Everything About Nothing

The Universe seems to be getting darker. By dark here I mean more mysterious and less well understood. Of course the fact that we now realise how little we know is itself progress because knowing 90% about 10% of the universe is actually better than knowing 80% about it all – but not even realising that what you think is everything is really just a small part.

If my statement above is confusing, here is an explanation of what I mean. When I first started my interest in astronomy we thought that we understood most of the material in the universe. Although there was a problem with missing mass going back many years it wasn’t considered likely to be the source of new forms of matter or fundamentally new phenomena.

Then it became apparent that there was a lot of extra mass which influenced other “normal” mass gravitationally but wasn’t detectable any other way. That was known as dark matter and we still aren’t sure exactly what it is even though it makes up about a quarter of the total mass/energy of the universe.

That was bad. Really bad. But since then its got a lot worse! More recently it was discovered that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing and this is attributed to a phenomenon called “dark energy”. This seems to currently make up about 70% of the mass of the universe. Do some maths and you’ll see that only leaves about 5% which is the material (atoms, photons, etc) which we do understand (well mostly understand anyway because there are plenty of mysteries regarding even these).

But wait, there’s more. The latest weird discovery is something called “dark flow”. This was first discovered last year and supported by a bigger study this year. The two studies showed that clusters of galaxies (with 800 in the first and 1400 in the second) are all moving in one particular direction in the sky.

So what’s going on here? From a situation where the universe was just quietly getting on with its steady expansion (which itself is an idea less than 100 years old because before that it was assumed the universe was static) we now have mysterious mass concentrations, something weird causing accelerated expansion, and huge areas of space moving because of some unknown effect. If it wasn’t so weird and interesting it would be very frustrating!

There is one thing I should emphasise here before finishing. These admitted deficiencies in cosmological understanding should not be used as a reason to believe pseudoscientific, supernatural, or new-age alternatives. Knowing enough about reality to realise that there is a lot more to learn is infinitely better than knowing so little that you don’t even know how ignorant you are.

I’ve had believers in non-scientific theories say that these gaps in understanding somehow support their ideas of gods, spirits or mysterious psychic forces. They don’t. Science dares to make predictions which can be easily checked and that’s why these mysteries become apparent. Alternative world views, like religion, are so amorphous that they can’t be tested so their deficiencies never become apparent.

Going back to my comparison of numbers at the start of this entry. Astronomers used to know almost everything about what they knew existed. Unfortunately there turned out to be a lot more that they didn’t even know existed. Maybe science knows a lot about only a small part of the universe but that’s a lot better than knowing everything about nothing!

Meaningless Noise

During my recent series of debates with fundamentalist Christians I was sent various information which claimed to support the Christian belief system. Much of this consisted of alleged facts which showed the accuracy of the Bible. Of course they weren’t facts at all as was easy to demonstrate to those who sent them. But other messages consisted of more theological material and that was more difficult to dismiss.

I wondered why that was the case. Why are religious claims so much more difficult to refute? Then it came to me, while listening to a podcast by a cultural anthropologist actually. He claimed that most theological discussion is meaningless. Its devoid of any real information and is really no more useful than just random noise.

This makes sense of course. Its hard to argue against something which has no meaning. So I emailed the person back and asked them to explain what the material meant by putting it into their own words. I wasn’t surprised when I got no reply. Sure its possible that the person was just too busy (although he replied about other topics) or didn’t respond for some other reason, but I think it was because he also realised the original material was pure nonsense.

Here’s an example of what I mean: “The truth of Christianity has significance quantumly beyond the car engine analogy, however. Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft affirms, “the point of Christianity is the living Christ. He is not an ancient ideal but a real person here and now, ready to barge in and transform our lives… The love of God is the answers not only to (1) the quest for the supreme value… and to (2) the quest for the supreme reality… but it is also the answer to the third quest, the quest for life’s deepest meaning and purpose.”

