tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27366559002073555262024-03-04T22:08:31.910-08:00Humanists4ScienceEpiphenomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05420404206189437710noreply@blogger.comBlogger128125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-69603288898073382892015-05-13T07:31:00.000-07:002016-08-07T08:54:03.633-07:00Science, Reason and Skepticism - from Wiley Blackwell Handbook to Humanism (just out) (unedited draft, not final copy)<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<b style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 28.48px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Source: </span></b><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 28.48px;"><b>http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/science-reason-and-skepticism-from.html - </b><span style="color: red;">I've checked the Wiley Blackwell Handbook and it appears identical to this draft. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 28.48px;"><span style="color: red;">Crabsallover, 7th August 2016</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Science, Reason and Skepticism<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">[1]</span></b></span></span></a></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Stephen Law</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What are science and reason?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Humanists expound the virtues of science and reason. But what are science and reason? And why should we think it wise to rely on them?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">By science, I 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 (though of course we find elements being applied even in the ancient world)). Science, as I’ll use the term here, is a<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">comparatively recent invention</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" name="_msoanchor_1" style="color: purple;">[AC1]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">, its development owing a great deal to 16th and 17th Century thinkers such as the philosopher Francis Bacon </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(1561-1626)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">So what is the scientific method? Here’s a rough sketch.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> 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 also try to <i>test</i> their theories. Scientists derive from their theories predictions that can be independently checked by observation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Systematic and rigorous testing, rooted in what we can directly observe of the world around us, is the cornerstone of the scientific method and thus science as I define it.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> Emphasis is placed on formulating theories and predictions with clarity and precision, focussing wherever possible on phenomena that are mathematically quantifiable and can be objectively and precisely measured, e.g. using a calibrated instrument.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Scientists are often able to <i>confirm</i> their theories. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A theory is confirmed by observation if what is observed is more probable given the theory than it would be otherwise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Notice that to</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> <span lang="EN-US">say a theory has been confirmed is <i>not</i> to say that it has been established as true. Even false theories can be confirmed. To say a theory is confirmed is just to say that it is supported by an observation, even if just to a small degree.</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Nevertheless, theories are sometimes strongly confirmed. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Suppose, for example, that we can derive from our theory a prediction that is highly unlikely if the theory is false. Establishing the prediction is true will strongly confirm that theory.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Here’s an illustration. To explain the erratic orbit of Uranus given Newton’s Laws of Gravitation, astronomers posited the existence of a further, undiscovered planet tugging Uranus out of its predicted path. From their theory, they predicted the location of this hypothetical new planet, looked, and discovered a planet there (Neptune). Because it was highly unlikely that there should just happen to be a planet at that position if their theory was false, this observation strongly confirmed their astronomical theory.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Of course, theories can also be <i>disconfirmed</i> to varying degrees. Take for example, the old Aristotelian theory that all heavenly objects revolve around the earth. With the aid of an early telescope Galileo observed that Jupiter had moons that revolved around it, not the Earth. This observation disconfirmed Aristotle’s theory. Indeed, this observation established beyond reasonable doubt that Aristotle’s theory was false.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">True, scientists are human. They are vulnerable to various social, psychological and financial pressures. They have their biases. Still, rigorous application of the scientific method is able to reveal such biases. No matter how psychologically wedded the scientific community might be to the hypothesis that blancmange cures baldness, and no matter how much money the blancmange manufacturers might pump into their research, if blancmange doesn’t cure baldness, a properly conducted scientific investigation will eventually reveal that fact.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Non-scientific approaches to rationally assessing beliefs</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The scientific method is a powerful tool, but not every reasonable belief is arrived at by means of it. People held beliefs, and held them reasonably, long before the appearance of science. Beliefs can be reasonably held if they are well-supported by evidence and/or argument, or perhaps because we can just directly observe that something is the case and we have no reason to suspect we are deceived, deluded.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Suppose my friend tells me he has a real elephant in his trouser pocket. Given the absence of any enormous bulges round his middle, it’s reasonable for me to judge the claim false. True, I make this judgment on the basis of what I observe, but what I’m doing here could hardly be called science – certainly not as defined above. We made these kinds of judgment long before the development of the scientific method.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Remember, too, that beliefs can also be supported or refuted by non-empirical means (that’s to say, without appeal to observation). Take mathematical truths, for example. That twelve times twelve is one hundred and forty-four is something you can establish from the comfort of your armchair by reason alone. So can other conceptual truths. It’s possible, for example, to figure out </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">whether my </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">great grandmother's uncle's grandson must be my second cousin once removed by just unpacking these concepts and examining the logical relations that hold between them. Again this can be done from the comfort of an armchair. No empirical investigation is required. Or suppose an explorer claims to have discovered a four-sided triangle in some remote rainforest. Do we need to mount an expensive expedition to check whether this claim is true? No, again we can establish its falsity by conceptual, armchair methods.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">So, even while acknowledging that science, as characterized here, is an extraordinarily powerful tool, let’s also acknowledge that other non-scientific but nevertheless rational methods also have their place when it comes to arriving at reasonable belief – including armchair methods. Science is merely one way – albeit a very important way – of arriving at reasonable beliefs.</span></a><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_2" id="_anchor_2" name="_msoanchor_2" style="color: purple;">[AC2]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What’s so great about reason and science?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Why should we favor the application of science and reason over other methods of arriving at beliefs, such as picking them at random, believing what we would like to be true, or accepting whatever some self-styled <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">authority</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_3" id="_anchor_3" name="_msoanchor_3" style="color: purple;">[AC3]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> tells us?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Advocates of science often point to its extraordinary track record of success. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The scientific method, in its fully developed form, has only existed for perhaps 400 or 500 years – just a few of my lifetimes. Yet in that short time it has utterly transformed our understanding of the world and the character of our lives. Five hundred years ago, many Europeans believed they inhabited a universe just a few thousand years old, created in just a few days. They possessed almost no effective medicine and relied on their legs or horse-power to travel the country. By means of science we have discovered the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, developed electricity and computers, unravelled the genetic code, created vaccines, and visited the moon.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">True, scientific theories are overturned, and it may well turn out that some of our current theories are mistaken. Scientific theories are often adopted only tentatively and cautiously. Nevertheless, the scientific method has allowed us to overthrow a great many myths and make enormous progress in understanding the nature of the universe we inhabit. While what scientists assert is sometimes dismissed by critics as ‘just a theory’ (that’s often said about the theory of evolution, for example), many scientific theories are extraordinarily well-confirmed. It is always possible that any given scientific theory, no matter how well-confirmed, might turn out to be false; that does not mean it is probable. Many scientific claims and theories, such as the germ theory of disease or the claim that the Earth goes round the sun rather than vice versa are now so well-confirmed it’s ludicrous to suggest they’re false.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Science, and reason more generally, are valued by humanists because of their <i>ability to reveal, or at least get us closer to, the truth</i>. Science and reason offer us <i>truth-sensitive</i> ways of arriving at beliefs.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Humans have a remarkable capacity for generating false but nevertheless impressively rich and seductive <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">systems of </a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">belief</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_4" id="_anchor_4" name="_msoanchor_4" style="color: purple;">[AC4]</a> </span></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_5" id="_anchor_5" name="_msoanchor_5" style="color: purple;">[SL5]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">. Almost every culture has evolved beliefs in invisible and supernatural beings, such as ghosts, spirits, demons or gods. Belief in magical objects, psychic powers, precognition end-of-world prophecies, etc., remains widespread across much of the developed world. Belief in non-supernatural but nevertheless extraordinary phenomena such as the Loch Ness monster, alien-piloted flying saucers, alien abduction and conspiracy theories involving 9/11, the moon landings, and the Holocaust, is also rife. Our vulnerability to such false <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">beliefs</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_6" id="_anchor_6" name="_msoanchor_6" style="color: purple;">[AC6]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> is well-documented. Even intelligent, well-educated people can be surprisingly vulnerable. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of that quintessentially rational character Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies, and was successfully hoaxed by two little girls who faked photographs of fairies with their box brownie camera.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Very many of these <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">beliefs </a>are rooted in <i>testimony</i> – reports supposedly originating with eyewitnesses to miracles, amazing cures, precognition, bizarre objects in our skies, and so on. One particularly striking series of reports concerned an object that appeared over the building site of a new nuclear power station back in 1967. Sanitation workers claimed they saw a large lighted object hanging over the plant. A guard confirmed the sighting. The police arrived. An officer said the object ‘was about half the size of the moon, and it just hung there over the plant. Must have been there nearly two hours.’ The object vanished at sunrise. The next night, the same thing occurred. The county deputy sheriff described seeing a ‘large lighted object’. An auxiliary police officer reported, ‘five objects – they appeared to be burning. An aircraft passed by while I was watching. They seemed to be 20 times the size of a plane.’ A Wake county magistrate who arrived on the scene claimed to witness ‘a rectangular object, looked like it was on fire… We figured it about the size of a football field. It was huge and very bright.’ In addition, there was hard evidence to support these claims: local air traffic control also reported an unidentified blip on their scope.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">A local news team finally arrived to investigate. The object appeared again at five a.m. When they attempted to chase the object in their car, the news team found they couldn’t catch up with it. Eventually, they pulled up and looked at the object through a long camera lens. “Yep, that’s the planet Venus alright,” noted the photographer.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Though this might not otherwise have struck you as remotely likely, those various eyewitnesses to a large illuminated object hanging over the nuclear plant had seen nothing more than the planet Venus. That anomalous radar blip was just a coincidence.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What’s interesting about this case is that if it had not been solved by a bit of good luck – by those reporters showing up and publicizing the truth – it could easily have gone down in the annals of UFO-logy as one of the great unsolved cases. UFO buffs would no doubt have seized upon it and said something like this:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">‘Here we have, sincere, multiple, trained eye-witnesses - workers, policemen, a deputy sheriff and even a magistrate. They have produced broadly consistent reports of a large lighted object hanging over a nuclear plant. They have no motive to give false reports (indeed, such officials are often hesitant and embarrassed about giving such reports). It’s absurd to suppose they might just have just seen a planet. Don’t forget their claims were supported by hard evidence in the form of that radar blip. Surely the best explanation of this testimony is that there really was a large lighted object hanging over the plant.’</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Fortunately, we got lucky and now know the truth about this particular case. It illustrates the point that humans are remarkably prone to generating such false testimony, and for a variety of reasons. This particular example was produced by an optical illusion and a coincidence (that radar blip) but take out a subscription to <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;"><i>one of the leading skeptic magazines</i> </a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_7" id="_anchor_7" name="_msoanchor_7" style="color: purple;">[AC7]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">and you will discover such amazing reports are constantly being explained by reference to a wide range of other far-too-easily-dismissed-or-overlooked mundane mechanisms.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The moral is obvious: a significant number of such otherwise-unexplained reports are likely to be made <i>anyway</i> whether or not there really are any visiting alien spacecraft, psychic powers, or miracles. But then the existence of such testimony is not good evidence that such phenomena are real.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">True, it’s often reasonable to take testimony at face value. If Ted and Sarah, a couple I know well and have learned to trust, tell me that a man called ‘Bert’ visited them last night, I’ll rightly take their word for it. But if Ted and Sarah add that Bert flew round the room by flapping his arms, died and then came back to life, and temporarily transformed their sofa into a donkey, it’s no longer reasonable for me to just take their word for it that these things happened<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a>. When it comes to such claims, we should raise the evidential bar much higher because we know that such reports – including reports that might seem very hard to explain in mundane terms – are going to be made from time to time anyway, whether or not they are true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">One variety of false belief to which we’re exceptionally prone is belief in hidden agency – in hidden beings with their own beliefs and desires. We’re quick to appeal to hidden agency when presented with significant questions to which we lack answers. When we could not understand why the heavenly bodies moved in the way they do, we supposed that they must be other agents – gods, perhaps. When we could not explain natural diseases and disasters, we supposed they must be the work of malevolent agents, such as witches or demons. When we couldn’t explain why plants grew, or the seasons rolled by, we supposed that there must be sprites, or nature spirits, or other agents responsible for these things. As a result of this natural tendency to reach for hidden agents when presented with a mystery, we have populated our world with an impressive range of unseen and mysterious beings and developed extraordinarily rich and complex narratives about them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Those who are broadly skeptical about claims such as those outlined above often disparagingly refer to them <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">as “woo”. As we have seen, woo claims – or W-claims, as I’ll call them –</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_8" id="_anchor_8" name="_msoanchor_8" style="color: purple;">[AC8]</a> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">are</span></a><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_9" id="_anchor_9" name="_msoanchor_9" style="color: purple;">[SL9]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> a diverse bunch, involving psychic powers, alien abduction, cryptozoology (Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc.) past life regression, end-times prophecies, miracles, ghosts, fairies, demons and gods.