(I will be traveling for a few weeks and rather than put this blog on hiatus, thought that I would continue with my weekday posting schedule by reposting some of the very early items, for those who might have missed them the first time around.)

We saw in an earlier posting that a key idea of the creationists is that it was with the arrival of Darwin, Marx, and Freud that has led to the undermining of Western civilization.

The basis for this extraordinary charge is the claim that it was these three that ushered in the age of materialism. These three people make convenient targets because, although they were all serious scientific and social scholars, they have all been successfully tarred as purveyors of ideas that have been portrayed as unpleasant or even evil (Darwin for saying that we share a common ancestor with apes, Marx with communism, Freud with sexuality).
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If a religious person asks me to prove that god does not exist, I freely concede that I cannot do so. The best that I can do is to invoke the Laplacian principle that I have no need of hypothesizing god’s existence to explain things. But clearly most people feel that theydo need to invoke god in order to understand their lives and experience. So how can we resolve this disagreement and make a judgment about the validity of the god hypothesis?

Following a recent posting on atheism and agnosticism, I had an interesting exchange with commenter Mike that made me think more about this issue. Mike (who believes in god) said that in his discussions with atheists, they often were unable to explain why they dismissed god’s existence. He says: “I find that when asked why the ‘god hypothesis’ as Laplace called it doesn’t work for them, they often don’t know how to respond.”

Conversely, Mike was perfectly able to explain why he (and other believers) believed in god’s existence:

The reason is that we have the positive proof we need, in the way we feel, the way we think, the way we act, things that can’t easily be presented as ‘proof’. In other words, the proof comes in a different form. It’s not in a model or an equation or a theory, yet we experience it every day.

So yes, we can ask that a religious belief provide some proof, but we must be open to the possibility that that proof is of a form we don’t expect. I wonder how often we overlook a ‘proof’ – of god, of love or a new particle – simply because it was not in a form we were looking for – or were willing to accept.

Mike makes the point (with which I agree) that it is possible that we do not have the means as yet to detect the existence of god. His argument can be supported by analogies from science. We believe we were all bathed in electromagnetic radiation from the beginning of the universe but we did not realize it until Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism gave us a framework for understanding its existence and enabled us to design detectors to detect it.

The same thing happened with neutrinos. Vast numbers of them have been passing though us and the Earth but we did not know about their existence until the middle of the 20th century when a theory postulated their existence and detectors were designed that were sensitive enough to observe them.

So electromagnetic radiation and neutrinos existed all around us even during the long period of time when no one had any idea that they were there. Why cannot the same argument be applied to god? It can, actually. But does that mean that god exists? I think we would all agree that it does not, anymore than my inability to prove that unicorns do not exist implies that they do. All that this argument does is leave open the possibility of a hitherto undetected existence.

But the point of departure between science and religion is that in the case of electromagnetic radiation and neutrinos, their existence was postulated simultaneously along with suggestions of how and where anyone could look for them. If, after strenuous efforts, they could still not be detected, then scientists would cease to believe in their existence. But eventually, evidence for their existence was forthcoming from many different sources in a reproducible manner.

What if no such evidence was forthcoming? This has happened in the past with other phenomena, such as in 1903 with something called N-rays, which were postulated and seemed to have some evidentiary support initially, but on closer examination were found to be spurious. This does not prevent people from still believing in the phenomenon, but the scientific community would proceed on the assumption that it does not exist.

In the world of science the burden of proof is always on the person arguing for the existence of whatever is being proposed. If that evidence is not forthcoming, then people proceed on the assumption that the thing in question does not exist (the Laplacian principle). It is in parallel to the legal situation. We know that in the legal context in America, the presumption is that of innocence until proven guilty. This results in a much different kind of investigation and legal proceedings than if the presumption were guilty until proven innocent.

So on the question of god’s existence, it seems to me that it all comes down to the question of who has the burden of proof in such situations. Is the onus on the believer, to prove that god exists? Or on the atheist to argue that the evidence provided for god’s existence is not compelling? In other words, do we draw a parallel with the legal situation of ‘presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt’ and postulate a principle ‘non-existence until existence is proven beyond a reasonable doubt’? The latter would be consistent with scientific practice.

As long as we disagree on this fundamental question, there is little hope for resolution. But even if we agree that the burden of proof is the same for religion as for science, and that the person postulating existence of god has to advance at least some proof in support, that still does not end the debate. The question then shifts to what kind of evidence we would consider to be valid and what constitutes ‘reasonable doubt.’.

In the next few postings, we will look at the kinds of evidence that might be provided and how we might evaluate them.

