Looking Out To Sea

Is there a meaningful difference between

• someone who won’t vaccinate their child because it will give them autism
• someone who won’t vaccinate their child because it promotes promiscuous sex

And having asked that, what do you think about compulsory vaccination? I haven’t thought about it yet and I’m ready for bed. Comments please!

A wee while back Rowan Williams got in a bit of trouble with large parts of the thinking world for, amongst other things, saying evolutionary biology was some kind of Dawkinsian cult which wanted to kill all believers. Well, something absurd was certainly reported in the press (which is the same thing, right?).

I’ve given up trying to decide if accurate reporting by newspapers is just a hoped-for ideal that has never been attained, or whether we currently just have a fine crop of journalists who (to paraphrase Terry Pratchett) use truth more as a reference point than as a shackle. Instead, what I can do is find out what he actually said. All the archbishop’s speeches, essays and similar productions appear on his official website eventually. And the official transcript (and the original audio recording) for this Faith and Science speech is now available.

First I’d like to present what Rowan Williams said on the day:

First of all there is the extension of Darwinian theory beyond straightforward biology and genetics. The heart of the conflict between faith and science as it’s frequently presented these days is no longer a simple stand-off between what people might regard as two rival accounts of how the world came to be.

Immediately we can see that, though he later refers to neo-Darwinism, he is not talking about “straightforward biology and genetics”. A curious claim, like saying “I’d like to talk about ice cream — by which I don’t mean the frozen cream dessert or non-dairy equivalents”.

Rowan Williams may be guilty of many things, but clarity is not one of them.

The transcript, however, includes a small aside intended to clarify the matter of his poor wording. I just wanted to leave it out first in order to give you a good idea of what the original audience would have heard. This is what the transcript says, with my emphasis:

First of all there is the extension of Darwinian theory beyond straightforward biology and genetics. [Note: This extension of the theory is sometimes loosely called ‘Neo-Darwinism’; but this is potentially confusing, as this term is more strictly applied to the fusion of Darwin’s original theory with Mendelian genetics. I did not avoid this confusion in the original version of this lecture.] The heart of the conflict between faith and science as it’s frequently presented these days is no longer a simple stand-off between what people might regard as two rival accounts of how the world came to be.

So, in this small aside he has admitted to being foolish and unclear, by redefining perfectly good terms. Fair enough. He goes on:

In spite of all the fuss about creation science versus evolution, that’s actually not where the intellectual energy of the debate lies. The real issue is in this extension of Darwinian principle and theory into an entire theory of culture and intellectual life. This is a vision fairly regularly reiterated by Professors Dawkins and Dennett and it deserves a moment’s explication.

What he’s talking about here is memetics. That’s what it looks like. (Richard Dawkins came up with the word, though he hasn’t done much research into it since it was mentioned in The Selfish Gene. I’m not sure about Daniel Dennett but in the couple of lectures of his I have seen he mentioned memes a bit.) Why Williams ever thought “neo-Darwinism” was a good label for this I’ll never understand. He may have been thinking of Universal Darwinism but I don’t think that’s accurate either.

He suggests that “science” (or maybe just that evil Dawkins fellow) have been concocting fairy stories about the world and letting the stories run away with themselves. They have not paying attention to the evidence. This is a curious argument since it doesn’t reflect the reality of (visible) academic research into memes or the attention that is paid to them. As far as I can tell, memetics as an active research area is dead at the moment. The only Journal of Memetics — not even a paper one at that, just an online publication — has been closed for business for at least three years now. This is not quite the threatening body of science the archbishop makes it out to be.

The whole speech seems rather pedestrian in the end. If you were to replace every instance of ‘Darwinism’ with ‘memetics’ then it would make more sense but it still wouldn’t say more. Susan Blackmore, who is mentioned in the speech as a “follower” of Dawkins (ah, the science-as-religion canard, where would we be without you?), raises most of these arguments in her own book on memes. They are not new to the people interested in the field. The remainder seem to be ordinary philosophical musings about reductionism and so on, or the realisation that popular views of genetics (a “gene for X”) are not very accurate. In any case, there is nothing actually show-stopping in his speech, and no obvious connection to faith.

