And Slaters Go Plop

In celebration of the World Youth Day in Sydney and of the recent “Academic Freedom” law changes in Louisiana I’d like to present Galileo Galilei’s confession for the “absurd and philosophically false” notion that “the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves”:

I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, aged 70 years, tried personally by this court, and kneeling before You, the most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General throughout the Christian Republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Most Holy Gospels, and laying on them my own hands; I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God’s help I will in future believe all which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach, and teach.

But since I, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the Earth was not the centre of the same and that it moved, and that I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine; and after having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to Holy Writ, I did write and cause to be printed a book in which I treat of the said already condemned doctrine, and bring forward arguments of much efficacy in its favour, without arriving at any solution: I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the Earth is not the centre of the same, and that it does move.

Nevertheless, wishing to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor and Ordinary of the place in which I may be.

I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which God forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons and other Decrees general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands.

I Galileo Galilei aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In Rome, at the Convent della Minerva, this 22nd day of June, 1633.

I, GALILEO GALILEI, have abjured as above, with my own hand.

On Saturday I trundled along to Academy Cinemas in Auckland to watch a documentary on the life and achievements of Allan Wilson, a NZ-born molecular evolutionary biologist.

Allan Wilson was born in Ngaruawahia in 1934 and died of leukaemia in 1991. He spent most of his life in the United States where he formed the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution at Berkeley.

So what was so special about Allan Wilson that a documentary was made about him?

At the time that Wilson was studying, the theory of evolution didn’t really have much objective data to go on regarding the differences between species. People could look at the size and shape of a bone and compare it with other species (across the outside of the tree of life) and they could see back down inside the branches by digging up old bones to see if modern species might share common ancestors. Going by morphology (i.e. how things look) is a fairly inexact science and while it might point you in the right direction it would have been nicer to be able to use numbers to be able to make mathematical and statistical predictions.

We take DNA for granted these days but in Wilson’s time very little was known about these building blocks of life.

Wilson straddled a path between zoology and molecular chemistry which were both tackling the problem of evolution from quite different angles. He caught a bit of flak for his attempts to marry the two but he drew the most fire from creationists - surprise, surprise - when some of his later experiments began to show the true, measurable relationships between humans and other species, namely the great apes.

He was heavily involved in the concept of the molecular clock, which is a way of finding how closely related one species is to another at the genetic level without necessarily being able to read the genes themselves. You may have also heard of the Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis - that’s his too.

Since his death both the human and the chimpanzee genomes have been read and have further bolstered the conclusions he was able to make by merging two seemingly disparate sciences. And also, sadly, since his death advances in diagnosis as well as treatment of leukaemia have been made due to the methods he and his team pioneered.

The film-maker went so far as to say that in the years to come Allan Wilson’s name will become synonymous with some of the other pioneers in the theory of evolution by natural selection. And everyone seems to agree; just about everything that present-day evolutionary biologists are working on stems from the advancements of this one bloke from Ngaruawahia.

Today I was asked by Rhett, a Christian pastor-to-be,

“Where would you say your concern for human suffering comes from in that you are an Atheist evolutionists. Forgive me for simplifying things terribly here, but do you see the moral compass as having evolved? And isn’t evolution all about survival of the fittest, might is right etc? How does concern for others suffering coming into you worldview?”

Evolution is a scientific observation about how life works. How living organisms change through the generations and the mechanisms that cause those changes. Many people see evolution as anti-Christian because the evidence claimed by the theory of evolution by natural selection (the proper name for the theory) flies in the face of a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Bible. Evolution is only anti-Christian if you define Christianity in such a way that it relies on an explanation that contradicts the scientific findings - in the same way that the theory of gravity would be anti-Christian if one of the core tenets of Christianity was that the spirit of God is what keeps planets in their orbits.

Many Christians have no issue with evolution and any controversy about the fundamentals of the theory is within Christianity itself and stems from a multitude of interpretations of scripture.

