So the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society was held last Saturday, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, a good time was had by most. Or, maybe the right thing to say was that a good time was had much of the time by many of the people.
More specifically: the morning session, devoted to science, was fun. The evening entertainment, by Mr. Deity and his crew, was fantastic. In between, there was some debate/discussion on science vs. religion. Ken Miller is a biologist who believes strongly that science should be taught in science classrooms — he was an important witness in the Dover trial — and who happens also to be a Catholic. He gave an apologia for his belief that was frustrating and ultimately (if you ask me) wrong-headed, but at least qualified as reasonable academic discussion. He was followed by Nancey Murphy, a theologian who was much worse; she defended her belief in the efficacy of prayer by relating an anecdote in which she prayed to God to get a job, and the phone immediately rang with a job offer. (I am not, as Dave Barry says, making this up.) And Michael Shermer and Vic Stenger represented the atheist side, although both talks were also frustrating in their own ways.
But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).
So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.
Ross’ talk took two tacks. First, he explained to us how the Bible predicted that: (1) the universe started from an initial singularity; (2) it is now expanding; and (3) it is cooling down at it expands. The evidence for these remarkable claims? A long list of Bible verses! Well, not the verses themselves. Just the citations. So we couldn’t really tell what the verses themselves said. Except for poor Ken Miller, who was trying to salvage some last shred of dignity for his side of the debate, and had the perspicacity to look up one of the verses on his iPhone. (Praise be to technology!) I’m not sure which verse it was, but that’s okay, because they all say precisely the same thing. Here is Isaiah 45:12, in the New International Version:
It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
What’s that? You don’t see the bold prediction of Hubble’s Law, practically ready for peer review? It’s right there, in the bit about “stretched out the heavens.” To the mind of a non-crazy person, this is a poetic way of expressing the fact that the dome of the sky reaches from one horizon to the other. To Hugh Ross, though, it’s a straightforward scientific prediction of the expansion of the universe.
Here is Ross in person, going through some of these same arguments:
(Yes, that video is embedded from “GodTube.com.”)
His second tack was to explain how our universe is finely-tuned for the existence of life. We’ve all heard this kind of claim, from real scientists as well as crackpots. But Ross and his clan take it to grotesque extremes, as detailed in the website for his Reasons to Believe ministry. Where, by the way, they don’t believe the LHC will destroy the world! Rather, it will “provide even new reasons to trust the validity of Scripture.” It would be nice if they would tell us what those reasons are ahead of time. Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
According to Reasons to Believe, the chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe is only 1 in 10282 — or it would have been, if it weren’t for divine miracles. (Don’t tell them about there are 10500 vacua in string theory, it would ruin everything.) They get this number by writing down a long list of criteria that are purportedly necessary for the existence of life (“star’s space velocity relative to Local Standard of Rest”; “molybdenum quantity in crust”; “mass distribution of Oort Cloud objects”), then they assign probabilities to each, and cheerfully multiply them together. To the non-crackpot eye, most have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities. (You cannot calculate the fraction of “Sean Carroll”s in the world by multiplying the fraction of “Sean”s by the fraction of “Carroll’s. As good Irish names, they are strongly correlated.) It’s the worst kind of flim-flam, because it tries to cover the stench of nonsense by squirting liberal doses of scientific-smelling perfume. If someone didn’t know anything about the science, and already believed in an active God who made the universe just for us, they could come away convinced that modern science had vindicated all of their beliefs. And that’s not something any of us should sit still for.
There is a reason why all this is worth rehashing, as distasteful as it may be and as feeble as the arguments are. Namely: there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness. You can invite religious speakers, and you can have a debate on the existence of God; all that is fine, so long as it is clearly labeled and not presented as science. But there’s never any reason to invite crackpots. The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It’s the opposite of the academic ideal. And it’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots.
Which, if you want to be excessively conspiratorial, might have been the point. Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there. Still, it was inappropriate. If we non-believers are confident in our positions, we should engage with the most intelligent and open-minded exemplars of the other side. Shooting fish in a barrel is not a sport that holds anyone’s attention for very long.
David:
Thanks for the post. I think you’re right, Dr. Prothero was more likely speaking of complex life not homo sapiens. Though I still would like to know what this 10^4100000 probability was all about. Much of the conference was indeed speculation culminating in the god thing. I frankly do not see much of a distinction between the Landscape and the existence of god but heh I’m just a lowly engineer.
