The other day I was thinking how awesome it would be if everything revolved around me. Seriously, if I were the center of the universe, then all problems – worldly and otherworldly – would take a back seat to my own. When I moved, I would move the universe. When I shake, I would shake the universe. Each time I would fart, a new brown nebula would be born.

Early humans had a similar desire – to not only matter, but to be VERY IMPORTANT. Indeed, some went so far as to codify our self importance into our religious beliefs. For example, it was a matter of Christian faith for over a thousand years that the Earth stood at the center of God’s universe. We had that special place, because we we mattered to god. Earth was His creation and therefore VERY IMPORTANT, and being His children, we were also VERY IMPORTANT.

But then some uppity know-it-alls had to mess up that pretty picture. They used mathematics, and careful measurement and upset a common assumption that had been in place long before the world was declared round. And that, according to an astounding flyer I recently received in the mail, is where western society began to break down.

Yes, I just got a serious-looking pamphlet about the Geocentric Bible, which claims that scientists have been wrong for 400 years, and that the Earth is really still at the center of the universe. By still, I mean “continues to be” although you could take that to mean “motionless” and that would, um, still be correct.

The change from the geocentric theory to the heliocentric theory damaged our viewpoint of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 is literal, and so is Psalm 50:1 “the Lord … Called the earth from the rising of the sun”. Both the earth and the sun are in the same sentence and it is the sun that is moving around a stationary earth

I think there’s some truth in that quote, but not what the purveyors of the Geocentric Bible claim. By adopting the heliocentric view, our view of the bible changed – and whether this is “damage” remains to be seen. Rather than interpreting the bible literally, most people interpret it allegorically, or thematically. Indeed, the bible is literary work that has profound scope and scale, and interesting characters that lived in ancient times. It may be the source of your faith – but it is clearly not 100% factually accurate.

One of the subjects that the bible fails us is in astronomy, since, if biblical claims of geocentrism were accurate, not only would our understanding of the universe be false, any sort of space program based on such faulty understanding would be impossible. That would mean – no weather or communication satellites, no moon landings, no probes to mars or the other planets. Nothing. All of these technological feats are only made possible in a universe in which planetary bodies move in predictable elliptical orbits, and gravity works as we think it does, and the planets and asteroids are where we expect them to be when our space probes get there. Since our universe has a successful space program, then our universe is incompatible with a literal interpretation of every verse in the ancient text of the Bible. Maybe we need to reconsider the veracity of the text rather than our lying eyes.

The earth has not rotated since the day of creation nor will it rotate until midway through the tribulation period.
The firmament carries the sun around the earth faster than the moon because the moon is closer to the earth, the center of the universe. “If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness” (Job 31:26). The sun never walks, but runs; “…the sun. Which…rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race” (Psalm 19:4,5).

Another small issue with the geocentric theory is that it posits that the entire “firmament” of the universe revolves around the earth once per day. In this quote, from the Geocentric Bible Foundation, we see that celestial objects closer to the earth move more slowly than those that are farther away (the moon walks while the sun runs). What about objects that are farther away than the sun? Since we know that many stars and galaxies are at least 12 billion light years from the earth, they would have to travel at least 74 billion light years per day (assuming a circular orbit around the earth with a radius 12Bly). To accomplish this, these object would have to be traveling just north of 856000 light years per second. That’s around 20 trillion times the speed of light, which according to the known laws of physics, is about 20 trillion times impossible. Somebody’s wrong by … well … an astonishingly colossal margin.

Could it be that the theory that has distant galaxies whizzing about at 20 trillion times the speed of light be wrong? Is that possible? It certainly conflicts with direct observation and established physical principles – of this universe. Yeah – that could the problem right there. Modern physics allows for the possibility of alternate realities – different universes that are similar to our own, yet differ in some critical way. For example, in another universe, this blog has quite a fan base. It’s also possible, that is some corner of the multiverse, there is a universe in which the sun and stars rotate around a stationary Earth. Yes – quite possibly in some other universe. In ours, however, those galaxies don’t revolve around little, old, but still VERY IMPORTANT, us.

The Guardian reported the interesting story of self-proclaimed psychic, Patricia Putt, and her attempt to take home 1 million dollars from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). While many “psychics” have tried to take home the top prize, which would be a scientific stamp of approval to their claims of esp or other super powers, not a single one has ever passed the preliminary round of testing.