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a> They are claims with which we are peculiarly fascinated (which explains why they feature so much in tabloid newspapers, fiction, films, and so on) and to which we are easily drawn. Clearly, while perhaps not all are false, a great many are. Many have been debunked. Many are incompatible. Many god-claims, for example, are mutually exclusive. A significant proportion of them must be false.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The humanist position is that we should take a <i>skeptical</i> attitude towards W-claims. We should not just assume they are false (some may not be). However, humanists subject such reports and claims to close rational and scientific scrutiny, and acknowledge that our inability to find a plausible-sounding but mundane explanation for a report of a miracle or flying saucer is not, as it stands, good evidence that the report is reliable.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Some religious believers insist that if there is a miracle-performing God, then such miracles are neither impossible nor improbable; thus – they say – those who are skeptical about miracle reports because they assume miracles are impossible or improbable are guilty of presupposing there’s no such God. We should note immediately, therefore, that the reason outlined above for being skeptical about such reports is <i>not</i> that what is reported is impossible or even improbable</span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_10" id="_anchor_10" name="_msoanchor_10" style="color: purple;">[AC10]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">. It’s not after all impossible or even particularly improbable that there exist bizarre and as yet undiscovered creatures that humans occasionally glimpse. The reason we should nevertheless be pretty skeptical about such cryptozoological reports (‘Nessie’, ‘Big Foot’, and so on) is that they are likely to be made pretty regularly anyway whether or not they’re true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The scientist and humanist Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Under the heading “extraordinary claims” Sagan would certainly include what I am calling <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_11" id="_anchor_11" name="_msoanchor_11" style="color: purple;">[AC11]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">-claims. Sagan is correct about <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W-</a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">claims</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_12" id="_anchor_12" name="_msoanchor_12" style="color: purple;">[AC12]</a> </span></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_13" id="_anchor_13" name="_msoanchor_13" style="color: purple;">[SL13]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">. We should raise the evidential bar much higher than usual before accepting them. Why? If for no other reason than that we have a remarkable track record of unreliability when it comes to making them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">In addition, we also possess excellent evidence that many specific <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W-</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_14" id="_anchor_14" name="_msoanchor_14" style="color: purple;">[AC14]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">claims are false. If someone claims they can successfully dowse for water, we should be pretty skeptical about that claim, not just because we know such claims are likely to be made anyway whether or not dowsing works, but also because we now possess ample scientific evidence that dowsing doesn’t work.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The world is chock full of competing <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_15" id="_anchor_15" name="_msoanchor_15" style="color: purple;">[AC15]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">-claims, including religious claims. They are, as I say, claims to which we are easily drawn and peculiarly vulnerable. If we step out into the marketplace of ideas just as willing to accept someone’s testimony that they have psychic powers or a direct line to God as we are to accept their testimony that they had baked beans for lunch, our heads are soon going to fill up with nonsense. If we value truth, it’s important we apply science and reason as best we can – as, if you like, a filter. False beliefs may still get through, but subjecting claims – <i>especially</i> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W-claims </a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_16" id="_anchor_16" name="_msoanchor_16" style="color: purple;">[AC16]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">– to rigorous rational and/or scientific scrutiny before accepting them gives us our best chance of having mostly true beliefs.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">It is for this reason that humanists insist on subjecting religious claims to such scrutiny. For of course religious claims usually are, or are built around, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">W-claims</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_17" id="_anchor_17" name="_msoanchor_17" style="color: purple;">[AC17]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">. Let’s now turn to some examples of religious claims that have failed to pass the test.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Science as a threat to religious belief</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">As a result of scientific investigation, many religious claims, or claims endorsed by religion, have been shown to be false, or at least rather less well-founded than previously thought. Here are three examples:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Young Earth Creationism.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> Young Earth Creationists (YEC) assert that the entire universe was created by God approximately 6,000 years ago (certainly less than 10,000 years ago). This estimate is based on Biblical sources. In the 17th Century, using the Old and New Testaments as his source, Bishop James Ussher calculated that the moment of creation to be during the night before the 23rd October 4004 BC. Young Earth Creationism has since been empirically falsified in numerous ways by the cosmological, geological, biological, archeological and various other sciences. </span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">An Earth-centered universe.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> In early 17th Century Europe the dominant cosmology, endorsed by the Catholic Church, placed the Earth at the center of the universe. The other heavenly bodies, including the sun, revolved around it. This view was supposedly supported by scripture. For example, </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Psalms 96:10 says, “the world is established, it shall never be moved." And in<i></i>Joshua 10:12-13, Joshua commands the sun to “stand still”, which suggests that the sun moves. This cosmology was rejected by Galileo (who was accused of rejecting it without proof, and was subsequently shown the instruments of torture and condemned to house imprisonment as a result). Science has, of course, established beyond any reasonable doubt that Galileo was right and the previously dominant religiously-endorsed view wrong.</span><br />
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The power of prayer.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> Many people believe in the power of petitionary prayer. For example, it’s often claimed that praying for people with a disease improves their chances of recovery. Yet recent rigorously-conducted large-scale scientific studies do not support this view. Indeed they rather undermine it. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">In 2006, <i>American Heart Journal</i> published the results of a $2.4 million experiment involving 1,802 heart-bypass patients, conducted under the leadership of Herbert Benson (a specialist who also believes in the medical efficacy of petitionary prayer). The results were unambiguous: prayer had no beneficial effect.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a> A similar large-scale trial of patients undergoing angioplasty or cardiac catheterization also revealed prayer had no effect. That prayer has beneficial medical effects is a religious belief that can be scientifically tested. Tests strongly suggest it’s false.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The development of Darwin’s theory of natural selection also poses significant challenges to religious belief. Most obviously, Darwin’s account is incompatible with the Bible-literalist account of how the different species came into existence – including our own species with the creation of Adam and Eve. It is also incompatible with the Christian doctrine of the Fall, according to which the entire world is corrupted by the sin of these – it turns out – non-existent individuals. Darwin’s theory also provides a naturalistic explanation for the existence of things that, many theists had previously argued, could only reasonably be attributed to cosmic intelligent design. William Paley, for example, famously drew an analogy between the eye and a watch. Suppose we find a watch on a beach. Given it has a purpose for which it is well-engineered, it is more reasonable to suppose some intelligence designed it for that purpose than that it is a mere product of natural forces such as the wind and waves. Ditto the eye, thought Paley. Darwin succeeded in undermining this particular design argument for the existence of God. He says,</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Some contemporary theists who accept the theory of natural selection maintain there is no tension between the theory and the claim that God has guided the evolutionary process by directing mutations to a particular end – the emergence of human beings. However, Darwin himself</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">considered the hypothesis that God guides the evolutionary process in this way is antagonistic to his own theory<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a>. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">On the theory of natural selection, the mutations that drive the evolutionary process are random in the sense that they are not goal-directed, e.g. towards either the adaptive needs of organisms or the production of a certain sort of species.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> To the extent that mutations might be selected by some sort of transcendent being, they would not be selected naturally.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Religious belief is itself now increasingly a focus of scientific investigation. In some cases what is discovered is potentially a threat to the beliefs in question. One example much discussed in the media is the so-called “God helmet” developed by Koren and </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Persinger. The helmet produces</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> a weak magnetic field around the wearer’s head. About 80% of subjects report a "sensed presence" which they interpret as an angel, a deceased person, etc. About one percent say that they sense the presence of God. When the Humanist Susan Blackmore tried the God helmet, she said it produced “the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had”.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">How might these and similar findings threaten religious belief? Not necessarily by demonstrating such beliefs are false. As the psychologist </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Justin Barrett points out:</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them. Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me — should I then stop believing that she does?<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Obviously, even if we could show that experiences of God, angels, or the dead walking among us have a natural, scientifically identified cause, that would not establish that there is no God, that there are no angels, or that the dead don’t walk among us. However, were we to discover that these experiences have such an explanation, and also that, given certain natural facts, people are likely to report such presences anyway whether or not they exist, that would demolish whatever support such experiences might be thought to provide such beliefs.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Other rational threats to religious belief</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, science has threatened and indeed established beyond reasonable doubt the falsity of some religious beliefs. But that’s not to say such beliefs can’t be threatened and undermined in other ways too.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Surely we don’t need to apply the scientific method in order reasonably to rule out the hypothesis that our universe is the creation of a supremely powerful evil <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">deity – the application of reason to our experience can tell us that</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_18" id="_anchor_18" name="_msoanchor_18" style="color: purple;">[AC18]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">. While the universe contains a great deal of pain and suffering and moral evil, it also contains an enormous amount of good (in the form of love, laughter, ice-cream, kindness, rainbows, etc.): far too much good, arguably, for us reasonably to believe this is the creation of such an evil deity. Perhaps an evil god would allow some good as the price paid for greater evils, but such is the scale of the good that exists that it is absurd to believe this world is the creation of such a malevolent being.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">I suspect most of us immediately recognize this just isn’t the sort of world an evil deity would create. Here, it seems, is a god hypothesis we can reasonably set aside even without bringing the scientific method to bear. Observation of the world, I suggest, allows me reasonably to rule out an evil god in much the same way that my observing your trousers allows me reasonably to rule out the presence of elephant in your pocket.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">But if it’s true that we can observe this is not the kind of world an all-powerful and supremely evil deity would create, why might we not also observe that it’s not the kind of world an all-powerful and supremely good god would create either? Surely, given the quantity of pain and suffering we see around us, it’s also reasonable for us to cross that deity off our list of likely candidates? This is, of course, the evidential <i>problem of evil </i>– perhaps the most significant threat to belief in an all-powerful and supremely benevolent god.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The problem of evil may not pose a scientific threat to belief in an all-powerful, all-good god, but that’s not to say that it can’t be significantly enhanced by science. Science is able to reveal huge hidden depths of pain and suffering. It has revealed, for example, that for the two hundred thousand years we humans have lived on this planet about a third to a half of every generation has, on average, died before the age of five (from disease, malnutrition, etc.). The vast scale of this suffering of both children and parents over such a long period of time before the one true God finally got round to revealing himself, his one true salvific religion, and the fact that there’s a good reason for every last ounce of this horror, strikes many humanists as further excellent evidence that there’s no such deity.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">While science and observation are capable of undermining some god beliefs, they are not the only threat. Armchair methods are also capable of refuting a god hypothesis by, for example, revealing that the hypothesis involves an implicit logical contradiction or incoherence (in much the same way that that the hypothesis that there exists a four-sided triangle does). So, for example, perhaps we can show, from the comfort of our armchairs, that the very idea of omnipotence, or omniscience, or of a non-temporal agent that is the creator of the spatio-temporal universe, makes no sense.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">In sumamry, science, and reason more generally, are able to threaten, and indeed demolish, many religious beliefs.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Immunizing strategies</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">When religious and other W-claims are challenged by science and reason, various strategies may be employed in their defence. Here are four examples.