J Horgan, R Dawkins and the Anthropic Principle

John Horgan is a reliable and competent science writer, albeit not a scientist himself, who directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. His books include The End of Science and Rational Mysticism. He wrote a review in The Philadephia Inquirer (8 November, 2009) of The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, refreshingly free of the creationist speculation and propaganda that any articles in US popular news inevitably invites these days. In it, Dawkins explains the basic evidence for evolution and natural selection, arrange such that it answers various categories of creationist criticisms.

Thus all those yawning gaps in the fossil record creationists cite from Darwin, have been considerably filled in since 1859. Creationists argue as if every living creature that ever appeared on earth ought to have a fossil, but fossilization is unlikely to happen to any dead animal, and it is more unlikely for some animals than others. Yet apparently there should be a fossil for every species that is an intermediate between two others that we do have fossils for. Whatever intermediate is found, they want one between that and next. All that would satisfy them, it seems, is a continuous record of evolution, and even given that, they would find some other excuse.

We have some good intermediate forms between ourselves and the common ancestor we had with the apes, Homo sapiens Neanderthalenis, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus, several examples in some cases, and most recently “Ardi”, Ardipithecus ramidus, an ape able to walk upright, albeit lurchingly, 4.4 million years ago. As the common ancestor is thought to have lived less than 8 million years ago, we have specimens half way to the common ancestor, and all have intermediate features and characteristics between us and apes. Indeed this specimen having a skeleton that shows it could walk upright so far back in time, and having no sharp canine teeth has made anthropologists think the common ancestor itself might have been more humanlike than chimplike, and that chimpanzees have therefore evolved away from the common ancestral form more than we have.

But creationists think we were a very special creation by God, and they will not change their views until they change their views about God, whence their hatred of practical science which challenges almost everything said in Genesis. Most absurd of all, of course, is the supposed creation of the whole of existence in six days. Not one of the bible worshipping believers are willing to recognize that Genesis records the seven days of an annual festival, popular in the ancient near east, in which each day celebrated an aspect of the creation, and the Genesis poem is describing the festival day by day, not God’s actual creation. It proves that none of these believers are too bright in not realizing this centuries ago.

Just as obviously, all mammals have the same skeletal structure. Bones are directly comparable in their situation in respect of other bones (homology), though they might have changed their shape and function. The nail on your middle finger is the hoof of a horse’s foreleg. If God made every species fresh, He showed a singular lack of imagination. He could have used different designs for every one of them, but, if we all evolved from a common stock, then what is observed is perfectly sensible. Indeed, not just mammals but most reptiles and amphibians also have the same structure of their limbs, and even some, like snakes, that seem not to, are shown by careful study to be the same too.

There ought to be nothing in these least surprising that in billions of years a single cell could evolve into a human being, because every time a human ovum is fertilized and grows into an adult, a single cell has grown into the most technologically sophisticated animal on earth in only nine months! And all by rules that come from the DNA encoded in the fertilized egg, and the pattern of chemical signals that accompany and drive local development and cell specialization.

Creationists demand to be shown life being created, even though evolution is about how life diversifies once it has been created. Molecules that reproduce have indeed been made but the reproduction is only local and does not constitute life. And one of the molecules of life, RNA, has been shown to evolve when allowed to reproduce in test tubes. Simple cells have been shown to evolve when grown for many generations in test tubes or on gels. And a virus, TMV, which is alive given the right conditions but can be isolated in a crystalline form has been broken up into its constituent molecules, killing it, but then it has been reconstituted from its constituents and returned to life. Scientists have resurrected the TM virus!

Religious dogmatists say evolutionary theory is not a proper scientific theory because it makes no predictions. Suddenly the creationists are telling the biologists and molecular chemists how science should be run! These hypocrites have not noticed that Darwin himself predicted, in 1862, that a Madagascar orchid that secretes nectar at the bottom of a foot long tube could only be pollinated by an insect with a foot long proboscis—some sort of moth. It was discovered in 1903.

Horgan only gets critical at the end of his review, suggesting that Dawkins falls short of perfection in asking:

How is it that we find ourselves not merely existing but surrounded by such complexity, such elegance, such endless forms most beautiful and wonderful?

And answering:

It could not have been otherwise, given that we are capable of noticing our existence at all, and of asking questions about it.

It seems Horgan was dismayed by this because it suggests the “notorious concept” called the “anthropic principle”:

The principle states that that universe must be as we observe it to be, because, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. If this sounds like a tautology, a circular and hence vacuous pseudo-explanation, that’s because it is. The anthropic principle is less a theory than an admission of defeat.

