Darwin, Creationism and Evidence

from Stephen Law by Stephen Law

Here's something I have been working on. Comments please. It needs a final para. Warning - about 3.5k words!

Introduction

Both the general theory of evolution and Darwin’s particular theory of evolution by natural selection are regularly challenged by people who describe themselves as “creationists”. There are several varieties of creationism. The focus here is on what is often called “young earth creationism”: the view that the entire universe is approximately six thousand (certainly less than ten) thousand years old, and that all living species were created within the first few days of creation. Henceforth, when I speak of “creationism”, it is young earth creationism I have in mind.

Why would anyone believe creationism? Typically, because they are Bible literalists. Creationists believe that Genesis provides an historically accurate account of origin of the universe and life. Their chronology is based primarily on the number and ages of the generations listed in the Old Testament.

Belief in creationism isn’t confined to a few religious cranks. Recent polls fairly consistently indicate that, currently, about one third to one half of all U.S. citizens are creationists.

Nor is creationism solely the preserve of the unintelligent or ill-educated. It seems that significant numbers of college graduates are drawn to Bible literalism. A Tennessee academic who surveyed his own students a few years ago found that about a third were creationists.

He complained that scientists like himself are having to fight the battles of the Enlightenment all over again. Medieval ideas that were killed stone dead by the rise of science three to four hundred years ago are not merely twitching; they are alive and well in our schools, colleges and universities.

Another 3,000 words from Stephen Law here.

Is Big Physics peddling science pornography?

Comment: Is Big Physics peddling science pornography?

Michael Hanlon is the science editor of the London Daily Mail and author of Ten Questions Science Can't Answer (Yet) (Macmillan)

From issue 2642 of New Scientist magazine, 09 February 2008, page 22

IF SOME Russian mathematicians are right, then 2008 will be a year to remember. Extraordinary as it sounds, this could be when humanity unwittingly creates its first time machine and we receive our first visitors from the future - presumably wearing, as future-fashion dictates, silver jumpsuits and driving flying cars.

These theorists speculate that at the much-delayed opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on the French-Swiss border, the assembled scientists and dignitaries may be treated to a big surprise. The LHC could, thanks to some mooted possibilities crashing around on the wilder shores of physics, become a time machine - specifically, the end of a "closed timelike curve" connected to the future (see "The accidental time machine").

This is not the first time we have been told that the LHC could change, or rather end, life as we know it. A few years ago someone calculated that the collider might create a mini black hole which would promptly set about eating the planet, starting with Switzerland. Or worse, create a weird subatomic particle called a strangelet that could devour the entire universe. Physics and cosmology stories are like this these days. Once it was all hard sums and red-shifted galaxies; awesome enough one would have thought. Now it's time machines and universe-eating particles.

Does any of this bear any relation to reality? Or is Big Physics guilty of some serious sexing-up, drifting away from the realm of hard data and into the softer universe of science pornography?

As well as accidental time machines we are told of cosmic strings - gigantic filaments of super-stuff that warp and tear space-time like ladders in a pair of celestial stockings - and crashing branes, titanic slabs of maths that give rise to the big bang in the exotically lovely ekpyrotic universe of Neil Turok.

Not crazy enough for you? What about the multiverse? One of the biggest sell-out lectures at last year's Hay-on-Wye festival in Wales starred the UK's astronomer royal, Martin Rees, who entertained his audience with a discussion of the possibility, indeed the probability, of multiple worlds - endless parallel realities existing in a gargantuan super-reality that makes what we think of as the universe as insignificant as a gnat on an elephant's backside. Or there's the simulation argument, philosopher Nick Bostrom's delicious idea that since it should be possible to replicate an entire universe in a computer, and that this could be done countless times, statistical cleverness proves that we are not the real McCoy but the figments of some electronic entity's imagination.

Don't get me wrong, I love parallel universes. I love the idea that, 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 100 light years away is an identical me, sitting down at his computer writing this very same article in a world exactly the same as mine except that the gear stick on the Honda Accord is a slightly different shade of grey. And I love the idea that every time a subatomic particle goes hither or thither, a whole new creation is invoked; forget half-dead cats in boxes, we are talking worlds in which Hitler won the second world war, or where there was no Hitler, and no second world war and no Honda Accords at all.

It is fun to know that serious scientists believe the fabulous alternate realities of the Philip Pullman novels could be accurate descriptions of reality (for in a multiverse of infinite size and scope there will, somewhere and somewhen, be a world where a little girl called Lyra befriends a talking polar bear and where people's souls take the form of animal familiars).

Fun yes, but is it harmless? Scientists, and people like me who stick up for science, are happy to pour scorn on astrologers, homeopaths, UFO-nutters, crop-circlers and indeed the Adam-and-Eve brigade, who all happily believe in six impossible things before breakfast with no evidence at all.