Anyway, I’m getting a wee bit off the point. In short, Rowan Williams did not call biology a fairy story: he called memetics a fairy story. Though in the process he did admit that Christianity was a fairy story, which was a surprising point. Why did the press not quote that bit so widely? Maybe it’s old news by now.

On Monday night Alan Penny came down from St Andrews University to talk about SETI. In particular, he wanted to convince us that spending money on searching for intelligent aliens is a good thing.

He didn’t really achieve this aim. Over the course of his talk he diminished his expectations and ended up stating that searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence would happen anyway, so that was that. He certainly didn’t convince me, and I don’t think anyone I was with changed their mind after hearing him speak either.

He spoke about the general arguments for and against the existence of intelligent life — such as the anthropic argument — which mostly served to highlight the futility of the search. Then he tried to convince us that it was worthwhile anyway. His arguments boiled down to two things, which I will render in a deliberately mocking and provocative fashion just because I can:

Where’s Your Logic Now, Science Boy?

People aren’t going to stop looking for aliens so it doesn’t matter what we do. This isn’t actually an argument for anything, more a statement of the romantic outlook of many people with cash to burn.

But Think Of The Children!!!

SETI is an easy concept to grasp and (because of the aforementioned romanticism) people are always interested in it. But it also requires science, so — in the absence of a real space programme — we can get kids interested in science by hunting for aliens.

He changed his mind during the talk from emphasising government-sponsored science (“should we spend money on SETI?”) to private foundations, so his first point is doubly irrelevant. No one is actually going round to billionaires’ houses and telling them how not to spend their money.

The children argument is interesting. It makes me uneasy, since it seems to beg the question that SETI is science¹ in the first place. The primary means by which SETI does its work is by examining signals picked up by radio telescopes to find “artificial signals”. Unfortunately I don’t know what an “artificial signal” looks like, since the only definition we have of one is a signal created by an intelligent being.

The speaker didn’t bother going into the detail of what they actually look for, which is a shame. The Discovery Institute have spent years telling people that they have means by which they can identify “design” (see “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity”), all of which have been bunk. By what means do SETI discriminate natural from artificial? What, exactly, does the SETI@home program do when it churns through radio data?

So the way I see it, search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is as scientific as the hunt for Big Foot or Nessie — involving lots of fancy James Bond toys but requiring us to ignore the fact that there is no evidence to suggest these things exist to be detected. In that respect, getting people interested in science with SETI is a bit perverted. There’s no lack of exciting work which both starts with some reasonable evidence and produces results all while using fun kit.

Meanwhile, in that other world which claims to know artifice when it sees it, Scientific American got a look at the creationist propaganda film Expelled in a private screening put on by the film’s associate producer, Mark Mathis. They then recorded a conversation/interview with Mark Mathis.

You can listen to the guy (part one, part two) repeatedly digging himself into rhetorical holes and then weaseling his way out. It’s remarkable how many times he used the argument “ah, well I wasn’t actually responsible for that bit” whenever a good point is raised. I began to wonder (and I’m sure the SciAm folks did too) what he actually did do.

This story is just too funny not to pass on: PZ Myers gets barred from entering a screening of Expelled, a film whose message is basically “the Darwinists (sic) are intellectual frauds who have kept real science out of biology”.

Read his account in full, I urge you — there is a most fantastic twist to the tale.

Watching how the ID supporters attempt to spin this story will be amusing. The producers delved too deep in the Mines of Irony and who knows what they awoke in the darkness?

This is the most baffling turn of events from a man I have often considered to harbour quite a deal of common sense.

Dr Rowan Williams, said “Neo Darwinism and Creationist science deserve each other. Creationism is a version of slightly questionable science pretending to be theology, and Neo Darwinism is a questionable theology pretending to be science.”

