12/20/2009

Terry Pratchett: Rather be a rising monkey than a fallen angel.

My favourite author just did some interviews for the guardian. If you have not read the discworld novels, you are missing out. They are the only books that I have laughed so hard while reading someone thought I was weeping.
More interviews can be found at:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2009/dec/18/book-club-terry-pratchett


High Voltage Cattle Prod

I had an impulse purchase at Chapters the other week. It was a book called, "What We Believe But Cannot Prove; Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the age of Certainty". I was shopping for other people, but the price was right and it seemed interesting. The entries vary in length and tone, but I'm going to reproduce the one that induced the purchase.

"Seth Lloyd"
"Seth Lloyd is a quantum mechanical engineer and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he specializes in the design of quantum computers and quantum communications systems. He is the author of Programming the Universe."

"I believe in science. Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again until only a fool would refuse to believe them.
I cannot prove that electrons exist, but I believe fervently in their existence. And if you don't believe in them, I have a high-voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves."

The "high-voltage cattle prod" line made me laugh out loud.

12/07/2009

Last Comment

I couldn't watch this whole video, the American makes it unbearable. The last comment of the video is pretty funny and makes it worth the pain. Saw the video via Pharyngula.


12/05/2009

Cognitive Biases

I just finished A.J. Jacobs book, "The Guinea Pig Diaries". It was a good, easy little read, and I would recommend it. His one experiment of trying to live rationally was interesting, and at the end of the book he had a list of cognitive biases which I found fascinating.
Cognitive biases are interesting for many reasons, I especially like the blind spot bias, which I am probably very guilty of. Just knowing that I probably commit several of these a day is, in a weird way, helpful. It's a long list, which is also kind of depressing. It does help to explain why there is so much woo woo in the world though...
I thought it would be helpful to list them, so I just cut and past the entire list from the Wikipedia article.

"Many of these biases are studied for how they affect belief formation, business decisions, and scientific research.
  • Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behaviour.
  • Base rate fallacy — ignoring available statistical data in favour of particulars.
  • Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.[1]
  • Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.
  • Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
  • Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.
  • Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.
  • Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one's own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
  • Denomination effect — the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) than large amounts (e.g. bills).[2]
  • Distinction bias — the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[3]
  • Endowment effect — "the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it".[4]
  • Experimenter's or Expectation bias — the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.[5]
  • Extraordinarity bias — the tendency to value an object more than others in the same category as a result of an extraordinarity of that object that does not, in itself, change the value.[citation needed]
  • Focusing effect — prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
  • Framing — Using an approach or description of the situation or issue that is too narrow. Also framing effect — drawing different conclusions based on how data is presented.
  • Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.
  • Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
  • Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
  • Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
  • Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.
  • Just-world phenomenon - witnesses of an "inexplicable injustice . . . will rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it"
  • Loss aversion — "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".[6] (see also sunk cost effects and Endowment effect).
  • Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
  • Money illusion — the tendency of people to concentrate on the nominal (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.
  • Moral credential effect — the tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.
  • Need for Closure — the need to reach a verdict in important matters; to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and uncertainty. The personal context (time or social pressure) might increase this bias.[7]
  • Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
  • Not Invented Here — the tendency to ignore that a product or solution already exists, because its source is seen as an "enemy" or as "inferior".
  • Omission bias — the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
  • Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
  • Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
  • Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
  • Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
  • Reactance — the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
  • Restraint bias - the tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
  • Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
  • Semmelweis reflex — the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.[8]
  • Status quo bias — the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).[9]
  • Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
  • Wishful thinking — the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.
  • Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

[edit] Biases in probability and belief

Many of these biases are often studied for how they affect business and economic decisions and how they affect experimental research.
  • Ambiguity effect — the avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".
  • Anchoring effect — the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (also called "insufficient adjustment").
  • Attentional bias — neglect of relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.
  • Authority bias — the tendency to value an ambiguous stimulus (e.g., an art performance) according to the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic.
  • Availability heuristic — estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.
  • Availability cascade — a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").
  • Belief bias — an effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
  • Clustering illusion — the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.
  • Capability bias — The tendency to believe that the closer average performance is to a target, the tighter the distribution of the data set.
  • Conjunction fallacy — the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
  • Disposition effect — the tendency to sell assets that have increased in value but hold assets that have decreased in value.
  • Gambler's fallacy — the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the normal distribution. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."
  • Hawthorne effect — the tendency of people to perform or perceive differently when they know that they are being observed.
  • Hindsight bias — sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the inclination to see past events as being predictable.
  • Illusory correlation — beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.[10]
  • Ludic fallacy — the analysis of chance-related problems according to the belief that the unstructured randomness found in life resembles the structured randomness found in games, ignoring the non-gaussian distribution of many real-world results.
  • Neglect of prior base rates effect — the tendency to neglect known odds when reevaluating odds in light of weak evidence.
  • Observer-expectancy effect — when a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).
  • Optimism bias — the systematic tendency to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.
  • Ostrich effect — ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.
  • Overconfidence effect — excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of question, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.
  • Positive outcome bias — a tendency in prediction to overestimate the probability of good things happening to them (see also wishful thinking, optimism bias, and valence effect).
  • Pareidolia — vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) are perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
  • Primacy effect — the tendency to weigh initial events more than subsequent events.
  • Recency effect — the tendency to weigh recent events more than earlier events (see also peak-end rule).
  • Disregard of regression toward the mean — the tendency to expect extreme performance to continue.
  • Selection bias — a distortion of evidence or data that arises from the way that the data are collected.
  • Stereotyping — expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
  • Subadditivity effect — the tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
  • Subjective validation — perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.
  • Telescoping effect — the effect that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
  • Texas sharpshooter fallacy — the fallacy of selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data is collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly. Refers to the concept of firing shots at a barn door, drawing a circle around the best group, and declaring that to be the target.

