Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Homophobia has no natural rights
Sometimes it is best to stay silent rather than appear a fool or ill informed. Sean Thomas has sadly not felt this way as he joins the chorus of “I’ve a bit of the homophobia” revelations.
But if gayness is natural, why do I feel that brief, reflexive twinge of disgust when I see gay men kissing? Some would argue that I have been conditioned by society into accepting the norm of straightness, and my repulsion is therefore mere bigotry.
But what if it isn’t? What if homophobia is also “natural”?
Using your own inclinations is not usually the best way to develop a hypothesis – generally speaking you are more inclined to look for evidence which backs you up rather than proves you wrong.
An actual scientific study which exposed men to gay porn while measuring penis extension to penis flaccidity found those who were homophobic had a sexual reaction to gay male porn compared to other heterosexual men who had no reaction. Some hard evidence.
Sean and I could carry out our own research together. The thing is attitudes are more complicated than supposing a natural instinct. He is also ignoring the possibility that because he is not gay he just does not find it turns him on. We could do the test Sean – see whether you are up for it or not.
Which leads to the other proposition to take issue with that all human attitudes and behaviour are concerned with the passing on of our genes:
Evolutionary psychologists have debated this point, and it is at least arguable that homophobia is unconscious – and inherited. And it’s not hard to see why such a reflex might have evolved: before the era of the test tube baby and artificial insemination, parents who happily tolerated gayness in their kids would be smiling on the extinction of their genes. Not good.
The link Sean provides actually goes more into cultural attitudes to gay people, in particular to jobs involving children because of gay sex being considered perverted (the old tabloid reaction of being homosexual is like being a paedophile). The study suggests that cultural memes and environmental factors are a major thing in responses to gay people rather than as a survival of the species.
Richard Dawkins in the video below talks about three likely theories regarding passing on homosexual tendencies. Myself I find the third theory more convincing – that cultural and environmental factors make coming out as gay or being actively gay more or less likely. In short not one gay gene it hangs on – it is not quite biological determinism but it is not a choice either. Just because you may in one state of the world be gay does not mean in another state of the world you would never have children.
As such my argument would be encouraging gay rights allows people to be who they are – but cultural attitudes as mentioned in the preceding link suggest this may not always be taken advantage of even if we achieve legal rights. Dawkins in his first theory of the gay uncle suggests an ancestral attitude which seems lacking in the contemporary study.
Homophobia is one reason for that and one that needs stamping out. The attitude effects life chances, family relationships and cultural let alone religious views reduce the pursuit of happiness that gay people are entitled to.
Sean at the end of erroneous thinking finally comes to a conclusion which is absurd as it is offensive.
All of which presents us with a liberal paradox. If we’re going to extend equal right to homosexuals, because homosexuality is perfectly natural, we also need to extend equal rights to homophobes, for exactly the same reason. How we celebrate this rich diversity is a difficult issue, though. Perhaps both sides could have marches on their special days, through different parts of the same town?
There is no natural right to be a bigot. All the time we make moral decisions to constrain the passing on of genes despite the idea that encouraging procreation benefits a population. If we acted in accordance with breeding at all times to be encouraged, with natural selection the only check, we may ban contraceptives, ban abortion and allow rape.
We do not and never will while there is breath in me. We make moral decisions based on other factors than appeals to natural law or population growth. Contraceptives exist because there is more to sex than conceiving. Sanctions against rape because it is a horrific act on women. Abortion because the woman concerned should have the final say – no one else.
Homophobia has no place because it represses gay people who have a right to pursue happiness. There is no natural right to allow it anymore than racism in the public sphere.
Tom Doran in drawing my attention to the article made the suggestion to read Sean’s post replacing the word homosexual with black and homophobic with racist.
Reread Sean’s article in this way. Ask yourself why he was able to get this printed.
Then like me be outraged.
Related blog: Mehdi Hasan and my lukewarm response to his homophobia revelation
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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God is Magical Thinking on Climate Change
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse takes on climate change deniers that claim God will magically solve everything:
Time to Wake Up: Magical Thinking on Climate Change
As delivered on the Senate floor
Wednesday, May 8, 2013:
Mr. President, as I’m sure you suspect, I am back on the Floor again to urge that we awaken to what carbon pollution is doing to our planet, to our oceans, to our seasons, to our storms.
