What do climate change denial and Intelligent Design have in common? I mean other then the obvious. They are both supported by groups that have an idealogical agenda. Both groups refuse to, or are incapable of, acknowledging the evidence. Both groups have well resourced and politically connected lobbys.
Well those are all true. I'm talking about recent moves in the US by the climate change deniers to adopt a "teach the controversy" policy towards climate change. They want to give equal time and attention to those who believe that it's all a hoax or a misunderstanding or a conspiracy.
This was exactly the tactic adopted by the Creationists after they failed to get creationism into public schools in the US. They engaged a professional marketing firm. Then they changed their name from Creationism to Intelligent Design and adopted the line "teach the controversy".
Lets get this straight. There is no controversy over climate change. It is happening. All the evidence says that is it and it is the overwhelming consensus of the global climate science community. There is no more a controversy over this than there is that evolution happened. It did. Or that the earth is an oblate spheroid. It is. Or that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion. It is. Or... Well you get the point. This is a case of deliberate amd manufactured false balance in the media that I have previously written about.
The only controversy over climate change is the false idea that there is a controversy. It's a false problem created by wealthy backers with an ideological block that doesn't allow them to acknowledge the evidence and come to a conclusion about reality.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Skepchick Speaks in Wellington
As part of her whirlwind tour of New Zealand. Rebecca Watson made an appearance at the Back Bencher in Wellington last night. The talk took place In a small room on the second floor and in front of an audience of about 50 or so. The intimate setting ensured that even though I was seated at the very back. I still had a clear view and no trouble hearing.
So on to the talk itself. Once troubles with the projector and microphone had been dealt with. And in this case dealt with means giving up on them and carrying on without. Rebecca, with slide clicker in one hand and a handle of max drought in the other, Began to deliver what would be a very entertaining presentation on the subject of Christmas. My initial impression was that this was a timely and yet irrelevant topic. Even though I was raised in a Christian family where Christmas was all about the birth of Jesus. I have had no trouble in my transition from Christmas as a religious holiday to Christmas as a celebration of family and food. Especially food. So I was a very curious from the out set just where Rebecca's talk would go.
Of course being a Rebecca fan of long standing I should have had more confidence that her talk would be funny, informative and thought provoking. It was of course all three. From an initial discussion on the subject of childhood belief in the traditional western Santa Clause. Rebecca moved into a very funny section about some of the other weird fictional Christmas characters that appear in other cultures. Door Sniffer was my favorite. Though I can't really tell why.
Any way. It turns out that the Christmas battle rages in the lad of crazy and extremes. Thats right, America. Over there it seems that the Fundamentalists are desperately trying to return Christmas to it's religious roots. And the New Atheists are trying to drive Christmas to it's secular extreme. On this Rebecca made a very interesting observation that I had not previously considered. That is that religious holidays tend to become more secular over time. She used the example of mothers day. Which apparently started out as mothering day. A day in old England where people that had moved away would return to their mother church. Now I can't think of many days that are less removed from religion than mothers day.
The stated topic of the talk was how to ruin Christmas. But in the end it was really about how to enjoy Christmas and at the same time piss off the crazy fundies that always pack a sad when things don't go their way. The idea that Christmas will move to a more secular holiday on it's own and as a natural result of cultural drift is one that I agree with. In fact it seems obvious now that I think about it.
After the talk there was Q&A. Rebecca again showed why she has achieved the celebrity skeptic status she has by answering a multitude of questions on a wide range of topics with clear in informative answers. Sometimes drifting into a funny and relevant anecdote that served to illustrate the point she was making. Or not. All in all it made for a very welcoming and relaxed atmosphere which facilitated an interesting and stimulating conservation.
Rebecca Watson is one of the jems of the global skeptical community. It was a true pleasure to hear her speak and I hope she sees her way to returning down under sometime soon.