[edit] Social biases

Most of these biases are labeled as attributional biases.
  • Actor-observer bias — the tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviours to overemphasize the influence of their personality and under-emphasize the influence of their situation (see also fundamental attribution error). However, this is coupled with the opposite tendency for the self in that explanations for our own behaviours overemphasize the influence of our situation and under-emphasize the influence of our own personality.
  • Egocentric bias — occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.
  • Forer effect (aka Barnum Effect) — the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.
  • False consensus effect — the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
  • Fundamental attribution error — the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviours observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behaviour (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).
  • Halo effect — the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).
  • Herd instinct — Common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.
  • Illusion of asymmetric insight — people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.
  • Illusion of transparency — people overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
  • Illusory superiority — overestimating one's desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people. Also known as Superiority bias (also known as "Lake Wobegon effect", "better-than-average effect", "superiority bias", or Dunning-Kruger effect).
  • Ingroup bias — the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
  • Just-world phenomenon — the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve."
  • Notational bias — a form of cultural bias in which a notation induces the appearance of a nonexistent natural law.
  • Outgroup homogeneity bias — individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.
  • Projection bias — the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.
  • Self-serving bias (also called "behavioural confirmation effect") — the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy — the tendency to engage in behaviours that elicit results which will (consciously or not) confirm existing attitudes.[11]
  • System justification — the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)
  • Trait ascription bias — the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.
  • Ultimate attribution error — Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

[edit] Memory errors

  • Consistency bias — incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.
  • Cryptomnesia — a form of mis-attribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination.
  • Egocentric bias — recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g. remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as being bigger than it was
  • False memory — confusion of imagination with memory, or the confusion of true memories with false memories.
  • Hindsight bias — filtering memory of past events through present knowledge, so that those events look more predictable than they actually were; also known as the 'I-knew-it-all-along effect'.
  • Reminiscence bump — the effect that people tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods.
  • Rosy retrospection — the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.
  • Self-serving bias — perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones.
  • Suggestibility — a form of mis-attribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
  •  
  • [edit] Common theoretical causes of some cognitive biases

11/16/2009

Gay and Christian

This is a blog post by a friend from my dts in Hawaii and the trip to China. I am amazed by her strength and hope she can effect some change.
http://wemeblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/this-is-a-life-or-death-stituation/

11/06/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter Six Review


I've been avoiding finishing this review, it's becoming depressing. Keller is predictable in his arguments and from my perspective not making very good ones. I don't like being so negative, but it's especially hard with this chapter.
The Title for Chapter Six is "Science Has Disproved Christianity". Obviously this is not the case, as you can't disprove religious belief. Faith can't be tested. You can give reasonable doubt, make good arguments, but if I believe that chocolate ice cream is the best, then that's what I believe. Unless you make a testable criteria for the best ice cream, belief trumps all.
Keller makes the usual jabs at Dawkins and those guys. This is silly, Dawkins is a biologist, not a philosopher of religion. His personal opinion, although popular, is just that. Keller also takes issue with evolution being an all encompassing theory. Which is fine, because scientists don't do that, Christians do. When Christians talk about evolution, they tend to throw in physics, geology and others into the mix, confusing things even more.
What I wish Keller had answered was the fact that when religion makes a testable claim and falls into the realm of science, it's believers tend to ignore the evidence and go with their beliefs. An example could be the role of religion is society. If Christians make a claim about the result of a "godless" society, we can look at societies that are "godless", and see if the prediction lines up with the result.
When a believer plays the miracle card, miracles by their definition are untestable and useless. That is presupposing that a miracle actually happened. 
Keller does make a claim about Genesis that I would like to quote.
"In each couplet one chapter describes a historical even and the other is a song or poem about the theological meaning of the event...I think Genesis 1 has the earmarks of poetry and is therefore a "song" about the wonder and meaning of God's creation. Genesis 2 is an account of how it happened."
He just made a claim that can be investigated and studied. He claims that Genesis two could be considered "true". In no way shape or form is Genesis 2 an account of "how it happened." Well, if you want to throw out all modern scientific evidence, sure, it's true. That quote is the equivalent of someone claiming that the sun revolves around the earth. If you want to believe that, then yes, science has disproved your version of Christianity.
To end on a more positive note, if anyone is interested in more thoughts and discussions on this topic, and a few others, by scholars and people who seem to know what they are talking about, try the links below.
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/11/around-blogosphere.html
http://egalicontrarian.com/
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=4238
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/11/evolutionary-theology.html
http://evolutionarytheology.wordpress.com/
http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/conferences/video/my_ways/index.htm
That could get a person started, there is a ton a stuff out there.
Cheers,
Scott
PS  - I would recommend three books as starters for those wishing to see the evidence for evolution.
Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald R. Prothero
The Greatest show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. This is Dawkins talking about something he's an expert on, not his personal beliefs.
Please don't argue the validity of the scientific evidence without doing some basic investigation, which I would say these books are.

9/25/2009

Carl Sagan and Peter Gzowski

I remember first listening to this interview in 1995. It's a great interview, and it makes me miss being able to listen to Gzowski interview people. These are two people I wish I could have met. In my life, this interview is probably one of many roots to how I look at the world now and where I am going. I even ordered the transcript tape in high school, but I lent it to a teacher. He promptly "lost it", for which I am still mildly bitter.

