Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube

Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube

reposted from:

crabsallover highlights, key points, comments / links.

Comment on draft of book on "Humanism: reason, science and skepticism"

source: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more

This is the draft of the first chapter of a book sent to Stephen Law to make comments on. Add YOUR comments here on Stephen Laws' blogspot. Please remember to say you heard about this request for comments via Humanists4Science.

What are science and reason?

Humanists expound the virtues of science and reason. But what are science and reason? And we should we think it wise to rely on them?

By science, I shall mean that approach to finding out about reality based on the scientific method. This is a method that was fully developed only a few hundred years ago. Science, as I’ll use the term here, is a comparatively recent invention, its development owing a great deal to 16th and 17th Century thinkers such as the philosopher Francis Bacon(1561-1626).

So what is the scientific method? Here’s a rough sketch. Scientists collect data through observation and experiment. They formulate hypotheses and broader theories about the nature of reality to account for what they observe. Crucially, they then test their theories. Scientists derive from their theories predictions that can be independently checked by observation.

New Scientist returns to nature/nurture debate

Did you know that "lower heart rates are a better indicator of criminal behaviour than smoking is of lung cancer"? Nor me, yet this is a key point in understanding the biological, often genetic, origins of crime.

Most humanists, I guess, think of crime as a response to bad circumstances. We don't like to call people evil because that sounds religious and because it sounds incurable. Yet there's lots of evidence to implicate the effects of the physical environment (eg lead poisoning) and, more controversially, genes as causes of crime.

Humanists should be guided by the evidence so its worth looking at NS's review of The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine.

Are Humanists4Science Positivist-ish or Scientistic-ish or Naturalisic-ish? - Part 1 of 4 - Positivism

@ProfBrianCox

@ProfBrianCox Ultra-naïve positivist-ish, although science can't explain the existence of antipositivists Positivism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivis…
— Chris Street (@ChrisGStreet) April 6, 2013

I was prompted by Brian Cox twitter profile @ProfBrianCox to investigate Positivism - wikipedia.

I've been mulling over Scientism - wikipedia for some time, especially since I organised for Prof. Alex Rosenberg - wikipedia to talk to Atheism UK about his book 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions'. Alex's talk on Youtube was recorded for Atheism UK by Mark Embleton at Conway Hall in London on 25th February 2012.

Alex Rosenberg (personal website) is very pro Scientism & describes himself as a Naturalist - NY Times blog (Naturalism - wikipedia).

Jim Al-Khalili - new President of British Humanist Association

Jim Al-Khalili 11th President
- British Humanist Association

In January 2013, Professor Jim Al-Khalili became the 11th (after Toynbee Smith Rayner Bondi Hemming Blackham Melly Leach Ayer Huxley) President of the British Humanist Association (BHA). Jim will retain the Presidency for 3 years.

Humanists4Science Committee would like to congratulate Jim Al-Khalili on becoming the BHA President.

BHA quote Jim Al-Khalili:-

"The most wondrous and surprising thing about our world is that it is rational and explicable. Appealing to the supernatural adds nothing to our understanding of our place in the Universe."

Policing: Less is More

All the parties want to "protect front-line policing", see for example this. It seems that everyone wants more policing. But why?

Crime in the UK has been falling for over ten years.  It’s long been known that this is not primarily due to either policing levels or policing tactics. Many explanations have been suggested but there’s now a growing acceptance (articles in Mother Jones and the Guardian) that the real cause of the decline may be the removal of lead from petrol.

Lead is a poison known to damage children’s brains. It’s not much of a stretch to believe that is causes dyslexia and problems with impulse control – the very problems that underlie much crime.

Of course we’ll need a police force for as long as there is crime; and that’s probably as long as there are human beings. Human society demands a balance between individual initiative, even greed, and social responsibility. We don’t always get this right either as individuals or as societies and when individuals get it wrong we need laws, courts, police and, sometimes, prisons.

God’s people: Reformers or stormtroopers?

Politics and religion are both ways in which humanity has tried to organise its collective life. The roots of politics lie in our need to make collective decisions and the desire of some people to have others follow their lead. This leads to a range of political forms from participatory democracy to tyranny and genocide.

The roots of religion lie in our tendency to believe that most events are caused by beings with desires (rather than physical processes) and our reluctance to believe that when a loved one dies then that person is gone for good. This leads people to believe in the existence of gods, spirits, ghosts, witches and saints and their involvement in deciding the weather, the harvests and our recovery from illness. Religion also leads to a variety of human behaviour from visiting the sick to torturing suspected witches and to such public displays as sung evensong and the Haj.

In short both are natural for us humans and neither has clean hands.