In part 1 and part 2 of this series of posts, we saw how the idea of when someone had died had shifted to the point where people in a persistent vegetative state could have their life support systems removed because they are considered to be ‘effectively’ dead. But even if the family is agreed on what action should be taken with a family member in a persistent vegetative state, there are already moves under way to shift the bar even lower. The question now being raised is as to what should be done if the doctors determine that further treatment is futile but the family does not want to remove life support.

In a recent case in England, doctors had recommended that an 18-month old infant (identified as just MB) who suffers from the severest form of spinal muscular atrophy – an incurable and progressively worsening condition leading to complete paralysis – be allowed to die. The parents objected and the matter went to trial.

On March 15, 2006, the judge ruled in the parents’ favor, refusing to declare that it would be lawful to withdraw life-sustaining ventilation.

A momentary look of wistfulness passed over the face of MB’s mother as the judge listed five possible options, one of which was to allow the child to die peacefully in his parents’ arms – the one favoured by the paediatricians. The parents have fought long and hard against the received medical wisdom of the case, even though, as the judge said, they may be deluding themselves that their son has a future.

At long last, Mr Justice Holman gave his ruling that the boy shall live, if not perhaps for long.

In that case, the judge in England did not shift the goal posts on what constitutes death or the conditions under which people are ‘allowed to die.’

But people might be surprised to know that a similar situation had occurred in the US and that doctors and hospitals were allowed to override the family’s will. Remarkably, this little noticed event took place on March 15, 2006 during the high point of the events surrounding Terri Schiavo.

While Americans were riveted by dramatic events unfolding in Pinellas Park, Fla., a five-month-old Houston baby took his last breath after a hospital let him die despite his mother’s objections.

Sun Hudson was born Sept. 25 with thanatophoric dysplasia, an incurable and fatal form of dwarfism. Doctors said his tiny lungs would never fully grow and that he would never breathe on his own.

Hudson’s mother, Wanda, put up a fight when doctors advised removing Sun from a respirator. She said she did not believe in sickness or death. (my italics)

This was the first time that life support was removed over the objections of the legal guardian and without any advance directives from the patient, such as a living will. Perhaps the ultimate irony, if not outright hypocrisy, was that this Texas law was signed in 1999 by then Governor George W. Bush. The baby Sun Hudson was allowed to die in Texas against the wishes of his mother because of a state law then-Governor Bush signed, on the very same day that now-President Bush dramatically cut short his vacation and flew back to Washington to sign the federal law that supported the parents’ right to keep life support continuing for Terri Schiavo.

The doctors were able to override the mother’s wishes on March 15, 2005 because the case took place in Texas and that state has a law that authorizes doctors and hospitals to override the wishes of the patient’s families. The hospital took this action under the The Texas Advance Directives Act (1999), also known as the Texas Futile Care Law, which according to Wikipedia, “describes certain provisions that are now Chapter 166 of the Texas Health & Safety Code. Controversy over these provisions mainly centers on Section 166.046, Subsection (e), which allows a health care facility to discontinue life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian ten days after giving written notice.”

As with the case of shifting the definition of death from heart dead to brain dead, serious ethical issues are raised by this act. There are concerns that this law was passed because hospitals did not want to shoulder the cost of maintaining life support for patients who cannot pay for it. Although the law (as I read it) does not explicitly say that the inability to pay for life support can be a reason for termination of services, it is easy to see that financial considerations are going to come into play.

It is unlikely that patients who have rich families who can pay the bills are going to have their wishes overridden and life support removed. But one can see why hospitals, which have become businesses, would not like the prospect of indefinitely providing expensive life support care if they have no hope of being reimbursed. What adds further suspicion to the view that commercial concerns are significant is that if another hospital is willing to accept the patient, then the patient can be shifted there. But it is unlikely that another hospital is going to accept a new patient who requires extensive life support when that patient is unable to pay.

This blatant hypocrisy and contradiction between Bush’s behavior as governor of Texas and as President later did not go completely unnoticed, though it did not get the attention it warranted. In an editorial on March 22, 2005, the Concord Monitor voiced concern over the implications of the Texas law:

On the same day President Bush interrupted his vacation and rushed to Washington to sign the Schiavo bill, a Texas hospital removed the breathing tube keeping 6-month-old Sun Hudson alive. According to The Houston Chronicle, the hospital’s action, the first of its kind, was made possible by a 1999 bill signed into law by Bush, then Texas’s governor.