9/17/2009

The Might Be Giants

I am in love with They Might Be Giants at the moment. I got my library to order their album, Here Comes Science, and can't wait to listen to the whole thing.
Niki really likes Meet the Elements, probably because she's a chemist, but I can't stop watching I Am A Paleontogist. Love the dancing dinosaur bones:)





Grain of Salt

I just saw this video via the magic box. As in all America media, I would take it with a grain of salt, and a high degree of skepticism, but I think he asked a good question.
"Can Christianity be rescued from Christians?"
It's an obviously a loaded question, but the fundy subculture does seem to take pride in renouncing facts for faith.


8/31/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter Five Review

It's been a busy summer, but I am finally able to do another entry on my critique of The Reason For God by Timothy Keller. I have other things on the go, so I am hoping to pick up the pace with these.

This chapter deals with the topic of Hell, or more specifically, "How Can A Loving God Send People To Hell?" As you can tell, Keller has framed the problem of hell to be one of how can a loving g0d send people to a place of eternal torment. This is not actually what I would see as the main problem, but I will talk about that at the end of the post.

He starts off with addressing the objection that "A God of Judgement Simply Can't Exist". He then builds on the idea that a g0d of judgement could exist, but it's modernity that has led us to believe that we can determine what is right and what is wrong. That "In ancient times it was understood that there was a transcendent moral order outside the self, built in to the fabric of the universe." The spirit of modernity has given us a responsibility to choose right from wrong. This modernity driven moral objection is a result of our culture, that other cultures are offended if there is no judgement.This ability of Christianity to offend all cultures Keller sees as a sign of it's inherent truth. To quote, "If Christianity were the truth, it would have to be offending and correcting your thinking at some place. Maybe this is the place, the Christian docrtrine of divine judgement".

He then moves on to the critique that a God can't be both love and a judge. He proposes that without the idea of judgement, people would descend into an endless cycle of revenge. "Only if I am sure that there's a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly to I have the power to refrain". Therefore if you want love, you must have judgement. Keller uses Nazism and Communism as examples of this. I find this very disappointing. It's been pointed out that the Soviet Union was a religious state, in that Stalin used religious thinking and ideals to hold power. Nazi Germany was very much Lutheran/Catholic. To make his point the French terror would probably be his only good example of a athiestic society gone amock, but I would have to look into that more. Phil Zuckerman's book touches on this point, and I wonder what Keller would make of it.

A Loving God Would Not Allow Hell. To this Keller says that it's our idea of hell that is wrong. That it's not that g0d gave us a certain amount of time, then once we die he casts our souls into hell. That it's actually us that choose hell. By rejecting g0d, and removing ourselves from its presence, that is the essence of hell. He borrows heavily from C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce with this argument. He also illuminates that the fire of hell is allegorical. That the symbolism of fire in the Bible is one of consumption and disintegration. Keller seems to skip around the idea that one could leave hell after death, but we choose to stay rather out of our own selfishenss. I find it very interesting that Keller makes the point that people change. "Today's outspoken believer may be tomorrow's apostate, and today's outspoken unbeliever may be tomorrow's convert". This raises some serious questions which he does not address and therefore, I feel, weakens the overall chapter.
To sum up the chapter, Keller says that we get our idea that g0d is love from the Bible. That no where else would this be evident. Outside of Christianity, he says, there is no evidence for a loving g0d. He uses that to say Christianity also teaches judgement, and if we want the Christian g0d of love, we must also accept the Christian g0d of Judgment.

That's the chapter as it stood out to me. I tried not to criticize as much, but just sort of put out the basics of Kellers' argument and see what reaction it might get. I mentioned earlier that the love part was not the main problem for me. I wish Keller would have addressed this problem.
(i) God exists, and is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
(ii) Some created persons will be consigned to hell forever.
(iii) If God is omnipotent, He is able to avoid (ii).
(iv) If God is omniscient, He knows how to avoid (ii).
(v) If God is perfectly good, He wants to avoid (ii).
(vi) Therefore, if (i), then not (ii).
This is found in Marilyn McCord Adams’ The problem of hell: a problem of evil for Christians published in Reasoned Faith. I discovered it via this blog. I would encourage people to read lukeprog as he seems to be fairly balanced in his reasoning. I find it very challenging. He often gives credit to the Theists when it's due, and calls out the Atheists when they are trying to pull a fast one.
Cheers,
Scott
PS - On a lighter note, people might like how Rowan Atkinson presents hell.




8/28/2009

The Oldest Bible

I am working on a new blog post, but I discovered this in my readings. Thought it was interesting, have to love that BBC radio.





7/27/2009

Null Hypothesis

I am currently in Victoria visiting family and friends. My father in law subscribes to Scientific America, which had this article in it. You can find the original here. I enjoyed it, and instead of quoting bits and pieces, thought I would just post the whole thing.

Cheers,


Scott


In a 1997 episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Springfield Files” — a parody of X-Files in which Homer has an alien encounter in the woods (after imbibing 10 bottles of Red Tick Beer) — Leonard Nimoy voices the intro as he once did for his post-Spock run on the television mystery series In Search of…: “The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies, and in the end isn’t that the real truth? The answer is no.”


