Skeptico

Skeptico - A "Top Resource" in Astrology

Talk about missing the point.

I received this email from the email address of Ryan Flaherty, although confusingly it was signed Mark Cutler.  The subject was “love your site” – well, who could resist that?  Here’s the email:

Our website Sunlightfoundation.org is a Professional Database that is used by over 100,000 users in the astrological/psychic world monthly to seek  psychic or astrological advice. We make this possible by updating the information daily and keeping up to date on recent astrological news. We take pride in being one of the largest websites in the industry and take what our users and affiliates say into account to make this website much more user friendly. We recently ran a poll asking the users that are most familiar with the site what types of informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. Our users primarily are interested in blogs and websites Such as yours. I have reviewed your information and must say, I absolutely love the content you have made available to the public and would like to make your site a link on ours. I would like to offer you our Featured Resource badge that can be posted on your site, which recognizes you as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field or simply a text link within your site (Psychic Reading). I would also like to post your site in our resources page with a FULL banner to make your site  available to my thousands of users. Thanks again for the great information and I look forward to the great responses your site will receive from my users!

As you can imagine I was thrilled, not to say a little proud that I was being recognized as a top resource in astrology!  I figured that all my work in this area had finally paid off.  Excitedly, I replied:

Ryan:

I'm glad you like my blog.  Please feel free to link my site on yours.  You can use my blog url, or perhaps the url to just my astrology articles would be better:

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/astrology/

Please send me your Featured Resource badge, that you described in your email. It would be great to be recognized as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field, as you mention.

Several days have passed and yet I haven’t received my Featured Resource badge, as Ryan/Mark promised. I hope he hasn’t had second thoughts.  Nah – I’m sure it’s on its way.

Roseneau Is Projecting Again

He’s at it again.  Josh Rosenau has another post up On accommodationism.  He ends with:

…I've occasionally used the term "enabler" to describe the folks who oppose whatever accommodationism might be.

(Sigh.)

I called Josh on this piece of projection before.

Think about this.  Considering a drug addict, say - which is the enabler:

1. The one who helps the addict get drugs, lends him money to get drugs, who tells him drug addiction is not that bad, tells him you can do drugs and live a normal life, would never tell him to give up, or
2. The one who tells the addict to stop doing drugs, says doing drugs is stupid, hides his drugs, hides his drug money, points to studies saying drugs are bad, gets angry at the addict when he’s high.

Clearly the enabler is #1.

Now, question for the class, which one (# 1 or # 2 above), by analogy, is the accommodationist, and which the new atheist?

As I wrote in a comment on Josh’s blog:

“You (the accomodationists) tell the addict (religious believer) that their religious delusions are OK and totally not inconsistent with science at all.  You (the accomodationists) are the ones who actually do enable the addicts (religious believers) by providing them with their drugs (reasons why religion and science are compatible).  I realize you are acting out of love for the religious people you come into contact with, but in reality, you’re making the problem worse.  That’s up to you, but you really should stop this dishonest labeling of the non-accomodationists with what you are actually doing yourself. It’s called projection.”

Of course, Josh is under no obligation to respond to what I wrote, to justify his use of the word.  But, if he’s not going to respond, then he should at least have the intellectual honesty to stop parroting this nonsense.

Buffy and the Enablers of the NCSE

Scienceblogger Josh Rosenau has a post up where he claims that there are other valid ways of knowing, apart from science.  Regular readers will know that woos make this claim all the time, which is why I think this subject is pretty important.  So much so that I wrote about the fallacy that is The appeal to other ways of knowing - the claim that the tools of critical thinking and science are not sufficient to evaluate the believer’s claim; therefore the believer's claim has validity despite the lack of evidence for it.  It’s generally not worth making a new post about this every time someone mentions it, but Josh, as well as being a blogger with the generally awesome Scienceblogs, is also Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), the organization that works to keep evolution in US public school science education.  So when Josh suggests that religion might provide one valid way of knowing, it’s relevant.   

Josh’s (first) post on this subject is On vampires and ways of knowing.  It was written in response to Jerry Coyne’s post How many “ways of knowing” are there? (which is how I found it).  You have to scroll down a few pages in Josh’s post before you get to where he starts to support his “other ways of knowing” argument.  If you read those two posts (especially Jerry’s), you’ll realize that what’s behind this discussion is the recent argument about so called “accommodationism” – the idea that science and religion need not conflict.  Accommodationists think that the “new atheists” with their harsh criticisms of religion, are making it harder to get people to accept evolution.  (I’m simplifying the discussion.  If you’re been reading PZ, Larry, Jason or Jerry Coyne, you’ll know what I’m talking about.)  The accomodationist stance does appear to be the NCSE’s position, although Josh’s post is not an official NCSE statement.

The reason for that preamble, is that before Josh gets to his “other ways of knowing” arguments, he takes a dig at the people who don’t approve of accommodation, or as Josh refers to them, “enablers”:

This is all part of the long and tedious battle between a clique of atheists who seem intent on enabling creationists in their muddling of the nature of science (enablers) and people who think it's possible for science and religion to exist without meaningful conflict (so-called accommodationists).  [My bold.]

He repeats this “enablers” wording later, and in comments.

First of all, you’ll note that Josh in no way demonstrates that the new atheists are “enabling creationists,” (he even says that they only “seem intent on…”) and yet he immediately follows by assuming his point is proven and henceforth labels the people he disagrees with as “enablers” – which is ad hominem, since he didn’t justify the wording.  As a further sign of his dishonesty, he doesn’t even use the much less pejorative (and more accurate) description of his own side, which would be “accommodationists.”  Instead he uses “so-called accommodationists.”  Weasel wording at best, and hardly a positive sign. 

More to the point, “enablers” seemed like a strange label to apply to the anti-accommodationist people.  It’s a specific term used by psychotherapists and the like, and has a specific meaning.  I looked up “enabler” in several places.  This one is fairly typical, where it defines enablers as people who:

…allow loved ones to behave in ways that are destructive. For example, an enabler wife of an alcoholic might continue to provide the husband with alcohol. A person might be an enabler of a gambler or compulsive spender by lending them money to get out of debt.