If evolution is bad religion — and not a science at all — where exactly does that leave his views on the history of life. If we weren’t created and we didn’t evolve, we…?

Dr Williams admitted that Neo Darwinism, a theory supported by Atheist Professor Richard Dawkins, is “most problematic” to theology, but he called it “a pseudo science” and “deeply vulnerable to intellectual challenge because it is trying to be a theology.”

I’m extremely curious why Rowan Williams thinks “trying to be a theology” makes one open to intellectual challenge. Even the ridiculous Answers in Genesis creationists admit there are arguments that creationists should not use, but that doesn’t stop them being used all the goddamn time. Clearly intellectual challenges have no effect on theology.

Despite all these apparent absurdities I’m not willing to write Williams off yet. He does not have a good track record on being understood by the press, so I’m willing to wait for an official transcript to appear. But it doesn’t look good for him.

PZ Myers recently touched on this question in his response to John Gray:

The critics of atheism seem, without exception, to be lacking in imagination. Over and over again, what we hear from them is desperate attempts to pigeonhole atheism as just another religion; they squat uncomprehendingly in their hovels built of faith and peer quizzically at the godless, seeking correspondence with their familiar theological nonsense, and crow in triumph when they find something that they can sort of line up with their experiences. “They want more people to think rationally — why, that’s evangelism!” Never mind that you could, with the same legitimacy, argue that when one person mentions to another that it is raining, they are attempting to evangelize their precipitational worldview.

Denotation, denotation, denotation…

In the broadest sense, practically every statement or opinion we make is evangelist in that sense. “Don’t you oppress me with your belief that this pasta tastes great! I’ll make up my own mind, dammit!”

At the opposite end of the spectrum — and this is according to the relevant Wikipedia page — evangelism is not even the same as proselytism in Christianity. It’s not enough to just attempt to convince someone of the truth of your statements; there’s something more to it, though the particular differences are rather obscure and I don’t feel confident teasing them apart. Evangelical religion seems to prefer “personal experience” over other means of proselytism, but this may not be completely accurate. (Maybe Rob can shed some light on this?)

In technology, some companies have advocates and some have evangelists. I’m not sure what the difference is here, but intuitively I would say that evangelists attempt to push a lifestyle whereas advocates push a technology. In the end they are both intended to sell more products.

Connotation, connotation, connotation

I think most uses of ‘evangelism’ are not meant in the strict religious sense, but with the understanding that evangelising is inherently bad. If you disagree with what someone says you can say that they are evangelising rather than advocating — or the more plain-speaking arguing.

If you’re from an evangelical religious community then obviously evangelism isn’t a dirty word. So it probably doesn’t get used as an attack in such cases. But everyone else — who would think of Billy Graham or Pat Robertson on hearing the word — feels a bit uneasy with that kind of religion. And yet by itself it shouldn’t have these connotations when applied generally — it’s only because people like Pat Robertson have such an odious reputation that the word means more than just “bringing good news”.

Helen just pointed out that ‘The Green Apple’, an ethical/Fairtrade craft store online, has been hacked by some Islamic fundamentalists. The main page currently has a “closed for maintenance notice” but if you click straight through to the store you see a protest page from some nutty religious group:

After thirty seconds the page directs you to some other site which is about the wonderful prophet.

From a quick look at the guy they’re protesting — Geert Wilders — I don’t really have any sympathy for either side. He seems like the Dutch equivalent of Robert Kilroy Silk (he even has the same daft haircut…):

Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!

Oh no! More mosques than churches!

On the other side, the Islamofascists are no better. I feel quite happy denouncing someone who would hijack a third party website for their own pointless protest and then claim “sorry for the inconvenience. Our aim is not to harm your system”. Er, yes it is. It was an effective online shop before and now it doesn’t sell anything — what other meaning of harm do you want to use?

Bunch of nutters, the lot of them.