Eh, what? I’m not even sure what “preaching science to the unconverted” is supposed to mean. If you’re saying that he’s convincing YECs to become OECs, then I will grant that’s a step in the right direction, but Ross also preaches that nothing in science is contradictory to the “inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of God” as interpreted literally, just a little less literally than YECs.
This sort of thinking is an anathema to what the scientific method calls for.
As for diplomacy — this is a blog, so what do you expect? In real life, I have never been as blunt to the creationists I know, mainly because I value their friendship. Such an approach would be counterproductive for all of us. But they are also not the head of an organization which attempts to obfuscate practicing their beliefs with practicing science. Sure, they dress it up as such, but when push comes to shove, they are always required to interpret their results in the light of a literal interpretation of Scripture, and you cannot do that and be called a real scientist.
@David McMahon The trouble is that it is not necessary to have a balanced and clear scientific understanding to get a PhD, or even in some cases a chair (professorship) , it is only necessary to be able to publish some papers on something quite specific.
These people are so infuriating, whether deluded or cynically misleading the successful amongst them have the ability to spout bollocks at such a rate that it is impossible for any rational debater to deflate all of their arguments. Even the semi-scientifically literate observer can come away with the notion that there was some substance to the crank’s arguments.
tacitus #23
RTB never “requires all of science to be in 100% harmony with a religious text”. How could they possibly do that? Your assertion is a straw man, something you made up.
RTB takes scientific information that is published in journal articles, books, etc.; compares the science to a Christian worldview, and shows where there is agreement and where there is disagreement, and why.
By the way, science is not the exclusive domain of atheists. Theists also participate and make marvelous contributions. I don’t think that tacitus is authorized to determine who can be called a “real scientist.”
Otis
That’s part of what I mean, yes. More than that, he’s getting biblical literalists to shed some of their knee jerk resistance to ideas backed “only” by science. The reality is that, crackpot that he is, he has far more credibility with that crowd than you or I would. Again, I think we need him. And more like him.
It is very much relevant, whether or not we can measure it. We may wish to perform calculations within the constraints of what we know but that should not mean that they don’t carry caveats.
Otis: #29
First I should state for the record that I do not argue that you cannot be a scientist if you are a Christian. I accept there are many, many thousands of such people.
But here are some examples of what I mean about Hugh Ross’s organization requiring science to be in harmony with Scripture:
1) From a “Creation” timeline in their FAQ we get this statement:
2) His answer for who is Cain’s wife is right down the line assuming that the Bible is 100% a historical record (http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/cainswife.shtml), to the point of arguing that Adam lived to be 800 years old and was the first human being on Earth. In fact, the whole answer is no different from anything a YEC site would put out, directly contradicting just about everything archaeology and paleontology tells us about early human beings.
3) More nonsense about how science supposedly leads us to the conclusion that early man lived hundreds of years (http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/new_clues_to_a_genesis_mystery.shtml). Again, pure YEC.
4) And here’s the clincher:
In other words any scientific theory that directly contradicts the Bible is, by definition, wrong.
from: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/inerrancy.shtml
Yes, their statement on inerrancy is buried a little deeper than most creationist sites, but it’s there and in full force.
Expanding on my comment about Christian scientists (small ‘s’), the Christians I am talking about are Christians who do not adhere to the inerrancy doctrine. In other words, they are quite comfortable with assuming that many of the tales told in Genesis are part of the Christian creation myth and are not to be interpreted as literal events in any way.
Many such Christians value Genesis as an allegorical depiction of the nature of the relationship between God and Man. That’s fine by me.
While I am an atheist, I accept and agree that the question of whether there is a supernatural being who is responsible for the creation of the Universe and everything is unanswered and may well always be so. I just don’t think it’s very likely there is one.
Such metaphysical questions are untestable and outside the realm of science (not something Ross would agree with, apparently).
Carl Sagan:
So how do you know whether this guy is Columbus or Bozo the Clown, or more accurately from my school of thought, who cares whether he’s Bozo the Clown or not? I think for myself, and expect others to do the same. If this guy presents a viewpoint and I don’t like it, that doesn’t mean it’s crazy or that he’s a crackpot. Just means that I believe he’s inaccurate right?
Wouldn’t the first time ever that both scientists, theists, or both have struggled with inaccuracy.
Sean said:
The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions.
Isn’t the mangling of facts, statistics, and context until it fits a pre-conceived conclusion generally the scheme amongst all non-provable topics?
A theist cannot prove there is a God to an atheist. An atheist cannot prove there is no God to a theist.
What is there to be open minded about when a staunch atheist and a staunch theist have a discussion about the existence of God?