In this fashion, though the enabler may be acting out of love and trying to help or protect a person, he or she is actually making a chronic problem like an addiction worse. By continuing to lend money to the gambler, for example, the gambler doesn’t have to face the consequences of his actions. Someone is there to bail him out of trouble and continue to enable his behavior.

Looking at that explanation, it seems to me that if anything, the real enablers are the accommodationists.  Think about it.  They (the accommodationists) tell the addict (religious believer) that their religious delusions are OK and totally not inconsistent with science at all.  They (the accommodationists) are the ones who actually do enable the addicts (religious believers) by providing them with their drugs (rationalizations for belief in both religion and evolution).  They are certainly protecting religious believers from having to face the consequences of their beliefs.  I’ll leave you to decide which side is actually making a chronic problem worse.  Regardless of what you think, it’s pretty clear that Josh has made no attempt to justify calling his opponents enablers.  His argument by label is lazy and not a little sleazy.  And since he’s really describing what his side does, it’s actually also projection.  (Hey, I can do psycho-babble too.)

OK, so what are Josh’s other ways of knowing?  Essentially, it’s what we get from fiction:

…telling stories about vampires is a great way to convey certain truths about the world we all live in. These aren't truths that science can independently verify, but they are still true in a meaningful way.

No one should watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer they (sic) way they would watch a documentary, but they should certainly watch the show. It's brilliant, and it uses this exact sort of literary truth to tackle tricky subjects like drug addiction, spousal abuse, peer pressure, bullying, and the challenges of adolescence in late 20th century America with a sophistication and humor that would be impossible in any other form.

Oh dear.  It’s hard to believe a smart person could make such a bad argument.  He’s saying (and he further clarified this is the comments and in subsequent posts) that works of fiction tell us truths, make us think of things, or in a way, that perhaps we wouldn’t be able to otherwise.  Maybe, but he’s confusing a way of knowing something with a way of having it explained.  Reading fiction may be a way of understanding something – but it’s just an explanation of what is already known by some other means.  It’s not a way to determine what is true in the first place.

For example, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the characters gets so heavily into magic that it messes up her life.  Nothing else has meaning for her anymore, she lies to her friends, she puts herself and her friends in danger, nearly gets someone killed, damages her own physical and mental health.  This is obviously an allegory about drug addiction.  From this we learn that drug addiction is bad.  But we don’t know that drug addiction is bad from this episode of Buffy.  We know that drug addiction is bad from stories about drug addiction, from people we have known who were addicts, from reports on addiction etc.  We already knew this from some other way of knowing – one based on observation, verification and replication (aka “science”).  The fictional Buffy the Vampire Slayer just explains this – gets us to remember and understand these facts that were already known before by some other means.  But we only get the allegory, and register the fact that addiction is bad, because we already know addition addiction is bad.  If we didn’t already know addition addiction was bad, the allegory wouldn’t make sense.

Buffy also tells us things that are not true.  For example, that vampires exist.  And yet we don’t learn from Buffy that vampires exist - we already know they don’t.

Josh must know this, but he digs himself in deeper in one of his follow up posts, Defining terms:

To return, then, to ways of knowing, I'll define them as systematic methods of evaluating truth claims against new sources of knowledge

For once I agree.  But how do you use Buffy to evaluate the truth or otherwise of the statements:

1. Drug addiction is bad
2. Vampires exist.

You can’t do that from watching Buffy – you have to go outside of the fictional TV program, and check what they’re telling you against the real world.  That is, you must do some form of science (informally defined), to check what Buffy is telling you – to “know” what is true, if you like.  Therefore Buffy is not a way of knowing, by Josh’s own definition.

The peculiar irony here is that the talk Jerry is complaining about was delivered at DragonCon, a science fiction/fantasy convention filled with people celebrating the truth of unreal things. I didn't see Genie's talk because I was manning NCSE's booth, watching a parade of costumed fans wait in line to get autographs from William Shatner (James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek Voyager's Capt. Janeway), and Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard). These fans are devoted to the various incarnations of Star Trek, and were willing to spend $40-75 for just one signature from one of the Star Trek captains. And they don't all want the same signature. Some think Picard is the greatest captain in the Star Trek Universe, some think Kirk is the better captain, and a few prefer Janeway.

These, again, are truth claims…

Again, oh dear.  No, these are not truth claims.  These are opinions. 

In any event, science as a "way of knowing" does not produce truth. People have known that since the failure of logical positivism in the early 20th century; science can lead us away from untruths, and lets us narrow in on the truth, but science can only approach truth asymptotically, and rarely as any sort of smooth function. Furthermore, the truths that other "ways of knowing" aim to provide are of a different sort than scientific claims. As a scientific claim, "vampires fear crosses" is as meaningless as "Picard is a better captain than Kirk" or "The Cubs are the greatest team in baseball's history," and none of those is any more scientifically meaningful than "Jesus is my personal savior."  [My bold.]

Tell that to people who believe, literally, that Jesus is their personal savior.

"Picard is a better captain than Kirk" is an opinion only, not a scientific claim as Josh proposes.  "The Cubs are the greatest team in baseball's history," might be just an opinion, or perhaps it could be verified empirically by tabulating numbers of games won or lost, numbers of home runs scored or whatever.  Then it would be a scientific claim.  If it were, then it would clearly be more meaningful, scientifically, than the Jesus statement.  Either way, Josh is wrong again.

I like novels. I like TV. I like art. I like baseball. I think there is truth to be found in such endeavors, and I think any brush that sweeps away the enterprise of religion as a "way of knowing" must also sweep away art and a host of other human activities. I've tossed out the comparison before, and have yet to get any useful reply to it.

OK, here’s a reply.  Novels and art are not ways of knowing – they can be ways of explaining what is already known, ways to make us think, or pure entertainment only, but they are not ways of knowing.  So when we say religion is not a way of knowing, we clearly do not need to sweep away novels or art as a way of knowing, because they were not ways of knowing in the first place.

Novels and art do not usually make empirical claims.  In the rare cases where they do (for example, many people believe The Da Vinci Code is based on fact), those claims can be tested.  Where they are false, the claim can be dismissed, but that doesn’t require us to “sweep away” the rest of fiction that is just fiction. 

I hope those replies were useful.