What does “quantumly beyond” mean? A quantum is the smallest possible unit so does that mean its the smallest amount beyond the analogy? I don’t think that’s quite what they had in mind! And what exactly is this “living Christ”? We have an upper case “C” there so I guess we are talking about the most well-known Christ, Jesus, but what do they mean by “living”? I thought the whole point was that he wasn’t with us right now. And the “love of God” is [sic] the answers to the quest for supreme value and supreme reality”. What does that mean? What is supreme reality? is that some sort of religious reality (which, in fact, isn’t real at all?) No wonder the person I questioned on this didn’t bother answering. He’s probably trying to figure it out too!

A common excuse for this sort of dilemma is that theological discussions are in a “higher realm” than the more mundane matters most of us deal with but I disagree. It seems to me that is just an excuse for the lack of real content in this type of religious discussion. People give up trying to find a meaning and blame themselves for not being capable of finding it but its not their fault at all because there’s just no real meaning there to start with.

So from now on when I am presented with this sort of gobbledegook I’m just going to demand that the person presenting it simplifies it and puts it in their own words. If they can do it that’s fine, maybe I will discover some hidden meaning, but I suspect that, like what happened this time, I’ll continue to be disappointed!

Flood Be Gone!

I don’t start arguments with creationists, I really don’t. I always wait for them to make the first move and then I retaliate with all possible force. Actually I have toned down the attack a bit recently because I often find that staying calm and reasonable when your opposition has “lost control” is even more effective than joining them in a major battle of words!

The latest incident involved a friend who invited several of his fundy Christian creationist friends to attack my disbelief in a god or gods. These people took their belief seriously and they have swallowed the whole Christian mythology, hook, line and sinker! That included the Flood story which is one of the easiest to discredit so I thought I would start on that.

The Flood is ridiculously easy to disprove. Actually, let me start that again. Nothing can really be disproved completely because there’s always the chance of some sort of illusion, conspiracy or poorly understood supernatural effect making the evidence invalid. What I should say is that its easy to present enough information that any reasonable person would reject the Flood story.

Of course creationists are almost never reasonable because if they were they wouldn’t be creationists in the first place, but there are a subset who are just ignorant and I always hope that I can influence these people enough that at some time they can break free of the prison of lies they are trapped by.

I have researched the evidence against the Flood fairly intensely but its unreasonable to present it all in an email back to a believer so I thought why not present it here in my blog instead. In fact there is so much evidence against the Flood that I decided just to pick on one disproof out of many, and that is the evidence from dendrochronology (the science of ageing trees using growth rings).

According to the Bible the Flood happened in 2350 BC (although some scholars offer a range from 3398 BC to 2348 BC). At most the Flood happened 5,400 years ago so if we can find anything of more than that age which is unaffected it would be strong evidence that the Flood didn’t happen.

Of course there are so many independent lines of evidence showing this that I can hardly list them here but a few would be marine sediments, varves, human population, records from ancient civilisations, genetic studies, archaeology, and many others. But I decided that tree rings are an easy to understand proof and one which is difficult to dismiss through fatuous objections (such as those against carbon dating) so that’s what I decided to use.

There are some individual trees which are old enough to disprove the Flood. The King Clone creosote bush (which is now a patch of shrubbery 70 by 25 feet) in the Mojave Desert is 11,700 years old. It shows no signs of being affected by a flood. And the world’s oldest tree has been discovered in Sweden. It is 9,550 years old and also survived the Flood some way.

But even if these individual examples are ignored its possible to date trees which lived for shorter times by cross referencing the patterns of growth rings. The rings vary depending on many factors such as rainfall, temperature and disease. All the trees in an area are affected in a similar way so similar patterns can be seen in their rings. If two trees each survived for 100 years but their lives overlapped by 10 years we would see the same pattern at the end of the older tree’s life and the start of the younger. Extending this its possible to date back as far as necessary independently of the life of the trees.

There are possible sources of errors but experts know which trees give the most reliable results and use these in preference to others. Also the dating has a margin of error but its far too small to allow the flood to possibly be true. So what have these studies found?

Talk Origins quotes this study: Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence going back to 6273 BC (Popular Science, November 1979, p.76).