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">(i) Selective skepticism</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">When your W-claim is challenged by reason and science, it can be tempting to play a skeptical card. There is, for example, a well-known philosophical puzzle about how to justify our belief that science and reason are reliable methods of arriving at true belief. Surely, any attempt to justify reason by making a case for its reliability will itself employ reason. But then the justification will be circular and thus as hopeless as trying justifying the belief that a second hand car salesman is trustworthy by pointing out that he himself claims to be trustworthy.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Similarly, pointing out, as we did above, that science has a great track record when it comes to exposing falsehoods and revealing the truth is to employ exactly the sort of inductive reasoning on which science is itself based. So it might appear that this kind of justification is also hopelessly circular.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Do these puzzles constitute an insurmountable problem so far as justifying the humanist’s belief that reason and science are reliable methods of arriving at true beliefs? That’s debatable. But they do at least provide those whose beliefs are challenged by reason and science with a nice rhetorical move. In some theological circles a popular response to any serious intellectual challenge to their belief is to say: “Ah, but reason and science are <i>faith positions too</i>, aren’t they? And thus so are all beliefs based on them. So, in terms of reasonableness, we’re all square. My beliefs are no less reasonable than yours. It’s <i>leaps of faith all round!”</i> They then head out the door leaving you to solve the thorny philosophical puzzle they have just thrown in your lap.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">I call this strategy “Going Nuclear”. Those employing it aim to achieve what during the Cold War was called “mutually assured destruction”. Kaboom! By exploding this skeptical device they aim to bring all beliefs down to the same level of (ir)rationality.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The key point to notice about this popular ruse is that the person who employs it almost certainly doesn’t believe what they say about reason. If they really believed all beliefs are equally reasonable, then they would suppose, say, that it’s as reasonable to believe that milk will make you fly as that it won’t. But of course they don’t believe that. They constantly place their trust in reason. Indeed, they regularly trust their lives to reason whenever, say, they trust that the brakes on their car while bringing them safely to a halt.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">In fact, your opponent was almost certainly happy to employ reason up until the point where they started to lose the argument. Only then did it occur to them to get skeptical. You can also be pretty confident that they’ll try using reason to prop up their belief again once the intellectual threat you have raised has been forgotten about.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">In short, your opponent’s skepticism about reason is <i>inconsistent</i>. It’s just a smokescreen device - a position they selectively adopt in order to avoid having to admit that, according to the standards of rationality that they employ in every other corner of their life, what they believe is false. That’s intellectually dishonest.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">(ii) Reinterpretation</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">When a prophecy or piece of religious scripture appears to be contradicted by the evidence, the believer in it will often reinterpret it to make it consistent with the evidence after all. Take failed end-times prophecies, for example. Nostradamus’s famously predicted:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The year 1999 seven months,<br />From the sky will come the great King of Terror.</span></i><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">This was widely claimed to be a prophecy of Armageddon. When July 1999 came and went and Armageddon failed to materialize, the passage was simply <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: purple;">reinterpreted.</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_19" id="_anchor_19" name="_msoanchor_19" style="color: purple;">[AC19]</a> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">More recently, the Christian Harold Camping used the Bible to predict that rapture and Judgement Day would occur on 21 May 2011. When 21 May arrived and nothing happened, Camping insisted Judgement Day had indeed occurred, only in a “spiritual” way (which is why no one noticed). He insisted the Bible was clear that end of the world would then arrive on 21 October 2011.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Genesis account of a six-day creation is no longer taken literally by all Christians (though it still is by many). It too has been reinterpreted.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">This kind of shoehorning - reinterpreting scripture, prophecy, astrological predictions, and so on to make them “fit” whatever evidence shows up - is an immunizing strategy widely adopted both inside and outside of religious contexts.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">(iii) Explaining away</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">For Bible literalists, the suggestion that Genesis should not be interpreted literally is not an option. Evidence supporting a billions-of-years-old universe in which life has existed for billions of years must be made to “fit” their religious belief in some other way.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Contemporary Young Earth Creationists (YECs) have developed a raft of explanations for why scientific discoveries concerning the light from distant stars, carbon-dating, ice cores, chalk deposits, plate tectonics, the fossil record and so on do not, after all, constitute a threat to their belief in a young universe.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The fossil record, for example, is now typically explained by YECs by reference to the Biblical flood on which Noah floated his ark. The deluge created mud deposits which formed many of the sedimentary layers we now find beneath our feet. It also drowned many creatures, including dinosaurs, which become buried and fossilized with those sedimentary layers. The ordering of fossils within the layers is explained in terms of different ecological zones being submerged at different times, in terms of the differing ability of creatures to escape the rising waters (man, being the smartest, would be last to drown, which explains why we only find traces of man in the topmost sedimentary layers), and so on.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Of course, such explanations usually just raise a host of other problems for Young Earth Creationism (YEC). The Flood theory for example, raises some interesting puzzles regarding the Ark. How did Noah get two of every “kind” of creature (including the dinosaurs, such as argentinosaurus at100 tons and 120 feet long each) into a boat with a cross section not much bigger than that of my Victorian terrace house? After the Ark was finally deposited on Mount Ararat, how did Noah get the creatures back across vast oceans to their various habitats? Visit a YEC website and you’ll discover much speculation and theorizing about these questions. What you can be sure of is that the YECs will be able to cook up some sort of explanation. One way or another, they will find a way to make the Biblical account of creation consistent with the available data. Achieving this kind of “fit” is something YECs pride themselves on. Here’s Ken Ham, a leading proponent of YEC:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Increasing numbers of scientists are realizing that when you take the Bible as your basis and build your model of science and history upon it, all the evidence from living animals and plants, the fossils, and the cultures fits. This confirms that the Bible really is the Word of God and can be trusted totally.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">What Ham doesn’t mention here is that any theory, no matter how ludicrous, can be squared with the evidence given enough ingenuity. Believe that the Earth is run by a secret cabal of alien, shape-shifting lizards? Or that the Holocaust never happened? Or that dogs are spies from the planet Venus? Or that the universe is the creation of a supremely powerful and evil deity? All these beliefs can ultimately be made <i>consistent</i> with what we observe, given sufficient patience and imagination. One way or another, every last anomaly can be explained away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">There’s a popular myth about science that if you can make your theory consistent with the evidence, then you have shown that it is confirmed by that evidence – as confirmed as any other theory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Proponents of ludicrous belief systems often exploit this myth. It is exploited by Ken Ham. It may also be exploited by those who reinterpret their preferred scripture or prophecy in order to make it “fit”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">In fact, achieving “fit” and achieving confirmation are not the same thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">As we saw earlier, a theory can be strongly confirmed by making a risky prediction – by predicting something that would be unlikely, or at least not likely, if the theory were false.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">The theory of evolution and common descent, in its fully developed form, does indeed make risky predictions – predictions that turn out to be true. That means it is strongly confirmed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Take the fossil record, for example. The theory predicts fossils will be dug up in a very specific order. It predicts, among other things, that, because mammals and birds are a comparatively late evolutionary development, their fossils will never be discovered within the earlier, pre-Devonian sedimentary layers (which contain over half the fossil history of multicellular organisms). If the theory of evolution were false and YEC true, on the other hand, there would be no particular reason to expect a complete absence of mammal and bird fossils in those earlier deposits (indeed, YECs wouldn’t be at all surprised had such fossils shown up). Yet, among the countless thousands of fossils excavated each year, not a single example of pre-Devonian mammal or bird has ever been found. That’s some coincidence if the theory of evolution is false. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(Note this is just one example of how the theory of evolution is strongly confirmed. There are numerous others.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a>)</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">By contrast, Ken Ham’s brand of YEC studiously avoids making such risky predictions regarding the fossil record. Whatever order the fossils are dug up in is of little consequence to YEC. Mammals and birds in the pre-Devonian? Fine. No mammals and birds in the pre-Devonian? No problem. For this reason, while the ordering of those fossils that have been excavated does strongly confirm the theory of evolution, it does not strongly confirm YEC.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[16]</span></span></span></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[17]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">(iv)The accusation of scientism</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Those who have subjected religious and other W-claims to critical scrutiny and found them wanting are sometimes accused of an irrational bias towards <i>scientism</i> – the view that all meaningful questions can in principle be answered by science.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Scientism is almost certainly false. Consider the question of why the universe has the most fundamental laws that it does, or why it exists at all. These do not appear to be the kind of questions science might, in principle, answer. Any scientifically established law or principle that supposedly accounted for the existence of the universe would merely postpone the mystery – for what, in turn, would explain why that particular law or principle holds?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">The most fundamental moral questions are also widely considered to be questions to which science cannot supply answers. As Hume points out, science reveals what is the case, whereas morality is concerned with what ought to be the case. And it appears we cannot justify “ought” conclusions by appeal to such “is” facts (though Sam Harris has recently challenged this view in his book <i>The Moral Landscape<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">[18]</span></b></span></span></a></i>).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Mathematical and conceptual puzzles would also seem to be the kind of puzzles science can’t solve. Indeed, many classical philosophical puzzles appear, at core, to be conceptual puzzles the solutions to which will require the armchair methods of the philosopher.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">So I think we should acknowledge that there are questions science can’t answer (at least some of which can perhaps be answered in other ways). However, none of this is to say that science, and empirical observation more generally, is incapable of supporting or refuting religious and other W-claims.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">When your belief in a W-claim is threatened, it can be tempting to place its subject matter behind a protective veil. Many insist that claims about gods, ghosts, psychic powers and so on are immune to scientific refutation because they are claims about a realm to which science is necessarily prohibited access.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">True, such beliefs may concern a part of reality that is supposedly unobservable. But the unobservable is not always scientifically off-limits. Subatomic particles and the distant past of this planet cannot be observed either, but, because theories about them often have empirically observable consequences, they are still capable of being empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. The same is true of religious and other W-claims. If someone insists there exists a God who answers petitionary prayers, we can check and see if such prayers are answered. If it is claimed that psychics can communicate with the dead, we can test whether the information they supposedly receive is reliable, and also whether it might have been acquired by some other means. If it is claimed that there exists an all-powerful and supremely evil creator, we can check whether the universe has the sort of character we should then predict it to have. The fact that something is, even in principle, unobservable does not entail that it is not scientifically or empirically investigable.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Admitting that science and reason have not supplied, and perhaps cannot supply, answers to certain fundamental questions does not entail that science and reason can’t pretty conclusively rule certain answers out. Suppose I acknowledge that I currently have no satisfactory answer to the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Does it follow that I should, then, consider the Christian answer a serious contender? No. Suppose Sherlock Holmes is having a bad day. He can’t figure out whodunnit. Still Holmes might still be able reasonably to rule out the butler, who has a cast-iron alibi. Similarly, humanists may not be able to answer all of life’s big questions. It does not follow that they cannot reasonably rule certain answers out – including religious answers.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Further Reading</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Believing Bullshit: How Not to Fall Into An Intellectual Black Hole</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> by Stephen Law (Amherst: Prometheus, 2011) investigates many of the issues raised in this chapter. The book focuses on how belief systems can become intellectual black holes, sucking in the unwary and making them intellectual prisoners. Examples include Christian Science, Young Earth Creationism and belief in psychic powers. The book outlines eight key mechanisms that tend to be involved in both immunizing such belief systems against refutation and creating a veneer of faux reasonableness.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">How to Think About Weird Things</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn (New York: McGraw Hill, 2013) is a good general introduction to philosophy of science, critical thinking and the weighing up of extraordinary claims. The book is expensive, but has been through many past editions, all of which are good and which are often available secondhand.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">, by Prof Christopher C. French and Anna Stone (Basingstoke UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), is an excellent textbook on the psychology of weird beliefs.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Why Statues Weep: The Best of “Skeptic”,</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> by Wendy M Grossman and Christopher C. French (eds.) (Rickmansworth: The Philosophy Press, 2010) contains some entertaining examples of strange claims being properly investigated.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> by Missimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013) is a more academic book that looks at the issue of how to distinguish science from pseudoscience (the so-called “demarcation problem”.</span></div>
