Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 574

Millennials are dumping religion for witchcraft, not science

It’s not a new story. We’ve covered it here, here, and here within the last year or so. People don’t seem to be ditching traditional religion for science as much as for witchcraft:

Interest in spirituality has been booming in recent years while interest in religion plummets, especially among millennials. The majority of Americans now believe it is not necessary to believe in God to have good morals, a study from Pew Research Center found. The percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who “never doubt existence of God” fell from 81% in 2007 to 67% in 2012.

Meanwhile, more than half of young adults in the U.S. believe astrology is a science. compared to less than 8% of the Chinese public. The psychic services industry — which includes astrology, aura reading, mediumship, tarot-card reading and palmistry, among other metaphysical services — grew 2% between 2011 and 2016. It is now worth $2 billion annually, according to industry analysis firm IBIS World. Kari Paul, “Why millennials are ditching religion for witchcraft and astrology” at MarketWatch

It’s curious how this trend and the current war on math and science in education garner so little attention among pop science commentators. Both trends will have devastating effects on the ability of members of the public to judge propositions in science, effects they would certainly not have derived from reading, say, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, or G. K. Chesterton.

But what we won’t recognize, we must live through anyhow, just without the means of dealing with it effectively.

Hat tip: Heather Zeiger

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See also: John Gray: New Atheists don’t acknowledge their myths and beliefs

Why do we think technological progress is inevitable? Historically, plateaus and declines in technological development have been quite common. There is no “must” about it. And the role of religion is varied.

And

Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? They need to re-evaluate their alliance with progressivism, which is doing science no favours.

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John Gray: New Atheists don’t acknowledge their myths and beliefs

British political philosopher John Gray, author of Seven Types of Atheism (2018) and also of Straw Dogs, comments in an interview:

Indeed. I’m a skeptic by nature, so I’m resistant to claims by anyone to have complete answers to intractable human problems. I’m particularly annoyed by what’s now called “New Atheism,” and I react strongly against those who debunk the beliefs of others in a way I find bullying and shallow.

The New Atheists — Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others — attack religions in the sublime confidence that these religions are myths and that they themselves harbor no myths, but that’s not true.

In many cases, the New Atheists are animated by 19th-century myths of various kinds: myths of human advancement, myths of what science can and cannot do, and all kinds of other myths. So yeah, I’m compelled to attack anyone who is debunking others for their reliance on myths when the debunkers themselves can’t see how their own thinking is shaped by myths.

Something as ancient, as profound, as inexhaustibly rich as religion or religions can’t really be written off as an intellectual error by clever people. Most of these clever people are not that clever when compared with really clever people like Wittgenstein or Saint Augustine or Pascal — all philosophers of the past who seriously engaged the religious perspective.

These New Atheists are mostly ignorant of religion, and only really concerned with a particular kind of monotheism, which is a narrow segment of the broader religious world.

But then he adds,

The human mind is like every other animal mind. If Darwinism is right, and I think it’s the best approximation we have to the truth about how humans came into the world, then all aspects of the human animal are shaped by the imperatives of survival.

That includes the human mind, so there’s a deep-seated tendency in the human mind to see the world in ways which promote human survival. And the tendency to obsess over reason and rationality overlooks this fact. Sean Illing, “Why science can’t replace religion” at Vox

One hardly need ask: If, as he says, the deep-seated tendency in the human mind is simply to see the world in ways that enable humans to survive, how does his own argument escape the charge? For example, he goes on to say, “ I don’t mean to imply that people can’t be moral without God, which is one of the stupidest claims I’ve ever heard.” But if his account is true, there is no “moral” for us to be anyway.

Darwin does that to people. A pity.

Hat tip: Heather Zeiger

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See also: John Gray offers harsh words for Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now: therapy for liberals

and

John Gray: No general theory of evolution

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Why do we think technological progress is inevitable?

Alien tripod by Alvim Corréa, 1906 French edition of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”

A historian asks:

Science Fiction Lacks Religiosity, But Why?