The journal Radiocarbon quotes this study: Marco Spurk et al. The oak chronology was also extended with new samples as far back as 10,429 BP (8480 BC). In addition, the formerly tentatively dated pine chronology (Becker 1993) has been rebuilt and shifted to an earlier date. It is now positioned by 14C matching at 11,871-9900 BP (9922-7951 BC) with an uncertainty of 20 years (Kromer and Spurk 1998).

Then there’s this one by Pilcher, Baillie, Schnidt and Becker from Nature: The world’s longest continuous tree-ring chronology is based on the bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata and Pinus longaeva) growing in the White Mountains of California. The great age of living and sub-fossil trees of this species enabled a continuous tree-ring sequence of 8,681 years to be established, providing absolutely dated wood samples for the first radiocarbon calibration. We have now established an unbroken west European tree-ring sequence spanning the past 7,272 years.

And I found this at the Direct Science blog: Bernd Becker and Bernd Kromer. During the past 25 years, in the Hohenheim tree-ring laboratory long tree-ring chronologies have been constructed, now reaching back to 11,400 yr dendro BP.

So there’s a whole series of independent studies which show that the Flood just didn’t happen (at least not when the creationists claim it did). There are no excuses because the science is so simple (at least in principle) that even creationists can understand it.

So there’s no reasonable doubt, the Flood is a myth, and a particularly stupid one at that. This Bible story is wrong. What other stories might be wrong? Well just about all of them actually but that’s another blog entry!

Deeply Divisive

Many people think of New Zealand as being a nice, peaceful country which doesn’t have a lot of the problems that other parts of the world suffer from. Part of this is because it is so isolated and another part is because of the low population. New Zealand is supposed to be a very “green” country but that’s largely because of the low population and increasing intense agriculture (especially dairy) is threatening that image.

Another problem which seems to have become a lot more apparent recently is the racial issue. This has always been a problem and it occasionally gets worse when specific incidents occur. The big problem at the moment is the Maori Party being part of the governing coalition and making various race based demands.

In some ways they have a perfect right to do that, of course, because they are there to represent Maori and that’s what they are doing. I would expect Act to be there pushing policies which are advantageous to their support base which includes groups like big business. And I would expect the Greens (if they ever get into a position of power) to support policies which environmentalists would approve of.

But in another way the Maori party has less justification for its activities because they are race based. Racism is quite rightly considered a greater injustice than following a philosophy which favours business or environmentalism or unions or anything else which is open to everyone.

That’s why the racist agenda of the Maori Party is so divisive. Their more extreme members – Hone Harawira is the prime example obviously – are racist and they really don’t belong in parliament. After Harawira effectively called all white New Zealanders “white motherfuckers” and when so many of his supporters agreed, the outer appearance of harmony in New Zealand disappeared. Now when I see anyone of Maori ancestry I wonder if that’s the way he or she really feels about me.

There are plenty of other extremist nutters around: political conservatives, religious fundamentalist, new age believers, and science deniers being just a few examples. But you never know who they are until the subject they are particularly nutty about is discussed. I just recently found a person I had worked with for years was a creationist and suddenly the reason for some of his odd behaviour became obvious. But just meeting him socially or at work would not lead me to believe he was harbouring in particularly crazy beliefs.

But with race the dividing lines are obvious. Which group a person belongs to is apparent from their physical appearance and an unconscious bias is almost impossible to avoid. That’s why the racism inherent in the Maori Party is so damaging. The fact that they have been given this power by a relatively conservative party like National is bizarre.

Maybe getting the underlying resentment out into the open instead of hiding it will help in the end, but I would have to say that at this point its just dividing the country into two opposing groups.

On one side we have Maori, some of whom want to get whatever they can from the system. They want every special privilege, every hand out of land, automatic representation on organisations, and every special political right they can get. Other Maori are just embarrassed by these demands and would prefer to just be treated like every other New Zealander but they aren’t the ones making all the noise.

On the other side we have the rest of New Zealand. Some are resentful of Maori and see them as nothing more than useless whiners who should have been all killed off in the Maori wars (yes, I really have heard someone say that). Others feel guilt for the behaviour of the European settlers or just follow whatever political correctness happens to be in vogue and think Maori should get special treatment. And others (like myself) want to see everyone teated the same way and think artificial distinctions like race should be ignored.