Atheists are people who don’t believe that there is a God. I’m the kind of atheist who thinks that the question “Is there a God” is one that is as unprovable as the question “Is there an invisible pink unicorn” because most people’s definition of a God seems to entail the same, non-observable or non-testable properties. On the question of whether it’s possible to prove God exists or not I’m an agnostic but my conclusion after looking at the arguments and the evidence is that there is none.

This is not necessarily what an atheist wants however. I would personally like to carry on after I die and the thought of bad people getting their comeuppance in the end is pretty appealing.

The link between atheists and evolution only really exists because there really is no other plausible explanation for how life develops. Evolutionists are not necessarily atheists but atheists are unlikely to be anything but evolutionists because of the lack of rival explanations that don’t include a god.

The theory of evolution by natural selection makes the observation that the offspring that are best suited for the environment they find themselves in are going to be more likely to have more offspring themselves and this will cause more of the population of their species to have similar traits because children inherit many of their parent’s genes.

This is sometimes termed as “survival of the fittest” which some people take to mean that “only the bullies win”. But to be successful as a species it’s not necessarily the strongest and most aggressive that do well. Being small and agile is a popular survival mechanism. So is being good in the dark or being camouflaged or being able to fly or being able to eat lots of grass or plankton and so on and so on. Another trait that has proved extremely useful is the ability to cooperate with other members of your species and this leads me to the core of Rhett’s question; Morality.

Altruism is defined as looking after the interests of others over your own. Reciprocal altruism is looking after the interests of others with the expectation that they will repay the favour. Reciprocal altruism has always been easily explained in evolution; if a species develops a trait that will allow individuals to help each other out not only will those members of the species do better than their siblings but the species as a whole is likely to do well as a result. At a simple level genuine altruism is also easily explained because a species that develops the tendency to be willing to die to help the survival of your direct offspring or of members of your family group is going to be more likely to pass that tendency on. Your children who survive because of your altruism will more than likely carry the same genes and close relatives have a higher chance of carrying that same trait. For an excellent discussion of this topic read Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.

So, self-sacrificing behaviour is very much a part of evolution and easily explained in even relatively simple creatures. Where it gets really complicated is with the likes of humans who not only inherit genes but have the hardware (brains and language) to spread memes (ideas).

We get much of our morality from our culture. Memes are spread around from person to person and from culture to culture. Some memes are bad, some good, others neutral - just like genes. Some people think our morality comes from God and struggle to understand how someone who doesn’t believe in a God (or, specifically, their God) can have morals. But morals are really just memes for how to best live in a society. Some morals are built into us at the level of our genes (a parent who will fight to the death for their child) and some are developed by trial and error or even by reason and passed from person to person as a meme (washing your hands after defecating - a reasonably recent meme). Often morals are encapsulated in the form of a religion and passed from person to person that way, perhaps because religion has been an excellent medium for spreading memes with its use of repetition, documentation, authority and so on.

“Do you see the moral compass as having evolved?”
Yes, absolutely. Most of the core behaviours of morality can be explained by way of genes (especially if we can observe them in species that don’t spread memes - i.e. ‘learn’) and the rest in humans have been able to be propagated due to the fact that we have the hardware which allows us to be really good at spreading memes. And even memetic morality evolves, just not by the same mechanism as genes. In our current society it’s immoral to prohibit a woman from voting but our ancestors thought it perfectly reasonable.

“Isn’t evolution all about survival of the fittest, might is right etc?”
Nope. It’s all about how well suited you are to the environment you find yourself in. Also, please notice the difference between observing the process and mechanisms of evolution and believing in evolution (as if it were some kind of ideology).

“How does concern for others suffering coming into you worldview?”
Like most people I inherited my morality from my family and from the culture I was brought up in. I’ve also read a lot of literature on different people’s opinions on how to best live as a society since then.

Morality is a game we all play and it’s a function of society. Pretending that morality comes to us by divine revelation is a form of exclusivism and I would have thought that in this day and age we’d be smart enough to see beyond that. 