So on to the talk itself. Once troubles with the projector and microphone had been dealt with. And in this case dealt with means giving up on them and carrying on without. Rebecca, with slide clicker in one hand and a handle of max drought in the other, Began to deliver what would be a very entertaining presentation on the subject of Christmas. My initial impression was that this was a timely and yet irrelevant topic. Even though I was raised in a Christian family where Christmas was all about the birth of Jesus. I have had no trouble in my transition from Christmas as a religious holiday to Christmas as a celebration of family and food. Especially food. So I was a very curious from the out set just where Rebecca's talk would go.
Of course being a Rebecca fan of long standing I should have had more confidence that her talk would be funny, informative and thought provoking. It was of course all three. From an initial discussion on the subject of childhood belief in the traditional western Santa Clause. Rebecca moved into a very funny section about some of the other weird fictional Christmas characters that appear in other cultures. Door Sniffer was my favorite. Though I can't really tell why.
Any way. It turns out that the Christmas battle rages in the lad of crazy and extremes. Thats right, America. Over there it seems that the Fundamentalists are desperately trying to return Christmas to it's religious roots. And the New Atheists are trying to drive Christmas to it's secular extreme. On this Rebecca made a very interesting observation that I had not previously considered. That is that religious holidays tend to become more secular over time. She used the example of mothers day. Which apparently started out as mothering day. A day in old England where people that had moved away would return to their mother church. Now I can't think of many days that are less removed from religion than mothers day.
The stated topic of the talk was how to ruin Christmas. But in the end it was really about how to enjoy Christmas and at the same time piss off the crazy fundies that always pack a sad when things don't go their way. The idea that Christmas will move to a more secular holiday on it's own and as a natural result of cultural drift is one that I agree with. In fact it seems obvious now that I think about it.
After the talk there was Q&A. Rebecca again showed why she has achieved the celebrity skeptic status she has by answering a multitude of questions on a wide range of topics with clear in informative answers. Sometimes drifting into a funny and relevant anecdote that served to illustrate the point she was making. Or not. All in all it made for a very welcoming and relaxed atmosphere which facilitated an interesting and stimulating conservation.
Rebecca Watson is one of the jems of the global skeptical community. It was a true pleasure to hear her speak and I hope she sees her way to returning down under sometime soon.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Parents Pray, and a Child Dies.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible are facing a charge of involuntary manslaughter after their son died of bacterial pneumonia. The parents are Christian fundamentalists who chose to forgo proper and effective medical intervention for their son in favor of prayer. The couple has other children that have been allowed to remain in their care since their arrest.
When someone asks "What is the harm in faith?"
BAM! Right there. This is why faith is destructive and opposed to a civil and enlightened society. The belief that you can suspend reality and alter the course of nature through the power of invocations to a magician in the sky. Does it sound absurd when phrased like that?
Any way I try to describe the actions of individuals who engage in this type of behavior. Any way I try to put myself in their shoes. Any way I try to rationalize their actions. I always come to the same conclusion. These people are nuts. I mean not just in the colloquial use of the term. I mean they are stark raving mad! Diagnosable as insane. Off their rocker. A few instruments short of an orchestra. They're... well I think you get the point.
Think about it in isolation. They believe in an invisible and all powerful being. That created the entire universe solely for their benefit. And they have private conservations with this being in which they ask him to cure their son of an illness the aforementioned being created. Sounds insane to me.
If these people were not Christians and had been praying to, say, aliens to save their child. Might the reaction have been different? Might there have been more outrage perhaps? Maybe they would have been put in a hospital instead of a jail cell. What if they had been practicing Voodoo, or Mayan ritual animal sacrifice in an attempt to appease their deity and save their son?
The point that I'm trying so subtly to make here is that this is not an isolated case of crazy. It is an extreme symptom of a world where irrationality and superstition (yes religion is superstition) are allowed to flourish. And indeed are accepted and encouraged. While I am aware that the vast majority of the religious population would not rely on prayer and would seek medical attention in the same situation. It cannot be avoided that the death of this young child is a direct result of broken thinking due to religion.