The same can be said of Ms. Putt:

Did we make history last week? Is Mrs Putt now preparing to face that final challenge? The chosen readings were compared with the actual readings by Richard Wiseman and Mrs Putt together, with several observers present and the whole procedure recorded. The first volunteer did not choose the reading that had been produced for her. Neither did the second. Or the third. By chance alone, the most likely outcome was for one hit out of ten. Unfortunately for Mrs Putt, every single volunteer chose a reading that had not been written for them. It looks like JREF’s million dollars are safe for the time being.

To her credit, Ms. Putt declined to make any excuses for her failure, at least not until a day later. Many of her predecessors have done the same before her, complaining that the JREF tests are unfair, rigged, or influenced by James Randi’s own powers. As with all JREF challenges, Ms. Putt agreed beforehand to the testing procedures as outlined by JREF staff, and she certified that they were a fair way to demonstrate her psychic powers to the world.

Later, in an email to JREF, Ms. Putt explained her failure:

“With them [the volunteers] being bound from head to foot like black mummies, they themselves felt tied so were not really free to link with Spirit making my work a great deal more difficult.”

Of course, Ms. Putt never spoke with any of the volunteers in her test, and the guardian reporter was correct to point out that she must have picked up on their sense of “being tied” using her extrasensory gifts.

Or not.

According to the Federation of American Sciences website, the American Association for the Advancement of Science is holding a meeting about the possibility of reinstating the OTA.

The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment provided rigorous, bipartisan, scientific and technological advice to Congress for nearly two decades before being eliminated in 1995. This session will focus on how to effectively place scientific and technical information into a policy context, analyze it, and communicate it to policy makers and the public.

It’s about damn time.

Do you want Congress to keep making decisions about evolution, climate change, stem cell research, alternate energy programs – or any other scientific area without a fair and impartial assessment of the scientific issues involved? If so, then you deserve whatever crap happens to you as a result of your majestic and profound idiocy.

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

The point that Anderson is trying to make is that now that we have such an overabundance of data, we don’t really need science anymore. We don’t need to worry why things happen, only that they do happen, and that’s good enough.

The problem with this sort of thinking isn’t just that it mistakes correlation with causation, but that it elevates the role of data in our thinking about natural phenomena to an undeserved level. As I mentioned before, scientific reasoning begins with data – it doesn’t end with it. In Anderson’s world, there’s some level of data at which we can stop asking why. He claims that the more we learn (that is – the more data we have) the farther we are from having good theoretical models that account for the facts.

That’s an interesting position, but it’s wrong. Even in the cases he uses, such as theoretical physics, the volume of data isn’t what threatens our mental models – nor does it need to fundamentally alter how we go about creating those models. As he correctly points out – data without a model is just noise. To go from that truth to a conclusion that boundless vistas of disconnected data are somehow more than noise is quite a conceptual leap.

More data doesn’t change – and certainly doesn’t obsolete – good scientific reasoning from facts toward organizing principles that account for those facts. Instead, new mountain ranges of data provide the possibility of new discoveries and challenges to existing theoretical structures that simply cannot explain them. We’re not facing some data-driven obsolescence of the scientific method.

Instead, we’re probably looking at an acceleration of it.

Herein lies the critical flaw of science when studying the creation of our world. Science cannot observe and therefore cannot test the creation, nor can scientists examine any of the so-called “Big Bang” scenarios. These singular events are far beyond any application of the scientific method. Since they happen but once, they can never be reproduced or observed by any scientist.

Observation and reproduction of studies and experiments are essential to the scientific method. Therefore, because the creation and associated theories cannot be observed or tested, responsible scientists will avoid aggressive assaults upon that which they cannot test by present methodology.

[emphasis added]

Again, this writer is probably well-meaning, and most likely educated. But as in previous instances, this is another great example of why we absolutely must improve science education – not only in Alabama, but throughout the US.

In this instance, the writer’s argument suffers from two fatal errors. First, he conflates Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with cosmology, and in particular “Big Bang” theories in Physics. Evolution makes no claims whatsoever concerning the origin of the universe. Instead, it’s simply a coherent, tested, and testable biological theory about how species change and adapt over time. For nearly 150 years, it has been the unifying theory of biology, and while biology and physics are indeed both sciences, Evolution only has cosmological importance if it violates your religious comfort zone. Scientifically Evolution and Cosmology are apples and oranges.