Most of us will have heard of vitamin C. It’s in oranges and tablets that taste like oranges right? But what is it? And what’s it got to do with orangutans, the Royal Navy and rose hips?

Well, I’m glad you asked; grab a coffee and come on in…
(more…)

(From chick.com)

A couple of weeks ago I purchased Carl Sagan’s 1979 TV series, Cosmos on DVD. Actually, it aired in 1980 but was filmed in 1979 and 1979 sounds way cooler than 1980.

It totally rocks!

Sure, he’s wearing beige and, sure, there has been progress in astronomy since the series was produced but I found myself learning plenty of new stuff with every episode. (Did you know that Eratosthenes calculated the earth’s circumference to within a margin of 5-10% back in 240BCE?).

What I love about the scientific method is that when done properly you present the facts as best you know them but remain open to future discoveries and you also disclose known weaknesses. In this series at the end of many of the episodes Sagan appears (looking greyer) with a “10 years later update” and very little of the original content needed revision. The only bit that stands out is that in one of the episodes he presents some of the experiments showing the creation of organic molecules in the laboratory and 10 years later added that they now believe it’s likely that the organic molecules may have formed in the icy bodies of comets.

Also, this was produced at a very uncertain time when the threat of all-out nuclear war seemed quite possible and many of his comments about the future of the human race are bracketed with “if we don’t destroy ourselves first”.

This series is a brilliant way to get an excellent perspective on our place in history and in the universe. It’s factual, balanced and remarkably well-produced. They even managed to avoid the temptation to use the snazzy synthesised music of the era (or is that ‘error’?) and instead opted for tasteful classical music.

Sagan had a very broad understanding of our universe and had a knack for presenting it in an extremely digestible way. With that understanding came an enthusiasm that remains contagious even after his death.

If you come across this series in your video store or for sale in a shop I’d encourage you to do yourself a favour and pick it up. And if you know me (this includes Dale, Ken, Frank and Jack), give me a yell if you want to borrow it and I’ll get it to you.

Here’s a little something you may not know:

The ampersand is an abbreviated form of the Latin “et” which means “and”.

If you have the Trebuchet MS font on your computer you’ll notice that it renders the ampersand like the middle image.

On this day 199 years ago Charles Darwin was born. Famous for his contributions to the discovery of the mechanisms of evolution by way of natural selection he is considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of scientific enquiry.

The implications of his discoveries have caused turmoil among the egocentric of the world and the fallout continues to this day. Charles Darwin himself was extremely reluctant to publish his discovery because of the contention it would cause in a world dominated by young earth creationism - a view he held for many years against all evidence.

In my opinion, evolution is the most mind-blowing natural process ever discovered. It’s life changing in more ways than one and if you don’t have a full understanding of it I encourage you to take some time out today to learn more - you’ll never look at a blade of grass or a drop of water the same again.

If you listen to podcasts check out the excellent introductory series by Dr Zachary Moore called Evolution 101, otherwise take a look through the introduction to evolution resource at Berkeley.

Just over a month ago I wrote about the shootings in Finland and, tongue-in-cheek, expressed what many in the fundamentalist blogosphere were saying.

Sadly, I spoke too soon. According to the Independent, in New South Wales an English creationist has stabbed a Scottish man to death during a heated debate about evolution. They were on a fruit-picking working holiday and had been drinking in a pub where the row broke out. The stabbing took place later that evening back at the camp ground where they were staying.

The creationist, Alexander York, was given a maximum of five years on a charge of manslaughter, not murder. The judge ruled that, while York knew he had a knife in his hand he had not thought of the consequences of his actions when he lashed out.

If not for the truly tragic nature of this news item it would almost make for a classic Gary Larson cartoon. I can just picture two scientists in a heated (excuse the pun) row about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I guess this is an example of how beliefs and reality clash on a day to day basis.

Then again, the guy may have just been a nut-job who would have flipped over another issue given the same circumstances and enough alcohol.