Josh continued to defend his idea in comments, and in further posts.  (You should read the comments – most disagree with Josh.)  In one comment, Josh writes

How do we decide that some non-empirical ways of knowing are OK, while others are incompatible with science?

The only basis Coyne offers, and the only one I can recall being offered by other enablers, is that religion and science are incompatible because religions can make false empirical claims.

No, that’s not it.  The problem with religious ways of knowing are:

1. There is no basis for making most religious claims.  They were essentially made up, usually by ignorant ancient peoples with no idea of how the world actually works.  Some of these claims are actually known to be wrong, and
2. There is no mechanism to change religious claims when new information is discovered that shows they were wrong.  On the contrary, religious believers go to great lengths to cherry pick the things that they think supports their position, while ignoring what contradicts it.  And then they lie about the whole thing.

Obviously, science works in the exact opposite way from points 1 and 2 above.  It’s disturbing that someone who works for the NCSE (and blogs at Scienceblogs) doesn’t know this.

Jerry Coyne ends his post with:

As for “ways of knowing,” my response is always, “What do you find out? What do you “know”?  And how would you know if you were wrong? Was Jesus the son of God?  Christians’ “way of knowing” tells them, “Yes, of course!” But Islamic “ways of knowing” say, “No, of course not, and you’ll burn in hell if you believe that.”  Revelation, dogma, and scripture are not in fact ways of knowing; they are ways of believing.  There are no “truths” that religion can produce which are independent of truths derived from secular reason.

Precisely.  Josh’s piece is a totally muddled post relying on little more than equivocation between different things that can appear in fiction, compared to things you can find in religious texts.  He just took a blog post from someone he says is an evangelical Christian, and repeated that blogger’s points uncritically (and at great length).  It was such a poorly thought out piece that Josh wrote four more posts in the three days following the original one, to try to reply to criticisms raised in the comments and rescue the jumble of the original post.  Which wouldn’t matter if Josh were a regular blogger, but he’s Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education!  While he does state that his blog is not official NCSE policy, it gives a worrying insight into the way they may be thinking.

In my view, the only interesting thing to come from Josh’s piece was the insight that the NCSE and other “so-called accommodationists” are enablers – that is, they’re enabling religious people to continue with their destructive delusions.  Apparently it’s a part of being codependent.  (I didn’t “know” that from Josh’s post, by the way.  I had to check external sources.)

Other bloggers on Josh’s post:

Jason Rosenhouse - Ways of Knowing

Ophelia Benson - Ways of whatting?

Blair Waffle Project

Via Ophelia I was unfortunate enough to find this piece of drivel written by British ex-PM Tony Blair, entitled Without God's Truth at its centre, no community can fulfil its potential.  Really?  “No community can fulfil its potential”?  None?  I guess the Danes and the Swedes must be pretty unfulfilled, then.  Oh wait, no they’re not!

But Blair doesn’t need facts, or even a valid argument.  See how he starts by invoking something he thinks we can all agree on - the recent financial crisis:

The limits to individualism are in one sense plain. We only need to contemplate the financial crisis to understand that the pursuit of maximum short-term profit, without proper regard to the communal good, is a mistake and leads to neither profit nor good.

A reasonable point to make.  Arguments could be made for this point or against it, and we could certainly compare their merits and decide if the pursuit of maximum short-term profit was to blame or not.  But Blair isn’t going this route.  Instead, the waffle starts:

Yet, at a deeper level, the case against a purely individualistic or materialistic philosophy has to be made. Young people today have access to technology, to opportunity, to experiences good and bad on a scale my generation never knew and my father's generation would find fantastical, like something out of science fiction.

“Yet, at a deeper level…”?  What does that even mean?  What “level” is he talking about?  Deeper than what?  Measured how?  Why does this case have to be made?  What does modern technology have to do with it?  Will Blair tell us?  Of course not.  His argument has no explanation (nor logic or evidence), just assertion:

The danger is clear: that pursuit of pleasure becomes an end in itself. It is here that faith can step in, can show us a proper sense of duty to others, responsibility for the world around us, and can lead us to, as the Holy Father calls it, caritas in veritate.

Of course – this is where faith can step in.  Obviously.  Because what we need is obviously to believe in more things that are not backed by evidence. That’s the ticket.  Accepting more things without a shred of evidence, or even in the teeth of evidence, is just what we need now.  After all, it worked so well in the past.  Note that Blair has shown absolutely no connection between this and the financial crisis he started his article with.

After the experience of fascism, Soviet Communism or viewing life in North Korea or the cultural revolution in China, it is easier for us to grasp the dangers of a too-powerful state.

Agreed.  Also, religiously controlled Iran, Saudi Arabia, The Taliban, Sudan...  And don’t forget, Hitler was religiously inspired.  No dangers of a too-powerful state there, no siree.  Phew, good job that faith “stepped in” to prevent the dangers of a too-powerful state.  Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) my ass.

Of course, the regimes of Soviet Communism, China or North Korea were/are not exactly bastions of rationality and critical thinking either.  They were/are quasi religious regimes based largely on faith (no evidence their systems worked). They just required faith in something else, not the things Tony Blair has faith in, so that was the bad faith, not the good faith, right Tony?  Right.

But I would argue that even the concept of community has its limitations. We use the word in two senses: one to distinguish it from government, to emphasise civic society if you like; the other sense is just to describe the general community of public opinion. In politics, of course, especially in a democracy, "the people" are the boss; public opinion is to be courted and if not surrendered to, as (sic) least managed.

“The people" are the boss”?  Funny, I didn’t think the people of Britain supported the war in Iraq.  In what sense were the people “the boss” when that decision was being made?  But at least Blair admits that the only thing politicians have to do is manage public opinion, not actually, you know, listen to it in any way.  Otherwise known as spin.

Of course, Blair is saving up for his big finish, where faith and belief in god is the only thing that can save us:

It is here that Faith enlarges and enriches the idea of community. The recent Papal Encyclical is a remarkable document in many respects. It repays reading and re-reading. But one strand throughout it is a strong rejoinder to the notion of relativism, to the description of the human condition in society as just some amoral negotiation or set of compromises with modernity; or even just obedience to the majority opinion. Not that it is anti-technology or anti-modern; or indeed anti-democratic. But it widens and deepens the relationship between individuals and the community in which they live. It puts God's Truth at the centre of it. In one passage, it describes humanism devoid of faith as "inhuman humanism": "Without God, man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is."