Consider science fiction which, like all genres, has its own share of standard tropes and themes. One of the main themes in science fiction is the status of technology, and you’ll notice a frequent assumption that technology will constantly grow more and more sophisticated over time; more precisely, the assumption is about a certain idea of progression…

When people encounter alien cultures in science fiction, they’re usually on some sort of a spectrum of more or less technologically––and, therefore, intellectually––sophisticated. It’s very common, in these situations, that more primitive cultures have “religion” while more advanced cultures have dispensed with it. There’s no inherent reason that intellectual sophistication and religion should be mutually exclusive, but much of the time in science fiction, they are.

We see it, for example, in Star Trek. Less sophisticated cultures have more primitive beliefs about the universe, and as they get more sophisticated, they discard those beliefs. The assumption underneath that is that religion is just an inferior or more crude form of science, and that the primary reason we don’t believe in Zeus anymore is that we now know where lightning really comes from.

Far from being more than a little insulting to the remarkable sophistication of the belief systems of ancient peoples, we now get to the heart of the matter: there is, at the bottom of our faith in technological progress, the assumption that science is the best (or the only real) source for truth. Is this a good assumption? Well, it turns out that the root of this assumption is a failure to make a clear distinction between different types of knowledge.Zachary Porcu, “How Upending Its Hidden Assumptions Can Deepen Your Read Of Science Fiction” at The Federalist

Historically, plateaus and declines in technological development have been quite common. There is no “must” about it. And the role of religion is varied.

We may be looking at an incipient decline today, as educators indulge in a war on science in the classroom. One obvious cause of decline would be the lack of people with the skills or inclination to carry science forward and de-emphasizing correct answers in favour of feelings is one way of helping bring that about.

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See also: Mediaeval science fiction? Yes, and why not?

and

Would backwards time travel unravel spacetime?

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Internet freedom has declined significantly worldwide since 2017

You take for granted that you can just choose to read Uncommon Descent. Or something else instead. Increasingly, governments would like you to read what they think is best:

There has been a definite uptick in digital authoritarianism worldwide, according to Freedom House, which assessed 65 countries:

Chinese officials have held sessions on controlling information with 36 of the 65 countries assessed, and provided telecom and surveillance equipment to a number of foreign governments, Freedom House said.

…

The report found 17 governments approved or proposed laws restricting online media in the name of fighting “fake news,” while 18 countries increased surveillance or weakened encryption protection to more closely monitor their citizenry.

According to the researchers, internet freedom declined in 26 countries from June 2017 to May 2018. Gains were seen in 19 countries, most of them minor.Agence Presse France, “Chinese-style ‘digital authoritarianism’ grows globally: study” at France24

One cause cited by Freedom House researcher Adrian Shahbaz will sound rather familiar: “While deliberately falsified content is a genuine problem, some governments are increasingly using ‘fake news’ as a pretense to consolidate their control over information and suppress dissent.”

Here’s the Freedom House study, which notes that “In almost half of the countries where internet freedom declined, the reductions were related to elections.” Also:

Many governments are enforcing criminal penalties for the publication of what they deem false news. “A chilling snippet from mass surveillance in China” at Mind Matters

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See also: Is it too late to prevent being ruled by The Algorithm? Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, tells Ben Shapiro why he thinks politicians soon won’t matter

Should robots run for office? A tech analyst sees a threat to democracy if they don’t.

It’s a sobering thought, how far some tech analysts would be prepared to go in order to impose their own vision of order on an unruly but stable political system.

and

Life after Google: More private and more profitable? Reviewing Gilder’s Life after Google, Ralph Benko asks, If our attention is worth billions, shouldn’t we market it?

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Once upon a time, MIT tried building a universal Moral Machine…

[image error]

Software engineer Brendan Dixon tried it out.