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<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_msocom_20" id="_anchor_20" name="_msoanchor_20" style="color: purple;">[AC20]</a> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[1]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">My thanks to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Richard Carrier, Bob Churchill, Wes Morriston, </span><span lang="EN-US">David Papineau and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Luke Tracey for helpful comments on previous drafts or partial drafts.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[2]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">Nothing I say here should be understood to commit me to the view that, say, observation is not theory-laden, that scientific progress is uniform, etc.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[3]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">Philip J. Klass, <i>UFOs: The Public Deceived</i> (Amherst NY, Prometheus Books 1983), p 83.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[4]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Indeed, we might apply what I have called <i>the contamination principle</i> here: given we should be skeptical about the many miraculous parts of Ted and Sarah’s testimony, shouldn’t we also be skeptical even about the more mundane parts, such as that they were visited by a man called “Bert”?</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> </span>This point is developed in relation to testimony concerning the existence and miracles of Jesus <span lang="EN-US">in my paper “Evidence, Miracles and The Existence of Jesus, </span><i>Faith and Philosophy</i> 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Pages 129-151<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[5]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">In characterizing W-claims, I (i) say they are claims to which we are both peculiarly drawn and pretty unreliable, and (ii) provide a series of illustrations – e.g. miracle claims and claims about invisible beings. Notice I mean to define W-claims relationally. Being a W-claim is something like a secondary quality of a claim. What qualifies a claim as a W-claim is just the fact that it is a claim of a sort with which we are peculiarly fascinated and about which we are pretty unreliable. For alien beings with different fascinations and unreliabilities, miracle claims and claims about invisible beings may not be W-claims. While my characterization of W-claims is rough and ready, it is clear enough, I think, that miracle claims and claims about the existence of invisible beings do indeed qualify.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[6]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">H. Benson et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessionary Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessionary Prayer,”<i>American Heart Journal</i> 151 (2006): 934–42.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[7]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">M. W. Krucoff et al., “Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomized Study,” <i>Lancet</i> 366 (2005): 211–17.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[8]</span></a> Darwin (1868), p. 236. – (1868). <i>The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication</i>. New York: Appleton, 2<sup>nd</sup> edition, 1876.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[9]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">For a more detailed discussion of this and related issues see Herman Philipse, “</span>The Real Conflict Between Science and Religion: Alvin Plantinga’s <i>Ignoratio Elenchi” </i>(forthcoming).</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[10]</span></a> <span class="citation">Roxanne Khamsi (December 9, 2004). </span><a href="http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=1424" style="color: purple;">"Electrical brainstorms busted as source of ghosts"</a><span class="citation">. BioEd Online. http://www.bioedonline.org/news/nature-news/electrical-brainstorms-busted-source-ghosts/</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[11]</span></a> Quoted in an email exchange with Robin Marantz Henig in latter’s “Darwin’s God” New York Times 4th March 2007.<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> There are various ways in which this intuitive problem can be more precisely formulated as an argument against the existence of God. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">One of the most sophisticated versions is the abductive argument of Paul Draper. See Paul Draper “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists” (1989) <i>No</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">û</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">s</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">, 23 pp 331-350.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[13]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">For an explanation of this problem of induction see the chapter “How Do I Know The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow?” Stephen Law, <i>The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking</i> (London: Headline, 2003)</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[14]</span></a> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/lie/root-of-the-problem<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[15]</span></a> See for example the talk Origins archive entry by Douglas Theobald, 29+ Evidences for Macro-evolution Part 1: the Unique Universal Phylogenetic Tree. Available online at<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html" style="color: purple;">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[16]</span></a> Elsewhere I have said that because Ham’s theory makes no predictions – takes no risks – regarding the fossil record, so it <i>cannot</i> be confirmed by the fossil record. See “But It Fits!” in my <i>Believing Bullshit</i>(Amherst NY: Prometheus Press, 2011). I now realize I did not get this quite right. Were we to start excavating fossils that were clearly stamped “Made by God in 4,004 BC”, etc., that might indeed confirm – even strongly confirm – YEC, despite the fact that YEC does not <i>predict</i> such a discovery. True, such a discovery may not be probable given YEC, but, given the discovery is nevertheless considerably more probable on YEC than otherwise, it would still confirm YEC to a significant degree.<span style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[17]</span></a> Also notice that each new assumption Ham introduces to try to explain away the evidence against YEC has the effect of reducing the prior probability of his overall theory. Ham succeeds in endlessly protecting YEC against empirical refutation only by endlessly reducing the prior probability that YEC is true.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1905686568472747305#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="color: purple;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[18]</span></a> <span lang="EN-US">Sam Harris, <i>The Moral Landscape</i> (London: Black Swan, 2012).</span></div>
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crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-40641868851872732582014-07-25T22:18:00.001-07:002014-07-25T22:18:40.215-07:00The Quest for Understanding » IAI TV - Peter Atkins<a href="http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/the-quest-for-understanding-auid-386">The Quest for Understanding » IAI TV</a>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-8241208720948488022014-06-01T12:52:00.002-07:002014-06-01T12:57:20.292-07:00Decline in UK Religion over 30 years: 1983-2012The British Social Attitudes survey is in its 30th year. Affiliation to the Catholic Church has held up but I predict that this will fall as more Catholics become aware of the clergy sexual abuse scandals and other abuses of Catholic power.<br />
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source: http://bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/read-the-report/key-findings/identities.aspx<br />
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Less religious attachment</h4>
<div class="p2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, 'Droid Sans'; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="Key _Findings _PQ_5" src="http://bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/media/28806/key_findings_pq_5_209x137.jpg" height="137" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; float: right; font-size: 12px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 1496px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="209" />We start by examining whether people's attachments to these three identities are indeed in decline, beginning with religion. Here there is little doubt that a substantial change has taken place, with a marked decline in the proportion who describe themselves as belonging to a particular religion. In 1983, around two in three people (68 per cent) considered themselves to belong to one religion or another; in 2012, only around half (52 per cent) do so. As our <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Personal relationships</strong> chapter sets out, this decline is in practice a decline in attachment to Anglicanism; in 1983 two in five people (40 per cent) said they were Anglican, and the Church of England could still reasonably lay claim to being England's national church (and thus, arguably, to some extent its fount of moral authority). But now only 20 per cent do so. In contrast, the proportion saying they belong to a religion other than Christianity has tripled from two to six per cent. Britain's religious landscape has not only become smaller but also more diverse.[2] </div>
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<img alt="Key _Findings _Figure _0.1" src="http://bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/media/28923/key_findings_figure_0.1_499x321.jpg" height="321" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 1496px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="499" /></div>
crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-9982505607796446252014-04-27T04:53:00.000-07:002014-04-27T04:53:07.925-07:00Americans question basic concepts of scienceAmericans have little doubt about the scientific evidence that smoking can cause cancer. However, many Americans still question some of the basic concepts of modern science. <a href="http://ap-gfkpoll.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/AP-GfK-March-2014-Poll-Topline-Final_SCIENCE.pdf">AP-GfK poll</a>*<br />
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As faith in a supreme being rises, confidence in the Big Bang, climate change and the age of the Earth decline, according to the poll.<br />
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"Views on science may be tied to what people see with their own eyes. The closer an issue is to their own bodies, and the less complicated, the easier it is for people to believe." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology#Prominent_historians_of_the_field">John Staudenmaier</a><br />
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"Science, in its really pure form, is just telling you what the state of the world is. The more in-tune with reality your beliefs are, the more you are in a position to make a wise decision. Ignorance of science could also prove to be dangerous - parents' reluctance towards vaccines can harm others by spreading disease. Science is not meant to dictate policy. Rather, it is used to tell others what the state of the world is, and how officials respond to that is a statement of values." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_T._Willingham">Daniel T. Willingham</a><br />
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"It is enormously distressing that science, which is our most powerful means for gaining insight into the world, insight into truth, is so mistrusted by so many people. Understanding scientific ideas is not just academic, it's essential to a vital democracy. Issues like climate change or nanoscience or genetically modified foods, are scientific at their core." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Greene">Brian Greene</a><br />
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"Some people may not believe in science because it draws on evidence that they don't experience in their everyday lives. Everyone draws conclusions about the world around them - scientists and non-scientists alike - but non-scientists base those conclusions on much weaker evidence: a single observation, a gut feeling, hearsay from others. When those 'homespun' conclusions contradict the conclusions of science, it's difficult to recognize that they rest on much flimsier grounds." <a href="http://www.oxy.edu/faculty/andrew-shtulman">Andrew Shtulman</a><br />
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"Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Schekman">Randy Schekman</a><br />
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via Briane Greene on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BrianGreenePhysicist/posts/866320183393563?stream_ref=1">facebook</a>. Source: <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-big-bang-evolution-ap-poll/">CBS News</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* margin of error for the total sample: +/- 3.4% at the 95% confidence level.</span>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-33693351395252333262014-01-01T21:46:00.000-08:002013-10-27T08:51:58.157-07:00Jim Al-Khalili - new President of British Humanist Association<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YAJpFsfbYAQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
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3m40s – 4m42s: ‘First and foremost, as you may have gathered, I am a scientist. So I view the world as a scientist views the world. I'm curious about the universe and our place in it, sometimes to the point of obsession. That’s what defines me as a scientist. I have a rational unshakeable conviction that our universe is understandable, that mysteries are only mysteries because we have yet to figure out, the almost always logical answers. For me there is simply no room, no need, for a supernatural divine being to fill in the gaps in our understanding. We’ll get there, we’ll fill in those gaps with objective scientific truths: [with] answers that aren't subjective, because of cultural or historical whims or personal biases, but because of empirically testable and reproducible truths. We may not get the full picture, we may never get the full picture, but science allows us to get ever closer.’ Jim Al-Khalili, AGM 2013<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: start;">Jim Al-Khalili 11th </span>President<br />
- British Humanist Association</td></tr>
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In January 2013, Professor Jim Al-Khalili became the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Humanist_Association#BHA_Presidents">11th</a> (after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Toynbee" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Polly Toynbee">Toynbee</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Smith_(comedian)" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Linda Smith (comedian)">Smith</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Rayner" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Claire Rayner">Rayner</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Bondi" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Hermann Bondi">Bondi</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hemming" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="James Hemming">Hemming</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._J._Blackham" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="H. J. Blackham">Blackham</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Melly" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="George Melly">Melly</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Leach" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Edmund Leach">Leach</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.J._Ayer" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="A.J. Ayer">Ayer</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px;" title="Julian Huxley">Huxley</a>) <a href="http://humanism.org.uk/about/our-people/president/">President of the British Humanist Association</a> (BHA). Jim will retain the Presidency for 3 years.<br />
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Humanists4Science Committee would like to congratulate Jim Al-Khalili on becoming the BHA President.<br />
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<a href="http://humanism.org.uk/about/our-people/president/">BHA quote</a> Jim Al-Khalili:-<br />
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"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."</blockquote>
In the March/April edition of <a href="http://newhumanist.org.uk/">New Humanist Magazine</a> Jim Al-Khalili says:-<br />
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"A lot of people say science is just one way of looking at the world, at reality, and poets and musicians and, of course, people of faith, have said there are other ways. I don't buy that. For me there is an objective reality that is there and real. For a theoretical physicist who's trained in thinking about quantum mechanics, which involves the idea that by observing something you alter its nature, you have to have some sort of working definitions of reality"</blockquote>
Amongst his many recent achievements Jim Al-Khalili hosts the Radio 4 programme "The Life Scientific". Each week, Jim al-Khalili invites a leading scientist to tell us about their life and work. He'll talk to Nobel laureates as well as the next generation of beautiful minds to find out what inspires and motivates them and what their discoveries might do for us. All 46 episodes can be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tls/all">downloaded</a>. Read Jim Al-Khalilis' own <a href="http://www.jimal-khalili.com/">official</a> website.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2z70lfW2Pd9UqfxGhIMqqklJ4IRTyqcBzMIwSRnTA65MdwbEA6q5P_tyJAg4LHQ06c14bBWwG0Xz0sjGfDFUOiMVwvCLZukvitWxlVkEGmD0W2fxiP4l9Z2NY-T8ys34H2qPXjsqh7gHU/s1600/chris-street-120pxW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2z70lfW2Pd9UqfxGhIMqqklJ4IRTyqcBzMIwSRnTA65MdwbEA6q5P_tyJAg4LHQ06c14bBWwG0Xz0sjGfDFUOiMVwvCLZukvitWxlVkEGmD0W2fxiP4l9Z2NY-T8ys34H2qPXjsqh7gHU/s1600/chris-street-120pxW.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chris Street 2nd Chair <br />
- Humanists4Science</td></tr>
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Chris Street<br />
Chair <a href="http://www.humanists4science.org.uk/">Humanists4Science</a><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
@<a href="https://twitter.com/bhahumanists">bhahumanists</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/jimalkhalili">jimalkhalili</a> belated congrats from Humanists4Science. Can we assist you? @<a href="https://twitter.com/hum4sci">hum4sci</a> <a href="http://t.co/W18k2OAnRU" title="http://humanists4science.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/jim-al-khalili-11th-president-of.html">humanists4science.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/jim-al…</a><br />