Christopher Brookmyre’s latest is dedicated to James Randi and Richard Dawkins. It mentions Firefly (quite a lot). It’s about criminals and paranormal researchers and woo science. It briefly touches on Intelligent Design creationism. It’s pretty damn funny and bitterly sarcastic when it needs to be.

It’s a great return to form for Mr Brookmyre — I thought A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil was pretty awful — and you’ll probably love it.

And if you don’t love it then I’ll put the evil eye on you.

I’ve just had a look at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=believe for the meaning of the verb ‘to believe’ and I found a number of very interesting definitions — to have confidence or faith in, to hold true, to suppose or assume — but none of the definitions fit this sentence (my emphasis):

Last week we learned that a family of at least three children had come down with measles because their family didn’t believe in vaccinating them …

There are other examples — just think of all the things people object to. “I don’t believe in sex before marriage”, “I don’t believe in abortion”, “I don’t believe in drugs”.

It should be fairly obvious that this type of person does actually believe in the existence of vaccination, pre-marital sex, abortion or whatever. They might even be involved in protests against them. But it’s not that they don’t actually believe in them. It’s that they don’t approve of them. So why do people use ‘believe’ when they mean ‘approve’?

And just as interesting, why does this very common usage not appear in dictionaries? (I also tried Urban Dictionary and Wiktionary, two sources I thought might mention ‘unofficial’ usage. But nothing.)

All this brings up some interesting thoughts when people make “belief” claims. If an otherwise smart person says “I don’t believe in evolution”, what do they mean by that? Many creationists argue against evolution on the grounds of moral consequences — that Hitler was an evolutionist, that Darwinism is a cruel and inhumane philosophy leading to genocide and eugenics, etc. It’s perfectly possible that “I don’t believe in evolution” has a strong element of “I don’t approve of evolution” or “I don’t like the moral consequences of evolution”.

And since few people seem to make a clear distinction between “belief as faith” and “belief as approval”, there are further consequences. Is “belief in God” entirely to do with faith, or is there an element of approval? A case of “I approve of God, because that is how I would like things to be”. An important element of religious faith is the comfort that people derive from it.

I have to admit this is all idle conjecture. But one final thought: whenever I find myself trying to find support for a belief of my own, I have to ask myself why it’s so important. And the only honest answer I can give myself is that, it’s important because this is the way I’d like things to be. If an important part of my world-view is removed, then I have to re-evaluate it all for consistency. That is a lot of work and may reveal things I don’t like — about myself, my friends or life in general.

Recently PZ Myers from the Pharyngula blog was involved in a couple of debates, both interesting in their way. The first was an on-air debate with Gene Simmons, a medical doctor and supporter of the Intelligent Design movement. (If you’re still in the dark on the ID front, I wrote a post about it a long time ago which should give you the background.) Dr Simmons was soundly beaten on every point. Apparently the big Intelligent Design blog, Uncommon Descent, noted that their player was shown to be a complete fool. (That is, before they deleted the thread in a bout of PR-friendly revisionism.)

In the end Dr Simmons had to take umbrage at Myers’ language in order to claw back some dignity. After demonstrating that he was happy to talk about the lack of transitional whale fossils without having done any research into the large body of knowledge on whale evolution, he was called “ignorant of whale evolution”. This seems only right and proper: he knew nothing about his chosen topic but was happily spreading lies and nonsense. But Simmons got angry at being insulted and deflected the point that he really didn’t know what he was talking about. Personally, I think that being offended by such a statement is a really cheap trick — and instead of warning PZ Myers about his language, the hosts should have ticked off Gene Simmons for trying to derail the conversation with further untruths and emotional appeals.

You might have expected that kind of petty ill-will from the start anyway. Especially as they changed the topic of the debate at the last minute at Dr Simmons’ request. That’s not cricket, chaps. You can download the whole debate from the radio station’s website — though it might disappear sooner or later. The station itself has creationist leanings and invited Dr Simmons back for another session on his own a few days later. It’s much easier to seem knowledgeable when you don’t have people poking holes in your arguments, don’t you find?

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