All that is left to talk about is A) What you believe and B) why you believe it. Fully knowing beforehand of course that you won’t be convincing the other of anything they don’t already believe.
Hi maninalift,
Yes I agree with your comment
“trouble is that it is not necessary to have a balanced and clear scientific understanding to get a PhD, or even in some cases a chair (professorship) , it is only necessary to be able to publish some papers on something quite specific.”
I have met plenty of people, creationists and not, that had that problem. In fact I would say the problem is rampant. But you seem to imply that a “balanced and clear scientific understanding” leads to atheism. I don’t think that is the case. I would propose that large numbers of educated people with a clear and balanced understanding of science, disagree with atheism.
The thing which gives the Bible such literary “power” is that it has a multiple, indeed almost innumerable, set of interpretations. It is silly to read Isaiah and read inflationary cosmology into it. Yet poetry which we consider great, and much of the Bible such as Isaiah is poetry, is that which continues to have some interpretative or aliterative impact through time.
Christians think that the coming Messiah written down by Isaiah is the “Christos,” when really it was not, and Hugh Ross is reading a whole lot of tea leaves as well. This is after all why all of this is called religion.
Lawrence B. Crowell
GRRRR!!! My browser asked do I want a cookie from GodTube.com as soon as I went to cosmicvariance.com. I didn’t even know what was going on until I saw this post. So what’s up? Why is your site automatically sending me cookies from things you link to that I haven’t even clicked on?
I don’t want my computer getting brainwashed.
It’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots? Sean, religious beliefs are crackpottery by definition. The question that should be asked is, why should the viewpoint of religious believers be represented at all? The only reason I can see is that their viewpoint is very popular, as popular as it is ridiculous. But if a belief’s popularity is a good reason to grant it the right to be represented at a conference, I have to ask, what’s your problem with Ross? Creationism is certainly very popular in your country. 42% of your citizens are young earth creationists, so I imagine that an even greater fraction fall under the label ‘creationist’.
So, it seems to me that you can’t have it both ways. Either popular viewpoints have the right to be represented at scientific conferences by virtue of their popularity, or they don’t. If they do, creationism should be represented. If they don’t, only justified viewpoints should be represented, in which case scientists like Ken Miller should speak as if they were atheists at any such conference.
To GRRRR!, I got a cookie as well. They are easy enough to delete at least.
L. C.
One poster said that the verse stated was in the past tense and the universe shouldnt be growing if it were created..but we as people create a baby and it continues to ‘grow’ most non believers think they can read the bible and understand they can not..the bible is for believers only. It would be like me reading a high level math book and then teaching at MIT..cant be done..look at it this way we are all but a very very tiny speck in all of creation, we are given but a slight view of this creation to argue who is right and wrong misses the point..lets all enjoy what we see lets all look for more things to wonder at and to learn..believers we can rejoice that our GOD made all of this, nonbelievers enjoy this its wonderful..find out more the wonders of the universe..to ague is a waste of our time we wont change each others view will we?
There is a much more serious point here, which is the damage this type of quackery does to real science.
Let’s all pretend for a moment that religion never evolved thus was unable to influence scientific debate.
The prevalence or rarity of life in the universe is a scientifically interesting question.
Specifically, the probability of a terrestrial planet containing detectable life is very important for exoplanetology. How to interpret measurements from a limited sample of planets depends greatly on whether or not the expectation for life is 1 in 10, or one in 10^9.
There are a lot of clues in various disparate, traditionally unrelated sciences (physics, organic chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy) that yield vastly different estimates for the probability of life. Many of these constraints will be convoluted, and require significant in-deph background knowledge of that field. In our perfect, religion-free world, scientists from different disciplines sit down with each other and explain, with infinite patience, where all these different constraints come from and how they can be combined to generate testable hypotheses.
Back to reality. If Woomongers use bullshit arguments that are superficially similar to real scientific arguments, then scientists in unrelated fields can be turned off, so that their patience is eroded to the point where they don’t bother learning the background necessary to distinguish between the genuine constraints from another science and the antiscientific crap.
Giving the antiscientists exposure at high profile conferences only exacerbates this problem.
As an example, conference members were subjected to nutjob arguments about how the crustal molybdenum content (Mo/Si ratio) can drop the probability of life by 200 orders of magnitude.
As a result of this, conference attendees may be less receptive to real geochemical arguments to drop the probability by 2 orders of magnitude based on Mg/Si ratios.
Incidentally, did the scientific part of the conference feature a rare Earth presentation, or was this hypothesis represented only by nut jobs?
I told you so, Sean.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But I *DID* try to warn you about what was coming.