— Humanists4Science (@Hum4Sci) <a href="https://twitter.com/Hum4Sci/status/316277315803951105">March 25, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Humanists4science (H4S) is <a href="http://humanism.org.uk/local-groups/political-special-interest/">affiliated</a> to the BHA. The H4S Mission is "To promote, within the humanist community, the application of the scientific method to issues of concern to broader society." Our Vision is "A world in which important decisions are made by applying the scientific method to evidence rather than according to superstition."crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-27426807025019793172013-11-20T22:14:00.001-08:002013-11-20T22:14:03.938-08:00Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims : Nature News & Comment<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientific-claims-1.14183">Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims : Nature News & Comment</a>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-36044551903986551952013-10-27T04:00:00.001-07:002013-10-27T07:48:33.092-07:00▶ Science Britannica w Prof Brian Cox E2 Method and Madness - YouTube<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_inBivOj4B0">▶ Science Britannica w Prof Brian Cox E2 Method and Madness - YouTube</a><br />
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Great Introduction to Scientific Method as recommended by my tutor Dr. Yoseph in Block 2: Scientific Investigation and Experimental Design of <a href="http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/s825.htm">S825 Developing research skills in science</a>.<br />
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Fantastic!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_inBivOj4B0" width="480"></iframe>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-82720591967551164752013-10-27T02:45:00.001-07:002013-10-27T02:45:19.496-07:00Albert Einstein’s 10 Best Quotes Einstein9<a href="http://topcultured.com/albert-einsteins-10-best-quotes/einstein9-2/">Albert Einstein’s 10 Best Quotes Einstein9 – Top Cultured</a><br />
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crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-75170682300708352562013-10-16T06:03:00.000-07:002013-10-16T06:11:55.878-07:00Kicking away the Godly ladderIf there's one topic that gets humanists excited it's religion. Odd, really, as we're supposed to have left it behind. But religion is more than a collection of superstitions, rules and peculiar habits. Religions have been integral parts of most past and current societies. Religion matters both for its influence on individuals and the way it shapes societies. <br />
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So here is a book that deals with the social dimension:<br />
<i> Big Gods: How religion transformed co-operation and conflict.</i><br />
<i> Ara Norenzayan</i><br />
<i> Princeton University Press, 2013.</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929361.300-no-need-for-gods-any-more.html#.Ul6PwBASMYM">Norenzayan's thesis</a> is that the great monotheisms became dominant because they enabled societies to become bigger and thus able to dominate their competitors. The imperial and expansionist histories of Christianity and Islam, though not of Judaism, certainly support this view though earlier large empires didn't seem to need it.<br />
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But, for me, Norenzayan's most interesting points relate to the step after monotheism. He says that strong state institutions, such as police, can substitute for the all-seeing Jehovah God. A few societies, mostly in Scandinavia, have outgrown God and their people behave well without his presence. They have, he says, "climbed the ladder of religion and then kicked it away".<br />
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In the UK religious belief is in free-fall but we have not achieved the Scandinavian Utopia. Perhaps the truth is a bit more complex than Norenzayan thinks.David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-11001185337232131802013-10-16T04:17:00.001-07:002013-10-16T05:10:34.195-07:00Scientific cycles?I've argued before that scientific method is applicable to much more than the subjects of the traditional hard and soft sciences. At least some aspects of history, human geography, social policy and morality are susceptible to empirical research. If you doubt this I suggest you look at the way that Steven Pinker uses data to test Kant's theories in <i>Better Angels of our Nature</i>. <br />
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One of the approaches used by would-be theorists is to look for cycles in history. Hegel, Marx and Toynbee all did so with decidedly mixed results. Now<a href="http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/people/turchin/"> Peter Turchin</a>, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, <a href="http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Arise_Clio_Nature.pdf">has joined their ranks</a>. Turchin claims that societies show 2-300 year cycles and that just three factors - economic output per head, the balance of labour supply and demand and attitudes to wealth redistribution - are enough to explain social evolution. Indeed, he <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html?page=2#.Ul503hASMYM">says </a>that his equations exactly match real wage rates since 1930.<br />
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I don't know if Turchin is right but his predictions are quantitative and can be tested. That's science.David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-66661580459160014172013-09-24T11:51:00.000-07:002013-09-27T08:04:52.649-07:00Scientific Method vs. Theology - Dr. Peter Atkins<div class="tr_bq">
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Distinguished British Humanist Association <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/about/our-people/distinguished-supporters/peter-atkins/">supporter</a> & physical chemist emeritus Prof. Peter Atkins discusses <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/peter_atkins/behe.html">his review</a> of Michael Behes' book 'Darwins Black Box' with Roger Bingham.<br />
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Roger Bingham quotes Atkins review 'With hard work and even the possibility of progress dismissed, Dr Behe waves his magic wand, discards the scientific method, and launches into his philosopher's stone of universal explanation: it was all designed. Presenting this silly, lazy, ignorant, and intellectually abominable view -- essentially discarding reason and invoking that first resort of the intellectually challenged (that is, God) -- he present what he thinks is the most wondrous of theories, that the only way of achieving complexity is by design. There we see Dr. Behe dangling from his petard, proclaiming his "science" of intelligent design, while not troubling to seek the regulation of that awesome monitor of scientific enterprise, peer review.'</blockquote>
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Peter Atkins says 'Intelligent design is a scientific abomination [...] it is a representation of intellectual laziness driven by the desire to turn as many other countries as possible into Theocracies [...] intelligent design is so alien to the scientific spirit [...] science is hard work, unlike the intelligent designers, scientists aren't sliding down hills on tabogans, they are climbing mountain peaks.'</blockquote>
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Peter Atkins <a href="http://www.templeton.org/purpose/essay_atkins.html">answers</a> the Templeton Organisation question 'Does the Universe have a purpose?'<br />
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"No. In the absence of evidence, the only reason to suppose that it does is sentimental wishful thinking and sentimental wishful thinking, which underlies all religion, is an unreliable tool for the discovery of truth of any kind. </blockquote>
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The extension of analogies is another tool that accompanies wishful thinking in the toolboxes of the credulous. That an intricate mechanism, such as an engine or even a spoon, is commonly associated with a purpose cannot be taken to be evidence that the universe as a whole is associated with a purpose, any more than the existence of a cheetah implies that it has been designed with a purpose in mind. Cheetahs have evolved by the bloody, directionless, unguided processes of evolution: they have not been provided for the purpose of killing antelopes. </blockquote>
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Similarly, the universe has evolved over its 14 billion years of current existence by the directionless, unguided processes that are manifestations of the working out of physical laws: it has not been made for the purpose of providing platforms to enable cheetahs to stalk their prey or humans to generate great art or to entertain delusions. That we do not yet understand anything about the inception of the universe should not mean that we need to ascribe to its inception a supernatural cause, a creator, and therefore to associate with that creator's inscrutable mind a purpose, whether it be divine, malign, or even whimsically capricious. </blockquote>
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Theologians typically focus on questions that they have invented for their own puzzlement. Some theologians are perplexed by the nature of life after death, a notion they have invented without a scrap of evidence. </blockquote>
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Some are mystified by the existence of evil in a world created by an infinitely loving God, another notion that theologians have invented but which dissolves into nothing once it is realized that there is no God. The question of cosmic purpose is likewise an invented notion, wholly without evidential foundation, and equally dismissible as patently absurd. </blockquote>
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We should not regard as great the questions that have been invented solely for the sake of eliciting puzzlement. </blockquote>
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I regard the existence of this extraordinary universe as having a wonderful, awesome grandeur. It hangs there in all its glory, wholly and completely useless. To project onto it our human-inspired notion of purpose would, to my mind, sully and diminish it."</blockquote>
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Does the Universe have a purpose? No! says Peter Atkins ... a lot of theology is grappling with phantoms. Theologians have invented this almost self consistent subject which has no contact with physical reality and invent questions that they taunt humanity with. eg 'why has the universe got a purpose?' or 'Why does <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy">theodicy</a> explain the problem of evil?' ... I could propose that there is a belt of planets between Mars and Earth which has no effect on the orbits of the known planets - great for after dinner gossip but not for serious consideration'.</blockquote>
crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-27981394610996598162013-07-21T21:51:00.000-07:002014-11-02T04:17:14.363-08:00Can Science Solve Every Mystery?' Peter Atkins, David Papineau, Peter S Williams debateScience can solve most mysteries says Peter Atkins and David Papineau - Peter S Williams disagrees.<br />
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Unfortunately this debate at Conway Hall in London on 8th June 2013 took place on the opening day of the <a href="http://bhaconference.org.uk/">BHA Annual Conference</a> in Leeds. I went to the Leeds conference. However fortunately through the wonders of technology, both the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/BritishHumanists/search?query=%27Can+Science+Solve+Every+Mystery%3F%27">London</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/BritishHumanists/search?query=%22BHA+Annual+Conference+2013%22">Leeds</a> events have been videoed, so I am delighted I can effectively be in two places at once!<br />
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Peter S Williams on 'Can Science Solve Every Mystery?' <span style="color: red;">(video below)</span></h3>
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David Papineau on 'Can Science Solve Every Mystery?' <span style="color: red;">(video below)</span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzwCbYPqUC6KPrkB7-zXE3iL8hHXIUAJ2A-Y4PuTh1Xnssm-nZZ1WgCoOxnZqju4I3OpIKcNqci_E14fv_CY4r0hvAWpfIW6TgMbidRZJKiMR82ckiGu3epuBgeMEiTOtkOnyj2c2Kwkx6/s1600/david-papineau-materialism.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a>David Papineau <span style="font-weight: normal;">(to 15 minutes)</span> - Materialism: <span style="font-weight: normal;">Our world is a fully material world - their is no need to go outside physics to explain everything about the Universe. If we posit non-material things, then we cannot make sense of their ability to interact with the material world. They would be epiphenomenal - they will have no effect on the world we can know about eg for a non-material mind eg god. There are no mental or vital forces outside the material world.</span></h3>
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Can Science Solve Every Mystery?' <span style="color: red;">(video below)</span></h3>
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Peter Atkins uses the term '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism">Scientismist</a>' as the melding of the words 'scientism' and 'scientist'.<br />
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5. Origins: i) The origin of the cosmos ii) The origin of life iii) The origin of physical laws</div>
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Peter Atkins: 13m: 'In my view the afterlife is the most evil of the core aspects of the religious understanding of the world. Only badness, only evil stems from the concept of the afterlife'<br />
Peter Atkins: 15m: 'Whereas most religious concepts are harmless, the concept of the afterlife is deeply harmful think of the ways it enable people to acquire power... quenches human aspiration ... encourages martyrs to end lives'<br />
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Panel questions on 'Can Science Solve Every Mystery?' <span style="color: red;">(video below)</span></h3>
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<br />crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-85341605171212374492013-06-20T09:36:00.000-07:002013-06-20T09:36:10.942-07:00Pareto and Policing: The need for UNcommonsense<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829212.000-heed-the-evidence-cops-need-more-than-common-sense.html#.UcMptJwSMnI">Last week's New Scientist</a> reminds me that crime is not random. Criminals, victims and the times and places of crimes are all much more likely to follow a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Applications">Pareto distribution </a>('20% of the villains commit 80% of the crimes') than a random distribution. <br />
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This is hardly a new idea. Police officers and criminologists know about habitual offenders and the likelihood of violence outside pubs on Saturday nights. So far so obvious. Yet police forces have been reluctant to apply these insights systematically. And the public still like to see patrols on their streets - even if their streets see little crime. (Which is, in any case, not actually reduced by random patrols.) <br />
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Just as some kinds of people are more likely to become criminals than others (men rather than women, young men rather than older ones just for a start) so some people and properties are more likely to become victims. It makes good sense to at least ensure that those concerned know of the enhanced risk and understand what they could do about it. For civil liberty reasons there should be no criticism of those who do not adjust their behaviour but many people will be only to happy to fit better locks and keep out of dangerous areas. <br />
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In fact the evidence about crime if often counter-intuitive. Most people believe that crime is rising and that primitive societies are more peaceful than ours. Neither is true. In the UK, for instance, violence, criminal damage and burglary have all fallen since 2006. Theft, exceptionally, fell until 2009 but then rose. <br />
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As humanists we should ask for evidence whenever people say silly things about crime. <br />
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Hmm - sounds like a lifetime job!David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-14886245151426266892013-05-06T16:15:00.001-07:002013-05-06T16:15:44.051-07:00Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJmRbSX8Rqo">Baloney Detection Kit, (Dr. Michael Shermer) - YouTube</a><br />
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reposted from:<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">crabsallover <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">highlights</span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><b>key points</b></span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">comments / links</span>.</div>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-79860694604009378772013-04-30T01:14:00.000-07:002013-04-30T04:13:11.689-07:00Comment on draft of book on "Humanism: reason, science and skepticism"source: <a href="http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more">http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more</a><br />