So not only is there conflict between Maori and non-Maori but there is also conflict within the groups. Its not good for the country and its not going to get better until we see the end of racist political organisations like the Maori Party. Chances are they will self-destruct but how long will that take and how much damage will be done until then?

I think potentially it could get bad. In fact, with this current government, that’s almost guaranteed!

Denial

I spend quite a lot of time debating science deniers of various types. The two worst offenders by far are global warming deniers and evolution deniers. The sort of people who deny GW tend to be political conservatives and libertarians. Those who deny evolution are generally fundamentalist religious people, and always Christians in the cases I have been involved with.

The reason they arrive in the deluded position they are in is that they want to be ignorant. They really only want to know one thing and that is that their political or religious view is correct, and they will stop at nothing to support that need.

Many global warming deniers say there is a vast scientific conspiracy to hide the facts. Or that its a socialist plot to take over the world. They say that scientists can’t be trusted but retired politicians and business leaders (who have no expertise in the area) can. I know this all sounds ridiculous but its what some otherwise intelligent people genuinely believe.

That’s actually relatively sensible though compared to the evolution deniers. At least there is still a certain amount of uncertainty regarding global warming and there have been some real efforts to hide data from the public. On balance none of this is significant, especially compared with major reports like the latest findings from SCAR (the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) on melting Antarctic ice, but you can see how some people might get the facts wrong.

But there’s really no good excuse for denying evolution (and I include with this the lesser but related topics of the Big Bang, the age of the Earth, etc). There is no debate there: evolution is an accepted fact by every fair and knowledgeable person on the planet. What I mean is there’s only two reasons to deny evolution: you’re ignorant of the facts, or you are unprepared to give the facts a fair appraisal because of an existing belief.

Getting back to global warming deniers I have noticed a pattern which shows that they really are not looking at the issue sensibly. If they had a real reason to deny GW you would expect them to consistently defend that perspective. But they don’t. Some of the time they try to produce data to show warming isn’t happening; then they say it is happening but its natural; then they will say its happening, human caused, but its good; and finally they will say its happening, human caused, not good, but there’s nothing we can do (or nothing we should do because no one else is doing anything).

So which is it? A soon as you show one form of denial is wrong they switch to another. Its obvious that their one underlying need is to deny the truth and the mechanism they use to do this is unimportant.

Today I showed a denier the latest data showing Antarctic ice melting leading to sea level rises of 1.4 meters by 2100. He said “Obviously it isn’t a problem for the rest of the world – why should it be for us?” Isn’t that bizarre? For a start, where would he get the idea it isn’t a problem, and he seems to have conveniently forgotten that they day before he tried to present data showing that warming wasn’t happening. Suddenly it is happening but no one cares.

You can see that debating with someone with as little intellectual honesty as this is a very difficult proposition yet I still feel I have to do it because he regularly sends out denial propaganda to others. Actually I sometimes think he partly does that just to annoy me but that sounds sort of paranoid!

It will probably be only a matter of time before the denial community comes up with some misleading data to try to show the SCAR report is wrong. And people like my friend will see it and instantly believe it without further thought. I guess there’s really no hope for them yet I still try because I do value the truth.

The same applies to a creationist I’m debating with at the moment. There are a series of rather lame answers to the major objections to his beliefs and as long as there is something out there which can be used an excuse for the obvious false beliefs of Christianity the believers are happy. They really seem to have no way to sort through the relative merit of different facts and figures. Or, more likely, they do have that ability but refuse to use it.

They need to be careful or they might discover the truth!

A Taxing Time

Tax seems to be the latest political hot topic here in New Zealand. Various groups are dreaming up recommendations for changes to our tax system and some are a lot more reasonable and practical than others.

The government was committed through an agreement with one coalition partner, Act, to produce a review although there was no requirement to take its findings seriously. That is just as well because the group seem to have been mainly composed of raving lunatics from the political extremes of the new right (actually I suppose “new right” is hardly relevant any more but what I’m talking about are proponents of extreme libertarian, laissez-faire economics).

