in the things science can study beyond what we are limited to with our current technology.
this is absolute rubbish.
I give you the neutrino as a perfect counter example of a phenomenon that was necessary to balance an equation, and yet was not measurable by science until decades after it was postulated to exist.
by your measure, the neutrino would fall under the realm of “philosophy”.
bah.
“But, like the prominent American scientists Francis Collins and Owen Gingrich, who happen to be Christian, I think science can only study phenomena that the human senses and their technological extensions can measure.
There are limits to what can be known through the scientific method. Natural scientists, philosophers and spiritually inclined thinkers could grow more sophisticated in their realms by engaging in dialogue.”
So Hi to everyone, new here in terms of commenting but I’ve been reading the blog for quite some time.
Apologies to Mr. Todd, but I think you fail in quite a few ways, as many other Pharyngulites have already so eloquently pointed out.
The fact that “science can only study phenomena that the human senses and their technological extensions can measure” is actually a virtue, rather than a limit. In fact, obviously barring some outliers, look at how scientists from various backgrounds (cultural, I mean) can communicate rather efficiently and can help develop knowledge for useful purposes (blazing fast advances in medicine, technology, etc). What about spirituality and philosophy? You have people believing in The Virgin Birth and Talking Snakes calling people who believe in Spells and Unicorns crazy. And what comes of this? Hate, prejudice, denial of civil rights…you name it. There needs to be NO synthesis of science with fluff. That would ruin what’s good about science, which is already WAY MORE sophisticated than spirituality.
Also, as an aside. You should not take Francis Collins as an example of a scientist who has successfully “synthesized” religion and science. The man believes that the Bible is an eyewitness account.
Scientists who have successfully “synthesized” science and religion have all done it in a very simple way: compartmentalization. When they do science, they take off their believer hat and put on their scientist hat. When they do religion, they switch hats. You can’t do science while you’re wearing the religion hat.
Now, a few of them do confuse the issue a bit. One way is to talk about how pretty their religion hats become when they add some ornaments taken off their science hats. But it doesn’t work in the other direction. Trying to put religion into your science results in failure, as we see with the Discovery Institute and some recent popular works by Simon Conway Morris and Francis Collins, among others (and note that the latter two haven’t done this in their actual scientific publications).
I think we’ve hurt Douglas’ feelings:
And is that point of view scientific? And is it concrete, real, material, and meaningful to science? If the answer is no, you have nothing…
Just to clear up any confusion about #130: all of that was supposed to have been a quote, not just the first sentence.