That law allows hospitals to discontinue life-sustaining care even when doing so runs counter to the wishes of the patient’s guardians. Before ending the patient’s life under the law Bush signed, however, two conditions must be met. Doctors must deem that there is no chance for recovery and the patient must be unable to pay the hospital bill for continuing care. (my italics)

Added John Paris, a medical ethicist at Boston College, told Newsday “The Texas statute that Bush signed authorized the ending of the life, even over the parents’ protest. And what he’s doing here is saying, ‘The parents are protesting. You shouldn’t stop [treatment]'”

Apart from this being another example of Bush subordinating principle to political expediency, it also clearly shows that society is steadily lowering the bar on death, first making it a judgment of whether someone is ‘effectively dead’ and who gets to make that decision, and now coming down to the question of whether someone is worth keeping alive and putting that decision (at least in Texas) in the hands of doctors and hospitals and not parents and guardians. While the judgment that further treatment is futile may be a medical and scientific judgment, the decision to withdraw life support will undoubtedly be also driven by financial considerations as to whether the patients and their families can pay the cost of continued treatment.

To be continued. . .

POST SCRIPT: Canned bird hunts

When not shooting old friends in the face, ‘Deadeye Dick’ Cheney kills birds for fun, and has killed up to 70 pheasants in just one shooting session. What is more, the birds he shot were bred in captivity to make them easy targets and one wonders what kind of fascination he finds in personally slaughtering such a large number of tame birds.

The comic strip Doonesbury suggests one reason, and Nate Corddry from The Daily Show tries to find out what the thrill is by going on one such canned quail hunt and bringing back a report.

Although I did not watch any of the 2006 winter Olympics events on TV, I casually followed them in the press, and the front page headline in the Sunday Plain Dealer caught my attention. It said Grace eludes U.S. Olympians: Too many athletes at Torino Games live up to ‘ugly American’ image and listed the many ways in which some US athletes did not behave well at the games.

I must admit that I am increasingly turned off by the way people behave at sporting events. It irritates me when people do not behave with grace and courtesy and politeness. To see athletes boasting and gloating and taunting their opponents when they do something well, to get angry and belligerent when someone else gets the better of them, and to loudly and rudely protest when the referee or umpire makes a wrong call, are all things that I find really distasteful, so much so that I rarely watch major sporting events anymore. And it is not just players who behave like this, sometimes spectators are even worse.
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In a previous post, I wrote about how political language has been abused and how words have either lost their meaning through misuse or whose meaning is deliberately kept vague so that they can be used as political weapons.

Glenn Greenwald (over at Unclaimed Territory) points out how this process of distortion is in full swing currently over the labels “liberal” and “conservative.” And in the process, he points put that conservatism, as a recognizable political ideology, is dead in America, killed by the very people who currently proudly claim themselves to be conservatives. I am excerpting some key passages from his long essay on this act of ideological suicide but you really should read the whole thing, with its links to supporting examples..

It used to be the case that in order to be considered a “liberal” or someone “of the Left,” one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, “judicial activism,” hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a “liberal,” such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a “liberal,” only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a “liberal,” regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more “liberal” one is. Whether one is a “liberal” – or, for that matter, a “conservative” – is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

. . .
People who self-identify as “conservatives” and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That’s because “conservatism” is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as “liberal” is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

. . .
As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.

. . .
And what I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: “Oh, my God – there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!” It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.

. . .
A movement which has as its shining lights a woman who advocates the death of her political opponents, another woman who is a proponent of concentration camps, a magazine which advocates the imprisonment of journalists who expose government actions of dubious legality, all topped off by a President who believes he has the power to secretly engage in activities which the American people, through their Congress, have made it a crime to engage in, is a movement motivated by lots of different things. Political ideology isn’t one of them.

This happens to ideologies. Initially they are about ideas, about the principles around which societies should be organized and about how to govern. But when people with a strong sense of ideology get into power, they find that trying to attain their goals takes longer and is more difficult than they anticipated because most people are not strongly ideological and resist being forced to conform to a rigid mold. So then the focus shifts to cutting corners on honesty and ethical and even legal behavior, doing anything to silence their critics and stay in power for as long as they can so that they can attain their goals by whatever means necessary. And in the process, the principles of the very ideology that initially drove them become sacrificed.

When that happens, the original followers of that ideology have a choice to make. Either they stay with their original principles and become critics of those in power or they abandon the principles and become instead power cultists, slavishly and uncritically following the dear leader.

A good test to gauge this thinking is to ask such people if there is anything, anything at all, about the leader’s actions that they find objectionable. The signs of cult-like behavior are when those people cannot find anything about the leader’s policies to criticize or when they do criticize, point to trivialities (“I wish he would make better speeches”) or say that the leader should be even more extreme. (“There should be warrantless wiretapping of everyone!”, “We need to invade more countries!”, “We should torture not just suspects but their families as well!”, “We need to put all foreigners in internment camps, not just Muslims!”) Such statements are not really criticisms. They are in reality a form of pandering, because they enable the leader to claim the mantle of moderation while pursuing extreme measures.