I was first exposed to Hugh Ross on public access TV when I was an undergraduate. Even before I went on to an academic career in physics I could tell that his understanding of science was utterly crackpot.
On the other hand, when he presented essentially religious arguments (from the New Testament!) for the correctness of string theory, it didn’t seem so different from some arguments I’ve heard from string theorists!
I suppose you folks realize that if the universe is really huge, or indeed infinite (how weird, considering then the infinities of all events however unlikely), then formation of life may actually be extremely improbable. For example, one chance in about 10^100 cubic light-years and we’re it for a region of about that size, and so on. Really, we have AFAIK very little idea of the probability of molecules coming together in the right way in various natural environments, so speculation to this point has been very much a case of guesswork. In that case, considering the boundary issues (how big the universe, how many “universes” (rightly defined as contiguous domains of space-time, as one “rubber sheet” versus another, true?) there are, etc. BTW please check my question in about space since I am bothered by spaces floating around inside another space, as it were.
Like I’ve said before, the big deal is why the world is the way it is, why one way for things to be would be blessed by “existing” (can you define that in a non-circular, non-mathematical type way?) and others not, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever really heard good answers to that here or anywhere. That doesn’t prove that “Someone” Did It, but may suspect some “Great Idea” is at work to get things off the ground at the very least. That Idea could well be about what sorts of things would be encouraged to happen (like life) not just to titillate scientists as with “elegance”, “symmetry”, “beauty” (in the conceptual sense) etc. Why not?
[My question in “Does Space Expand?”]
But if that’s what you want from science, then you are doomed to be disappointed. Science is in the business of asking “How?” not “Why?”. Why we are here, why we exist is not within the realm of science to answer. Frankly, given the odds against us even existing (just think about the number of variables just in your parents’ lives that went into the “encounter” that resulted in your conception), then the only answer that seems to fit is…
“Dumb luck!”
Seriously, though, questions as to why the Universe is the way it is will likely ever be answered by science. Even if we discover the presence of an infinite number of parallel universes and can one day explain how a singularity became our universe, that still doesn’t explain why we exist, or anything exists, for that matter.
Religion doesn’t really answer those questions either. If you ask “Why does God exist?” you just get answers like “he just does” or (what seems to be the current favorite) “that question is a category mistake.”
Ho hum. “Dumb luck” works for me 🙂
Well Sean, I guess I really don’t know what to believe anymore.
Will there be any ‘evidence’ that this blog existed, in 2000 years time?
Will Elvis still be King? – will there be any evidence that Elvis ‘actually’ existed in 2000 years time?
I guess we sort of take it for granted that a recording of his voice & songs in one form or another will still exist in 2000 years time.
Notwithstanding that really there is little that is actually relevant or prove-able to us, beyond our own very short lifespan.
I mean will anyone remember in however many billions of years time, when and if the universe ends – who was the first to predict accurately if, how and/or when it would end sometime in the second millennium anno domini – terran time?
Mind you after our own Sun burns out – will anyone remember terran time and/or earthlings? will the ‘human race’ or ‘species’ have developed and achieved interstellar or intergalactic travel – maybe surfing on dark matter?
Recommended reading in the LA Times a few days ago on “Asking the Right God Question”. Something the Origin conference failed to do.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-oe-rodriguez6-2008oct06,0,5631711.column
It’s a bit sad that Sean feels compelled to report on the least interesting talk at this conference. Did Susskind have anything thought-provoking to say?
Among all the differences between Science and whatever label one wants to put on the various interpretations and observations of “belief”, there are two that stand out more than others to me. One, the unseemly desperation by those on one side or another to appear to “know” the truth actually precludes the most important truth…. no one, I repeat NO ONE has even a grunion of proof either way! That’s offensive to the “intellectual” crowd, I understand. And offers no validation to the “sheep”.
Two, when it comes to trying to find out, only one side says, “I want to know”. Only Science tries to disprove it’s observations. Creation theory would be a lot more worthy of discussion if it weren’t for the absurdity of the claim that a single eternal entity was here before anything existed and instead admitted creation may well have happened as a classroom experiment by other far advanced life. It becomes even less worthy of recognition when all the “Holiness” is attached. I’d be more likely to believe a cow actually jumped over the moon, though to me I see no difference between either fairy tale.
Lawrence B. Crowell on Oct 9th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
To GRRRR!, I got a cookie as well. They are easy enough to delete at least.
L. C.
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My point was that if that could happen, then I could just as easily have gotten a virus from this site. And that could be impossible to delete.