Blair’s catholic church had such a strong moral compass that it allowed multiple serial pedophiles to prey on innocent children in church while protecting the predators from the law, and the rape and molestation of thousands of children in over 250 catholic schools for decades.  Hey Tony, do those articles I just linked repay reading and re-reading too?  Caritas in Veritate.

Faith is such a good moral guidance that one in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader.  In what sense did faith enlarge and enrich the idea of community for those women?  Do tell.

Of course, I see it now.  The 9/11 hijackers were motivated only by “a purely individualistic or materialistic philosophy” and “pursuit of pleasure.”  If only they had had some religious faith instead, all that horror could have been avoided.  Yeah, what we need is more faith in the world.  How could I possibly have missed this obvious conclusion?

And this twit was Prime Minister? 

One Giant Embarrassment

Trust The Onion.  Two Bangladeshi newspapers recently took that statement quite literally, which was a big mistake.

The Onion recently ran a Moon landing conspiracy piece - Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked, featuring a spoof interview with Neil Armstrong, who supposedly only now realizes he had been fooled into thinking he had actually walked on the Moon:

According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman's website, OmissionControl.org.

"It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind's so-called 'greatest technological achievement' for me to realize I had been living a lie, " said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. "It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico."

"This is the only logical interpretation of the numerous inconsistencies in the grainy, 40-year-old footage," Armstrong added.

More at the link.

Pretty funny.  Except that journalists and editors at a couple of Bangladeshi newspapers thought The Onion was a real news site, and the Armstrong interview was real. They re-published the story as though it were fact:

"We thought it was true so we printed it without checking," associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told the AFP news agency.

"We didn't know the Onion was not a real news site."

Hey, I’ve got a couple of other real news sites these newspapers could use as a source for their articles.  For example:

The Landover Baptist Church

The Society for DNA Free Food

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research

The British Veterinary Voodoo Society

I guess the moral is always check your sources.  And yes, I did check a couple of other sources before I wrote this post.

Maher-Woo

David Gorski, writing today at Science-Based Medicine, has a comprehensive post detailing Bill Maher’s various woo beliefs – specifically his anti-science views about medicine and (most) vaccinations.  It’s a long piece, but worth a read, and worth referencing – all Maher’s faulty thinking detailed in one place.

The Ontological Argument for God

I’ve never understood the supposed difficulty in refuting the ontological argument for god’s existence.  Apart from the fact that it’s an argument from logic and reason alone, rather than from any actual verifiable evidence – which should rule it out as an argument to be considered seriously anyway in my view – it never seemed to make any sense.  Still, some people apparently believe it, including one recent commenter who listed it among the numerous “proofs” that god exists, so I thought it was time I deconstructed it.  As you’ll see, it didn’t take long to locate the logical fallacy that’s at its heart.

The ontological argument was originally put forward by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century.  Wikipedia has two versions of it, but I’m going to refer to what I think is a better version at The Internet Dictionary of Philosophy: “The Classic Version of the Ontological Argument” as they call it, which they say can accurately be summarized thus:

1) It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (i.e., the greatest possible being that can be imagined).

2) God exists as an idea in the mind.

3) A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.

4) Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (i.e., a greatest possible being that does exist).

No.  Correction - if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then all this means is that we can imagine something that is greater than the idea of God in the mind – not greater than a God who actually exists.  Anselm’s argument relies entirely on equivocation - the misleading use of a term that has more than one meaning, while glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time.  Specifically, Anselm relies on there being two meanings of the word “God,” and he slips between these definitions as it suits him.  What are these two meanings of the word “God”?  They are (1) a god who exists in reality and (2) a god who exists only in the mind.  In point 4 above he uses the “god who exists only in the mind” version, but in point 5 he tries to make you think he was talking about the “god who exists in reality,” because point 5 is:

5) But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)

Yes, but “the greatest possible being that can be imagined” is not God who exists only as an idea in the mind – so there is no contradiction.  It only seems to be a contradiction because Anselm is equivocating between the different meanings of the word “God” and has glossed over which meaning he is using at different points in his argument.

6) Therefore, God exists.

No.  Epic FAIL.  Therefore nothing.  All this shows is that we can imagine something greater than a God who exists only in the mind. But “God who exists only in the mind” is not “a being than which none greater can be imagined.”  In fact, premise 3 specifically states there can be something greater than this – a God who exists in reality - and so the argument is contradicted by its own premises.  “God who exists only in the mind” is not God, as defined in premise 1, and so it is possible to imagine something greater, without violating premise 1.

Anselm’s mistake will become clearer if we define his terms in a less ambiguous way.  I will rename Anselm’s different versions of God, as God-1 and God-2:

God-1 = God who exists in reality (the thing whose existence we are trying to prove).

God-2 = a God who exists only as an idea in the mind.

Now we can rephrase the argument:

1. Nothing greater than God-1 can be imagined
2. God-2 exists. 
3. God-1 is greater than God-2
4. If God-1 does not exist then we can imagine something greater than God-2 (i.e., God-1)
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God-1
6. Therefore God-1 exists

You can see quite clearly now that the argument is bogus.  Point 4 is where it goes wrong.  It only appears to work because Anselm equivocates about the definitions of God-1 and God-2.  This is what he is doing.  He is trying to make point 4 sound like, “If God-1 does not exist then we can imagine something greater than God-1” (which would be a contradiction to point 1).  But point 4 only makes sense as “…we can imagine something greater than God-2 (i.e., God-1),” as in my version.  (Otherwise he is actually saying “If God-1 does not exist then we can imagine something greater than God-1 (i.e., God-1),” which is gibberish.)  He hopes you won’t notice he changed God-2 to God-1 in point 5, setting up the contradiction to point 1.  But he wasn’t talking about God-1 in point 4, so there is no contradiction.  Consequently, point 6 “Therefore God-1 exists,” just doesn’t follow.