Show us the data, we say to these deluded souls. Where are your trials? What about Occam's razor - the principle that any explanation should be as simple as possible? The garden is surely beautiful enough, we say, without having to populate it with fairies.

The danger is that on the wilder shores of physics these standards are often not met either.

There is as yet no observational evidence for cosmic strings. It's hard to test for a multiverse. In this sense, some of these ideas are not so far, conceptually, from UFOs and homeopathy. If we are prepared to dismiss ghosts, say, as ludicrous on the grounds that firstly we have no proper observational evidence for them and secondly that their existence would force us to rethink everything, doesn't the same argument apply to simulated universes and time machines?

Are we not guilty of prejudice against some kinds of very unlikely ideas in favour of others?

Believing in ghosts takes a different mindset to advocating parallel worlds or cosmic strings. But do we really believe that we are all the creations of a computer sitting in some higher-dimensional adolescent's bedroom, or that time travellers will land at the LHC? Or

are we, too, seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden?

Claims of Evidence by Victor Stenger

Seminar IV. Claims of Evidence (b)

T: Science is supposed to rely on empirical evidence. What about the empircal evidence of religious experience? Throughout history to the present day, individuals have experienced the existence of a transcendent power during prayer or meditation. They insist that what they experiences was no a simple dream but a real oneness with the universe.
A: Why should we believe them?

T: Are you saying they are lying?
A: No, in most cases they are probably not lying. But it still could be all in their heads.

T: They are witnesses, just like the witnesses in a law court. We base legal judgements on the testimony of witnesses, why can't we base scientific judgements on the same?
A: Many studies have shown the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. I, for one, would never convict someone of a crime based on eyewitness testimony alone. It has to be supported by physical evidence, like DNA. Since DNA testing, many convicted people have been found innocent.

T: Let's get back to the relgious experience. Physical evidence has been found, in brain scans, which show that something unique happens in the brain during religious experiences.
A: Yes, and they have even been induced by electromagnetic pulses in the brain. As I said, it could be, and indeed looks as if, it's all in the head. The mystic never returns from his or her trance with information that could not have been there all along. Why don't they come back with predictions that can be tested? Not a single psychic or mystic predicted the 9/11 tragedies (though many may claim so after the fact).

T: What about out-of body experiences (OBE)? I have heard of a controlled experiment where a woman lying on a table was able to read numbers on a shelf above her head, not visible from the table. She said she floated above her body and read them.
A: I know of that experiment. It turned out that she could see the numbers reflected from the glass of a wall clock.

T: Dr.Larry Dossey has documented many cases of OBEs and other evidence for spiritual claims in his best-selling books. In one case, he reports that a blind woman floated up out of her body during surgery and was able to read the name tags of the medical staff in an adjoining room.
A: Dossey admits he made up that story.

T: And, how about Near Death Experiences (NDE)? People have been revived after being clinically dead and talked about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and a very general, pleasant experience that has convinced them not to fear death, that there is a world beyond.
A: First, they were probably never really "dead" or else they would not have been resucitated. And, as in OBE, they bring back no revelations that can be later tested. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is a common experience of oxygen deprivation and observed in the laboratory, such as in high-g centrifuge tests of jet pilots.

T: You spoke earlier about predictions. I agree that predictions are a major way to test scientific theories. Well, the Bible and other scriptures have their predictions too, called prophecies. Many authors have documented their success. Take one example: hundreds of Old Testament prophecies foresaw the coming of Jesus.
A: Prediction is meaningless when they are made after the fact. How do you know that the stories in the New Testament were simply written to conform to those in the Old Testiment?

T: The New Testament stories are not inventions, they are facts confirmed by witnesses.
A: Witnesses, right. What about the all the prophecies that never happened, like Jesus telling his disciples that he will return to Earth and establish his kingdom before all of them were dead? But let us not get off into the endless debate on the Bible. I want to stick to science. In science a prediction has to be made ahead of time, before the predicted event happens. And, it has to be risky. Not a simple triviality such as "The sun will come up tomorrow." Risky predictions have been successfully made thousand of times in science, not once in religion.

T: What about the Bible Code? Michael Drosin was able to predict the assasination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin including the year it would happen. He and others have found many other predictions coded in the Bible.
A: Statistics experts have shown the the skip-sequence method they used will produce many apparent correlations by chance. They have shown similar concordances in other long books beside the Bible, such as Moby Dick and War and Peace. Drosnin's Rabin prediction was very vague and not very risky. given the violence in the Middle East. It was not published until after the fact and he admits that the date prediction was made while "Israel mourned Rabin."

T: But they quote very high odds against chance, thousands to one.
A: These calculations have been shown to be wrong. The fail to account for the data selection that was done in their analyses.