Here Horgan seems to falter, not Dawkins. First, it is hardly correct for a science writer to call the anthropic principle a theory, except in the vague but popular sense that the creationists use it in—a gash explanation. It is not gash, and it is not a tautology. The anthropic principle is more of an observation than a theory. We are here, and so the Universe’s age and physical constants are those that allow us to exist, and not all those others that would make our existence impossible, because the physical constants would be to big or small for the universe to exist itself, or to exist long enough for us to have evolved. We are not trying to prove that we do exist, but that unless the conditions had been as they are, we could not have done.

We do exist, and the universe is as it should be for us to exist. We would need no convincing there is a God if we miraculously existed in a universe which we could see was unsuitable for our existence! Moreover, just as observations can suggest explanations, so too can this one explain the fact that we are here to observe the universe. It is no different from observing that a fish is a certain shape, and so too are dophins, whales, seals and so on, the reason being that they all live in a rather dense medium called water. Would it be tautological for a dolphin, an intelligent mammal, to figure out that it existed because the planet is largely covered in water, without which it could not exist?

US Youth—Atheistic Thinking is Just Fine!

American high schools have atheist clubs, warns the head of US Catholic bishops. Kids confirmed in the eighth grade, are atheists by the time they’re sophomores in high school. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, President of the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference, notes that atheism is getting popular among teenagers and students in the USA. Atheism is growing rapidly in the 18-25 age group, and Catholic and Protestant professionals alike are getting worried about it. Young Americans are beginning to get the courage to go against the pressure of their parents and peers and proudly declare their atheism, flooding YouTube with atheistic videos. The US is getting like Europe. People who have long believed that religion is part of the American psyche are beginning to doubt!

It is hard for the scientific skeptic to imagine that human beings differ greatly in the way they think, but the religious believe they do think differently from nonbelievers. How then can devout Christian youth be persuaded by godless atheism? Indeed why should the Christian confident that they think differently from the atheist even worry that they can be deconverted by mere arguments? There could be no reason, if it were true, but it is not. UCLA researchers have found that Christians and nonbelievers use the same parts of the brain in categorizing the truth of articles of religious faith. Sam Harris, who recently completed a doctoral dissertation in cognitive neuroscience at UCLA, is one of the researchers. 15 Christian believers and 15 nonbelievers judged the truth of religious tenets while their brains were being monitored in a scanner. For both groups:

1. judging religious assertions activated parts of the brain related with emotional judgment, uncertainty, rewards and self
2. thinking about facts used parts of the brain that are strongly associated with memory retrieval
3. asked to declare as true or false matters of faith took longer to respond than when asked to categorize matters of fact.

If anything, it shows that humans generally find matters of faith more puzzling and emotional than matters of fact, so even the faithful must have their doubts. The Cardinal sees it the other way round. Atheists are evangelical in their proselytizing, so they are thinking like believers!

It’s the mirror image of a kind of fundamentalism, because it’s very restrictive in its use of reason. It’s also very triumphalistic and self-righteous.

Either way, the mode of thinking of the pious and the profane are the same, and atheism can be taught to the next generation just as belief is, so any rise in atheism at the expense of religion is likely to continue to grow. Christian professionals are praying that the fear of death will change the minds of the newly atheistical youth, as they grow older.

The cardinal says that unbelief among young people is not just rejection of going to church, it is new atheism and every bit as intolerant as Christian fundamentalism. That is just old fashioned scaremongering, itself a form of intolerance. The intolerance of patriarchal religion is not surprising. It is the foremost teaching of the Old Testament God, in deed if not always in word. American youth are right to reject it.

The War Between Science and Religion

It is a shame how some apparently learned men will show themselves to be little more than idiots savants for the sake of God. One such man is Nigel Cutland, now professor of mathematics at the university of York. Cutland is a Christian but teaches abstruse mathematics at about the standard Newton and Liebnitz reached 300 years ago, but made trendy with a smidgeon of added philosophy. As a Christian, he feels obliged to defend God. Though God is a far better mathematician than Cutland, he feels the need to defend Him against some non-mathematical critics, presumably because he is not sure God can stand up for Himself.

He says that Richard Dawkins “buys into the mistake that science and religion are at war”, and he does not want God to believe any such thing. As proof, he tells us “there are many scientists, some very eminent, on both sides of the theist-atheist divide”. Well, indeed there are, and there are some scientists who smoke cigarettes and have sex with other people’s wives, but being eminent scientists does not justify their bad habits. And, in any case, it remains true that an overwhelming proportion of the topmost scientists have always rejected God. As the degree of eminence declines, the proportion of believers increases, but never gets to the levels of the general population. Scientists are always less religious than the masses. The exceptions of certain journeymen just prove the rule.