In an effort to program self-driving cars to make decisions in a crisis, MIT’s Moral Machine offered 2.3 million people worldwide a chance to crowdsource who to kill and who to spare in a road mishap…

The project aimed at building righteous self-driving cars revealed stark differences in global values. People from China and Japan were more likely to spare the old than the young. But in Western cultures, numbers matter more:

The results showed that participants from individualistic cultures, like the UK and US, placed a stronger emphasis on sparing more lives given all the other choices—perhaps, in the authors’ views, because of the greater emphasis on the value of each individual. Karen Hao, “Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from.” at Technology Review

Whatever the causes of cultural differences, Dixon thinks that the Moral Machine presents mere caricatures of moral problems anyway. “The program reduces everything to a question of who gets hurt. There are no shades of gray or degrees of hurt. It is, as is so often with computers, simply black or white, on or off. None of the details that make true moral decisions hard and interesting remain.”  More. “There is no universal moral machine” at Mind Matters

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See also: Peaceful code of conduct sparks rage in Silicon Valley. Hi tech firm’s code, based on ancient monks’ practice, deemed “just disgusting”

, by Jonathan Bartlett: Who assumes moral responsibility for self-driving cars? (Jonathan Bartlett) Can we discuss this before something happens and everyone is outsourcing the blame?

Guess what? You already own a self-driving car Tech hype hits the stratosphere

and

Self-driving vehicles are just around the corner… On the other side of a vast chasm

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Winston Ewert: Do technologies change cultures or were the changes inevitable anyway?

Ewert, developer of the dependency graph model of relationships between life forms (as an alternative to the tree of life concept) offers some thoughts on whether technology is neutral:

A number of examples can be put forward in defense of the thesis that technologies do change cultures. A commonly cited example is the printing press. When invented in Europe, the printing press caused the widespread availability of books and learning, sparking the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the early modern age. Another example is the clock, which was originally developed by monks for the purpose of punctually following the canonical hours of their liturgy. But this technology eventually led to factory workers following regimented working hours and produced modern capitalism.

In contrast, the neutral view would see this account as a misinterpretation of these events. Both the printing press and the clock were invented in China long before medieval Europe. However, China did not produce modern science or capitalism. Indeed, an appreciation for learning and for precision were part of European culture long before these inventions. Those who see technology as neutral see underlying cultural beliefs and practices are responsible for the changes, not the technology itself.

Both viewpoints seem to capture part of the truth… More. Winston Ewert, “Is technology neutral?” at Mind Matters

Note: Dr. Winston Ewert is a software engineer living in the Vancouver, BC area. He obtained a PhD studying electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University. His work on specified complexity, swarm intelligence, evolutionary simulation, and genome analysis has appeared in conference, journals, and books. He is a Senior Researcher of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, a Senior Research Scientist at Biologic Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

See also: Should robots run for office? A tech analyst sees a threat to democracy if they don’t. It’s a sobering thought, how far some tech analysts would be prepared to go in order to impose their own vision of order on an unruly but stable political system.

and

Facebook is said to be exploring minting its own cryptocurrency If Facebook wants to mint private currency, can it still be the judge of morals and manners among users?

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Michael Egnor: Is your brain a billion little biological machines?

Michael Egnor

As pop neuroscientist Anil Seth claims in a TED talk?

What the brain “is” depends on how you study it. We live in a mechanical age, so we study it as a machine. But our method of study determines what we learn. Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg noted perceptively that “…what we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning” ( Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, 1958, p. 78).

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

By its nature, the brain is an organ. It is a functional part of a living being. We can draw analogies to it in order to help us understand it, but we must remember that what we then learn about the brain is only that aspect of its nature that is exposed to our method of questioning.

In other words, the brain will seem like a machine if we study it like a machine. More. Michael Egnor, “Yes, your brain is a machine—if you choose to see it that way” at Mind Matters

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“It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be” Anil Seth, The real problem, Aeon, 2016

See also by Michael Egnor: Hamlet: Did his perplexing neurotransmitters cause the tragedy? Michael Egnor: The neuroscientist working from a mechanical perspective would study the material and efficient causes of Hamlet’s act of revenge. It is essential to note that the Aristotelian neuroscientist, while delving into the complexities of Shakespeare’s remarkable psychological portrayal of this tortured man, can also study Hamlet’s murder of Claudius in just the same way that the mechanistic neuroscientist can. But he doesn’t lose the plot.