And I wonder, “Why is it that we are so comfortable asleep, when the warnings are so many and so real?” What could beguile us away from wakefulness and duty? I was recently at a Senate meeting where I heard a member of our Senate community say, “God won’t allow us to ruin our planet.” God won’t allow us to ruin our planet. Maybe that’s why we do nothing: we are comfortable that God somehow won’t allow us to ruin our planet. That seems such an extraordinary notion that I thought I would reflect on it in my remarks this week.
First of all, the statement refers to God: it is couched in religious terms. But is it really an expression of religious inquiry? I think not. It is less an expression of religious thinking than it is of magical thinking. The statement that God won’t allow us to ruin our planet sweeps aside ethics, responsibilities, consequences, duties, even awareness. It comforts us with the anodyne assumption that—no matter what we do—some undefined presence will, through some undefined measure, make things right, clean up our mess. That is seeking magical deliverance from our troubles, not divine guidance through our troubles.
So is God really here just to tidy up after our sins and follies, to immunize us from their consequence? If that is true, why does the Bible say in Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived . . . whatever one sows, that will he also reap”? If God is just a tidy-up-after-us God, why does the Book of Job 4:8 warn that “those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same”? If God is not a god of consequences, why does Luke 6:38 tell us, “For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you,” and Proverbs 22:8 tell us, “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity”?
Jeremiah 17:10 says, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” So it seems that we should not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or sit in the seat of scoffers, and then expect there will be no bitter fruit of our deeds, no consequence. We are warned in the Bible not to plow iniquity, not to eat the fruit of lies; where in the Bible are we assured of safety if we do? I see no assurances of that. The Bible says at1 Samuel 2:3 “the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed,” and that at 2 Thessalonians 1:6 “God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict.” Those who “sow the wind,” the Bible says, “they shall reap the whirlwind.”
And look at our own American history. If God is just here to tidy up after our sins and follies, how could Abraham Lincoln say this about our bloody Civil War to free and redeem us from the sin of slavery? Here’s what Lincoln said about that war: “Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: ‘The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’” That was Abraham Lincoln. Blood, drawn by the sword, in equal measure to that drawn by the lash, as the true and righteous judgment of the Lord—that doesn’t sound like a God of amnesty.
Go to the very beginning. If we live in a state of God-given general amnesty from consequences, why were Adam and Eve expelled from Eden for their sin? Why was Cain sent into the wilderness, condemned to wander, for the crime against his brother? If it is your assertion that God’s love has no measure of tough love, wander a bit through the Old Testament before getting too married to that idea. And if the Old Testament is too bloodthirsty for you, look at Revelations 11:18: “And thy wrath is come, and the time . . . that thou . . . shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.” Destroy them which destroy the earth.
If we believe in an all-powerful God, we must then believe that God gave us this Earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics. We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason. He gives us these powers so that we his children can learn and understand Earth’s natural laws, which he also gave us. So that, as His children, we can use that understanding of Earth’s natural laws to build and create and prosper on His Earth. And hasn’t that in fact been the path of human progress? We learn these natural laws, and we apply them, to build and create, and we prosper.
So why then, when we ignore His plain natural laws, when we ignore the obvious conclusions to be drawn by our God-given intellect and reason, why then would God, the tidy-up God, drop in and spare us? Why would He allow an innocent child to burn its hand when it touches the hot stove, but protect us from this lesson? Why would He allow a badly engineered bridge or building to fall, killing innocent people, but protect us from this mistake? Why would He allow cholera to kill in epidemics, until we figure out that the well water is contaminated? The Earth’s natural laws and our capacity to divine them are God’s great gift to us, allowing us to learn, and build great things, and cure disease. But God’s gift to us of a planet with natural laws and natural order has, as an integral part of that gift, consequences. Consequences when we get that law and order wrong. The child’s hand burns; the bridge falls; the disease spreads. If it didn’t matter whether we got it right or wrong, there’d be no value to God’s creation of that natural law and order in the first place.
So, is that then to be our answer to polluting our atmosphere with carbon by the megaton and changing our climate and changing our seas? Is it to be our answer to that that God would not allow us to ruin our planet?
