Category Archives: Science

NPR flunks evolution

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The following is a slightly edited copy of feedback I sent to NPR earlier this week. It’s probably a bit more harsh than they deserved. But I felt I needed to do some shaking here.

“I was truly disappointed in your coverage of the Florida evolution bill issue today. Even the title of your piece, ‘Bill in Fla. Lets Schools Teach Evolution Alternatives,’ is a distortion.

The truth is that no bill is needed to allow teaching of alternatives to evolution. Schools are already allowed to teach scientific alternatives to evolution, just as they are allowed to do so for any other theory in science.

What they are not allowed to do is teach religion in the guise of science. That is what this law is really all about. It is the latest attempt by the proponents of creationism to shoehorn the teaching of creationism in science classes. The more neutral sounding language is simply designed to circumvent the latest legal rulings against such teaching. Your report never really makes this clear.

Instead, your report makes the issue sound more like a “he said, she said” debate between Republicans and Democrats, with the Republicans on the side of academic freedom.

To describe this bill as advocating academic freedom, is like describing a bill that weakens anti-pollution regulations as a “Clean Skies Act.” It’s just double-speak. This is an anti-evolution bill, plain and simple.

Similarly, your report mentions the Discovery Institute as a source of support for the Florida legislation, but fails to mention that this same Institute was on the losing side of the Dover, PA trial that strongly ruled against teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. Indeed, the Discovery Institute spokesman quoted in your report acknowledges that the wording of the Florida legislation was in part based on model language provided by the Institute.

Your report mentions Ben Stein’s new movie (Expelled), but fails to mention that it has received near unanimous condemnation for its promotion of knowingly false and inaccurate information. The New York Times, for example, called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” There is an entire Web site, Expelled Exposed, that exposes the many falsehoods in this movie.

While citing Ben Stein and his film, and quoting a person from the Discovery Institute, your report offered no statements from scientists or experts of any sort on the other side of this controversy.

In the end, your report comes off as a shameful example of ignoring the facts, and promoting the legitimacy of discredited views, apparently in a sheepish attempt to give yourself an appearance of neutrality.”

There is no middle ground in the God debate

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I recently browsed through a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists. As I have not actually read the book cover-to-cover, I won’t attempt to review it here — or even give my opinion of it.

I will say that one of the general points seemingly made in the book is similar to one I have seen made many times before: Strong advocates of atheism (such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris) are characterized as every bit as much extremists as the religious fundamentalists on the other side of the fence. Indeed, atheism itself winds up being equated to just another “faith” — and therefore no more worthy of support than any other faith.

The argument that atheism itself is just another type of religion has been more than adequately rebutted elsewhere (although, as with creationist arguments, that won’t prevent it from going away). So I won’t bother with answering that here.

However, I do want to address the idea that atheists and fundamentalists represent the two extremes on a spectrum — with the implication that more reasonable minds should prefer to seek some more rational middle ground.

Normally, I am a strong advocate of the “middle ground.” Take almost any controversy — and you will almost certainly find that the most extreme advocates for either side have pushed the argument too far. A middle ground is a more sensible approach and, thankfully, often becomes the dominant view. For example, consider arguments over the concept of instinct. One side may say that there are no such things as instincts, that all behavior is learned. The other side may claim that all behavior ultimately emerges from innate patterns, that learning plays at best a minor role in behavior. The truth, almost assuredly, lies somewhere in between.

Still, there are “either-or” propositions for which there is no middle ground. Either the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth. There is no compromise position here. Either O.J. killed his wife or he didn’t. There is no middle ground on this matter. The only ambiguity comes from the public not knowing with 100% certainty what O.J. actually did, not with any ambiguity in his actions.

And so it is with God. Either God exists or he doesn’t. If God exists, the atheists are wrong. If God does not exist, all the theist religions of the world are wrong. There is no safe middle ground to be found. Trying to find some compromise here is simply a waste of time.

We can perhaps agree that, in the absence of 100% proof in either direction, some degree of tolerance should be maintained for both positions. But that’s about it.

However, understand that much of science is based on evidence for things we cannot see. No one has actually visited a black hole. Almost no one (maybe no one really) has seen an atom. We cannot actually view gravity. Yet most people (at least virtually all rational people) believe that these things exist. We don’t consider such beliefs to be based on faith — but rather the result of the preponderance of scientific evidence. Atheists simply ask that a belief in God be established in the same way. Given that no such preponderance of evidence exists, rejecting the idea of God makes more sense.

Or, to turn it around (and as I have said before in other postings), we don’t assume something is likely to be true simply because we can’t prove with 100% certainty that it’s not true. Otherwise, we would have to say that it is plausible that little green men live on Mars. And so it is with God. The fact that existence of God cannot be disproved with 100% certainty, does not make it likely that God exists.

In the end, atheists wind up discarding a belief in God following the same logic that leads science to discard a belief in men on Mars or support a belief in atomic theory. This is not an “extremist” position and there is no need to seek a middle ground for retreat.

Intelligence: Environment vs. Genetics

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For the record, I have little tolerance for these endless environment vs. genetics debates. Too often, they make it sound like an either-or debate: Either trait X is “determined” by the environment or by genetics. It has to be one or the other. People who actually study this issue have long ago realized that traits are instead “determined” by some combination of the two factors. True, there is a continuum, where some traits may be more influenced by one of these two factors than the other. But it never reaches 100%. It is similarly silly to say that a given trait is “90% genetic” or whatever. This would be like saying that your mother’s apple pie is determined 90% by recipe and 10% by cooking skill. An apple pie is a result of the interplay of these two determinants. You can never completely isolate one factor from the other—or assign a percentage to each one.