Does your brain construct your conscious reality? Part I

A reply to computational neuroscientist Anil Seth’s recent TED talk

Does your brain construct your conscious reality? Part II In a word, no. Your brain doesn’t “think”; YOU think, using your brain

and

The brain is not a meat computer. Dramatic recoveries from brain injury highlight the difference

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Astronomers: Solar system object in transit, Oumuamua, might be a “light sail of extra-terrestrial origin”

Artist’s impression of interstellar asteroid/comet, Oumuamua /ESO, M. Kornmesser

A light sail is “a small spacecraft, propelled solely by sunlight.”

Interstellar object Oumuamua, was discovered 2017 while passing through our solar system. It’s peculiar acceleration is explained, seriously, by a Harvard prof as an extraterrestrial spacecraft:

Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, ‘Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!). A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that ‘Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin.

The study – “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain “Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?,” which recently appeared online – was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA’s Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee.

Matt Williams, “Could ‘Oumuamua be an extraterrestrial solar sail?” at Universe Today

It’s amazing what’s taken seriously, and isn’t, these days. We’ll watch the file.

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See also: SETI reacts to the new study that says not to wait up for extraterrestrials

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Paleontologist Gunter Bechly live tonight on what the fossil record really tells us about common ancestry

Jonathan McLatchie announces a live interactive webinar today, Saturday, at 8pm British time, featuring pro-ID paleontologist Dr. Gunter Bechly, who will be exploring the implications of the fossil record for common ancestry.

(Time zones.)

Gunter Bechly is a distinguished paleontologist, specializing in fossil dragonflies, exquisitely preserved in amber for tens of millions of years. After revealing his support for the theory of intelligent design, he was pushed out as a curator at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently joined Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as a Senior Fellow.

He was also erased from Wikipedia due to his change of mind.

Philip Cunningham has made a playlist of Gunter Bechly here:

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See also: Does intelligent design oppose common descent? Not in principle, according to Ann Gauger of the Biologic Institute.

and

Gunter Bechly: Decline of science? Imaged in a single paragraph

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Rob Sheldon: If Hubble’s Law changes its name, will “Darwinian” evolution be next?

Big Bang/NASA

What about Alfred Russel Wallace? Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon on the Hubble’s Law name change, to recognize “Big Bang” priest, Fr. Georges Lemaitre:

—

The misappropriation of laws is a well-known institution in science.

Avogadro had nothing to do with his constant. The French just didn’t want to name it after the Austrian Loschmidt who discovered it. Likewise the Bose-Einstein condensate had little to do with Einstein; Bose couldn’t get his paper published in an English-speaking journal, so he asked Einstein to send it into Zeitschrift fur Physik. Hannes Alfven had no knowledge of “Alfven layers” “Alfven boundaries” and so on. But he was the only plasma physicist to get a Nobel Prize, so he had name recognition. Kolmogorov didn’t invent his complexity. Poincare didn’t invent a disk model. Newton didn’t invent the Newtonian telescope. Bode’s law wasn’t Bode’s. Laffer didn’t invent his curve. It just goes on and on.

Stephen G Brush is a historian at the University of Maryland, and gave a talk on “The Matthew effect” named after Jesus’ quote “to those who have more will be given, but to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away.”

So there is nothing new about misappropriation, and if we start trying to right history, entire textbooks will have to be rewritten, and a whole cadre of scientists retrained. Plus, there will be the chaos of Russian scientists who claim to have published first, but in some obscure Soviet journal that never got translated into English. (If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears…) The process will turn out to be endless.

On the contrary, the assignment of names to laws is a political one, a credit to their standing. What did the Preacher say? The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. If we reinterpret “time” to be the recognition of history, then we find perfect agreement with the naming of laws.

After all, the reason Hubble was assigned his Law was because he was an atheist, whereas the upstart Catholic monk Lemaitre thought it was proof of the validity of Genesis, undermining the whole purpose of cosmology. It was the same reason that atheist Darwin and not theist Wallace gets credit for evolution, or otherwise what would be the point?

So tell those astronomers that if they are willing to lose Hubble, then Darwin is next.

—

No, Rob. We mustn’t tell them. They would probably slit their throats. Consistent with our principles, we mustn’t encourage suicide. We will wait till something happens and then volunteer to help at the  Crisis Hotline.