The second fatal flaw in the writer’s argument is the misunderstanding of the notion of historical sciences. Different sciences can be placed on a continuum ranging from experimental sciences to historical sciences. Physics is largely an experimental science, as is chemistry and psychology, and these would sit near the “experimental end of the continuum. Toward the far end, we have sciences that are largely historical in nature, such as paleontology and astronomy. Within the philosophy of science, it’s well understood that many sciences have aspects that are experimental and those that are historical. In all these cases, however, the methods and rigor used by all scientists, even those who use mathematical models and known physical properties of the universe to describe the conditions at one ten-billionth of a second after the Big Bang, are valid scientific methods.

So I ask how dumb dead matter and dumb dead light arrived at the system called vision without the input of intelligence.[sic] My answer (and the answer of most people) is: They didn’t. Darwinian evolutionists do not like that answer. But they cannot disprove it …” [emphasis added]

Another recent letter claimed that:

First of all, the last time I checked, evolution was still listed as a theory. Certain people in the scientific community seem to think that it has been proven as a fact.

Quotes like these from well-meaning (and likely reasonably well educated) people highlight the importance of improving science education. In every expressed opinion in favor of intelligent design, the authors demonstrate a clear and fundamental misunderstanding of science and what the words “Theory” and “Fact” mean within a scientific context.

There have also been a number of recent “pro-science” letters and opinion pieces. While well-meaning, these too have missed the mark with respect to the key misconceptions about science that lay people clearly demonstrate in their “pro intelligent design” tirades. Recently, the most cogent discussion to appear locally concerning some of the problems with the intelligent design movement appear in Dr. Albert Gapud’s piece (Don’t be distracted by intelligent design, May 25). To his credit, Dr. Gapud recounted the famous Dover trial (Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District et al.), but I don’t think he went quite far enough.

In the Kitzmiller opinion, the court concluded that it was unconstitutional to require teaching intelligent design in the public schools, saying:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID [Intelligent Design] Policy violates the Establishment Clause [of the US Constitution]. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

While this court decision makes it equally difficult for fundamentalist Christians as well as radical Moslems to impose their religious ideals upon our children within public schools, citing it doesn’t do anything to educate the many ID supporters who mistakenly contend that scientists “believe” in evolution, or that ID stands as a viable scientific alternative to Evolution, or that science is or should be democratic. Let’s examine each of these misconceptions.

First, scientists don’t believe in evolution, certainly not the way that religious people have faith in God. This gets back to those words I mentioned earlier, “Fact” and “Theory”, and what they mean in a scientific context. To the lay person, facts are irrefutable truths that can be proven. The situation in science is similar, with the exception that in science, facts are simply data. They are the pieces of information that are collected through careful observation and measurement. For example, it is a fact the half-life of Carbon-14 isotope is 5,730 (plus or minus 40) years. It’s also a fact that many species that existed in earlier times are now extinct. Given enough facts (or data), scientists will attempt to organize them into a conceptual framework that describes them, and explains how they came about. These conceptual frameworks are known as theories.

Theories in science are as good as science gets. Interestingly, theories are also incapable of being “proven” in any way (google : falsifiability for the roots of this). What sets a scientific theory apart from a non-scientific explanation of things (like ID) is that real scientific theories (like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution) are capable of being proven wrong.

Since Evolution makes testable predictions, and is capable of being proven wrong, you would think this is something that should cause creationists and other “evolution deniers” to rejoice. Science provides this very elegant mechanism to get rid of bad scientific theories. Instead, however, we only hear wailing and gnashing of teeth, since creationists don’t use the only vehicle by which Evolution could be properly rejected: amass a body of independently verifiable facts that refute evolution and provide a compelling, falsifiable alternative theory. Rather than searching for a scientific alternative for Evolution fundamentalist Christians (as well as fundamentalist Muslims) use political and religious arguments and stunts that waste your taxes in their attempts to refute the Theory of Evolution.

This brings us to the second point, that ID is not a viable alternative to Evolution. There are several reasons for this, but I’ll mention just two. First, as we have seen, ID isn’t really a scientific theory since it makes no testable predictions and is therefore not capable of being proven wrong. The second main reason that ID can’t possibly replace Evolution is that it simply has no explanatory power. This is due to the fact that the central claim of ID is that we cannot know how the diversity of life came about, because the development of species on Earth was the result of an intelligent designer (but not God, someone else) that worked in some mysterious ways (but not God’s way) to bring it all about.