Not only that, but now we’ve deconstructed it, we can see it doesn’t even make sense.  Consider this.  Point 5 is just a restatement of point 1.  So if you leave out this repeated point (you don’t need it here since it’s already been stated), the last two points (4 and 6) are:

• If God-1 does not exist then we can imagine something greater than God-2 (i.e., God-1)
• Therefore God-1 exists

To simplify even further, we can cut out what this allows us to imagine, which leaves:

• If God-1 does not exist then …
• … God-1 exists

To go back to the phrasing of the original argument, he is saying, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then God exists in reality. Or, put it even more simply, if God doesn’t exist then he exists.

I have read several versions of Anselm’s argument, and they all fall apart for exactly the same reason - the logical fallacy of equivocation.  The only surprising thing about this argument, in my view, is that anyone thinks it should be taken seriously.

Skeptics' Circle

The Skeptics' Circle has just been published at Ionian Enchantment.  It's a special Chiroquacktic edition!

Lame Pet Psychic Tricks

Of all the fake psychics (some redundancy there), the lamest has to be the pet psychic. Think about it.  If a psychic deals with people, at least they have to have some basic skills in cold reading, they have to be able to read the person to some extent, and know the sorts of guesses to throw out and how to follow them up.  Most importantly, they need to know how to extract themselves from the inevitable wrong guesses, and leave the victim still thinking they guessed right. But the pet psychic doesn’t have to bother with too much of that.  After all, Rover is hardly going to sit up and say, “no, I never thought of chasing rabbits,” now is he?

Even lamer than the pet psychic is the reporter reporting credulously and with no skepticism at all about the pet psychic.  For evidence of this, see what somebody called Julia Lyon wrote recently in The Salt Lake Tribune: Utah pet psychic would 'rather talk to dogs'

"I'll go to a barbecue and people will have their dogs there -- I'd rather talk to the dogs,"

Yeah, I’ll bet the other people there are happier that way too.

Raider, a Jack Russell terrier, loves his name but doesn't want to wear dog clothing. And that big black dog he sometimes visits? Yes, that's a friend.

A black dog?  Four of my neighbors have dogs and three of them are “black.”  Well, they are black enough and big enough that they would fit the description “big black dog.” I guess that’s the dog equivalent of “do you know an ‘M’ or a ‘J’ name?”

With each passing "communication" between Davis and Raider, she looked hard at the dog and then looked away. Raider didn't seem in the zone at all. He was busy straining at the leash and watching all the excitement from a neighboring dog racing course.

But Mary Tuttle, his owner, was not disappointed.

"You hit many things right on the head," the Cottonwood Heights resident said. "I'm very open to that."

And as with the psychic who reads humans, the pet psychic is also given a free pass by a credulous human – this time the pet owner.  The dog quite clearly doesn’t want anything to do with the crazy lady; the dog owner wants to believe anyway.

The pet psychic does say one thing I agree with though:

"If I can do it, anyone can do it,"

Yeah, probably true.  Most people just wouldn’t.

Rrrrrough, get me away from the crazy woman!

Astrology Still Fails

I’ve written before about Shawn Carlson’s “A Double-blind Test of Astrology”, published in the journal Nature, in 1985.  To recap, 116 people completed California Personality Index (CPI) surveys and provided their natal data (date, time and place of birth). One natal chart and the results of three CPI surveys (one of which was for the same person as the natal chart) were given to an astrologer who was to interpret the natal chart and determine which of the three CPI results belonged to the subject whose natal chart it was. In only 40 of the 116 cases did the astrologers choose the correct CPI.  This is the exact success rate expected by random chance.  The conclusion: the test gave us no reason to suppose astrology works.

That was 24 years ago.  As far as I am aware, no serious challenge has been made to Carlson’s conclusions, perhaps until recently.  I have now been informed that Suitbert Ertel, professor of psychology at Göttingen University, has claimed to have found serious flaws in Carlson’s paper.  Ertel’s paper is apparently not available online, although I have read a summary of it by Ken McRitchie: Reappraisal of 1985 Carlson study finds support for astrology.

Normally, articles in Nature, or any scientific journal, are peer reviewed before publication. The peer review process subjects scientific beliefs and claims of fact to critical analysis by qualified experts. Yet, even though the Carlson study makes claims of scientific fact, it had not been peer reviewed. Nature had published the article as editorial content in the Commentary section, a detail that undoubtedly has been overlooked by countless authors who have cited the study and regarded it as definitive.

I found this a strange if interesting claim – some Nature articles are not peer reviewed?  The “commentary” section is somehow less “definitive” than if it had been published elsewhere in the journal?  I emailed Shawn Carlson to see what he had to say about this.  His reply began:

In general I stop reading an article when I come across the first absurdity.  Ken McRitchie states that my paper was not peer reviewed.  Not so. It survived a rigorous peer review that included a famous psychologist whom I will reveal in a later publication. To the best of my knowledge, Nature never publishes research articles that have not been properly reviewed, and I doubt that any serious scientist thinks otherwise. I talked personally with then Editor-In-Chief John Maddox about whether or not the "Commentary" section was the appropriate venue and he assured me that they often published original results there that they believed were likely to be of general public interest.   

So it was peer reviewed, and the commentary section is not reserved for non-definitive reporting.

I have to say, I found McRitchie’s criticisms here to be laughable, especially considering that Ertel’s “reappraisal” is published in the so-called Journal of Scientific Exploration – a journal that includes papers by Dean Radin and Ian Stevenson among others. Ertel’s paper is rather laughingly referred to as “peer-reviewed.”  Well yes, but if his “peers” are the likes of Radin and Stevenson, I’m unimpressed.  According to Wikipedia, the journal is not indexed in Web of Science, an indexing service for leading scientific journals, that covers over 10,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide.  Of course, that doesn’t make Ertel’s paper wrong, but it shows this criticism of Carlson’s paper to be absurd at best.

Instead of presenting the astrologer participants with pair choices, which is the normal format for such tests, and the format followed in an earlier well-known astrological study by Vernon Clark (1961), Carlson presented a three-choice format, consisting of one genuine object and two selected at random. This three-choice format, Ertel notes, is less powerful than a two-choice format.

Maybe, but that doesn’t mean the one in three choice is invalid.  If astrology were real, it should have been possible for the astrologers to pick out the correct one with greater odds than you would get with just guessing.  They didn’t.  If you were to pay money to an astrologer, would you be happy to be given advice based on an interpretation of your horoscope that, while not accurate for you, was accurate for the second closest person?  I doubt it, and this certainly isn’t what astrologers claim.