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This is the draft of the first chapter of a book sent to Stephen Law to make comments on. Add YOUR comments <a href="http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more">here</a> on Stephen Laws' blogspot. Please remember to say you heard about this request for comments via Humanists4Science.<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What are science and reason?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">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?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">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</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(1561-1626)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">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 <i>test</i> their theories. Scientists derive from their theories predictions that can be independently checked by observation.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Take for example, the old Aristotelean theory that all heavenly objects revolve around the earth. With the aid of an early telescope Galileo observed that Jupiter had moons that revolved around it, not the Earth. He thereby <i>falsified </i>Aristotle’s theory.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Theories can also be <i>confirmed</i> by observation – if you can derive from your theory a prediction that is unlikely to be true if the theory is false, then discovering that the prediction is true confirms your theory. For example, to explain the erratic orbit of Uranus given Newton’s Laws of Gravitation, astronomers posited the existence of an as yet undiscovered planet. From their theory, they predicted the location of this new planet, looked, and discovered a planet there (Neptune). Because it was unlikely that there should happen to be a planet at that spot if their theory was false, this observation strongly confirmed their astronomical theory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Systematic and rigorous testing, rooted in what we can directly observe of the world around us, is the cornerstone of the scientific method.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> Emphasis is placed on formulating theories and predictions with clarity and precision, focussing, wherever possible, on phenomena that are mathematically quantifiable and that can be objectively and precisely measured, e.g. using a calibrated instrument.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Non-scientific approaches to rationally assessing beliefs</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The scientific method is a powerful tool, but surely not every reasonable belief is arrived at by means of it. People held beliefs, and held them reasonably, long before the development of the scientific method.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Suppose someone tells me they have an elephant in their trouser pocket. Given the absence of any large bulges in their trousers, it’s entirely reasonable for me to reject this claim: there’s no elephant there. True, I make this judgement on the basis of what I observe, but this could hardly be called science – certainly not as I have defined the term above. We engaged in this sort of reasoning long before the development of the scientific method.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Let’s also remember that beliefs can also be supported or refuted by non-empirical means (that’s to say, without relying observation of the external world) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: red; font-size: 14pt;">[or rationalism]</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">. Take mathematical truths, for example. That twelve times twelve is one hundred and forty-four is something you can establish from the comfort of your armchair – by reason alone. So too can other conceptual truths. It’s possible, for example to figure out </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt;">whether my </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14pt;">great grandmother's uncle's grandson is my second cousin once removed by just unpacking these concepts and examining the logical relations that hold between them. Again you can do this from the comfort of your armchair. No empirical investigation or testing is required.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Rather more significant conceptual discoveries can also be made from your armchair. Galileo famously refuted the Aristotelean view that two balls of differing mass will consequently fall at different speeds by means of a thought-experiment. Galileo asks us to imagine that the two balls are now connected by a chain. This combination of objects will now have an even greater combined mass, and so, given Aristotle’s theory, should fall faster than they did individually. Yet, given Aristotle’s theory, the less massive ball should function as a brake on the more massive ball, and so the chained balls should fall more slowly than did the more massive ball. Galileo could demonstrate, from the comfort of his armchair, without applying the scientific method, that Aristotle’s view generates a logical contradiction, and so cannot be true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">So, even while acknowledging that science, as I have characterized it here, is an extraordinarily powerful tool, we should also acknowledge that non-scientific, but nevertheless rational</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: red; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> methods also have their place when it comes to arriving at reasonable belief – including armchair methods. Science is merely <i>one</i> way – albeit a particularly important way – of arriving at reasonable belief.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What’s so great about reason and science?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Why should we favour the application of science and reason over other methods of arriving at beliefs, such as picking beliefs at random, or believing what we would like to be true, or believing what a psychic tells us?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Advocates of science often point to its extraordinary track record. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="color: #333333;">We have only had </span><span style="color: blue;">the fully-developed scientific method for about 400 years - just five of my lifetimes.</span><span style="color: #333333;"> Yet in that short time it has utterly transformed our understanding of the world and the character of our lives. Four hundred years ago, Westerners believed they inhabited a universe just a few thousand years old, created in just a few days. They possessed almost no effective medicine and relied on horses or their own legs to get around. Through science </span><span style="color: blue;">we have discovered the universe is about 13.75 billion years old</span><span style="color: #333333;">, have developed electricity, computers, unravelled the genetic code, developed vaccines and visited the moon.</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #333333; font-size: medium;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">True, scientific theories are overturned, and of course it may turn out that many of our best current theories are mistaken. Scientific theories are often adopted only tentatively and cautiously. Nevertheless, the scientific method has allowed us to overturn a great many myths and make enormous progress in understanding the nature of the universe we inhabit and our place within it. While what scientists assert is sometimes dismissed by critics as being “just a theory” (that is often said about the theory of evolution, for example), a great many scientific theories are extraordinarily well-confirmed. Yes it is <i>possible</i> that any given scientific claim, no matter how well-confirmed, might turn out to be false. But “possible” does not mean probable. When it comes to such scientific claims as that the Earth goes round the sun, or that life has existed - and indeed evolved - on the surface of this planet for more than just a few thousand years, they are now confirmed to such an extent that it is ludicrous to suggest they might be false.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Science, and reason more generally, are valued by humanists because of their <i>ability to reveal, or at least get us closer to, the truth</i>. Science and reason offer us <i>truth-sensitive</i> ways of arriving at beliefs.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Humans have a remarkable capacity for generating false but nevertheless impressively rich and seductive systems of belief. Almost every culture has evolved belief in invisible and magical beings, such as ghosts, spirits, demons or gods. Belief in the magical power of objects, in psychic powers, in precognition and end-of-world prophecies, remains widespread across much of the developed world. Belief in non-supernatural but nevertheless bizarre phenomena such as Nessie (the Loch Ness monster), alien-piloted flying saucers, alien abduction, conspiracy theories involving 9/11, the moon landings and the Holocaust, and alternative histories involving ancient alien architects is also rife. Our vulnerability to such false belief systems is well-documented. Even intelligent, well-educated people are vulnerable (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of that quintessentially rational fictional character Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies, and was successfully hoaxed by two little girls who faked photographs of fairies with their box brownie camera).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Very many of these beliefs systems are rooted in <i>testimony</i> – reports, supposedly originating with eyewitness to events such as miracles, amazing cures, precognition, and bizarre, seemingly piloted objects in our skies.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">One particularly striking series of reports concerned an object that appeared over the building site of a new nuclear power station back in 1967. Sanitation workers claimed they saw a large lighted object. Then a guard confirmed the sighting. The police arrived. An officer said the object “was about half the size of the moon, and it just hung there over the plant. Must have been there nearly two hours.” The object vanished at sunrise. The next night, the same thing occurred. The county deputy sheriff described seeing a “large lighted object”. An auxiliary police officer reported “five objects – they appeared to be burning. An aircraft passed by while I was watching. They seemed to be 20 times the size of a plane.” A Wake county magistrate who arrived on the scene claimed to witness “a rectangular object, looked like it was on fire… We figured it about the size of a football field. It was huge and very bright.” There was also hard evidence evidence to support these reports - local air traffic control also reported an unidentified blip on their scope.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Local news reporters finally arrived to investigate. The object appeared again at five a.m. When they attempted to chase the object in a car, they found they couldn’t catch up with it. Eventually, they pulled up and looked at the object through a long camera lens. “Yep, that’s the planet Venus alright,” noted the photographer.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Though this might not strike many of us as remotely likely, the various eyewitnesses to the large illuminated object hanging over the nuclear plant had seen nothing more than Venus. Venus is one of the most common sources of UFO reports. That anomalous radar blip was just a coincidence.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">What’s interesting about this case is that, if it had not been solved by a bit of good luck – by those reporters showing up and publicizing the truth – it could very easily have gone down in the annals of UFO-logy as one of the great unsolved cases. UFO buffs would no doubt have seized upon it and said: “Here we have, <i>sincere</i>, <i>multiple, trained eye-witnesses</i> - workers, policemen, a deputy sheriff and a magistrate. They have produced largely <i>consistent</i> reports of a bizarre lighted object hanging over the plant. They have <i>no motive</i> to give false reports (indeed, such officials are often hesitant and embarrassed about giving such reports). It’s absurd to suppose they might all have just have just seen a planet. Don’t forget their claims were supported by hard evidence in the form of that radar blip. Surely the <i>best explanation</i> of these reports is that there really was a large lighted object hanging over that plant.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Fortunately, we did get lucky and now know the truth. What this case illustrates is that human beings are remarkably prone to generating such false reports, and for a very wide variety of reasons. This particular example was produced by an optical illusion and a coincidence (the radar blip), but take out a subscription to <i>Skeptical Inquirer</i> (published in the US) or <i>The Skeptic Magazine</i> (UK) and you will discover that such amazing reports are constantly being explained by reference to a wide variety of far-too-easily-dismissed-or-overlooked mundane mechanisms.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The moral is: clearly, a significant number of such otherwise-unexplained reports are going to be made <i>anyway</i>, whether or not there really are any visiting alien spacecraft, psychics, or miracles. But then the existence of such testimony is not good evidence that such phenomena are real.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">True, it’s often reasonable to take testimony at face value. If Ted and Mary, a couple I know well and have learned to trust, tell me that a man called Bob visited them last night, I’ll rightly take their word for it. But if Ted and Mary add that Bob flew round the room by flapping his arms, died and then came back to life, then it’s no longer reasonable for me to just take their word for it that these things happened. When it comes to such claims, we should raise the evidential bar much higher because we know that such reports – including even reports that appear very hard to explain in mundane terms – are going to be made from time to time anyway, whether or not there’s any truth to them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">One variety of false belief to which we’re particularly prone is belief in hidden agency – in hidden beings with their own beliefs and aims – where in truth there are none. We’re particularly quick to appeal to hidden agents when presented with significant questions to which we lack answers. When we could not understand why the heavenly bodies moved in the way they do, we supposed that they must be other agents – gods. When we could not explain natural diseases and disasters we supposed they must be the work of malevolent agents, such as witches or demons. When we couldn’t explain why plants grew, or the seasons rolled by, we supposed that there must be sprites, or nature spirits, or other agents responsible for these things. Was a result of this natural tendency to reach for mysterious hidden agents when faced with such mysteries, we have populated our world with an extraordinary range of hidden and mysterious beings and developed extraordinarily rich and complex narratives about them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Those who are broadly skeptical about such claims often refer to them somewhat disparagingly as “woo”. As we have seen, woo claims – or W-claims, as I’ll call them – are obviously a diverse bunch, involving psychic powers, alien abduction, cryptozoology (big foot, Nessie, etc.) past life regression, end-times prophecies, miracles, ghosts, fairies, demons and gods. They are claims with which we are peculiarly fascinated (which explains why they feature so much in tabloid newspapers, fiction, films, and so on), and to which we are very easily drawn. Clearly, while not all may be false, very, many are. Very many have been debunked. Many are mutually incompatible (many god claims, for example, are mutually exclusive – a great many of them must be false).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The humanist position is that we should take a <i>skeptical</i> attitude towards reports of miracles, alien visitation, and so on. We should not assume they are false (some may not be). However, humanists, as a rule, believe we should subject such reports to close rational and scientific scrutiny, and acknowledge that our inability to find a plausible-sounding but mundane explanation for such reports is, as it stands, not good evidence that they are true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Notice that reason I am giving here for being skeptical about such reports is <i>not</i> that what is reported is impossible or even improbable (some religious insist that if there is a God, then his performing miracles is neither impossible nor improbable; thus skepticism about religious miracles based on the assumption that miracles are impossible or improbable just presupposes there’s no God). It’s not impossible, or even very improbable, that there exist bizarre and as yet undiscovered creatures that humans occasionally glimpse. The reason we should be pretty skeptical about such cryptozoological reports (Nessie, Big Foot, and so on) is <i>not</i> that such creatures are impossible, or even improbable, but that such reports are going to be made fairly regularly anyway whether or not they’re true.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The scientist and humanist Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Under the heading “extraordinary claims” Sagan would certainly include what I am calling W-claims. And Sagan is correct about W-claims – we really should raise the evidential bar much higher than usual before accepting them. Why? If for no other reason than that we have an extraordinary track record of unreliability when it comes to making them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The world is chock full of competing W-claims, including religious claims. They are claims to which we are both easily drawn and peculiarly vulnerable. If we step out into the marketplace of ideas as willing to accept someone’s testimony that they have psychic powers or a direct line to God as that they had baked beans for lunch, and our heads are soon going to fill up with nonsense. If we value truth, it’s important we apply science and reason as best we can - as, if you like, a filter. False beliefs may still get through, but subjecting claims – <i>especially</i> W-claims – to rational and/or scientific scrutiny before accepting them gives us our best chance of having mostly true beliefs.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Let’s now turn to some examples of some specifically religious claims that have failed to pass rational and/or scientific scrutiny.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">C Science as a threat to religious belief</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Many religious claims have been falsified, or at least shown to be rather less than well-founded, as a result of scientific investigation. Here are few examples:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">Young Earth Creationism.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> The Young Earth Creationists (YEC) believe that the entire universe was created by God approximately 6,000 years ago (certainly less than 10,000 years ago). Their estimate is based on Biblical sources. In the 17th Century, using the Old and New Testaments as his source, Bishop James Ussher calculated that the moment of creation during the night before the 23rd October 4004 BC. Young Earth Creationism has since been empirically falsified in many ways by the cosmological, geological, biological, archeological and various other sciences. </span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">An Earth-centered universe.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> Back in the early 17th Century, the dominant cosmology, endorsed by the Catholic Church, placed the Earth at the centre of the universe. The other heavenly bodies, including the sun, revolved around it. This view was also supported by scripture. For example, </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Psalms 96:10 says “the world is established, it shall never be moved." And in<i> </i>Joshua 10:12-13, Joshua commands the sun to “stand still”, which suggests that the sun moves. This cosmology was rejected by Galileo (who was accused of rejecting it without proof, and was subsequently shown the instruments of torture and condemned to house imprisonment as a result). Science has, of course established, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Galileo was right and the previously dominant religious view wrong.</span><br />
