Creationist Math

A common misconception is that evolution relies entirely on chance. For example, I once read part of a science textbook intended for homeschooling parents that included this analogy:

Imagine a yard containing all of the parts of a working computer that has been disassembled and the parts have been strewn all over the yard. How likely does it seem that a tornado could blow through the yard and randomly reassemble the parts to once again form a working computer?

This is an attempt to update the old Boeing 747 analogy from Fred Hoyle. He was attempting to illustrate the improbability of certain elements of life originating by chance.

Since such abuses of probability estimation seem to thrive still today, particularly in forums that are dominated by amateur commentators (I’m talking about you, Facebook), I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss a one of the many problems with analogies like this.

The modern theory of evolution—or you may hear it referred to as the modern synthesis—does not suggest that evolutionary events are the products of mere chance. While chance is a factor, such as in random mutations, it is not the only one. Consider 10 types of birds living on an island with 10 different beak shapes. Let’s suppose the available food source for these birds is only reachable by one of the beak shapes (perhaps it’s in a narrow hole or something). A naïve treatment of the probability of survival here would assign equal weight to every type of bird. However, we should easily recognize that survival is not random here. It will specifically favor the bird type that is able to reach the food source. So, there is a non-random factor at work. Specifically, reaching the food is needed for reproduction and survival and not all bird types can reach the food. An entirely natural process is performing selection.

Let’s also look at an example that does not involve living things. If you’re on a rocky beach, you might notice the distribution of rocks and pebbles has a specific pattern. Rocks will be sorted according to their size. There will be fairly uniform layers running parallel to the water. Let’s approach the problem like a creationist and see how we incorrectly determine the probability by thinking it’s random. To keep it simple, we’ll assume a small sample space of 16 rocks. Each letter group means the rocks are roughly the same size.

If I were to randomly pull rocks out of a bag and place them into the 16 squares, I calculate the chance as only 0.0000000159 that this pattern would appear. This is being pretty generous in that we have only 16 squares to fill and any of the A rocks can be in the first row, B rocks in the second row, etc. Even given these concessions, random chance is an unlikely explanation. So, should we conclude that there must have been intelligent involvement? Of course not. We know there are natural processes selecting for rock placement just as natural processes select for survival.

Any argument that calculates a probability based on random chance alone ignores this known feature, thus, is arguing against a straw man.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you haven’t caught sight of this video yet, it’s well worth the hour and a half: Stephen Colbert, out of character, interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson with intelligent questions on the nature of science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson also gave An American Atheist the pleasure of an interview some months back as well.

Why Carl Sagan is awesome – post script.

One more point about Carl Sagan and Cosmos – in the last episode, Sagan makes explicit the connection he appears to draw throughout the series between the value of critical thinking in the scientific realm and the value of critical thinking in all human endeavors. While standing in a recreated library of Alexandria, he asks why the knowledge of the Ancients failed to bring us swiftly into the Enlightenment and instead disintegrated into the Dark Ages, only to reemerge hundreds of years later.

I cannot give you a simple answer, but I do know this. There is no record in the entire history of the library that any of the illustrious scholars and scientists who worked here, ever seriously challenged a single political, or economic, or religious assumption of the society in which they lived. The permanence of the stars was questioned – the justice of slavery was not.”

I’ve written several times before on the connection between atheism and social justice, the skeptical movement and other political movements. I’ve argued that anyone who cares about the religiosity of a society also needs to care about politics – that the two are intertwined and cannot be untangled, and that perhaps it is even the political and social arrangements of a society that have the greatest impact on the level and destructiveness of its religiosity. I can’t say how pleased I was to see Sagan invoking the same point – science without a social conscience cannot justify itself all on its own, and if we challenge the irrationality of theism but not of oppression, it is quite possible we will, in the long run, accomplish very little indeed.

Investigating Woo: Spring Forest Qigong “research”

This is a follow-up to my previous post investigating a study from the Mayo Clinic in collaboration with the University of Minnesota claiming that external qigong, a form of ancient Chinese medicine, is an effective treatment for chronic pain. My critique apparently got on the nerves of at least one person, Drew Hempel, qigong enthusiast and woo extraordinaire, who offered his assurance regarding the validity of the study and its methodology. Sadly, it’s not assurance that I am after—it’s evidence. However, maybe I was wrong; maybe the study was academically rigorous and its conclusions actually sound. After all, I am only an undergraduate (despite the fact that, in a recent blog post, Hempel incorrectly described me as a “university senior biologist”), and I admittedly only read the abstract.