We are to continue to pollute our Earth, with literally megatons each year of carbon, heating up our atmosphere, acidifying our seas, knowing full well by His natural laws what the consequences are, and instead of correcting our own behavior, we’re going to bet on a miracle? That’s the plan?
Excuse me, but that’s not really the American way. President Kennedy described the American way as he ended his inaugural address connecting our work to God’s: “. . . let us go forth,” he said, “to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
That is the order of things. We are here to do God’s work; He is not to do ours. How arrogant, how very far from humility, would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us god, will come and clean up our mess; that on this Earth God’s work need not be our own.
Remember the story of the man trapped in his house during a huge flood. A faithful man, he trusted God to save him. As the waters began to rise in his house, his neighbor offered him a ride to safety. And he said, “I am waiting for God to save me,” so the neighbor got in his pick-up truck and drove away. As the water rose, the man climbed to the second floor of his house. And a boat came by his window with people who were heading for safe ground. They threw a rope and they yelled at the man to climb out and come with them. He told them “No, I trust in God to save me.” They shook their heads and they moved on. The floodwaters kept rising, and the man clambered to his roof. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over the loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder to the man and let him climb up, and fly to safety. The man waived the helicopter away, shouting back that he counted on God to save him. So the helicopter left. Well, eventually the floodwaters swept over the roof and the man was drowned. When the man reached heaven, he had some questions for God. “God,” he asked, “didn’t I trust in you to save me? Why did you let me drown?” God answered, “I sent you a pick-up truck, I sent you a boat, I sent you a helicopter. You refused my help.” Just as God sent the pick-up truck, the boat, and the helicopter to the drowning man, He has sent us everything we need to solve this carbon pollution problem. We just refuse. We just refuse. Some of us even deny that the floodwaters are rising.
Mr. President, as I’ve indicated in previous speeches, climate denial is bad science, indeed it’s such bad science it falls into the category of falsehood. Climate denial is bad economics, ignoring that in a proper marketplace the costs of carbon pollution should be factored into the price of carbon. Climate denial is bad policy in any number of areas: bad national security policy, bad environmental policy, bad foreign policy, bad economic policy.
Though I’m a Senator not a preacher, from everything I’ve learned and believe, it seems to me that climate denial is also bad religion, and bad morals. Hopes for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly, that’s not aligned with either history or text of the Bible.
We need to face up to the fact that there is only one leg on which climate denial stands: money. The polluters give and spend money to create false doubt. The polluters give and spend money to buy political influence. The polluters give and spend money to keep polluting. That’s it. That’s it. Not truth, not science, not economics, not safety, not policy, and certainly not religion, nor morality. Nothing supports climate denial. Nothing except money. But in Congress, in this temple, money rules; so here I stand, in one of the last places on Earth that is still a haven to climate denial. In our arrogance, we here in Congress think that we can somehow ignore or trump Earth’s natural laws, laws of chemistry, laws of physics, laws of science, with our own political lawmaking, with our own political influence. But we’re fools to think that. The laws of chemistry and the laws of physics neither know, nor care, what we say or do here. So we need to wake up. We need to walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but with due humility awaken to our duty and get to work. Because here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.
Thank you very much, I yield the floor.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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How does science make you feel?
For me there is a wonder at the universe and the animals that inhabit this planet. A delight in the creations of nature, like seeing a rainbow arc from end to end while imbibing a beer in the fellowship of dripping wet festival goers who are raising money for children without the advantages we have.
To that end science does not make us less, rather it is the means by which we as a species can understand the complexities and balances that are going on around us and indeed in us. Let alone many light years away.
Some though use science as a means to say we are nothing special, and others that life is a precious thing to use every moment due to its scarcity. The answer is we just do not know if in this universe other species can comprehend the world as we have done. Given the size of the universe we may never know. We are relatively nothing to everything yet definitely something to each other.
One thing we do know. The odds of us being here at all:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” – Richard Dawkins “Unweaving the Rainbow”
Among those fortunate to be born was William Cobbet, famous son of Farnham and where on his 250th anniversary of his birth we drank the brew to honour a journalist that made parliament accountable to the people
My thanks to the BeerEx organisers and volunteers for last weekend, and all the best to Farnham Lions.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Flow Chart for Debating Climate Change Deniers
Your handy flow chart to bluff your way in a climate change conversation with someone not convinced.