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;">The power of prayer.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 14pt;"> Many people believe in the power of petitionary prayer. For example, it is often claim that praying for people with a disease improves their chances of recovery. Yet recent rigorously-conducted large-scale scientific studies do not support this view. Indeed they undermine it. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;">In 2006, <i>American Heart Journal</i> published the results of a $2.4 million experiment involving 1,802 heart-bypass patients, conducted under the leadership of Herbert Benson, a specialist who also believes in the medical efficacy of petitionary prayer. The results were unambiguous: prayer had no beneficial effect. A similar large-scale trial of patients undergoing angioplasty or cardiac catheterization also revealed prayer had no effect. That prayer has beneficial medical effects is a religious belief that can be scientifically tested. Tests strongly suggest it’s false.</span></div>
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Add YOUR comments <a href="http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/rough-draft-for-comments.html#more">here</a> on Stephen Laws' blogspot. Please remember to say you heard about this via Humanists4Science.<br />
<br />crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-39317631466906978322013-04-16T09:07:00.003-07:002013-04-16T09:07:31.592-07:00New Scientist returns to nature/nurture debateDid 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Humanists should be guided by the evidence so its worth looking at <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829122.400-time-to-get-tough-on-the-physiological-causes-of-crime.html?full=true">NS's review</a> of <i>The Anatomy of Violence</i> by Adrian Raine. David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-49312900179058792592013-04-06T16:42:00.002-07:002013-04-30T04:17:03.883-07:00Are Humanists4Science Positivist-ish or Scientistic-ish or Naturalisic-ish? - Part 1 of 4 - Positivism<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
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<a class="pretty-link js-nav" data-send-impression-cookie="true" href="https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox" style="color: white; text-decoration: none;"><s style="text-decoration: none;">@</s>ProfBrianCox</a></h2>
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@<a href="https://twitter.com/profbriancox">ProfBrianCox</a> Ultra-naïve positivist-ish, although science can't explain the existence of antipositivists Positivism <a href="http://t.co/efnHYyrEIE" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#.UV_mGNPtoWY.twitter">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivis…</a><br />
— Chris Street (@ChrisGStreet) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisGStreet/status/320463451631779840">April 6, 2013</a></blockquote>
I was prompted by Brian Cox twitter profile @ProfBrianCox to investigate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism">Positivism - wikipedia</a>.<br />
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I've been mulling over <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism">Scientism - wikipedia</a> for some time, especially since I organised for Prof. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Rosenberg">Alex Rosenberg - wikipedia</a> to talk to <a href="http://www.atheismuk.com/">Atheism UK</a> about his book 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions'. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoH4YBPbx5Y">Alex's talk on Youtube</a> was recorded for Atheism UK by Mark Embleton at Conway Hall in London on 25th February 2012.<br />
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Alex Rosenberg (<a href="http://people.duke.edu/~alexrose/">personal website</a>) is very pro Scientism & describes himself as a <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/why-i-am-a-naturalist/">Naturalist - NY Times blog</a> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism#Methodological_naturalism">Naturalism - wikipedia</a>).<br />
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Wikipedia reckons that Scientism is a pejorative term for Positivism. ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#See_also">wikipedia</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I'm interested to understand what are the similarities & differences between the philosophies of Positivism, Scientism and Naturalism, because they often seem to be used interchangeably. And what is Antipositivism?</i></span></blockquote>
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What is Positivism?</h3>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism">Positivism</a> is a philosophy of science based on the view that information derived from logical and mathematical treatments and reports of sensory experience is the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge, that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge. ... Verified data received from the senses is known as empirical evidence. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected. ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism">wikipedia</a></div>
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<b>Auguste Comte</b></div>
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Positivism states that the only authentic knowledge is that which allows positive verification and assumes that there is valid knowledge only in scientific knowledge. Enlightenment thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Auguste Comte believed the scientific method, the circular dependence of theory and observation, must replace metaphysics in the history of thought. ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Auguste_Comte">wikipedia</a></div>
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<b>Logical positivism and postpositivism</b></div>
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Logical positivism, a descendant of Comte's basic thesis sprang up in Vienna in early 1900s. Logical positivists reject metaphysical speculation and attempt to reduce statements and propositions to pure logic. Critiques such as Karl Popper, Willard Van Orman Quine and Thomas Kuhn led to the development of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositivism">postpositivism</a>. ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Logical_positivism_and_postpositivism">wikipedia</a> </div>
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Logical positivism combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation. ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Logical_positivism">wikipedia</a></div>
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<b>Positivism in science today</b></div>
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Statements should be testable; amenable to being verified, confirmed, or falsified by the empirical observation of reality. </div>
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Positivism is "the view that all true knowledge is scientific," and that all things are ultimately measurable. Positivism is related to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism">Reductionism - wikipedia</a>, in that both involve the view that "entities of one kind... are reducible to entities of another," such as mental events to neural phenomena. It also involves the contention that "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events," or that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems." ref: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism#Positivism_in_science_today">wikipedia</a><br />
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<b>What is Antipositivism?</b><br />
Brian Cox' twitter profile, 'Ultra-naïve positivist-ish, although science can't explain the existence of antipositivists', prompted this blog.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipositivism">Wikipedia explains what an Antipositivist</a> is:-<br />
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Antipositivists rejects <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism">Empiricism - wikipedia</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method">scientific method - wikipedia</a> in the conduct of social research. Antipositivism may be equated with qualitative research methods which rely on fieldwork or open-ended interviews. Positivists use quantitative research methods such as experiments and statistical surveys. Antipositivists reject 'scientism' or science as ideology.<br />
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<b>Next blog post: Scientism</b></div>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-8348751183324271082013-01-23T09:20:00.001-08:002013-04-30T04:18:31.122-07:00Policing: Less is More<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">All the parties want to "protect front-line policing", see for example <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/10/frontline-police-jobs-cut-election">this.</a> It seems that everyone wants more policing. But why?<br /><br />Crime in the UK has been<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales"> falling for over ten years</a>. 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 <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline">Mother Jones</a> and the <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2013/01/07/the-grime-behind-the-crime/">Guardian</a>) that the real cause of the decline may be the removal of lead from petrol.<br /><br />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.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />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.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />So we need police but there’s also a downside. The Levenson report and the deaths of Mark Duggan, Smiley Culture and Ian Tomlinson have shown us that should we have doubted it. And it’s not an accident that we recognise the danger of a ‘police state’. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />So, and especially in a recession, it makes sense to ask how little policing we can get away with rather than constantly to demand more. After all, though we’re all reassured by ‘bobbies on the beat’, we know that a bobby would have to patrol for 40 years before happening across a crime!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />So let’s see what we can cut.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />First, let’s stop chasing drug users. The ‘war on drugs’ cannot be won so we need to reframe the problem as one we might actually solve. We can regulate the supply of harmful drugs – we’ve done it for alcohol and tobacco for centuries – so we can apply that model to cannabis and the legal highs; and possibly to cocaine. We can – sometimes – treat addicts and we can certainly reduce the harm they suffer and cause to others. We’ll need less policing not least because they’ll commit less non-drug crime. Of course we’ll need more treatment and support services but research shows we’ll come out ahead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Second, let’s stop chasing prostitutes. Prostitution is a victimless crime and legalisation would make it easier to address the real issues – on-street nuisances, exploitation, trafficking and STDs. Not least, allowing prostitutes to share accommodation would make them safer. Again, regulation is a better approach than prohibition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Third, we need to rethink our approach to illegal downloads of copyright material. This, like drug prohibition, is a lost cause not least because almost no-one under 35 sees it as wrong. I don’t see the solution clearly but what we are doing isn’t working. Maybe something like public lending right, in which authors are paid when their books are borrowed from public libraries, would work. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />These measures ought enable us to spend less on policing and yet to be safer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />What they need is fair measure of political courage. In the UK, only the Green Party has that courage but I’m hopeful that others will acquire it.<br /></span>David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-57072944092164076682012-08-29T06:35:00.000-07:002013-04-30T04:19:47.058-07:00God’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. <br />
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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.<br />
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In short both are natural for us humans and neither has clean hands.<br />
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For most of recorded history religion and politics have been inseparable. Priests have anointed kings and kings have chosen – and sometimes killed – bishops. Some of this remains in, for instance, the Queen’s role as head of the Anglican church and the US President’s annual prayer breakfast. <br />
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At least in the West much of the relationship between religion and politics over the centuries has been cynical and instrumental. Kings have valued religious endorsement (and the clerical condemnation of rebels) whilst bishops have valued royal favours (and the persecution of heretics). Neither side has been much interested in the real meaning of the less convenient scriptures (such as the sermon on the mount). <br />
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This is our heritage but it is not our present.<br />
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In that last 300 years we have come to see the welfare of the whole population as the proper goal of politics. This idea would have baffled almost all previous leaders who thought its purpose was either the building of god’s kingdom on earth or their own glory. (Many thought these synonymous of course.)<br />
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Christianity has also changed. Practicing Christians now hold a variety of religious opinions and few simply accept their supposed leaders’ teachings on morals, politics or even theology. We are in the era of ‘pick ’n mix’ religion where one person may hold ideas derived from Christianity, Buddhism and even Wicca without much sense of strain. (This, by the way, is frustrating for humanists who have difficulty knowing what they should disagree with!)<br />
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For brevity, and knowing that I’m over-simplifying, I’ll distinguish two ways in which religion can influence politics other than simply buttressing the state.<br />
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Firstly, religion may give people a sharp sense of compassion and motivate them to use political processes to, for instance, house the homeless, feed the starving, reform prisons and abolish slavery. I’ll call these people ‘God’s Reformers’. Much valuable work has been done by God’s Reformers but we should note that they have generally been a minority and have often had to fight the social conservatism of their fellow religionists. God’s reformers have become significant since the C18 Enlightenment.<br />
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Secondly, religion may make people believe that they alone know God’s will and that everyone should be forced to do it. I’ll call them God’s stormtroopers. They have brought down governments, introduced Prohibition, persecuted witches, demolished the twin towers and created tyrannies. Today, in the UK, they resist gay marriage and the choice of an easy death in old age. They have previously resisted law reforms concerning contraception, abortion and homosexuality. (Isn’t it surprising how often their concerns are sexual?) Like God’s reformers, God’s stormtroopers are also a minority amongst believers but it is a minority that often includes the most senior people in the ‘faith community’. They are unreasonably influential because they claim privileged knowledge of God’s will, because the state accords them special respect and because the media fail to hold them to account.<br />