From the website What's the Harm.net
Here is a short (and incomplete) list of lives lost due to the ineffective "treatment" of just Christian Science prayer healing.
Nancy Brewster, Aged 7, Cancer
Ian Burdick, Aged 15, Diabetes
Seth Ian Glasser, Aged 17 Months, Bacterial Meningitis
Amy Hermanson, Aged 7, Diabetes
Elizabeth Ashley King, Aged 12, Cancer
Andrew Pinkham, Aged 3, Pneumonia
Natalie Reppberger, Aged 8 months, Meningitis
Michael Schram, Aged 12, Ruptured Appendix
"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer form a delusion it is called religion." Robert Pirsig.
When someone asks "What is the harm in faith?"
BAM! Right there. This is why faith is destructive and opposed to a civil and enlightened society. The belief that you can suspend reality and alter the course of nature through the power of invocations to a magician in the sky. Does it sound absurd when phrased like that?
Any way I try to describe the actions of individuals who engage in this type of behavior. Any way I try to put myself in their shoes. Any way I try to rationalize their actions. I always come to the same conclusion. These people are nuts. I mean not just in the colloquial use of the term. I mean they are stark raving mad! Diagnosable as insane. Off their rocker. A few instruments short of an orchestra. They're... well I think you get the point.
Think about it in isolation. They believe in an invisible and all powerful being. That created the entire universe solely for their benefit. And they have private conservations with this being in which they ask him to cure their son of an illness the aforementioned being created. Sounds insane to me.
If these people were not Christians and had been praying to, say, aliens to save their child. Might the reaction have been different? Might there have been more outrage perhaps? Maybe they would have been put in a hospital instead of a jail cell. What if they had been practicing Voodoo, or Mayan ritual animal sacrifice in an attempt to appease their deity and save their son?
The point that I'm trying so subtly to make here is that this is not an isolated case of crazy. It is an extreme symptom of a world where irrationality and superstition (yes religion is superstition) are allowed to flourish. And indeed are accepted and encouraged. While I am aware that the vast majority of the religious population would not rely on prayer and would seek medical attention in the same situation. It cannot be avoided that the death of this young child is a direct result of broken thinking due to religion.
From the website What's the Harm.net
Here is a short (and incomplete) list of lives lost due to the ineffective "treatment" of just Christian Science prayer healing.
Nancy Brewster, Aged 7, Cancer
Ian Burdick, Aged 15, Diabetes
Seth Ian Glasser, Aged 17 Months, Bacterial Meningitis
Amy Hermanson, Aged 7, Diabetes
Elizabeth Ashley King, Aged 12, Cancer
Andrew Pinkham, Aged 3, Pneumonia
Natalie Reppberger, Aged 8 months, Meningitis
Michael Schram, Aged 12, Ruptured Appendix
"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer form a delusion it is called religion." Robert Pirsig.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
The Nonsense of "Scientific" Ghost Hunting.
If your not familiar with these shows, Ghost Hunters ect., you probably have better things to do with your time. In this post I'm going to point out quickly why these ghost hunters are not doing science. They use this word in an attempt to lend some legitimacy to what is otherwise a group of adults walking around in the dark and giving themselves frights.
The Equipment:
The ghost hunters, paranormal investigators or what ever it is that they choose to call themselves. Will often wander into a site to be investigated festooned with a multitude of electronic gizmos to be employed in the detection of the spirits. Lets go through some of the common items and see how they work and why it is unlikely they can be used to detect ghosts.
1) A thermometer. Everyone knows what a thermometer is right? It detects the temperature of the air or a surface ect. The thermometer is one of the favored tools of the paranormal investigator. Often its use is to find cold spots, or hot spots, in a room or on a surface or anywhere really, and then declare this to be ghost cold, or hot. Do we see the problem with this line of reasoning? First of all there are variations in temperature in any environment. If there weren't, we probably wouldn't need thermometers. Secondly. Being hot or cold has never been shown to be a property of ghosts. Therefore you can no more say that a cold, or hot, spot is a ghost then you can say my foot hurts because a giant invisible elephant is sitting on it.