So, Cutland has convinced himself that there is no war between science and religion, even though science demands evidence, and religion demands faith—belief without evidence. Nothing could be more opposite, though Cutland has not noticed it, despite his professorship. As further evidence, he cites John Lennox (God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?), a book he greatly admires, no doubt because Lennox is a fellow Christian mathematician, a pastor of Green College, Oxford, and doubtless his chum. Lennox does not think science can decide between two alternative “world views”. One is naturalism-atheism—there is nothing but nature and the material world. The other is supernaturalism-theism—there is a God. Even so, Lennox has decided that God is necessary because there are plenty of gaps remaining for Him to exclusively fill. God is the Intelligent Designer!

It is a view many scientists are happy to accept, mainly because they are unwilling to debate with unreason, and consider that the winning entry will eventually be clear without them having to intervene. It is a naïve view, but like other normal people, most scientists are naïve outside of their own skills. Scientists rightly think that they have a method for showing what is true and what is not by painstaking testing. Whatever fails the tests is ruthlessly abandoned, like the notion of space being filled with a fluid called ether. Progressively science is proving religion wrong. Germs not demons cause disease, and Jesus could only have been acting the magician to drive out demons when none were there, or needed to be. Science has shown it can explain the world, and find answers to problems without the need for a God. God has left no traces in the world, and shows no sign of interfering in it. The evidence is the same as that He does not exist. The hypothesis of God should be abandoned. God is superfluous.

Though, science has being replacing the rickety ladder of religion with a solid staircase to greater knowledge, religion in extremis will destroy everything to stop itself from being destroyed. It has happened before. Look at the Cathar genocide, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the countless religious wars of unbridled malignity. Fundamentalism has been attacking science for a hundred years, and judging by history, it is never safe to think that religion will go quietly. Look at the ferocity of Moslem fundamentalists. They feel under double attack, by science and by the western lifestyle. Then listen to Christian fundamentalists. Religious fanatics would rather destroy the world than admit they are insane.

In his researches, Cutland has discovered that “scientists on both sides believe that science supports their own faith”. He declares atheism to be a faith because it is impossible to disprove God. It is just as hard to disprove the Wizard of Oz, Santa Claus, the Loch Ness Monster or ET. As they are all imaginary, there is nothing about them to prove. You do not need to prove Santa Claus to a child—they accept him as the source of their Christmas presents. But once the seed of doubt is planted, you have nothing to counter it because Santa is as imaginary as Tinker Bell and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Just how does God differ in practice from these other entities? If I am grown up enough to realize that Santa Claus is imaginary, do I have some peculiar faith? The Mighty Calculus thinks so, but it is patently absurd, and simply demonstrates how Christianity destroys reason.

Cutland thinks his hero, Lennox, has shown that science is consistent with theism because it explains “the rational intelligibility of the universe, without which science cannot begin”. You have then to believe that either God thinks much as we do, and admittedly that is what Christians do think, or, as a vastly superior being, he thinks in a vastly superior way, in which case there is no reason why we should find anything He thinks as intelligible, and a more likely case for a God! One cannot expect an idiot savant to think subtly outside of his intellectual cocoon.

Cutland admits that “the unthinking blind faith and fanaticism” of some believers is deplorable, but adding that “it is unscientific to generalize from some to all”. I hadn’t noticed that Christians were so discerning in their long history. The Christian leaders of the US and UK not long ago felt no need to distinguish innocent Moslems from terrorists. Far from it, all were treated as if they were terrorists, and many are still not getting access to justice. Generalizing about Christians seems a proportionate thing to do in view of their own chosen behaviour, well reported as it is in history for those who want to read it. No one is obliged to be a Christian, any more than anyone is obliged to be a Nazi. Those who choose to be Christian do it with the full knowledge of its appalling record as an institution, a record that individual duty can hardly scratch. It is safer for non-Christians to assume that any Christian would willingly kill them to save their soul, since that is what they have willingly done in the past.

Do Christians think God is trying to Trick them?

It seems that no Christians dare. No one has replied.

clipped from mikemagee.wordpress.com Do Christians think that God is trying to trick them in making history seem different from the myths in the so-called holy books? When the holy books are so much at variance with scholarship, would it not be more sensible to realize that dishonest people in the past have lured honest Jews and Christians into believing falsehoods? How do they know that God has been trying to persuade them of their errors but the Devil has such a grip on them that they will not listen? I have a lot of relevant analysis of these matters at the askwhy website. Take a look, even you Christians, if you dare!

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