No cubed. The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled to the clicker culture of mass media where attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units. It must be true — I saw it on television, at the movies, on the Internet. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Loose Change, Zeitgeist the Movie. Mysteries, magic, myths and monsters. The occult and the supernatural. Conspiracies and cabals. The face on Mars and aliens on Earth. Bigfoot and Loch Ness. ESP and PSI. UFOs and ETIs. JFK, RFK and MLK — alphabet conspiracies. Altered states and hypnotic regression. Remote viewing and astroprojection. Ouija boards and Tarot cards. Astrology and palm reading. Acupuncture and chiropractic. Repressed memories and false memories. Talking to the dead and listening to your inner child. Such claims are an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction. Cue dramatic music. Darken the backdrop. Cast a shaft of light across the host’s face. The truth is out there. I want to believe.


What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide. And after 99 monthly columns of exploring such topics (this is Opus 100), I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know. I believe that the truth is out there. But how can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.


Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. The statistical standards of evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis are substantial. Ideally, in a controlled experiment, we would like to be 95 to 99 percent confident that the results were not caused by chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not make the claim false, and, conversely, rejecting the null hypothesis is not a warranty on truth. Nevertheless, the scientific method is the best tool ever devised to discriminate between true and false patterns, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and to detect baloney.


The null hypothesis means that the burden of proof is on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptics to disprove it. I once appeared on Larry King Live to discuss UFOs (a perennial favorite of his), along with a table full of UFOlogists. King’s questions for other skeptics and me typically miss this central tenet of science. It is not up to the skeptics to disprove UFOs. Although we cannot run a controlled experiment that would yield a statistical probability of rejecting (or not) the null hypothesis that aliens are not visiting Earth, proof would be simple: show us an alien spacecraft or an extraterrestrial body. Until then, keep searching and get back to us when you have something. Unfortunately for UFOlogists, scientists cannot accept as definitive proof of alien visitation such evidence as blurry photographs, grainy videos and anecdotes about spooky lights in the sky. Photographs and videos can be easily doctored, and lights in the sky have many prosaic explanations (aerial flares, lighted balloons, experimental aircraft, even Venus). Nor do government documents with redacted paragraphs count as evidence for ET contact, because we know that governments keep secrets for national security reasons. Terrestrial secrets do not equate to extraterrestrial cover-ups.


So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science, lots of mysteries are left unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day. I recall a mystery in cosmology in the early 1990s whereby it appeared that there were stars older than the universe itself — the daughter was older than the mother! Thinking that I might have a hot story to write about that would reveal something deeply wrong with current cosmological models, I first queried California Institute of Technology cosmologist Kip S. Thorne, who assured me that the discrepancy was merely a problem in the current estimates of the age of the universe and that it would resolve itself in time with more data and better dating techniques. It did, as so many problems in science eventually do. In the meantime, it is okay to say, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure” and “Let’s wait and see.”


To be fair, not all claims are subject to laboratory experiments and statistical tests. Many historical and inferential sciences require nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion. Just as detectives employ the convergence of evidence technique to deduce who most likely committed a crime, scientists employ the method to determine the likeliest explanation for a particular phenomenon. Cosmologists reconstruct the history of the universe by integrating data from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, spectroscopy, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Geologists reconstruct the history of Earth through a convergence of evidence from geology, geophysics and geochemistry. Archaeologists piece together the history of a civilization from pollen grains, kitchen middens, potshards, tools, works of art, written sources and other site-specific artifacts. Climate scientists prove anthropogenic global warming from the environmental sciences, planetary geology, geophysics, glaciology, meteorology, chemistry, biology, ecology, among other disciplines. Evolutionary biologists uncover the history of life on Earth from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, and so on.


Once an inferential or historical science is well established through the accumulation of positive evidence, however, it is just as sound as a laboratory or experimental science. For creationists to disprove evolution, for example, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. They have not, instead employing only negative evidence in the form of “if evolutionary biologists cannot present a natural explanation of X, then a supernatural explanation of X must be true.”


The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants. Show me a Nostradamus quatrain that predicted World War II or 9/11 before (not after) the fact (postdictions don’t count in science). Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Show me, and I’ll believe.


Most people (scientists included) treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot — even in principle — be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing. In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. And beyond such controlled research, why does God only seem to heal illnesses that often go away on their own? What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as if an amputee grew a new limb. Amphibians can do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it. Many Iraqi War vets eagerly await divine action.


There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question — God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?


In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.