When this kind of thing happens on a large scale, it signals the impending death of the ideology. It is what we currently see happening in the US for the movement formerly known as conservative.

Greenwald’s essay seemed to have touched a nerve, with many “conservatives” trying to deny the existence of a Bush cult and to discredit his main point that conservatism these days is measured by the degree of blind allegiance to whatever Bush does. He has responded to those arguments in this post.

Yesterday the Ohio Board of Education (OBE) struck a huge blow against intelligent design by voting 11-4 to remove benchmarks in its science standards that called for “critical analysis” of evolution and to eliminate a lesson plan based on that benchmark.

Here is some background to the issue. In 2001 I was selected to be part of Ohio’s Science Standards Advisory Board to set new science standards for Ohio. After many months of work, we approved a set of standards to be fleshed out by other people in writing committees. There was some discussion of what to do about intelligent design creationism (IDC) but the consensus was to keep it out.
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In a previous post, I looked at why many Christians seemed to find Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection to be so objectionable. After all, many theories of physics also lead to conflicts with literal interpretations of the Bible. The answers that physics and chemistry and geology and astronomy give to the question of the ages of the Earth and the universe are reason enough for anyone who believes in a 10,000 year old Earth to reject all those disciplines wholesale. And yet, biology seems to be the sole target of Biblical literalists.
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A long time ago, President Nixon, descending into paranoia, maintained an “enemies list” that was leaked to the press. But Nixon had by then become so unpopular that being on Nixon’s enemies list was actually seen as a badge of honor. Humorist Art Buchwald expressed his outrage at not making the list, despite all the articles he had written making fun of Nixon. Buchwald said that as a result of this omission his wife was being snubbed by society and he could not get the best tables in restaurants, which were being reserved only for people on the list. “What kind of government is this” he fumed “that does not even know who its real enemies are?”
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In my seminar courses, students are expected to research and write papers on topics related to science. Invariably, many of them will submit papers that cite Wikipedia as a source for some assertion. I tell them that Wikipedia is not a credible source for authoritative information and should never be used when submitting any paper.

The reason for this is that wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia where absolutely anyone can edit and update entries and the submissions are largely anonymous. Since there is no identifiable and authoritative person behind the information, there is no way to judge the credibility of the information. This contrasts with things like the Encyclopedia Brittanica which solicits articles from experts in the fields and the resulting articles are then peer-reviewed and vetted by editors to ensure quality in both the content and the writing.

So my message to students has been quite simple: no to Wikipedia and yes to Encyclopedia Brittanica.

My anti-Wikipedia stance received some support from the recent disclosure of a hoax by an author who wrote a scurrilous biography of someone that contained palpable untruths. The person whose ‘biography’ was faked discovered its existence and was justifiably incensed, and his actions subsequently led to the unmasking of the hoaxer.

But then comes along another study that compared the accuracy of entries in Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica and found them to be comparable. Aaron Shaffer has a nice entry on this that compares the two and finds that on some measures, Wikipedia may be even better.

So should I change my advice to students and allow Wikipedia? The answer is no. As long as the articles are anonymous, they remain a no-no for academic publications. Academia has no use for anonymous information. Much of our work is based on trusting the work of our peers. The assumption is that someone who has a responsible position in an academic institution has too much at stake to willfully mislead or even be sloppy in their work. Signing their name and giving their institutional affiliation means that the institution now also has a stake in the information being correct.

Having said all that, I must add that I like Wikipedia and am impressed with the whole concept and with the quality of the information that it provides. I often use it myself to learn about things quickly. It is an interesting example of ‘the wisdom of crowds,’ how when a large enough number of people are actively involved in something, the resulting quality of the finished product can be quite high. It is a highly intriguing experiment in information democracy.

So my advice to students is to use it to get a quick overview of something and to get started on learning about it. But then to go to some authored source for substantiation and citation. Because although Wikipedia may be right most of the time, in academic discourses, who said it is sometimes as important as what is said.

Over the weekend, I watched the DVD of the film Hotel Rwanda. This was a film that I knew from the beginning that I should see and would see, but at the same time dreaded seeing and postponed it for as long as I could. I knew that the film would make me both angry and depressed. Angry at the inhumanity that can be generated when people are stupid enough to take the superficial differences amongst as things that are important enough to kill and be killed for. Depressed because the events in Rwanda remind us once again how the world classifies people, nations, events, and regions into ‘important’ and ‘unimportant’ and that these classifications are not based on any measures that are real and tangible, but on how they directly affect the developed world.
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