Though in practise I would invite them to read “Cool It” by Bjorn Lomborg the skeptical environmentalist.
More from the producers of the flow chart, Climate Desk, can be found here.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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The Sublime is For Everyone
Why should religion have all the good words to describe how we feel?
Apparently atheists should not use words like sublime, awe, wonder, or miraculous when looking at the universe, and in particular those of nature. So an article in “The Guardian” implies accusing documentaries of inspiring something that is at best stealing the language and hierarchy of religion and at worse trying to make humanity just another bunch of cells making up a mammal of less significance.
The crucial question, though, is who is doing the worshipping. Cox and co make much of their own humility in the face of natural marvels. They express wonder and we are meant to follow suit.But it’s too easy for the meekness we feel in the face of extraordinary facts to blur into deference towards popular scientists themselves, with their public profile and their privileged access to those facts. Like priests, they occupy an elevated position in relation to the phenomena they admire. While putting on a good show of being amazed, they function as powerful gatekeepers to a mystical beyond. Cox may not look like a boffin, but it’s telling that he’s always called professor.
The article does not consider that the credentialed presenter is not a new phenomenon. Think AJP Taylor as a talking head on history fifty odd years ago. That they are professors, dons, experts in their fields which is preciously why they are worth listening to. These facts are available to anyone that can read, go to a library/bookshop, surf the net, enrol on a science course or use a remote control. The only barriers are imagination to be curious.
Clearly though, Elaine Graser (a BBC producer) is suggesting that atheists are lauding such people for not believing in God. Yet atheists maybe, as all genuinely curious people are, passionate about science, how things are, and want to actually listen to someone that can explain to the best of our knowledge how things are. Beating a sermon reading from Genesis on a Sunday as to why.
The old chestnut that the more we know the less mystic about what makes us human means we less see us reflecting the image of God is also a subtext of the article:
While all this reinforces the status of scientists, it downplays the extraordinary uniqueness of the human mind. Could it be scientists’ inability to explain why we are so different from other animals that leads them to minimise this genuine wonder of life?
Thing is the more we learn, for example that the eyes of squid are far superior to our own, suggest that calls on considering us superior (which is what unique means here) are without the foundation that traditionally are used. The biblically inspired caveat that we are stronger, more capable and have a God given right to make this world as He wants us to.
Gradually, and yes Darwin did help in making this possible, we are seeing ourselves as a product of the universe. Of the stars, chemical reactions, organic bio-chemical electrical cells made up entities getting to grips with our environment. Most of humanity, and not enough of it, has moved beyond hand to mouth existence. We choose to use our time to stop and stare. To marvel at the world and universe we live in – and to make sense of it. We were probably doing this long before we learnt to paint in caves. Our understanding has moved on since then.
The article in suggesting humanity is unique, and religion has a central place in describing human ecstasy at creation, is reinforcing the very religious monopoly it accuses public profile scientists of usurping. Thing is we want to know the “how” and increasingly the clergyman is not the first port of call anymore, just as witch doctors are not when we get sick.
If moved by watching such things, that is not only because I am human. It is also good quality television.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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The Blind Watchmaker – Dawkins Video
An oldie from 1987 television. “The Blind Watchmaker” was the first book I ever read to understand evolution having left the study of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Genesis 1 and 2 – man before animals or after?
The claim that every letter and word in the bible has been ordained by God would seem to mean an inaccuracy would not reflect well on divine authorship. Though if being charitable, we could say God was an editor at large.
Genesis 1:25-27
New International Version (NIV)
25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 2:18-19
New International Version (NIV)
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
The reading does not really indicate whether man was made before all other living creatures, after all living creatures, or some and not others. It is a slight stretch to say conclusively in the very first two chapters a major lack of proof reading has crept in.
So therefore argues a creation site:
Genesis 2:19 is describing only the animals created in the Garden, after man. The purpose of this second batch of animals being created was so that Adam could name them (Genesis 2:19) and select a wife (Genesis 2:20). Since Adam could not find a suitable mate (God knew he wouldn’t), He made Eve (Genesis 2:21-22).