7/07/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter Four Review

Chapter Four of Keller's book is entitled, "The Church Is Responsible For So Much Injustice."
This is taking much more time and work than I expected. For this chapter I am going to bullet point Keller's rebuttals to the criticism and then my thoughts on the rebuttals.
  • People are affected by their emotional backgrounds with how they react to Christianity intellectually.
Interesting that Keller would start off with this, seeing how he so often rails against relativism.
I guess when one is critical, you must have met some naughty Christians. It felt like he was saying you could not be against Christianity without having some sort of personal grudge. I found this offensive, mainly because I want the message that I grew up with and loved to be true.
  • Many people with harmful pasts, abusive families and character flaws become Christians. Christianity is for people who realize they are sick and need the grace of g0d. Therefore it's to be expected that Christians would be a mixed bag of good and bad.
I hear this argument a lot when Christianity fails to live up to its own claims. The problem with this is, either your all powerful g0d changes all lives or he doesn't. I think it's very interesting that you get 'born again' experiences in all forms of faith. The appeal to 'we're all sinners struggling to get through' just makes me sigh and think that it is not really different from any other human created belief system.
  • All societies have killed and abused their citizenry. You can't just blame religious thought for this, even the commies did it, and they were atheists!
I guess I would say, again, this just leads one to say Christianity is another human created institution. If you're just like everyone else, and yet claim a supernatural source, where does that leave you? Keller using those evil commies as an atheistic society is interesting. Stalin was taught by the church, and used what he learned there to manipulate his people. He calls his list of societies that hurt people, and were not Christian, "rational and secular". That made me laugh. Secular maybe, rational I don't think so. I can't think of any society in history I would call "rational". I think it's very difficult to make a society rational. The whole "counting bodies" argument always tires me.
  • People who are super fanatical and hateful are not fanatical enough. If you were really fanatical about your faith, a 'real' Christian, then you would treat others with love. This is because you would be so humbled by being "accepted by g0d by sheer grace."
This seems to me to be the no true Scotsman fallacy.
  • Christ's own teachings have a built in critique against the abuses the church has done throughout history. Christianity teaches against the hypocrisy it has committed. You can't criticize Christianity without using it's own morals.
I think there is some validity in arguing that Christianity has not lived up to itself. I would probably take it a lot further than Keller, and say the argument could be made that Christianity sold out around the time of Paul. I am curious what Keller would make of Jesus being another apocalyptic Jewish teacher. That would change the view of Jesus' teachings.
  • Look at all the good that Christianity has done. From abolitionists to Bonhoeffer to Martin Luther King Jr. These are examples of 'true' Christianity.
This would work for me if you could not provide examples of the same thing in other faiths. As well, I could be mistaken, but I believe many of the first abolitionists were humanists. Also, King got much of his anti violence message from Gandhi. I don't say this to discount the good that Christians have done, but only suggest that maybe its origin are not supernatural. Christianity is just so very, well, human. The history of its church just makes that more clear.
I also find it very curious that all his examples happen after the enlightenment.

I feel Keller might have answered the criticism in a superficial way in this chapter, but missed the greater point.
Cheers,
Scott

Baloney Detection Kit

A worth wile watch for everyone.


Original video can be found here.
Hoping to do the next chapter review tonight.
Oh, Mr Deity has two more episodes up. lol.

6/24/2009

Honesty

Things are a bit buys, so I have not had time to do a review of the next chapter.
I thought I would quickly share something that I thought was interesting and honest. Recently I was around a conversation about homosexuality. I did not actively partake, but something interesting was said. A person stated they had to believe being gay was via nurture and had nothing to do with persons biological makeup. This person stated this because if it was something you were born with, why would g0d condemn it? That would make g0d, or at least the Bible, immoral and something to be ignored. Seeing how this person could not believe that, then being gay can't be something you are born with.
I found it interesting, and also found the honestly refreshing. I would tend to agree too, if being gay is biological, the g0d found in much of the Bible is evil and should be ignored.
Mr Deity touches upon this in the latest episode.
Cheers,
Scott

6/16/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter Three Review


The title for Chapter three is, Christianity Is A Straitjacket.
Keller goes on to expand the criticism to mean that Christianity, "...looks like an enemy of social cohesion, cultural adaptability, and even authentic person hood. However, this objection is based on mistakes about the nature of truth, community, Christianity, and of liberty itself."
These are how explains that those are mistakes:

Truth is Unavoidable
Keller explains that there must be a form of absolute truth because, if you are skeptic of everything, then you can't believe in anything. If you think everything is a "power play", then even your statement is. He's again trying to deal with relativism, this time in how it relates to truth. I don't really see why if his religion is relative, that must mean everything is. Why can't just his version of Christianity be relative? I can see the possibility for there to be an absolute truth, but the assumption that his beliefs could fall into that category is pretty huge.

Community Can't Be Completely Inclusive
I agree with his main point in this section. To have a community, you have to have a definition and a boundary for that community. If you don't have those, then you're just a bunch of people standing around. If you want to define your community to mean anyone who stands in a field, then that's your community. I would just say, we define as a culture what kind of communities we tolerate. There are lots of things as a society we have said we won't tolerate. Keller says, "but we should not criticize churches when they maintain standards for membership in accord with their beliefs. Every community must do the same". That's just silly. Yes I agree you have to have definitions for your in group, it's stupid to say everyone must be OK with your community. If your church says it's OK to have slaves and kill your children for disrespecting you because it's biblical, society is perfectly within its rights to put a stop to your community. If your 'community' continues to believe things that are patently false; IE the world underwent a global flood, the earth is six thousand years old, why should we not criticize that?? You deserve to be laughed at. If you don't bring any evidence, why can't you be criticized? If I went around claiming superpowers, and everyone in my social group claimed superpowers, why should we expect not to be mocked when said powers were never shown? Or even if it was shown we honestly thought we had powers, and there were good reasons for us thinking we did. I went on longer than I meant to, but Keller claiming that people can't criticize churches for their standards is just stupid. I agree a community can have any standard they want. Just don't expect me to refrain from pointing out if they are asinine.