2) A sound recorder. These are used to record electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. This is where the investigator makes a recording and hears nothing at the time. But later when the recording is played back. There is a ghostly voice speaking in the background. This is easily explained as normal interference on the recording combined with a good dose of pareidolia. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where a random stimulus is interpreted by the brain as a meaningful pattern. It's incredibly powerful and can be very convincing. Pareidolia is especially likely in situations where the person is wanting to find something. Like a ghost hunter. Or the devout Christian who sees the face of Mary in her grilled cheese. What is the claim here. That the ghost is able to somehow imprint their voice directly onto the recording medium? If so they usually do a rather poor job.
3) A night vision camera. Night vision cameras work by using an infrared bulb to illuminate the area to be filmed. This light is then picked up by the receiver in the camera. Since people cannot see in infrared, and the camera can, the camera appears to be filming in darkness. The usual use of these devices in ghost hunting is to see shapes or orbs that the camera picks up but were not visible to the user at the time. The reason for this happening should be obvious. Since the camera is essentially filming in the dark. Of course anything it films is going to be unseen by the operator. The types of things seen on these ghost films are almost always known artifacts and effects of filming with such cameras. They can usually be reproduced with complete accuracy by someone who knows what they are doing.
4) The EM field detector. An EM detector detects the orientation and magnitude of Electromagnetic Fields. This is probably the most ridiculous of all the tools that the paranormal investigator deploys in the attempt to look for spirits. Once again they simply wave it around and wait for the needle to move or the numbers to change and then declare it to be a ghost. Or psychic or paranormal energy or other such meaningless rubbish. They probably haven't a clue about what the device is actually measuring or how it is measuring it. EM fields are everywhere. You couldn't walk around a home with one of these devices and not have it register something. And, just like the thermometer, EM fields have never been shown to be a property of ghosts or a result of paranormal activity.
The Method:
In order to do a scientific investigation of ghosts and paranormal activity one must follow two possible methods.
Method 1) First you would need to establish the theoretical basis for the existence of ghosts. This would allow you to construct a theoretical ghost model that would allow for some of the properties of ghosts and ghostly activity to be hypothesized. Once these properties are known and a method for examining and/or measuring them is devised. Then an field expedition to a hunted site could be mounted to gather data and check it against the model. If the data fits. Success. If it doesn't. Failure. The model needs to be revised to explain the data and make further predictions that can then be tested in turn.
Method 2) Start by gathering data. Go to a haunted site and gather data. Take plenty of care to recored all the relevant information so that it can be useful later. Then you would need to look at your data and use it to come up with a model of ghosts and their properties that can explain your data and make predictions about further data that you can then go out and test.
The ghost hunters never follow either of these basic methods. What they engage in is anomaly hunting. They simply wander in with equipment that they don't understand and get excited when it does something they can't explain. It should not be hard to see why this isn't science. It isn't even investigation. In fact it isn't anything more than a waste of time and effort. These investigations do nothing to advance knowledge about ghosts or their behavior. And they bring us no closer to being able to understand what exactly a ghost is and how we can reliably detect one.
You can't scientifically investigate the paranormal. By definition it is outside of the laws of nature and therefore not amenable to scientific investigation. If there were spirits and ghosts that could have an effect on the real world, then we would be able to detect their presence and they would no longer be outside of nature. Alas, everything we have learned over the past few centuries of scientific investigation leads us to conclude that there are no such things as ghosts. The ghost hunters aren't doing science. Aren't doing an investigation and are just making themselves look stupid.
The Equipment:
The ghost hunters, paranormal investigators or what ever it is that they choose to call themselves. Will often wander into a site to be investigated festooned with a multitude of electronic gizmos to be employed in the detection of the spirits. Lets go through some of the common items and see how they work and why it is unlikely they can be used to detect ghosts.