Mr. Hempel has posted on internet blogs and forums statements such as the following:

Last fall there was a new study done by doctors from one of the top rated hospitals in the world — the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The study proved the existence and the efficacy of external qi (paranormal energy) healing transmission. . . O.K. I want to emphasize the implications of this study. This is ground-breaking official proof of something that undermines the very foundation of science.

Such extraordinary claims require even more extraordinary evidence, and Hempel believes, along with many, many others, that this evidence exists in a study performed at the Spring Forest Qigong center in Minnesota, published in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine.

After Hempel’s criticisms of my post and his request that I not “give up so easily” in my search for truth (I suggest Hempel do the same), I decided to check whether or not my university subscribed to the specific journal in order to obtain the full text of External Qigong for Chronic Pain (2010), the study that had supposedly demonstrated the efficacy of qigong. Much to my surprise, they do, and I found it. While reading the study, my initial criticisms based on the abstract alone became more and more cemented. I am now-more than ever-convinced that the study is absolutely bunk from the top down. The flaws are numerous, and I have included them below in point form, followed by a more in-depth criticism regarding the methodology behind each.

1. Flawed sampling method.

2. Lack of adequate controls.

3. Subjectivity in data collection.

4. Reliance on anecdotal evidence.

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Can belief kill? - Exploring the mind-body connection

Several years ago, I was dozing in and out of an afternoon nap in the back of my car. While chatting away with the endless dialogue that often typifies my dream experience, I realized that my eyes were open, and I could see my arm and my hand and the back of the front seat in front of me. I tried to move – but nothing happened. I tried again, and yet I remained unable to budge. It felt as though I was trapped inside a rock.

My first thought was that I was dying. For a brief moment this seemed like a mere interesting observation, “Huh, maybe I’m dead” but then as the seconds ticked away my inability to move started to build up panic inside me. Finally, I focused all my energy on being able to move and in one final push, was able to suddenly burst awake, sitting straight up. That was my first experience with sleep paralysis.

Visitations from witches are another traditional interpretation of sleep paralysis.

Anyone who has experienced sleep paralysis knows it is a deeply terrifying experience, especially the first time it happens. However, once I looked up what had happened to me, and learned it is a universal, and perfectly normal, experience, my future encounters with sleep paralysis were not nearly half so bad. True, they were still frightening and frustrating, but at least I could think calmly to myself in the midst of them, “this is sleep paralysis, and it will pass.”

But what if you didn’t know what sleep paralysis was? And even worse, what if the explanation you did have understood sleep paralysis as a visitation from an evil spirit, or a demon? Traditionally, this is how cultures of various stripes have accounted for sleep paralysis – in the Christian tradition it is often known as “the devil sitting on your chest.”[1] Now this is an explanation that is likely to make the experience of sleep paralysis not less, but considerably more horrifying. Indeed, perhaps this could even contribute to your horror so much, that it might actually kill you – that, at least, is the argument of a new book by Shelley Adler, called Sleep Paralysis: Night-mares, Nocebos, and the Mind Body Connection.

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Creation “Museum” opens in San Diego County

Creation “Museums” are popping up like toadstools all over the country, the latest of which has sprouted in San Diego County, California, and appears to be wasting no time in its effort to lower the nation’s collective IQ through its administering of antiquated blarney, despite the fact that their ideas have been old hat for well over a century.

Religious beliefs tend to not be very concerned with whether or not ideas are true, but rather how tenacious they are. One comes to this realization while reviewing the current religious explanations for myriad phenomena only to discover that, despite having been completely and utterly refuted for decades or even centuries, they remain completely unchanged or merely redressed in freshly creased slacks, hoping you won’t discover that they’re still wearing the same skidmarked undies beneath a new fashionable pretence.

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The speed of light might not be the ultimate cap

One of the pillars of physics and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — was rocked Thursday.

European researchers said they clocked an oddball type of subatomic particle called a neutrino going faster than the 186,282 miles per second long been considered the cosmic speed limit.

There is still a lot of work to be done to determine if Einstein’s notion is incorrect, in need of modification, or if the neutrino test is flawed. This is an excellent time to point out that when science might be wrong, it is interested. If it is wrong, it changes its mind. The benefit of science is that it changes its mind. It is especially strange that this is the very thing that fundamentalists attack as the flaw in science — “those scientists, you see, they were wrong all along! They never knew what they were talking about!”

Read the full article here.

Further reading via Reuters.