Even the moderately right wing National Party has run a mile for the report produced by Don Brash and his bunch of nutters. Its not as if the report contains anything new or relevant. They could have just pulled out the same old stuff from the 80s and recycled that. The fact that we know it doesn’t work is irrelevant to these people because they are motivated by ideology rather than practicality.

The idea of catching up with Australia economically is a silly one because Australia does have some advantages we don’t enjoy here, such as its mineral wealth and just the economy of scale a larger country has.

Labour has claimed we actually gained on Australia during the relatively left-oriented policies of the last nine years but the extreme right (Roger Douglas, no less) claims the opposite. Who’s right I don’t know, but what I do know is that the low tax, small government, private and foreign ownership model has no outstanding benefits which outweigh its obvious problems.

No one will deny that we should have a fair tax system and one that will encourage an efficient economy but fairness is a difficult attribute to understand fully and I’ve seen a lot of policies aimed at fairness achieve the exact opposite. So if we can’t get a fair and balanced review of the tax system we should just leave it the way it is, despite its faults.

Protect the Internet

I love the internet. It gives me quick, convenient access to any information I need, plus it allows me to distribute the information that I want to share with others. Perhaps the most important characteristic which allows this to happen is that the ‘net is not controlled by big corporations like so many other aspects of our lives are.

That’s why it worries me when there is a hint of these corporations interfering with the efficient operation of the internnet just so that they can extend their control or increase their profits. Its hard to imagine two companies more evil and disgusting than News Corp and Microsoft so I dread to think what kind of abomination would result if they cooperated in a search/news system like those currently being proposed.

Rupert Murdoch has said he is sick of Google being freely able to provide access to his content. Why? Isn’t the whole idea of news content to be accessed by as many people as possible? What’s the point of news if its not read, and then there’s the exposure the advertising on those pages gets as well. You would almost think that Google should be charging him for delivering readers, not the other way around.

Most experts seem to think the idea of removing News Corp sites from the Google search index is suicide. I certianly hope so because it would be great to see News Corp die and it would be even better if it was as a result of corporate ignorance and greed not being able to cope with a new way of doing things.

One option being presented is removing News Corp sites form Google and allowing only Microsoft’s Bing to access them… for a fee of course. That would mean that you would need to use Bing to make sure that News Corp content was included in your search so more people might use Bing in preference to Google.

This is typical of Microsoft’s dirty tricks they have used in the past. They can’t compete on merit so they do some backroom deals with some equally unprincipaled partners to force people into using their products. To be fair at this point I should say that Bing is actually OK. I can’t see a reason to use it but it isn’t actually virtually unusable like most Microsoft products (Windows, Word, etc).

Of course it might backfire. People might continue to use Google so they will find other company’s content and just keep away from News Corp sites. That way Murdoch will be worse off than he was before. That’s what most people think will happen and that’s what I hope does happen.

The whole idea of compromising the internet’s openness is contrary to all the principles which have made it the useful tool it is today. If this move succeeds it will probably mean others will follow and that will be the beginning of the decline of the ‘net in general. If it fails then it will most likely warn other companies off from doing the same thing.

So it must fail just to protect the integrity of the Internet. If NewsCrop also fails that’s another benefit (other, more principled, organisations will fill the gap) and if Murdoch is exposed as the evil, greedy scumbag he is then that’s just another bonus as well!

Another Bigot

Why are so many Christians and conservatives of various types so bigoted? Why are they so totally convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong? Its a very dangerous attitude for anyone to have and its made worse by the fact that Christianity and conservatism have so many just plain bad beliefs which are in need of more examination and criticism rather than less.

According to the dictionary a bigot is someone who is obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of his own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions. This fits perfectly with a friend who I have been debating with recently who has been distributing misleading (and often just plain wrong) information against Muslims.

He makes the same old claims which have never stood up to any scrutiny in the past: western countries being based on Christianity, Muslims being incapable of being citizens of a modern democracy because of their extreme beliefs, the superiority of the Christian worldview, and the political right being more in touch with reality than the left.