Christianity Isn't Culturally Rigid
I would again agree with part of what Keller says in this section. How Christianity can adapt to every culture. How Christianity has grown in every nation and people of many different traditions believe in it. I would just like to point out that in previous generations, much of this was done through genocide. What happened after 1492 in the 'new world' is on par with, if not much greater than, the holocaust of WWII. It really helps a new religion get established if you wipe out or overpower any nation that does not convert. If you read the writings of the Puritans and how they viewed the new world, these are not the Christians of Keller's belief system. These are people far removed from his standards of morality in relation to other people. To be clear, I don't blame all the crimes in the new world on Christians, but they sure seemed to hurt a lot more then help.
I agree Christianity does not have to be culturally rigid, and in much of the world it no longer is. It was to a huge extent though, and for a very long time. Christianity is very adaptive, and can accommodate many different types of people. One would expect that in a large religion.
For further reading/viewing on on these topics I would suggest:
http://www.amazon.com/What-America-Short-History-World/dp/0786720972
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Nations

Freedom Isn't Simple
The basic premise for this is, if you want to achieve something worthwhile, it will restrict your freedom. An example Keller uses is playing piano or having a loving marriage. Your end goal requires that you practise/work/restrict what you might want to do instead. I don't disagree with this overall principle, as it makes sense. He uses this to again show how relativism is bad because to say one should restrict themselves for a greater good is taking a absolutist stance.
He uses the analogy of someone who rebels against g0d being a fish out of water. The problem with that is according to Keller's world view, g0d created the water, fish, and everything in the first place. I see this as raising a lot more problems than it solves. If you restrict yourself to practising to become good at the piano, the piano does not threaten you like a tyrant with torture for all eternity. That was just the thought that popped into my head while reading this section.

The Chapter is summed up with, Love, the Ultimate Freedom, Is More Constraining Than We Might Think.
Keller talks about how loving constrains us, and I think sums up his position well with the last paragraph: "The love of Christ constrains. Once you realize how Jesus changed for you and gave himself for you, you aren't afraid of giving up your freedom and therefore finding your freedom in him."
I totally can understand how and why Keller comes to this conclusion. I am just left feeling he has made some huge assumptions and not really explained why I should accept them. For one, if someone drops you down a well, then makes the "sacrifice" of coming down to get you, why am I suppose to be grateful? For the sake of the analogy, I am assuming there is a well to be dropped down in the first place. I would expect the person who tossed me into the well to help get me out. I would be grateful for there help, especially if they made it impossible to get me out on my own. Should I be grateful to that person? Probably not, unless of course it's in the same way an abused spouse is grateful the abuser does not leave them. That sounds kind of harsh, but I think it holds for the version of reality Keller is asking people to accept.

That wraps up the Chapter. I am actually enjoying the book, even though it may not sound like it.
Cheers,
Scott

6/10/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter Two Review

I must say, I enjoyed Chapter two more than Chapter One. I appreciate the attempt to answer a more difficult argument. The title of Chapter two is, "How Could A Good God Allow Suffering?"
Keller begins by using the Tsunami of 2004 as an example of a g0d preventable tragedy. He also paraphrases Epicurus' problem, "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

The first section proposes that Evil and Suffering Isn't Evidence Against God.
His basic support for this premise is the "mysterious ways" argument. We may not be able to see why these things happen, but g0d must have a plan. I view this as a cop out, a brilliant one, but a cop-out nonetheless. He says it well, but he is still saying, "my g0d and his existence is immune to all logical arguments." The story used to example this is that of Joseph. Joseph has bad things happen, then good things happen after the bad things. If you're talking about an all powerful g0d, this g0d could create us with character, with all the things that we supposedly go through suffering to get. Ockham's razor seems to also weaken this line of thinking, but maybe I am just missing something obvious.

After that Keller postulates Evil and Suffering May be (if Anything) Evidence for God.
He defends this statement by using C.S. Lewis' argument, if there was not g0d, then we would not have a concept of good and evil. He also quotes Alvin Plantiga, saying basically the same thing. What happens if you can show that our concept of right and wrong evolved with us??
I think this is a weird form of the Ontological argument: "If I can conceive of evil, there must be a g0d to give me that perception". Suffering is a problem for the believer because I am accepting their presupposition that there is a g0d. When you take away that supposition, what happens for the skeptic is the ancient philosophical idea of "shit happens". I concede that this could lead to issue of where the skeptic might get their morality from. I just don't see how the skeptic would have to go with the assumption that, if I think something is evil, I must believe in a g0d. Does that not more point to fuzzy thinking in the skeptic, rather than any proof for the theist? Again, I could be missing a deeper point here, but still think this is a unresolved problem for a protestant Christian.

Keller rounds off the chapter by going into the suffering of Jesus, and because he was supposedly g0d, that means g0d shares in our suffering. I did not realize that the idea of g0d suffering was fairly new. Keller uses the idea of Christ suffering with us, the terrors of this world, to mean "the ultimate defeat of evil and suffering. It will not only be ended but so radically vanquished that what has happened will only serve to make our future life and joy infinitely greater". This seems to me more of a day dream than any sort of reasonable belief. What makes him think this? The fact that people of all faiths keep promising a better world for their followers makes this highly suspect. It would be nice to think that everything will be set right, that the universe will end like a Disney movie. I just find it odd that Keller would use this argument in a book for skeptics. It does not really answer the criticism except by saying, "Trust me, this is all for the best." Reminds me of a Grumpy Old Men quote about wishing...
If you accept his beliefs, then this would probably work. He's not writing to the choir though. He's trying to answer skeptics, and so this seems an odd argument to include.

This is a tough topic for the believer to answer, especially in one chapter. Maybe if Keller had a whole book for this one topic he might be able to more fully explain his reasoning. Or maybe there just isn't an answer for 'if there's a g0d, why there is suffering'. I was recently reading the reverse of this argument, "The Evil God Challenge". I don't know if it's tenable, but it shows how much bigger this discussion could be.
Cheers,
Scott
PS - It is my understanding that in the Job era of thinking, g0d was responsible for any evil that happened. That the devil was just his 'agent'. The writers of the O.T. recognized that because g0d has final authority, g0d gets all the responsibility. Am I wrong in that understanding?

