Hokum-Balderdash Assay

New home

2006-01-13T13:36:20+08:00

Been having technical problems with my blogspirit.com blog for months now. Been wasting too much time trying to get blog entries uploaded and formatted correctly so I've moved ... reluctantly. Experimented with blog.com but like a point and shoot instamatic it just doesn't offer bloggers enough controls. Not that I've explored various other blog hosts, but blogger.com certainly has more manual controls to fine tune the blog. As with blogspirit it offers the blogger full html and css control of the blog skins. That's one of the clinchers. Downside: no blog categories option.

So it's going to be hokum-balderdash.blogspot.com from today onwards.

Retribution by God's chosen people

2006-01-12T09:55:00+08:00

We don't know and will never know if indeed God punished Sharon by giving him a stroke, but we certainly know that Israel is punishing Robertson for saying it:

Israel is pulling out of a $50 million deal with US TV evangelist Pat Robertson after he said Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution.

...

Mr Robertson was leading a group of evangelical Christians hoping to build the Galilee World Heritage Park.

The centre was expected to cover nearly 35 acres (14 hectares) north-east of the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus is believed to have delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

Pat never learns, does he?

Creationism's metastasizing

2006-01-11T23:02:25+08:00

In some town in California a handful of parents with the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State just sued a school for teaching what amounts to creationism. Reading that the school is labeling the class philosophy and not science, I thought the case may not have much chance in prospering, and that the parents and Americans United were too quick on the trigger, perhaps emboldened and inspired by the recent victory in Dover. But after reading the following I say the parents should carry on and raise hell in Frazier Mountain High.

An initial course description sent to parents in December said it would examine "evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and Biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid."

Pray tell, what is "Darwin's philosophy"? And how do they understand and use "theory" and "scientific"? Are they fallaciously equating evolution the science with a certain philosophy, say, materialism or Social Darwinism?

I'd really like to know who wrote that course description and where the nearest electroconvulsive therapy center is. Perhaps Ms. Lemburg can help me with this.

Ahem!!

2006-01-11T13:20:24+08:00

Looks like OTC cough syrups may just be a waste of money:

Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been proven to treat coughs, said Dr. Richard Irwin, chairman of a cough guidelines committee for the American College of Chest Physicians.

...

'[T]he best studies that we have to date would suggest there's not a lot of justification for using these medications because they haven't been shown to work," said Irwin, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass.

I'd offer my personal anecdotes to vouch for that, but critical thinkers out there would lynch me. Yes, yes, yes. Confirmation bias, selective recall, lack of controls, etc., etc.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group for makers of over-the-counter medications, disputed the guidelines and said over-the-counter cough medicines provide relief to millions of people each year.

I sure hope they have good studies to support that claim. I'd like to know how much more effective these various cough relief medications are over sugar syrup (strawberry-flavored please).

Dextromethorphan is in Robitussin, a top-selling over-the-counter cough syrup. It is among Robitussin ingredients that the Food and Drug Administration has found to be safe and effective, said Francis Sullivan, a spokesman for Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, which makes Robitussin.

Sullivan said Robitussin “wouldn't be a top brand if people didn't feel it was efficacious.”

Oh! So this is the way Wyeth determines the efficacy of their OTCs--compare sales figures. Well, while they're at it, why not use testimonials as a gauge as well.

I don't hear Sullivan stating, much less emphasizing, that the level of dextromethorphan in Robitussin has been found to be effective. Can he please address that issue? Of course, Wyeth can, instead, highlight the "safe" part. How about reducing the amount of the active ingredient so they can claim it to be safer than ever? Are those homeopaths I hear in the distance?

Science rocks!

2006-01-11T00:15:00+08:00

As a college student some 15 years ago Lauren Becker worked during summers as a ranger in a state park in the Bible Belt. During the guided tours she would take the hikers down to the base of a 256-foot waterfall--the main attraction of the park. She would then tell them, among other things, that the rocks they were standing on are 300 million years old.

Although Lauren had heard that there were people who believed the earth is only 6,000 years old, she'd never actually met any. It was during her stint at the park that she finally came face-to-face with young earth creationists. And not a few of them. For instance, whenever she would talk of the age of the rocks, some mothers would try to prevent their children from hearing about the facts. During one hike a man actually argued that the rocks were only a few thousand years old and the only reason we think they're millions of years old is that the Devil made them look that way to make humans turn away from God!

You can listen to Lauren Becker's story by downloading the December 30 2005 Point of Inquiry podcast. It is a most enjoyable piece and I highly recommend it. (The MP3 file is around 38Mb. Becker's segment is around 10 minutes long, while the entire podcast runs 55 minutes.)

Here are excerpts:

A 300-million-year old rock is the answer resulting from decades of observation, research, field study, laboratory testing, comparative studies, and critical thinking. A 6,000-year old rock is the answer because God said so.

...

The lack of a deity is not an opening for chaos; it is a call for responsibility.... Our species has continuously found meaning, purpose, and comfort in the idea of God or gods. Unfortunately, if we want to know what is actually going on--and our survival depends on understanding reality--religion is utterly bereft of explanatory power....

The discovery that a rock is 300 million years old is the result of lots of questions by lots of people who devise lots of different ways to ask the earth about itself. Much to our delight she is talking. Science is how we listen and the scientific method is how we understand what she says. To deny that a rock is 300 million years old is to deny the process that got us to that understanding. Since this process of inquiry is our best tool for succeeding in the world its denial is a grave threat to our future prosperity. Far from making us stronger faith cripples us because it takes away our greatest advantage--our ability to question, to learn, to adapt, and therefore to live.

(Lauren Becker is a Point of Inquiry contributor and Assistant Public Relations Director for CSICOP.)