Ertel is also critical of Carlson’s piecemeal analysis of the sampled data, in which only sub-samples are examined instead of the total effects. The correct analysis for a three-choice format, Ertel asserts, is to calculate the proportion of combined first and second choices according to the normally accepted protocol. Carlson initially states his intention to do this but then disregards the protocol for no given reason. Re-analysis shows that the astrologers correctly matched CPI profiles to natal charts better than would be expected by chance with marginal significance (p = .054). This positive result, Ertel found, was replicable with even better results (p = .04) for the astrologers’ ten-point rating of profiles fit to birth charts, a procedure that Carlson requested of the astrologers but ignored in the end, again without giving reasons.

Firstly – Carlson didn’t ignore the “ten-point rating of profiles.”  He uses the ten point rating results and concluded (page 424):

Next we took the weights into account, by a method established before studying the data. 

[Snip] 

The scientific hypothesis predicts that 1/3 of the choices at any weight should be correct choices.  Figure 4 shows the percentage correct for each weight with the appropriate error bars, and the best linear fit with slope – 0.01 +/- 0.02.  The slope is consistent with the scientific prediction of zero slope.

In other words, the astrologers’ confidence that they were right (on a scale of 1 to 10) did not fit the actual correct choices any better than the incorrect ones.

Regarding the correctness of the second choice options, the Nature paper (page 424) states:

The correct CPI was chosen as the second place choice at the 0.40 +/- 0.044 rate which is also consistent with [random chance].

It looks to me as though the astrologers' first and second choices were consistent with guessing, rather than with any information provided by astrology.  In addition, Carlson did use the ten point rating scale (despite what Ertel claims), and I see nowhere in the Nature paper where Carlson initially states his intention to calculate the proportion of combined first and second choices but then changes his mind, as Ertel also claims.  (If anyone can see where he says this, I’d be interested.  I’ve read the paper several times, and I can’t find it.)

The eminent psychologist Hans Eysenck, late author of the book Astrology: Science or Superstition, argued that the CPI explicitly states that it should be interpreted only by trained and experienced users, and the astrologers lacked the necessary qualification. Other critics questioned whether the CPI and astrology evaluate personality in the same ways, and whether there was enough common ground for astrologers to make valid matches.

This one really had me rolling my eyes.  McRitchie really needs to make his mind up.  Is the CPI a valid way of testing astrology or not?  Because if it isn’t, then Carlson’s whole test is invalid regardless of what any “reappraisal” of the statistics tell us, which means that Ertel can’t claim that Carlson’s test now supports astrology.  He can’t have it both ways.  Which is it?

Of course, if the CPI is not a valid way of testing astrology, then all this means is that there is still no evidence astrology works.  Remember, proponents of astrology are the ones making the claim, and so they are the ones with the thing to prove.  Null hypothesis, anyone?

Furthermore, if the CPI is not a valid way of testing astrology, and if asking the subject which natal chart interpretation is correct (Carlson’s test #1) is not valid (as Carlson concluded), then how should astrology be tested?  It’s a bit rich for proponents of astrology to criticize a method of testing astrology to see if it works, if they don’t have a valid way of testing it themselves.  As I wrote in January 2007 in Testing Astrology – Again, if none of these methods are acceptable, and therefore if astrology can’t be tested, then this means that astrology is almost certainly bogus. For one, astrology’s doubtful provenance (no known method by which it is supposed to work, no known way its rules were derived, its absurd premises), means we need extraordinary evidence that it works.  By this I mean better evidence that we demand for many other things.  And we certainly don’t have this extraordinary evidence.  And for two, if astrology can’t be tested, then clearly no one would ever have been able to work out all the detailed rules astrologers use. How would they have been able to work out the rules if there is no way of ever testing them to see if they were right?  On what basis do astrologers claim that astrology works?  How do they know?

Proponents of astrology want to have it both ways – they  claim astrology can’t be tested, and yet they also claim they know it works.  And you can see this mindset in all its absurdity with this from Ertel:

“The results are regarded as insufficient to deem astrology as empirically verified,” Ertel warns, “but they are sufficient to regard Carlson’s negative verdict on astrology as untenable.”

- which is an epic FAIL. If the results of Ertel's study are insufficient to deem astrology as empirically verified, then astrology failed the test. The null hypothesis is that astrology doesn't work. Come on, this is basic experimental design. Ertel, with this comment, shows himself to be a pseudo-scientist who is clueless about how real science works.  This is further confirmed by the fact that in Ertel’s “reappraisal” methodology, he decided to change the things that he thinks the test should have been looking for in the first place.  This is a strict no no in experimental design.  In a well designed test, you state your objectives clearly before you do the test, and you compare the results with what you stated at the beginning you would be looking for.  What you should never do, is do the test, decide the results were not what you wanted, and then go looking for something else that might show the result you did want.  It’s well known that this technique is likely to return false positives, which is why it is never done by real scientists.  Or as Carlson wrote in his email:

I could go on at length about Dr. Ertel's flawed analysis.  I will take up that effort at a later time.  For now, let me just point out that a scientist never figures out how to analyze his data after the fact with all the data in view. This leads to selection biases that can skew the results to favor the experimenter's hopes. Apparently Dr. Ertel has done just that and from many possible approaches he has selected a particular method of analysis that gives him a result that he says is "marginally significant" in favor of the astrologers.  That won't surprise anyone who understands statistics and knows how certain subtle pitfalls often turn a "great discovery" into a fool's errand (and sometimes vice versa).

To get there however, Dr. Ertel ignores the direct and extremely significant null result that I obtained using data analysis methods that were perfectly reasonable and selected before the fact. The astrologers failed directly--thereby refuting the notion that astrology is so effective as a discipline that a selection of astrologers who are held in high esteem by their peers can gain access to vital information that is not available to ordinary psychologists.