1) A thermometer. Everyone knows what a thermometer is right? It detects the temperature of the air or a surface ect. The thermometer is one of the favored tools of the paranormal investigator. Often its use is to find cold spots, or hot spots, in a room or on a surface or anywhere really, and then declare this to be ghost cold, or hot. Do we see the problem with this line of reasoning? First of all there are variations in temperature in any environment. If there weren't, we probably wouldn't need thermometers. Secondly. Being hot or cold has never been shown to be a property of ghosts. Therefore you can no more say that a cold, or hot, spot is a ghost then you can say my foot hurts because a giant invisible elephant is sitting on it.
2) A sound recorder. These are used to record electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. This is where the investigator makes a recording and hears nothing at the time. But later when the recording is played back. There is a ghostly voice speaking in the background. This is easily explained as normal interference on the recording combined with a good dose of pareidolia. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where a random stimulus is interpreted by the brain as a meaningful pattern. It's incredibly powerful and can be very convincing. Pareidolia is especially likely in situations where the person is wanting to find something. Like a ghost hunter. Or the devout Christian who sees the face of Mary in her grilled cheese. What is the claim here. That the ghost is able to somehow imprint their voice directly onto the recording medium? If so they usually do a rather poor job.
3) A night vision camera. Night vision cameras work by using an infrared bulb to illuminate the area to be filmed. This light is then picked up by the receiver in the camera. Since people cannot see in infrared, and the camera can, the camera appears to be filming in darkness. The usual use of these devices in ghost hunting is to see shapes or orbs that the camera picks up but were not visible to the user at the time. The reason for this happening should be obvious. Since the camera is essentially filming in the dark. Of course anything it films is going to be unseen by the operator. The types of things seen on these ghost films are almost always known artifacts and effects of filming with such cameras. They can usually be reproduced with complete accuracy by someone who knows what they are doing.
4) The EM field detector. An EM detector detects the orientation and magnitude of Electromagnetic Fields. This is probably the most ridiculous of all the tools that the paranormal investigator deploys in the attempt to look for spirits. Once again they simply wave it around and wait for the needle to move or the numbers to change and then declare it to be a ghost. Or psychic or paranormal energy or other such meaningless rubbish. They probably haven't a clue about what the device is actually measuring or how it is measuring it. EM fields are everywhere. You couldn't walk around a home with one of these devices and not have it register something. And, just like the thermometer, EM fields have never been shown to be a property of ghosts or a result of paranormal activity.
The Method:
In order to do a scientific investigation of ghosts and paranormal activity one must follow two possible methods.
Method 1) First you would need to establish the theoretical basis for the existence of ghosts. This would allow you to construct a theoretical ghost model that would allow for some of the properties of ghosts and ghostly activity to be hypothesized. Once these properties are known and a method for examining and/or measuring them is devised. Then an field expedition to a hunted site could be mounted to gather data and check it against the model. If the data fits. Success. If it doesn't. Failure. The model needs to be revised to explain the data and make further predictions that can then be tested in turn.
Method 2) Start by gathering data. Go to a haunted site and gather data. Take plenty of care to recored all the relevant information so that it can be useful later. Then you would need to look at your data and use it to come up with a model of ghosts and their properties that can explain your data and make predictions about further data that you can then go out and test.
The ghost hunters never follow either of these basic methods. What they engage in is anomaly hunting. They simply wander in with equipment that they don't understand and get excited when it does something they can't explain. It should not be hard to see why this isn't science. It isn't even investigation. In fact it isn't anything more than a waste of time and effort. These investigations do nothing to advance knowledge about ghosts or their behavior. And they bring us no closer to being able to understand what exactly a ghost is and how we can reliably detect one.
You can't scientifically investigate the paranormal. By definition it is outside of the laws of nature and therefore not amenable to scientific investigation. If there were spirits and ghosts that could have an effect on the real world, then we would be able to detect their presence and they would no longer be outside of nature. Alas, everything we have learned over the past few centuries of scientific investigation leads us to conclude that there are no such things as ghosts. The ghost hunters aren't doing science. Aren't doing an investigation and are just making themselves look stupid.
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