Divebombed again!

Workout notes 1600 yards of swimming, IM, fist and drill sets, yoga then 5 miles of walking. I got divebombed again; this time on Hamilton Street.

Photo from Birdchickblog.

These rotten birds will go after anyone.

A video of their behavior

Rotten birds!

Ultras: The word is out that there will be a Centurion USA in 2007 in Dallas, Texas on November 16-17. The race will be part of the Ultracentric 24 hour race.

Evolution 70% of Republicans reject evolution. The link I provided goes to the Gallup Poll; another analysis is here.

We’ve got a new Gallup poll on evolution to agonize over. It’s nothing but bad news—we are a nation of uneducated morons. Gary chose to weep over the political correlation: look how membership in the Republican party is tied to ignorance about science.

Hee, hee, hee.

As far as the scientists, here is a reminder:

The popular media balyhoo the fiction that science is supportive of religion. A recent issue of Newsweek (July 20, 1998) featured a cover story “Science finds God” which gave many innocent readers the impression that scientists in droves were finding scientific “evidence” allowing for God and an afterlife and were jumping on the religion bandwagon. Some of these 1998 reports were stimulated by a June 1998 Science and the Spiritual Quest Conference organized by Robert John Russell, and sponsored by The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Since this is an organization devoted to the reconcilation of science and religion it’s no surprise the the speakers were supportive of the idea of the possibility of god and/or an afterlife, though some of the papers were so speculative and abstruse that it’s hard to tell whether they were profound philosophy or mere moonshine. One wonders whether some speakers came just for the stipend provided by the John Templeton Foundation. Several Nobel-Prize winning scientists gave papers at this meeting. The papers were mostly philosophical and speculative. No new hard evidence was produced. News reports failed to put these wishful speculations in perspective by pointing out that most scientists are, in fact, not religious. And the percent of “leading” scientists who hold religious beliefs has been declining from around 30% in 1914 to less than 10% in 1998. Wayne Spencer, editor of The Skeptical Intelligencer (a publication of the Association for Skeptical Inquiry) has provided me with this summary of an article in the journal Nature which documents this fact.

[Links to the CTNS are provided above, but this does not mean that I in any way endorse the opinions expressed at those web sites. For a detailed critique of these bogus science rationalizations, see Victor Stenger's excellent Has Science Found God?, a draft of an article for Astronomy magzaine. For a broader perspective on the science/religion questions, see these Religion and Philosophy links and these Science, Religion and Philosophy links. I also highly recommend Michael Koller's Essays on Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Also see the skeptic links on my web page.] — Donald E. Simanek.

[Summary of a paper that appeared in the 23 July 1998 issue of Nature by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham: "Leading Scientists Still Reject God." Nature, 1998; 394, 313.]

Larson and Witham present the results of a replication of 1913 and 1933 surveys by James H. Leuba. In those surveys, Leuba mailed a questionnaire to leading scientists asking about their belief in “a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind” and in “personal immortality”. Larson and Witham used the same wording [as in the Leuba studies], and sent their questionnaire to 517 members of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences from the biological and physical sciences (the latter including mathematicians, physicists and astronomers). The return rate was slightly over 50%.

The results were as follows (figures in %):

BELIEF IN PERSONAL GOD 1914 1933 1998

Personal belief 27.7 15 7.0
Personal disbelief 52.7 68 72.2
Doubt or agnosticism 20.9 17 20.8

BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 1914 1933 1998

Personal belief 35.2 18 7.9
Personal disbelief 25.4 53 76.7
Doubt or agnosticism 43.7 29 23.3

Note: The 1998 immortality figures add up to more than 100%. The misprint is in the original. The 76.7% is likely too high.

The authors elaborated on these figures:

Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality).

Larson and Witham close their report with the following remarks:

As we compiled our findings, the NAS issued a booklet encouraging the teaching of evolution in public schools…. The booklet assures readers, ‘Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral’. NAS president Bruce Alberts said: ‘There are many very outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists.’ Our survey suggests otherwise.”

There were some Daily Kos diaries about this; the lead one was this one by thereisnospoon and one about getting along with religious types by Transmission, and one which questions if one can “believe in evolution” to begin with (by Indecent).

The Theory of Evolution is Science, not religion. It is a matter of evidence and debate, both of which are absent from Religious arguments. But by speaking of “believing” in the Theory of Evolution, we undermine the volumes of real, tangible evidence for it, turning it into something religious people can summarily deny because it is not in accord with their own “beliefs.”

* Indecent’s diary :: ::
*

Science is not about “belief,” although the word is used (somewhat) improperly all the time. Science is about a rational way to ask questions, gather data, and interpret it to gain meaning. It is a different way of looking at the world than many people are accustomed to, because there really are very few absolute, clear-cut answers. Like a civil court, scientific arguments are mostly settled by a preponderance of evidence, and it is rare that the evidence has but one plausible interpretation.

This is in stark contrast to how many people, especially those with less education, view the world. It is more comforting and easier to deal with “black and white” and “us vs them,” moral absolutes that allow you to be “right” without questioning your world view or viewing things from a different perspective. This is the “luxury of ignorance” that allows people to act without needing to learn or know more, confident that they are making the proper decision, even though they may be blind to the truth right in front of their faces. Sound like anyone we know?

To speak of Science, such as the Theory of Evolution, in terms of “belief” detracts from the strength of the evidence behind it; in effect, it accords the thousands of scholarly articles, careful experiments and documentation, and real-world evidence the same weight as two-thousand-year-old texts describing “miracles” and the anecdotal “evidence” of modern miracles.

Scientists do not “believe” in anything they cannot observe. Rather, we should change our words to reflect “acceptance” or “trust;” you can either accept the Theory of Evolution as true, or not accept it. Or, you can accept parts of it, but not all, because of perceived “holes” in the theory. Likewise, you can trust that the experiments carried out have been conducted, reported, and reviewed in good faith, so that the evidence presented is true to the best knowledge of those reporting it.

Like many ideas perpetrated by the mainstream media, the concept of “Belief” in Science being equivalent to “Belief” in a deity is one that will be hard to change. Nevertheless, it behooves all of us who know that the two are not equal to strive for the correct language to avoid perpetuating a fallacy that harms the education and very lives of every person on the planet. Those who disagree with global warming and evolution emphasize the small disagreements over particulars as evidence that the data are weak or false. We cannot let the Republicans continue to exploit Science by placing real, testable, falsifiable evidence on a lower tier of proof than abstract “Belief” in the supernatural.

Well said.