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God’s stormtroopers are particularly problematic in a democracy – even such a flawed one as our own. Caution, reasoned discussion, a willingness to be persuaded and, inevitably, a willingness to compromise are vital democratic values. God’s stormtroopers, however, are strongly motivated, immune to persuasion and see any compromise as betrayal. Their hostility to democratic values is not incidental – it is fundamental. As John Knox put it "A man with God is always in the majority." Ayatollah Khomeini would not have disagreed. The logic of infinity – eternal life and an omnipotent God – trumps all ordinary arguments.<br />
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As a humanist I welcome and honour the contribution that God’s reformers have made to public life. Humanists claim no monopoly on compassion or good sense and God’s reformers generally use arguments I understand – even when their language is religious. <br />
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But I must resist the claims of God’s stormtroopers – even on those rare occasions when we finish on the same side. I resist these claims not just because they lead to oppressive conclusions but because to accept them is ultimately inconsistent with democratic politics; that is, with letting the people decide the laws that will govern us. <br />
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And I believe that all democrats and liberals, of whatever party or faith, should resist them too.David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-64300690974669159632012-05-08T15:28:00.003-07:002013-04-30T04:20:43.381-07:00How fear and anxiety leads to more religion - a presentation by Tom Rees of Humanists4ScienceOn Saturday 14th April 2012 Dr. Tom Rees gave a presentation in Bournemouth to Dorset Humanists, on the topic 'Fear and God'. Tom is a committee member of Humanists4Science and lives near Brighton.<br />
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In the talk Tom reviewed many of the studies he has covered on his blog <a href="http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2012/04/how-fear-and-anxiety-leads-to-more.html">Epiphenom</a>, looking at how and why fear and anxiety provoke religious responses, and the link between unstable and dangerous societies with greater levels of religion. He also looked at some of the consequences of the anxiolytic effects of religion on behaviour.<br />
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The talk was aimed at a general, non-scientific audience (although it does cover a lot of science), so if you're looking for an easy to digest introduction to this topic, then you might find this interesting! The talk itself runs for 50 minutes, with another 20 minutes of questions at the end.<br />
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Contact Humanists4Science or <a href="http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/">Tom directly</a> if you'd like Tom to talk to your Humanist or similar Group.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NlOtNb6xLvo?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-69030350316919917772012-04-24T01:29:00.001-07:002013-04-30T04:23:12.304-07:00Spreading science's valuesLast week I heard Dick Taverne (Lord Taverne in private life) give the Sense About Science annual lecture. He claimed that science increases democracy, tolerance and compassion - you can hear the whole lecture on the Guardian website <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2012/may/01/science-weekly-extra-podcast-sense-science-lecture?CMP=twt_gu">here</a>. He also said that scientists' values were irrelevant to the value of their scientific work. I challenged this - here's why.<br />
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Firstly some values are built into science. Science requires openness to new ideas, without which it cannot advance. It requires a willingness to listen to ideas from any source, since authority is a poor guide to truth. And it requires respect for reason and evidence, since we are all prone to believing what we'd like to be true. As Huxley put it "The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Science is a social process and it works best in societies that share these values.<br />
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Secondly, though scientists, like most of us, work for money, they have reasons for choosing to work at science. Perhaps the commonest reason is the intrinsic satisfaction of learning more about the world; of adding to humanity's store of knowledge. This matters. I see this store of reliable knowledge as humanity's greatest achievement but that's because I value reliable knowledge. That is a value. Many people, in practice, think money, or feelings or the confirmation of their prejudices to be more important.<br />
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And many scientists are motivated by humanitarian concerns or by concern for the natural environment. Of course having the right goals doesn't guarantee that you'll reach them or even do good science but it does guide at least some scientists in their choice of topics. It also helps to connect science with the concerns of everyone else - since everyone wants health and most people want an environment that is living not dead.<br />
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But here's the problem. Scientists can only do research that someone will fund. In practice that usually means a corporation, a government or a private philanthropist. The funders must value what science can DO, or they would not fund it, but they may not value what it IS. And they often have values that are alien to science. Corporations want to profit by monopolising some piece of knowledge. Governments want support for policies decided by prejudice or public opinion. Neither of these concerns is conducive to good science and some branches suffer severely from their effects.<br />
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So the values inherent in science are of limited effect unless they also guide the funding of science. That means holding corporations and governments accountable for the ways in which they fund, direct and publish research. It also means looking at what they fail to fund, misdirect and censor.<br />
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Science could be greater than it is if its values were shared by more of the people and institutions that shape our societies.David Flinthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11063189611159076891noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-27936157048637659262012-03-27T22:58:00.001-07:002016-07-10T03:23:09.837-07:00Ben Miller explains there is 'Nothing' on Qi<a href="https://vimeo.com/7868344">https://vimeo.com/7868344</a><br />
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Brilliant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Miller">Ben Miller</a>!! I learn that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Miller#Early_life_and_education">Miller started a PhD in quantum physics</a> but gave it up for a career in comedy. Comedys gain, sciences loss!crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-20704160238383652482012-01-27T18:32:00.001-08:002012-01-27T18:32:24.568-08:00The Scientific Method - Radio 4 - In Our Time - Melvyn Braggsource: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b1ljm/In_Our_Time_The_Scientific_Method/">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b1ljm/In_Our_Time_The_Scientific_Method/</a>crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-57674132518190756142012-01-20T09:05:00.000-08:002013-04-30T04:33:33.054-07:00The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Prof. Alex Rosenberg, Conway Hall, London<img border="0" src="http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/e/4/c/2/event_83938562.jpeg" style="float: left; margin: 5px; max-height: 700px; max-width: 700px;" />Organisers: WW Norton & Chris Street for AtheismUK, Humanists4Science & HASSNERS.<br />
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Date & Time: Saturday 25th February 2012, 2-3.00 pm.<br />
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Prof. Alex Rosenberg (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rosenberg">wiki</a>) is chair of the Philosophy department at Duke University and co-director of Duke Center for Philosophy of Biology. Alex has written 12 books about the philosophy of biology and economics. He describes himself as a '<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/why-i-am-a-naturalist/">Naturalist</a>'.<br />
Alex Rosenberg is visiting the UK to talk about his new book <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=22355">'The Atheist's Guide to Reality - Enjoying Life without Illusions', published by WW Norton</a>.<br />
'takes the sin of scientism as the ultimate virtue. Alex Rosenberg has sheared the nature of things down to the bedrock, and exposed our common vanity'. <strong><em>EO Wilson</em></strong><br />
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'presents a brave and compelling treatise on why you should accept the universe for what it is, rather than what you would wish it to be. <em>The Atheists Guide to Reality,</em> like the best scholarship and science, removes you from your comfort zone and that is the only way to gain new and better perspectives on our place in the cosmos' <strong><em>Lawrence Krauss</em></strong><br />
<img border="0" src="http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/0/c/event_83942572.jpeg" style="float: left; margin: 5px; max-height: 700px; max-width: 700px;" />'Rosenberg's philosophical temperament is a dead ringer for David Hume's, and his wit isn't far behind either'. <em><strong>Rebecca Goldstein</strong></em><br />
'This eccentric, funny treatise on "scientism,"...takes a perverse delight in "nice nihilism." Rosenberg doesn't believe in free will, morality, or secular humanism ...this dismemberment of mainstream worldviews abounds with clever barbs and dry one-liners.' <em><strong>Village Voice</strong></em><br />
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We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them all of them. His bracing and ultimately upbeat book takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences. He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. The Atheist's Guide to Reality draws powerful implications for the ethical and political issues that roil contemporary life. The result is nice nihilism, a surprisingly sanguine perspective atheists can happily embrace.<br />
<a href="http://www.indyweek.com/artery/archives/2011/10/05/in-praise-of-nice-nihilism-alex-rosenberg-discusses-his-new-book-on-atheism">Read Alex Rothenberg talking about The Atheists Guide to Reality' at Indyweek.com </a><br />
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<strong>The publishers WW Norton have booked a room in <a href="http://www.conwayhall.org.uk/">Conway Hall</a> in Central London (2 minute walk from Holborn Tube station). </strong><br />
<br />crabsalloverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310281888611427075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2736655900207355526.post-16822521146036972862012-01-12T23:07:00.000-08:002013-04-30T04:34:44.686-07:00H4S Science Resolution Revolution Competition<br />
<a href="http://resolution-revolution.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/RR-sm.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://resolution-revolution.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/RR-sm.gif" width="156" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">During 2012 do YOU resolve to discuss science?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Enter the Humanists4Science <i><b>Science Resolution Revolution</b></i> <i><b>Competition</b></i>!</span></div>
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New Year Resolutions are often all about ME! ... I'm going to go on a diet, get fitter - join a gym etc etc. During 2012 join the revolution and make a <i>Science </i>resolution.<br />
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Resolve to discuss anything scientific with somebody. That can mean discussing scientism or scientific method with a friend. Or maybe you could discuss scientific evidence or scientific thinking?<br />
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Enter the <i><b>Humanists4Science (H4S) Science Resolution Revolution</b> <b>Competition</b></i>.<br />
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<a href="http://resolution-revolution.org.uk/">Revolution Resolution</a> by British Humanist Association (<a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/954">BHA</a>) is inclusive and open to all, regardless of religion or belief. H4S are <a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk/meet-up/groups/special-interest/science">affiliated</a> to BHA.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8Qz1vxfu-VyrUOFEeYKvVcwS3pvcNPtAizUJnnBpo7XXnt3e3JezhiadfNzefXi9OeijPwyIC9sGVqQ37mLe4l-SdisbdVjF-uRUr9PflNb5115QVBxv8VVDxrpUAg5JHyRGvfam0a1_/s1600-r/H4S_banner_blog.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ8Qz1vxfu-VyrUOFEeYKvVcwS3pvcNPtAizUJnnBpo7XXnt3e3JezhiadfNzefXi9OeijPwyIC9sGVqQ37mLe4l-SdisbdVjF-uRUr9PflNb5115QVBxv8VVDxrpUAg5JHyRGvfam0a1_/s1600-r/H4S_banner_blog.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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<i style="font-size: x-large;"><b>H4S Science Resolution Revolution Competition</b> - </i><span style="font-size: large;">Rules </span><br />
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<li>Everyone is eligible to enter the <b><i>H4S Science Resolution Revolution Competition</i></b></li>
<li>Your resolution MUST include the words 'science', 'scientism' or 'scientific'.</li>
<li>There is no limit on the number of resolutions per entrant to the competition</li>
<li>Add your resolution onto the <a href="http://resolution-revolution.org.uk/">Revolution Resolution</a> website by 29th February 2012.</li>
<li><a href="mailto:crabsallover@btinternet.com">Email</a> a copy of your <b><i>H4S Science Resolution Revolution Competition</i></b> entry to Chair, Humanists4Science. Include your name, address & phone number by 29th February 2012.</li>
<li>Winners will be announced March 2012.</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Examples</span><br />
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<li>I resolve by May 2012 to give a talk to my local primary school about <i>'My Passion for <b>Science</b>'.</i></li>
<li>By June 2012 I resolve to discuss what I mean by '<b>scientific method</b>' with 'J'.</li>
<li>During March 2012 I resolve to discuss the <b>science </b>of stem cell research with 'A'.</li>
<li>In 2012 I resolve to discuss with my creationist friend 'C' the <b>scientific evidence</b> for evolution by natural selection.</li>
<li>I resolve to discuss during by May 2012 with 'D', the difference between '<b>science</b>' & '<b>scientism</b>', '<b>scientific</b>' & 'scientistic'.</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Prizes</span><br />
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<li>All <i><b>H4S Science Resolution Revolution Competition</b></i> entrants receive <i>'Thank You'</i> certificates.
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<li>A minimum of 20 people entering the <i><b>Competition</b></i> triggers prize giving.</li>
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<li>Winner receives '<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magic-Reality-know-whats-really/dp/059306612X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324970458&sr=8-1">Magic of Reality - How we know what's really true</a>' by Richard Dawkins (<a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk/about/people/distinguished-supporters/Professor-Richard-Dawkins-FRS">BHA Vice President</a>)</li>
<li>Runner-up receives '<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-scientists-exploration-questions-existence/dp/0199603367/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324970499&sr=1-1">On Being - A scientists exploration of the great questions of existence</a>' by Peter Atkins (<a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk/about/people/distinguished-supporters/peter-atkins">BHA Distinguished Supporter</a>)</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Competition</span><span style="font-size: large;"> Judges</span><br />
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<li>Chris Street, Chair of Humanists4Science and David McKnight, H4S Co-Founder. </li>
<li>Judges cannot enter the competition.</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Humanism: Science, Scientific Evidence & Scientific Method</span><br />
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In line with February 2011 suggestions from Humanists4Science, for the first time the <a href="http://humanists4science.blogspot.com/2011/12/bha-strategy-now-includes-science-in.html">November 2011 British Humanist Association Strategy includes 'science' and 'scientific evidence' in the BHA Aims</a>:-</div>
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<li>Humanism involves a naturalistic view of the universe.... humanists strive to be rational, looking to <b><i>science </i></b>in attempting to understand the universe.</li>
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<li>We support significant initiatives to meet global challenges, showing how these initiatives rest on our principles of accepting <b><i>scientific evidence</i></b>... </li>
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For the first time BHA includes 'scientific method' in its <a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk/humanism">definition of Humanism</a>:-<br />
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<li>Humanists have trusted to the scientific method, evidence and reason to discover truths about the universe ...</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Humanists4Science</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Vision</span><br />
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'A world in which important decisions are made by applying the scientific method to evidence rather than according to superstition.'<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">British Humanist Association Vision</span><br />
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'A world where everyone lives cooperatively on the basis of shared human values and respect for human rights.'<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Celebrities discuss New Years Resolutions with Susan Blackmore</span><br />
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