That said, it is also my belief that most human characteristics, both physical and behavioral, are significantly influenced by our genes. Just because an apple pie is not 100% determined by its recipe does not mean that its recipe is irrelevant to how the apple pie tastes. The same is true for genes and human behavior.

When it comes to human behaviors and skills, our genes place upper limits on what we can achieve. I doubt that anyone believes they could match Michael Jordan’s basketball abilities simply by practicing harder or getting the “right” training or growing up in a different environment or whatever else might be mentioned here. Most of us will never and could never be as good as Michael Jordan, no matter what. He started off with a genetic advantage that the rest of us don’t have. In a different environment, he might not have realized his potential. But most of us don’t even have the potential to realize.

This reminds me of a more personal example. I took piano lessons for 10 years, from about the age of 8 to 18. For most of that time, I studied under an excellent teacher and studied quite hard. Still, I struggled to move up the ranks and join the teacher’s “advanced students” group. I eventually made it but it was not easy.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine (we weren’t close friends but we were friendly to each other) was taking lessons from the same teacher. We grew up in the same town, were of the same religion and traveled in similar social circles. My friend had a much much easier time advancing. Indeed, he was so good that the teacher wound up giving him his own solo concert when we were seniors in high school. Quite simply, my friend was incredibly talented.

I was not surprised when, several years later, I discovered that my friend had made a career in music. His name is Randy Edelman and he went on to become a noted film composer. I am confident that there is no way that I could have achieved what Randy achieved, no matter how similar our backgrounds and how hard I tried. There was a genetic component to his talent that I did not have.

I was reminded of all of this when I read the recent article in the New York Times by Richard Nisbett, titled “All Brains Are the Same Color.” The main contention of the article is that any racial difference in intelligence “has environmental, not genetic, causes.”

Leaving aside my prior concern about whether such statements are ever meaningful, and leaving aside concerns about the potential bias of I.Q. testing, I would mainly agree with Nisbett’s contention. It is possible that there is a “genetic cause” for some of the difference, just as there may be for any physical trait, such as the color of skin. But, if there is, it is too entangled in other causes for us to clearly define it. At least for the moment, it is more reasonable to assume no difference at all.

But we have to be careful not to overgeneralize here. It is one thing to say that the intelligence differences between two groups have no genetic basis. It is quite another thing to say that there is no genetic basis for intelligence at all. To me this would be the equivalent of saying that we can all be Einsteins, given the right environment. Or that we can all be Michael Jordan. Or that I could have easily been Randy Edelman. It just isn’t so. Pretending it is so or wishing it were so, does not change that fact.

At some level, we all know that some of us are smarter than most of us, and that such differences are not simply a question of environment. Denying this truth, as with the case of any denial of truth, ultimately causes more harm than good.

Sorry for the long gap between this posting and the previous one. I have been busy finishing up my iPhone book. I hope to return to a more frequent posting schedule now.

Gallup poll and evolution folly

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Scientific truth is not determined by a popular opinion. it wouldn’t matter if 99% of the American public believed that the sun revolved around the earth—instead of the other way around. Such poll results would have absolutely no effect on the behavior of the sun and the earth.

When it comes to the subject of evolution, despite the distortions you may have read elsewhere, evolution is an established scientific fact. It is as much of a fact as gravity, or black holes, or atoms and molecules.

Have you actually seen gravity? How do you know it really exists? Couldn’t the reason we feel the apparent pull of gravity be due instead to some supernatural force that we don’t understand? How do you know that atoms truly exist and, more importantly, that atoms behave the way scientists say they do? On what basis do you accept the idea that black holes, whatever they may be exactly, exist in outer space?

My guess is that the overall answer to such questions is that, when it comes to such matters, you accept the consensus reached by the scientists that work in these fields. You may not understand the physics of gravity or atoms or black holes. But that does not lead you to dispute their existence. In fact, it is largely because of your lack of understanding, because you have not made the effort to study the facts yourself, that you defer to the experts who have done so.

The truth of a scientific theory also doesn’t depend upon whether or not you are pleased with its conclusions. You may not be happy to discover that you can get HIV from having unprotected sex. You may be irritated to learn that you cannot cure severe depression simply by telling a person to “Cheer up;” medication may be required to help the person. But your unhappiness and irritation does not change anything.

All of this applies in the same way to evolution. You may be offended by the idea that humans are descended from apes. You may find it difficult to understand how the process of natural selection could account for the range of species on the planet today. But such offense and incomprehension has no bearing on the overwhelming evidence in support of evolution.

Unfortunately, although the above logic is indisputable, people somehow are willing to make an exception for evolution. The same person that would never think of denying the scientific evidence that links HIV to AIDS or that supports the existence of black holes in outer space—has no problem making such an assertion about evolution.

The data in this regard are staggering. According to recent Gallup polls, close to 50% of all people surveyed say that they “do not believe in evolution.” This is consistent with similar surveys taken over the past several years. I am sure that much of the reason for this, aside from what I have already said, is that people view evolution as in conflict with their religious beliefs. Forced to make a choice, they go with religion.

For the scientific community, such poll results are equivalent to finding out that 50% of the American public does not believe in gravity. On the one hand, the poll results are a depressing statement about the state of scientific education in our country. On the other hand, it has no bearing as to whether or not gravity really exists.

Scientific assertions based on ignorance of the relevant science (how many people that say that they don’t believe in evolution have actually studied the evidence?) or on religious prejudices is not a particularly effective way to get to the truth. It doesn’t work for deciding on the veracity of gravity, black holes, atoms, or AIDS. And it doesn’t work for evolution.