6/09/2009

The Reason For God - Chapter One Review

The criticism of Christianity being refuted in chapter one is, "There Can't Be Just Be One True Religion." Keller better clarifies this position by stating, "To insist that one faith has a better grasp of the Truth than others is intolerant." He does concede that this works against peace in our world. Once a religion can claim sole truth, it is easy to 'stereotype and caricature other ones'. He also concedes that this will most likely lead to violence. Keller then proceeds to list out three common reactions to this problem.

First reaction to the problem of religious exclusiveness, outlaw religion.
I would agree with him this would never work, and is counterproductive. I would concede that maybe every society needs some sort of fairy tale or narrative to function. I think it's interesting that when Keller talks about the explosive growth of religion, he fails to point out that it's in predominantly poor and uneducated countries. The fact is that the U.S. is an anomaly among wealthy nations in its belief system. This has more to do with its history of anti intellectualism than any sort of benefit of religious belief. I wonder what he thinks of the evidence that religious belief tends to leave a society worse off.

Second reaction to the problem of religious exclusiveness, condemn religion.
He claims that condemning religion leads to the following statements:
"All major religions are equally valid and basically teach the same thing". Who would say this! The fact that someone would raise this as an objection makes me despair about the type of skeptics who actually challenge Keller.
The next statement that condemning religion might lead to is, "Each religion sees part of spiritual truth, but none can see the whole truth." He then uses the classic blind men feeling an elephant analogy to parable this stance. His reaction to this is, "How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed none of the religions have." PZ Myers has an excellent retort to this kind of thinking. It's long, so I have posted it at the bottom.
The statement to follow that is, "Religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be 'truth'". He goes to use the classic argument against relativism. I don't really see how this defeats the relativism of religion. If you were taught something from a young age by everyone you trusted and loved, you would believe that. This is why there are always fights over what gets taught in school. Belief in Santa is relative, and not discoverable outside of it's cultural context. Once everyone stops believing in Santa, he's "dead". How is religion different? I don't care if he argues against relativism, I want to know how religion is not relative? I can see how math is not relative, everyone can discover its principles. The language around math may be a construct, but the principles remain the same. How does one discover non-relative religious principles? Are there any? This is making me feel like Keller would prefer to engage in 'straw-man' arguments.
That last statement that Keller says might result from condemning religion is, "It is arrogant to insist your religion is right and to convert others to it". I don't dispute that certain beliefs might have more validity than others, but something Keller asks is: why do the skeptics care what other people believe? He offers no answer, but I will. What others do with their beliefs affects my life. Notice I said what people do with their beliefs. Unlike the g0d depicted in much of the Bible, I don't believe in thought crime. A line of morality could be, 'What kind of society do you want to live in.' Then behaviours of others resulting from belief would matter. I would also say that evidence gives credence, or as Hitchens puts it, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." When you claim exclusivity, but yet can't show any evidence on how you are exclusive, why should we not consider that arrogant? In fact, why should you not be laughed at? Again, I feel as if he skipped over the meat of this issue and answered the easy critics.

Third reaction to the problem of religious exclusiveness, keep religion private.
He says that it's not possible, that everyone brings their beliefs and spirituality to the public sphere. Keller says everything is morally relative, unless people bring their belief in g0d around with them. He does a nice little straw man caricature of a 'anything goes' morality. The problem is, when believers make claims in the public realm, they bring a giant 'g0d' stamp: "I'm right because g0d says so!" He conveniently ignores that this is one of the reasons why religion and state mixture is deplorable. He also says we have to have religion so we know what kind of society to build. He touches on a post modern idea of dialogue and constructing a society, then completely misses the point. *sigh*

Of course his answer to the problem of exclusive religion claims is, "Christianity can save the World". These are his reasons why:
Biblical doctrine of people being created in the image of 'g0d' leads to respect for others. Other people will recognize Christians as 'good' because of Jesus' teachings.
The Christian gospel should make people feel humble in light of their 'salvation', and therefore treat others with respect.
Christians in the first two centuries were so nice, gave people more rights, in comparison with the culture around them.
He then proceeds to say that, "We cannot skip lightly over the fact that there have been injustices done by the church in the name of Christ, yet who can deny that the force of Christians' most fundamental beliefs can be a powerful impetus for peace-making in our troubled world?"
He just did skip lightly, and it annoyed me, though I suspect he tries to answer the injustices later in the book. As to his claims on how Christianity will save the world, there are natural explanations for all of them. Not really a whiff of anything supernatural in them. An example off the top of my head would be: if Christians were bad asses, persecuting people, in an empire with a big, well trained army, it is not a religion that will get off the ground. He seems to assume early Christianity was a cohesive belief system, which would imply he knows very little about the early church. Christianity has changed many times over, and it will continue to do so. I really enjoy how he calls Jesus' teachings good, but uses the classical argument later on that he was a bad moral teacher, which helps prove he was g0d.
To sum up, I would agree that there could be one true religion, but Keller in no way shows that it has to be Protestant Christianity. For me this book is off to a rough start. One too many straw men. I am also left with the feeling that there are tougher problems within this one chapter that Keller has chosen to ignore. I remember feeling annoyed at the weakness of the first chapter on my first run through the book, but I think it gets a little better.
Cheers,
Scott











Once upon a time, four blind men were walking in the forest, and they bumped into an elephant.

Moe was in front, and found himself holding the trunk. "It has a tentacle," he said. "I think we have found a giant squid!"

Larry bumped into the side of the elephant. "It's a wall," he said, "A big, bristly wall."