There are no contradictions between these two chapters. Chapter 2 only describes in more detail the events in the Garden of Eden on day six. If ancient man had written the Bible (as some scoffers say), he would never had made it say the light was made before the sun! Many ancient cultures worshiped the sun as the source of life. God is light. God made the light before He made the sun so we could see that He (not the sun) is the source of life.
The sun though does not just provide an alternative light source:
Our sun gives us light, heat and energy. It may seem that energy comes from other sources such as gasoline and electricity but the ultimate source of energy for the Earth is nothing else but the sun. Without the sun life on Earth would not exist. It would be so cold that no living thing would be able to survive and our planet would be completely frozen.
…
The sun also plays the role of a big anchor, which creates gravity that keeps our planet and the other planets of the solar system in a small space. If it weren’t for the sun, our planet would simply fly off loose into the universe.
Perhaps gravity, and the order in which chemicals were formed, was left out because God neglected to mention how stars and planets form, and how their motion works.
Or just maybe it was written by a people who did not live in a time to know about such things. That is not scoffing. It is just being honest.
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Email from Chairman Royal Institute
Dear John,
Thank you for your email. You are welcome to make a donation to the Royal Institution and can find out how to do so here: http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000001072.
Please see the email below from Sir Richard Sykes:
Thank you for the tremendous amount of support and suggestions that have come in over the past week. I am truly overwhelmed by the strength of feeling about the future of the Ri, and this is hugely encouraging as we work through some very complex issues.
No one more than I would like to see the Ri flourish at its home in Albemarle Street, delivering our vibrant events programme and global outreach via the Ri Channel and Christmas Lectures, set against the backdrop of our wonderful heritage.
However, as I have said previously, we have significant debt and a major challenge to find a sustainable operating model.
Such uncertain times are very difficult for staff, members and everyone around the world who loves this institution. The Trustees and I are very aware of our duty to safeguard the financial health of the charity and to ensure the delivery of the objects in our Royal Charter.
The scale of the challenge is significant. Over the last two years, we have been working hard to secure major funders and partners. We have many loyal supporters, but we have yet to establish a robust endowment that would put us on a firm financial footing.
I am committed to finding the best way forward for the Ri and whilst we continue to explore the various options, I will keep you informed.
Thank you once again for your support.
Sir Richard Sykes, FRS
Chairman of the Royal Institution
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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Campaign to Save the Royal Institution - 22/1/2013
I am pleased to join forces with, and lend my support to, the Save21AlbemarleStreet campaign set-up last Friday by Mary R. Perkins. The following statement reflects discussions we have been having. A new joint website will be appearing later, and in the meantime I encourage people to follow @Save21Albemarle on Twitter and, for those on Facebook, to join the group:
Selling of the Royal Institute
Business plans in action often are not prepared for economic downturns after having made capital investments. The Royal Institute (Ri) has been in trouble since investing £22 million in a refurbishment project on it’s Mayfair home in 2008 just at the wrong moment:
The project, which included a fine-dining restaurant, was intended to modernise the institution and turn it into a “salon” for science to attract a wider audience. The subsequent economic downturn, however, meant that there were never enough visitors to pay for the organisation’s running costs. It now owes creditors about £7m.
The historical legacy of the site since 1799, whether research or public education through the famous Christmas lectures, should make this a no brainer. Faraday demonstrating electricity was just one of three thousand discourses that have taken place, and research ranging from the thermos flask to x rays organised. More on the history of Ri can be read here.
Whilst it is possible to give donations to Ri which you can do here. I have asked the Ri if there is a specific way we can donate that may prevent the site being sold.
Professor Sir Harry Kroto, who long time readers will know kindly commented when I was blogging on the Reiss affair at the Royal Society, is vocally looking to put on the pressure to look at alternatives to selling. The comment I left on the savetheri blog that encourages people to contact him was:
Losing Ri would be like the Globe being sold. Mismanagement not trying to fundraise sooner since difficulties has left us in a situation where we have to act now to save, and ensure our historical legacy is secure for the future. £7million is not an impossible debt to settle without selling out our heritage.
So do get in touch with him via the above link. Because if anyone can Sir Harry can.
UPDATE 21/1/2012 Facebook group to save Ri
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
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