Its all garbage. Modern democracies are based on Greek ideas, not Christian. When western civilisation was more based on Christianity we had a period of history called the Dark Ages. Has everyone forgotten this? Democracy isn’t a strong theme in the Bible but it is a feature of Greek philosophical thought. If we did base our culture on the Bible we would live in a very confused, backward, and unfair society. Why would we want that?

Muslims extremists probably cannot fit in to a modern society but the vast majority of moderates can. I am not a great supporter of the Islamic religion (or political system) but I do realise that it is believed by a significant proportion of the world’s population. Just rejecting it and refusing to try to find a compromise solution seems to be more likely to create conflict and that may be what some conservatives want, but they will usually not admit it.

Christianity has been responsible for more deaths, misery, and repression than any other belief system I can think of. Look at history: murdering people with opposing religious views, persecuting and murdering intellectuals who disagreed with them, the crusades, the extermination of Jews, witch burning, the inquisitions, religious warfare, and modern genocide. No other belief system comes close to being as evil as Christianity so they have no right to claim the moral high ground in any way.

I agree that the extreme left are pretty loony but so are the extreme right. Rejecting any idea just because it originates from a liberal perspective is just plain ignorant. Many conservatives refuse to accept compromise and seem to have no perspective on political beliefs apart from their own form of extremism. Rejecting alternative ideas out of habit rather than for good reason is no way to improve any political situation.

Its just the intensity of the hate that many of these people exhibit which worries me. I have several fundamentalist Christian friends and the sort of stuff I hear from them, and their associates who have similar beliefs, is just sickening. It really destroys the notion that Christianity is a religion of forgiveness and tolerance.

There’s probably no hope that conservatives will ever look at the world in a fair and objective way and see that there perspective isn’t really the only one which is worth considering. Cherry picking the evidence and ignoring inconvenient facts will always convince them that their imaginary world is real. The only hope for a better world is for the decline of religion to continue and for future generations to be a bit more moderate in their political beliefs.

Thoughts of an Old Fart

Yesterday was my fiftieth birthday. Yes, those of you who follow my blog now know that I am what many people have referred to as an “old fart”. But is 50 really that old today? I don’t think so, at least not in my case. But I do know some people who are a similar age and act like they really are old farts and I know a few who are older and don’t act that way at all.

Working in the IT industry helps, of course, because I am usually already involved in the latest tech trends before much younger people even find out they exist: blogging, podcasting, social networks, and Twitter would be examples. On the other hand my teenage son and daughter claim the stuff I put on Facebook is far too serious – they tend to use the word “lame”!

I think it is important to act the way that is natural for you and avoid as many social norms as possible. Who really wants to do things the same way as everyone else? Certainly not me. Naturally there are many social rules which are only sensible to follow, and the same applies to laws and regulations.

But I reserve the right to ignore any norm, rule, regulation or law which I disagree with. I do understand that if I break laws I might have to face the consequences but I won’t necessarily agree that what I did was wrong. Anyone who thinks that the law is automatically right is not only limiting themselves but they’re also not doing society a favour in the long term.

I have always been interested in debating controversial subjects (at least since my time as a student at university) but I have toned down my rhetoric a bit since I was younger. Yes, what I present in this blog is definitely less extreme than what I used to believe! I don’t think that’s a mellowing process associated with getting older, its a realisation that there are no black and white issues and there is always an argument which can be presented for both sides of any issue.

Actually I usually associate mellowing with ageing but when I think about it I realise that most of the people who have the most extreme and inflexible views are people who are older than me. At least that seems to be the trend with the people I debate. That could be because people usually become more conservative with age, and I tend to debate conservatives.

But what is it about conservatives which so often leads me to debate them? It generally gets back to their inflexibility and inability to cope with new trends. The most common topics I debate are global warming, liberal politics, religious flexibility and the value and accuracy of science versus other world views.

Few people would say we are 100% certain that global warming is happening just the way the scientific consensus thinks but that is certainly the safest view to take and is very likely to be close to the actual facts. So why do conservatives refuse to see this? Its because they were brought up in an environment where exploiting the environment was considered a noble thing (of course, “exploit” might not have been the word they used). Things have changed, and with very good reason, but conservatives haven’t.