Theory construction in science requires that your alternative to an existing theory must account for all (or at least a large proportion of) the data that supports the theory it’s intended to replace. The classic example in Physics occurred when Quantum Mechanics replaced Classical Newtonian Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics explains everything that Isaac Newton did, but it also explains phenomena that Newton could never have considered, like what happens to matter at subatomic scales. ID doesn’t even come close to explaining anything that Evolution explains without the need to appeal to supernatural intervention. Indeed, where ID absolutely needs to provide an alternative to the mechanism of natural selection, it instead offers an empty box labelled “a miracle happened here.” It’s your prerogative to believe in miracles. Just don’t teach your special brand of miracles as science in biology classes on the Federal dime.

Finally, there’s this mistaken notion that we should teach ID because it offers a counterpoint to Evolution, as if these were two great political parties engaged in some sort democratic contest for truth. Central to this mistake is the idea that it’s somehow unfair to present only one side of a story. In this case, the side of scientists who provisionally accept Evolution is presented without any sort of rebuttal by the other side. There are a couple of problems with this way of thinking about science. First of all, it is common to present competing theories in the classroom, but with respect to Evolution, there simply isn’t any scientific competition, and there hasn’t been any for almost 150 years. There are some details that scientists argue over, but there aren’t any viable alternatives waiting in the wings. Also, this argument is also typically raised by Evolution deniers who have political rather than scientific motives, and who foist the false dichotomy of Evolution versus ID upon us in an attempt to get more fundamentalist Christianity in our public schools. Science progresses by replacing old theories that fail to account for the facts with newer ones that do. In this sense, science itself uses a sort of Natural Selection to weed out bad theories to make room for better ones.

Someday, a scientist or team of scientists may come up with an alternative to Evolution. That alternative, however, won’t be any form of ID, no matter what you call the God-Designer. It will instead be some other similarly naturalistic framework that will also cause much consternation among those who want to teach about Allah, or Yahweh, or Jesus in our public science classes. Until that alternative shows up, however, we should be teaching Evolution in publicly funded science classes, and leave religious instruction to our children’s parents and clergy.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to examine critical thinking and I’d like to get your input as well. For starters, I’ll just take on the term “Critical Thinking” itself. In later posts, I’ll cover how critical thinking is related to science and effective argumentation.

The term “Critical Thinking” starts with the word “Critical”, which has more than one definition. The most common definition of critical is negative. For example, if I wanted to find fault with your poor fashion choices as you shop at WalMart, I might be said to be critical of your coffee-stained wife-beater and flip-flops. This isn’t the same sense of the word critical (and, by the way, if that’s how you dress at WalMart, please stop).

Thinking, on the other hand, is a verb – and it is the act of applying mental effort or reason to something. Thinking isn’t the same as day-dreaming or wishing. When you are thinking, you are purposefully exerting effort, and your attention, to reason about a specific object, problem or goal.

So there you have it: Critical Thinking is essentially the process of skillfully applying your mental effort or reasoning to something. Indeed, when we talk about critical thinking being something rare, we’re really saying that critical thinking skills are apparently rare. So, in the general vernacular, there is already a consensus that critical thinking is a skill.

And that makes it something that you can learn or improve through practice and exercise.

One issue with critical thinking – as with all thinking – is that it’s invisible. You could well be the most clever, most critical thinker on the planet, but nobody would know it in the absence of some observable evidence of those skills. I’d like to suggest that critical thinking skills are certainly worth learning and practicing, but more than that, we have to become good at implementing those skills in our writing, speech and decision making. This is the part of the topic that fascinates me: how we go from a set of thinking skills to a set of real-life actions that would lead others to suspect that you possess those skills.

Let me know what you think about this.

In a previous post we looked at scales of measurement – from the very very large, to the incredibly minute. In a similar vein we have Giant Stars, which provides us with a sense of just how big our biggest problems really are. As I said before, I find it reassuring when I can get reminders like this of where we stand in the natural pecking order.

In the movie Expelled, Ben Stein gives a compelling argument for Intelligent Design.

Having not seen the film yet, I can’t really comment on how compelling his argument actually was, but I suspect that it wasn’t a compelling scientific argument. If you follow the Intelligent Design controversy at all, then you’re probably well aware that ID lacks all the hallmark features of a true scientific theory. The two most critical components that ID lacks are the requirement that the theory be potentially falsifiable (ID is not), and that it leads to testable hypotheses (ID doesn’t make any).