This is the best astrology proponents can do after 24 years – no new information, no new tests that show astrology can do anything, just some dishonest and scientifically dodgy sniping at a comprehensive test that all involved (including the astrologers) agreed before the test was done, was a valid test.  Proponents of astrology are the ones who need to show evidence that their magic fortune telling system is real, and yet even after 24 years, and after the efforts of a university professor with a history of writing papers supportive of astrology, the best they can do is say, and I quote again:

The results are regarded as insufficient to deem astrology as empirically verified

If Ertel, or anyone else, believes that astrology works in any measurable way, then they need to stop sniping at Carlson’s well designed and genuinely peer reviewed test, and they need to design and perform their own experiment, have it peer reviewed and published in Nature or another real scientific journal.  As Carlson notes, such a successful test would undoubtedly win its author the Nobel Prize.  If astrology is real, it should be possible to design and conduct such an unequivocal test.  Why don’t they? 

The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker

I don’t normally post YouTube videos, but after some thought I decided I would post this link to The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker, that was originally linked by commenter PaulJ on the Atheism is Not a Religion post.  It’s a bit long at just over nine minutes, but you’ll get the idea after less than a minute into it.  It demonstrates the fallacy of thinking that if you can’t explain where something came from, then god must have done it.

In future, when some theist says something like, “what is the origin of life and/or the origin of the information" necessary to bring life into existence?” you can answer with: “The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker and that causes and directs the events that we can't otherwise explain and which doesn't need to have been made and is the one thing from which to ask for things that no human can give and without him we can't be fully happy and is unlimited by all the laws of physics and never began and will never finish and is invisible but is actually everywhere at once and who is so perfect that even if he killed millions of people, including babies, he still would be perfect and who is so powerful and magical that he can even make a virgin pregnant if he wanted to."

Which is, of course, just as meaningful and useful an answer as “god.”

Other Videos

It’s also worth checking out the other You Tube videos from NonStampCollector.  For example, What Would Jesus NOT Do?, ATHEIST!!!!!!!, How amazing is God's Forgiveness? Not very, and The Great Debate.

Skeptics’ Circle

The Skeptics’ Circle has just been posted by TechSkeptic – including several interesting pictures.

Atheism is Not a Religion

This is a refrain I’m hearing a lot from religious apologists – atheism is a religion. Also its equally fallacious siblings, science is a religion and evolution is a religion. It’s a sign of their desperation that the best argument they have is not that atheism is wrong, or that god does exist (supported by evidence of course), but that atheism is a religion too. A strange argument for a religious person to make on the face of it.  Is it supposed to strengthen the atheist’s position or weaken the theist’s one? In reality it’s a sign they have run out of arguments.

Still, this argument is widely made, and so it needs to be addressed. Atheism (and here I mean the so-called “weak atheism” that does not claim proof that god does not exist), is just the lack of god-belief – nothing more and nothing less. And as someone once said, if atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby.

That really ought to end the discussion right there. Clearly, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion. In addition, atheism has no sacred texts, no tenets, no ceremonies. Even theists making this argument must know all that. So they must have something else in mind when they trot this one out, but what is it? What are they really thinking? Well, if you look at various definitions of religion, the only things that could possibly apply to atheism would be something like this:

6. Something one believes in and follows devotedly

or this:

4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

Obviously I don’t know if that’s what they mean – I don’t read minds. But I can’t see what else it could be. They must be referring to certain activities of atheists – writing books and blogs, financing bus ads, joining atheist groups, etc. They think atheists are “religious in their atheism” as one person put it to me – the word “religious” being used here colloquially to mean something felt very strongly, or followed enthusiastically. But this definition of religion is so broad that virtually anything people enjoy doing very much, or follow strongly or obsessively, is a religion. It’s a definition of religion that is so broad that it’s meaningless. In reality, most of the things that people follow enthusiastically, are just hobbies. And ironically, although not collecting stamps is not a hobby, getting involved in atheist activities (writing books and blogs, attending atheist meetings) might well be a hobby for some people. But it is a hobby, not a religion.

What Is Religion?

I’m sure that argument won’t convince all theists to abandon this rhetorical trope they love so much.  To really address the argument, we have to define religion, and then see if atheism fits the definition. While I don’t think I can define religion completely, I think I can state the minimum that religion has to have to still be a religion. And it seems to me that there is one thing at least that is common to all religions. It’s this. In my view, religion at a minimum, has to have the following characteristic:

Religion must include something you have to accept on faith – that is, without evidence commensurate with the extraordinary nature of the belief.

Most religions will include other things too, but they must require faith. Of course, not all things that require faith are religions, but all religions must require faith.

The minimum definition covers all the religions I’m familiar with. For example, it includes any religion that involves belief in god or gods – something you have to believe in without evidence. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism… all require you to believe in god or gods as a minimum, without evidence. The minimum definition would also include religions that don’t require belief in god, but require faith in other things. For example, I believe it would include Buddhism, which (for example) includes the belief that living beings go through a succession of lifetimes and rebirth. It would also include Scientology – no evidence for Xenu, that I’m aware of. Maybe you can think of some actual religions that would be excluded, but I haven’t been able to so far.

So religion requires belief without evidence. And by that definition atheism cannot possibly be a religion because atheists do not have to believe in anything to be an atheist – either with or without evidence. QED.

Now, some religious people may say, “but that’s not my definition of religion”. To which I say, OK, then give me your definition. Give me your definition of religion, that doesn’t require belief without evidence, that includes your religion, the others I named, and atheism. And it needs to be better than the two dictionary definitions I cited above.  Give me that definition. Because here’s the thing. The problems I have with religions are:

1. They are not based on fact or on any reasonable evidence commensurate with the claims they make. In many cases, the claims they make are plainly absurd and are actually contradicted by the evidence.
2. Religious proponents demand respect, and adherence to their delusions by others. This despite (1) above.

Those are the aspects of religion that I object to. Clearly atheism doesn’t fit 1 (or 2) above, so it is nothing like any of the religions I object to. If your religion does not require belief without faith, then I probably wouldn’t have a problem with it. Assuming, of course, all the tenets of your religion are actually backed up by evidence extraordinary enough for the extraordinary claims your religion makes. But they never do. 

In my view, theists will have their work cut out to deny this minimum requirement for religion.  Come on – they even refer to their religion as “my faith”. 