Liberal politics is a bit less objective because its almost impossible to get unbiased and clear data on the outcome of various political interventions, but at the very least people should be prepared to compromise on this. But not the conservatives. Anything that is to the left of where they stand is communism! And Barack Obama is a socialist! Are they for real?

I think the data indicates that religion is on the way out as the major social and political influence in the world. It has already happened in Europe and has started in America. The third world is where most of the growth is now coming from but that will follow the other regions eventually. Its clear that no one religion has a special place in the world now but I do agree with the conservatives that we should be careful in giving certain religions (you know which one I mean) special benefits in an attempt at fairness. Giving a religious group special privileges when they demand them has nothing to do with fairness.

The rejection of science can be quite annoying. The same people who deny certain areas of science (creationists, new age medicine proponents, and global warming deniers are examples) seem to be happy enough to accept it in less controversial areas. Do creationists really think that scientists could get evolution wrong but still get the physics theories used in modern computing and communications (which the creationists use to distribute their lies) right? That doesn’t really make sense.

So that’s a few thoughts from an old 50 year old skepticism and science blogger. If I look at the classic skeptic James Randi who is now over 80 and still doing brilliant skeptical work I figure I’ve got a few years left yet!

Inspirational

Most people are inspired by something. It can be a belief system or a place or a person. I think you can tell a lot about a person by asking them what they find inspirational. So what kinds of things do people find an inspiration? Sometimes its a popular figure like a sportsperson or an entertainer, sometimes its a religious thing, and sometimes its a more technical or intellectual thing or person.

So what is it for me? Probably the thing that inspires me most is the awesome vastness and subtlety of the universe. There are also some people I find inspiring and one of them would be Carl Sagan. If you have never heard of him, he was a professor of astronomy and space science and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. He also served as an advisor and consultant to NASA, and played a major role in the establishment of SETI projects. As an author he won a Pulitzer Prize and was most famous as a science communicator especially for a television series (produced in 1980) called “Cosmos”.

Sagan died at the relatively young age of 62 in 1996 and is missed by both science enthusiasts and skeptics (because he was also famous for his skepticism). I was pleased to see that November 7 was set aside as the first annual Carl Sagan day. Unfortunately I only found out about this after the event or I’m sure I would have done something special that day, like watch some favourite scenes from Cosmos.

The thing I liked about Sagan was the way he made astronomy and cosmology interesting and approachable without dumbing them down too much. Very few others have done this as well as he did. At the time his efforts were a bit controversial because some of his fellow scientists didn’t think popularising science was a worthy activity but in many ways he helped make the subject the acceptable discipline it is today. Many universities now have specific programs aimed at increasing the public understanding of science. Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous person in this role as the of Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

Sagan made some perceptive quotes during his career. Here are a few I found on the internet (although I’m not sure that all of them were totally original)…

As a skeptic I love this one: “the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” So when I laugh at creationists its not because they are misunderstood geniuses, its really because they are amusing clowns! (see my blog entry “Laughing at Catholics” from 2009-11-13 for more on this).

Another which can be applied nicely to religious people as well as believers in other paranormal and superstitious beliefs is: “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Me too!

Sagan also noticed the poor standard of scientific literacy in American society: “I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.” And I know people at the university I work at that don’t know what a day or year is (as far as their astronomical origin is concerned).

Reinforcing this idea he said: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology” which lead to: “We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” This hasn’t improved much since he originally said it either.

He was aware that pure facts by themselves are useless though: “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Great advances in science have been the result of great imagination (Einstein being the greatest example) but these can’t be just random junk, like homoeopathy for example. Imagination is fine but the result of imaginative ideas must be testable and fit the facts.

I don’t think he was the first to make this observation: “The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” Of course, the anthropic principle might contradict this, but one day I think we will find why there are aspects of the universe which seem to be strangely conducive to the appearance of life.

Even if there are factors in the universe which seem to me friendly to life its still obvious that life isn’t really a significant part of the universe as a whole: “Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”

And finally, a thought which sums it all up for true science fanatics: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”