Curly, at the back, touched the tail. "It's nothing to worry about, nothing but a piece of rope dangling in the trail."

Eagletosh saw the interruption as an opportunity to sit in the shade beneath a tree and relax. "It is my considered opinion," he said, "that whatever it is has feathers. Beautiful iridescent feathers of many hues."

The first three, being of a scientifical bent, quickly collaborated and changed places, and confirmed each other's observations; they agreed that each had been correct in the results of their investigations, except that there wasn't a hint of feathers anywhere about, but clearly their interpretations required correction and more data. So they explored further, reporting to each other what they were finding, in order to establish a more complete picture of the obstacle in the path.

"Tracing the tentacle back, I find that it is attached to a large head with eyes, fan-shaped ears, and a mouth bearing tusks. It is not a squid, alas, but seems to be a large mammal of some sort," said Moe.

"Quite right, Moe — I have found four thick limbs. Definitely a large tetrapod," said Larry.

Curly seems distressed. "It's a bit complicated and delicate back here, guys, but I have probed an interesting orifice. Since this is a children's story, I will defer on reporting the details."

Eagletosh yawns and stretches in the shade of a tree. "It has wings, large wings, that it may ascend into the heavens and inspire humanity. There could be no purpose to such an animal without an ability to loft a metaphor and give us something to which we might aspire."

The other three ignore the idling philosopher, because exciting things are happening with their elephant!

"I can feel its trunk grasping the vegetation, uprooting it, and stuffing it into its mouth! It's prehensile! Amazing!", said Moe.

Larry presses his ear against the animal's flank. "I can hear rumbling noises as its digestive system processes the food! It's very loud and large."

There is a squishy plop from the back end. "Oh, no," says Curly, "I can smell that, and I think I should go take a bath."

"You are all completely missing the beauty of its unfurled wings," sneers Eagletosh, "While you tinker with pedestrian trivialities and muck about in earthy debasement, I contemplate the transcendant qualities of this noble creature. 'Tis an angel made manifest, a symbol of the deeper meaning of life."

"No wings, knucklehead, and no feathers, either," says Moe.

"Philistine," says Eagletosh. "Perhaps they are invisible, or tucked inside clever hidden pockets on the flank of the elephant, or better yet, I suspect they are quantum. You can't prove they aren't quantum."

The investigations continue, in meticulous detail by the three, and in ever broader strokes of metaphorical speculation by the one. Many years later, they have accomplished much.

Moe has studied the elephant and its behavior for years, figuring out how to communicate with it and other members of the herd, working out their diet, their diseases and health, and how to get them to work alongside people. He has profited, using elephants as heavy labor in construction work, and he has also used them, unfortunately, in war. He has not figured out how to use them as an air force, however…but he is a master of elephant biology and industry.

Larry studied the elephant, but has also used his knowledge of the animal to study the other beasts in the region: giraffes and hippos and lions and even people. He is an expert in comparative anatomy and physiology, and also has come up with an interesting theory to explain the similarities and differences between these animals. He is a famous scholar of the living world.

Curly's experiences lead him to explore the environment of the elephant, from the dung beetles that scurry after them to the leafy branches they strip from the trees. He learns how the elephant is dependent on its surroundings, and how its actions change the forest and the plains. He becomes an ecologist and conservationist, and works to protect the herds and the other elements of thebiome.

Eagletosh writes books. Very influential books. Soon, many of the people who have never encountered an elephant are convinced that they all have wings. Those who have seen photos are at least persuaded that elephants have quantum wings, which just happened to be vibrating invisibly when the picture was snapped. He convinces many people that the true virtue of the elephant lies in its splendid wings — to the point that anyone who disagrees and claims that they are only terrestrial animals is betraying the beauty of the elephant.

Exasperated, Larry takes a break from writing technical treatises about mammalian anatomy, and writes a book for the lay public, The Elephant Has No Wings. While quite popular, theEagletoshians are outraged. How dare he denigrate the volant proboscidian ? Does he think it a mere mechanical mammal, mired in mud, never soaring among the stars? Has he no appreciation for the scholarship of the experts in elephant wings? Doesn't he realize that he can't possibly disprove the existence of wings on elephants, especially when they can be tucked so neatly into the quantum? (The question of how the original prophets ofwingedness came by their information never seems to come up, or is never considered very deeply.) It was offensive to cripple the poor elephants, rendering them earthbound.

When that book was quickly followed by Moe's The Elephant Walks and Curly's Land of the Elephant, the elephant wing scholars were in a panic — they were being attacked by experts in elephants, who seemed to know far more about elephants than they did! Fortunately, the scientists knew little about elephant's wings — surprising, that — and the public was steeped in favorable certainty that elephants, far away, were flapping gallantly through the sky. They also had the benefit of vast sums of money. Wealth was rarely associated with competence in matters elephantine, and tycoons were pouring cash into efforts to reconcile the virtuouswingedness of elephants with the uncomfortable reality of anatomy. Even a few scientists who ought to know better were swayed over to the side of the winged; to their credit, it was rarely because of profit, but more because they were sentimentally attached to the idea of wings. They couldn't deny the evidence, however, and were usually observed to squirm as they invoked the mystic power of the quantum, or of fleeting, invisible wings that only appeared when no one was looking.

And there the battle stands, an ongoing argument between the blind who struggle to explore the world as it is around them, and the blind who prefer to conjure phantoms in the spaces within their skulls. I have to disappoint you, because I have no ending and no resolution, only a question.

Where do you find meaning and joy and richness and beauty, O Reader? In elephants, or elephants' wings?