Interestingly, I see many who mistakenly claim (as I’ve heard Stein claim in the Expelled trailers) that the “scientific community” (interestingly, not individuals, but the community as a whole) have an almost religious belief in Evolution, which is absurd for anyone wanting to call themselves a real scientist. Indeed, this would be equivalent to saying that the religious community has faith because of the results of careful experimentation.

No, as I’ve written before, scientists don’t believe in Evolution – they accept it provisionally as good theory. If Evolution were really such bad science, maybe as some in the ID community would like it to be, then it would not withstand the internal pressure of real scientists who really test it. So far, the testable hypotheses that Evolution has made have supported it. One of the implications of Evolution, unknown even in Darwin’s time, was that the Earth has to be much older than Darwin originally believed. We now have confirmation from multiple independent sources that point to a very old earth, unless you would prefer to reject several distinct branches of science. Evolution also predicts the relative orderliness in the fossil record – and the discovery of just one counter example would completely destroy the theory. Interestingly, Evolution also predicts the genetic differences found between humans and other major primates. The recent discovery that the human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two distinct chromosomes found in the great ape species not only accounts for the the observation that humans have 23 chromosome pairs and the apes have 24, but also supports the notion of a common ancestor. If the genetics worked out any other way – then it would be reason enough to toss the theory in the bin.

The principle issue I have with ID is that, since it isn’t really science, members of the ID community have attempted to get it into our public school science classes through the tactic of redefining science itself. I think scientists take issue with that, and rightly so. Again, the equally absurd tactic would be to force churches to teach Evolution in sunday school classes by successfully redefining what the tenants of christianity are.

Nope – the Expelled hype aside, it all comes down to this: Evolution isn’t “special” in a scientific sense. It makes predictions that can be tested, and if those tests fail, then the theory will be discarded for something better. I can guarantee, however, that ID isn’t a viable alternative, since, well, it isn’t really a theory in the scientific sense of the word. And THAT’S what matters to scientists.

I saw this comment on a religious blog, and thought I’d give it some more room here. This was made in response to a favorable review of Ben Stein’s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed:

ID isn’t really scientific and its detractors are correct to say so. However, evolution is completely neutered by LOGIC, which needs no bunsen burner or laboratory. I’ve been told that complex enzymes existed on comets and that’s where life came from. The proponents of this never seem to be concerned that a ‘complex enzyme’ has to have an origin, too. The mental gymnastics needed for faith in evolution pump up the pride of the ’scientists’ who espouse it. The wisdom of the world is indeed foolish.

Such hand-waving assertion that LOGIC (in all caps, no less) neuters evolution or that scientists have “faith” in evolution are great examples of why we need to have intelligent conversation about what science is and how it operates. Unfortunately, movies like Expelled do more to cloud the issue and polarize people with its dishonest caricature of science, scientists, and even ID.

That evolution occurred and continues to occur is indisputable fact. To deny this is to deny converging evidence from not only the the fossil record , but also from observations of chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms, from the geographic distribution similar species, from documented genetic changes in organisms over many generations, and from specific predictions the theory makes which have been observed.

That Darwin’s theory of evolution, since its inception, has withstood intense scientific and popular criticism, and yet remains the current best explanation for the diversity of life on earth is also indisputable fact. Science has a way of dealing with bad theories if they fail to measure up: they are replaced by better theories.

One might ask, then, “What characteristics would a replacement for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution have to possess?”

Here are some must have’s:

• Falsifiability: Any potential replacement for Evolutionary theory would itself have to be able to be proven false. Evolution is indeed falsifiable: It requires an old Earth , it operates at the level of genetic material to transform species over time (sometimes, geological time scales), and it predicts that certain species that exist now did not exist earlier. As Haldane said, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian” would pretty much toss Evolution into the bin.
• Explanatory Power: Any replacement for Evolution would have to explain everything that evolution does, and it would have to simultaneously explain observations that Evolution could not explain. So, if we were to find rabbit fossils in Precambrian strata, then the new Theory would have to account for that as well.
• Simplicity: Evolution has essentially one mechanism to account for the diversity of life: Natural Selection. Any theory that has a hope of replacing evolutionary theory would similarly have to rest upon the operation of a natural (as opposed to supernatural)
  process.

Note that Intelligent Design possesses none of these qualities. It is not falsifiable, and in invoking a supernatural agent as it’s underlying causal agent, its explanatory power approaches zero since any irreducibly complex designer can do anything it wants by waving it’s irreducibly complex hands about.

And hand-waving is something we want in only small quantities, especially in science.