Science leads to reliable knowledge because it does not claim to possess absolute knowledge of the world, is based on systematic observation of the world and rigorous testing of claims/hypotheses, and is self-correcting. Unlike religion, science does not delude itself about the understanding it gleans and possesses. This is one of its greatest strength. This is one reason it has been so successful.

On the other hand, rather than being founded on the principle of tentativeness of understanding¹, the search for better and more detailed understanding, and self-correction, most religions are absolutist and dogmatic in character. And as for their supernatural beliefs/explanations, they are untestable. Hence, they can only remain unverified and unverifiable extraordinary claims. Moreover, since the supernatural by definition is not constrained by natural laws people can make the most ludicrious of appeals to the supernatural, people can attribute anything that they cannot understand (even things that they believe are impossible in this world) to the supernatural and make the supernatural cause practically anything they fancy (An aside: Can deities make a round square? Or create married bachelors? Or commit suicide? Can a deity create entities that supersede itself in all aspects, thus creating beings greater than itself? If not then what does omnipotence mean exactly? If God is constrained by, for instance, logic, then there are limitations to a deity's powers. But what then are the implications of the existence of such restrictions?).

If an explanation is valid/correct, then it has the power to predict. Scientific explanations provide deterministic and stochastic predictions. Indeed scientific theories would be useless (and untestable) if they had no predictive power. Supernatural explanations, on the other hand, cannot be tested and don't predict anything. Becker rightly declares that supernaturalism is "bereft of explanatory power." Pat Robertson can declare that if the Christian deity gets pissed with some person--as in Ariel Sharon--then He will in his infiinte wisdom gift him with a stroke or heart attack. Problem is, how can you predict (and test) this if we have no way of knowing God's emotional state or whether the supernatural exists in the first place? What use is the explanation that person K was cured because supplications had been answered by the supernatural, when failure to get well despite a barrage of prayers are explained away with the rationalization that God sometimes refuses to accede to our prayers because he knows what's best? With all bases covered the claim that prayer works is nonfalsifiable.

One of the worst and yet common pitfalls in supernaturalistic thinking is that of producing ad hoc explanations--rationalizations that cannot be tested/falsified. Thus, during the short-lived elation over the supposed survival of 12 American miners a number of people attributed their survival to the supernatural. How did they know that? They didn't; they merely believed. For in order to know one must have good evidence/reasons to support one's belief. I am actually tempted to go all the way and declare that all supernatural explanations are ad hoc explanations.

In the world we live in supernaturalistic explanations are completely devoid of utility in understanding and predicting processes and events. They are merely superstitious beliefs or palliatives that provide a false sense of understanding--and it is false because those who propose and believe them have no way of confirming whether these explanations are in fact right or wrong.

Notes:

1. Michael Ruse, "Creation-Science Is Not Science," Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, ed. Martin Curd & J.A. Cover, NY: W.W. Norton, 1998, p. 40

LivePseudoscience

2006-01-07T11:15:00+08:00

Was reading a Live Science article when I noticed the following advert on their page:

Ironic. Pathetic.

(PS. The ad may or may not be there if you visit the page. Keep reloading the page and it might surface.)

The point of inquiry

2006-01-07T10:17:03+08:00

If you haven't been tuning in to Point of Inquiry yet maybe you should. The MP3 files take forever to download with dial-up but certainly worth the wait.

Einstein the philosopher

2006-01-05T17:50:00+08:00

Professor Don Howard in the December 2005 Physics Today article "Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science" shows how the scientist who revolutionized physics in the 20th century had extolled philosophy, how Einstein had deemed it important to science, and how he had steeped himself in the philosophy of science.

Sorry, wrong number

2006-01-05T17:44:18+08:00

I don't know about you but 616 just doesn't have the same fear factor as 666.

While many Bible have footnotes saying the number translated from the original Greek could be 616, experts say new photographic evidence of an ancient fragment of papyrus from Revelation indeed indicates the number is indeed 616, instead of 666.

Why science excludes the supernatural

2006-01-05T17:35:43+08:00

Skeptico asks, "Why does science exclude the supernatural?" As he rightly points out one very important reason is the nontestable/nonfalsifiable character of supernatural claims. We have already heard philosopher Barbara Forrest comment on this matter:

Any claim that depends on the supernatural ... is not falsifiable. [I]n science whatever claim you make has to be grounded in empirical evidence and you have to at least in principle know what kind of disconfirmation would show your theory to be wrong.... And so any position that's grounded in faith and the supernatural is one that by definition not falsifiable.

Geologist Arthur Strahler explains why the supernatural is outside the purview of science:

Religious tenets, which usually involve belief in supernatural entities, are ... beyond the limits of scientific appraisal.

[S]upernatural forces, if they can be said to exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science--that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up "from nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore the claims of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of evaluating and processing information will collapse. (Arthur N. Strahler, Understanding Science: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992, p. 13-14)

To get technical about it, science must exclude the supernatural because at its very foundation "science is committed to methodological naturalism (MN)," a position which "does not deny the existence of supernatural entities per se" but "simply assumes for the purpose of inquiry that they do not exist." In the same essay philosopher Michael Martin concludes that science's commitment to MN is warranted because it does not block inquiry, it is not a science-stopper unlike supernatural explanations. (Justifying Methodological Naturalism)

Coincidentally, Unscrewing the Inscrutable has cogent things to say about MN:

The reason that scientists use MN when they are performing science is quite simply because it works. MN assumes that the natural world is all there is, then observes it and constructs hypotheses and theories that attempt to describe how a given naturally-observed phenomenon works. This is not to say that since MN presupposes a natural world, that there is no supernatural world. The question of whether or not a supernatural world exists just isn't ever addressed by MN. It can't be. That's why it's called "methodological naturalism" and not "methodological supernaturalism".