Evidence and Extraordinary Evidence

Some religious people will claim that their religious beliefs are backed by evidence. This is where it gets tricky, because many religious people genuinely believe their religion is rational and backed by evidence. For example, one Christian I debated cited that the evidence Christianity was real, was (and I quote), “the resurrection of Christ”. Of course, the resurrection of Christ, if it had actually happened, would be pretty good evidence for Christianity. But, unfortunately, there is no good evidence for the resurrection. Certainly, nothing close to the extraordinary evidence we would need to accept this extraordinary claim.

Extraordinary Claims

This needs explaining in more detail. Why do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Well, all claims require exactly the same amount of evidence, it’s just that most "ordinary" claims are already backed by extraordinary evidence that you don’t think about. When we say “extraordinary claims”, what we actually mean are claims that do not already have evidence supporting them, or sometimes claims that have extraordinary evidence against them. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence.

So why is Jesus’ resurrection an extraordinary claim, and why is the Bible not extraordinary evidence for it? Well, the resurrection goes against all the evidence we have that people do not come back to life, spontaneously, after two days of being dead. Modern medicine can bring people back from what would have been considered in earlier years to be “dead”, but not after 2 days of being dead with no modern life support to keep the vital organs working. In fact, it is probably reasonably safe to say it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that people cannot come back to life after being dead for two days without modern life support. So, extraordinary claim it is.

On the other hand, the evidence we are offered in support of this extraordinary claim consists only of accounts written decades after the event, by people who were not there when the events described were purported to have occurred. We are offered nothing but hearsay anecdotes from superstitious people with a clear reason for wanting others to think the story true. This is hardly acceptable evidence to counteract the fact that this never happens. Christians might ask, what evidence would an atheist accept for such an extraordinary claim? And in reality, it is hard to imagine that there could possibly be any evidence good enough for us to accept the resurrection as true. Christians may claim that this is unfair, or that we are closed minded, but the fact that you are unlikely to find extraordinary evidence for this event 2,000 years after the fact, is hardly the non-believer’s fault. The real question, considering the weakness of the evidence, and the wildly extraordinary nature of the claim, is why would anyone believe any of it in the first place?  The truth is, they accept it on faith.  In fact, the acceptance of this story on faith alone is usually considered to be essential to the true believer. And although that was just Christianity, the same lack of evidence, and belief based on faith alone, applies to the claims of all the other religions that I’m familiar with.

Religions require belief in extraordinary claims without anything close to the extraordinary evidence that is required.  Atheism requires no belief in anything.  The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

But the believer has one final shot – one last desperate rhetorical item to fling at the atheist.  Here we go.

More Faith To Be An Atheist?

The final argument many religious apologists throw into the mix is it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to believe in god. That certainly took me by surprise the first time I heard it. I think what they’re trying to say is this. Atheists think matter just appeared out of nowhere, that something came out of nothing. But where did the matter come from? To think that matter appeared out of nowhere requires more faith than to think a creator made everything. Why is there something rather than nothing? To think that matter just appeared by itself, requires faith.

Atheists don’t think matter came out of nowhere. Atheists say we don’t know where matter came from; we don’t know why there is something rather than nothing. Maybe one day we’ll know, or maybe we won’t. But we don’t know now. Theists are exactly the same. They don’t know either, but the difference is they make up an explanation (god). But it’s just a made up explanation – they have no reason to suppose it’s true, other than that they just like it.

And it’s a useless explanation. Unless they know something about this “God” – how he created everything; why he created it; what he’s likely to do next - it’s a lack of an explanation. It’s just a placeholder until a real explanation comes along. Except that the theist won’t be open to the real explanation when and if science is able to provide one. The god placeholder prevents investigation into any real tentative explanations. The theist who says god created everything, is the one with the faith – faith that “god” is the explanation and that no other is possible. The atheist is content to say “we don’t know”. For now, anyway. And it’s obvious that saying “we don’t know,” requires no faith.  That may be a hard thing to do for people who want all the answers, but it certainly isn’t religion.

One last thing.  Some theists have responded to the “if atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby” argument by pointing out that non stamp collectors (aphilatelists?) don’t write books or blogs about not collecting stamps, don’t post anti stamp collecting ads on buses, don't ridicule stamp collectors, etc.  This is meant to demonstrate that the “stamp collecting” analogy is weak.  It actually demonstrates that the analogy is very good, since it highlights one of the main problems atheists have with many religious people.

Here’s the thing they are missing, and the real problem most atheists have with religion.  If stamp collectors demanded that people who don’t collect stamps obey their stamp collecting rules, started wars with groups who collected slightly different types of stamps, denied non-stamp collectors rights or discriminated against them, bullied them in school, claimed you had to collect stamps to be a suitable person to run for public office, tried to get stamp collecting taught in schools as science in opposition to real science, demanded that people be killed for printing cartoons that made fun of stamp collectors, claimed that non-stamp collectors lacked moral judgment, made up ridiculous straw man positions they claimed non-stamp collectors took, and then argued against those straw men positions etc etc, - then non-stamp collectors probably would criticize stamp collectors in the way atheists criticize many religious people. And with good reason. Not collecting stamps would still not be a hobby.  Or a religion.

Emergency Acupuncture

I thought Battlefield Acupuncture was a joke.  (Sadly, it wasn’t.  Well, not in the conventional meaning of “joke”.)  Now, from reader Joe, I learn that a hospital in Australia is planning to use acupuncture in emergency departments to treat acute migraine, back pain and ankle injuries after its “success in lowering pain levels in patients attending a busy public hospital”.  What was this “success”, you ask?  This is the description of the pilot study, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Dr Parker said patients who turned up at casualty were given the option to be treated by final year or graduate acupuncture students from RMIT in conjunction with standard medical treatment.

Regular readers will have no problems seeing the problems with this study, and the reasons that it does not show that acupuncture does anything, which are:

1. Not randomized – participants self-select to receive acupuncture, meaning that probably only those who start off believing it will do something, will be included in the trial.
2. No blinding – participants know which group they were in (acupuncture or no acupuncture).
3. No sham acupuncture.
4. Standard medical procedures were used in addition to acupuncture – so patients received the benefits of pain medication that actually works in addition to the magic needles.

And yet on the basis of this patently useless pilot study, more than $400,000 (Australian) has been allocated for a three-year clinical trial.  This despite the fact that we know acupuncture is a placebo that provides no difference in pain intensity. 

So, yet another useless acupuncture pilot study followed by (undoubtedly) another useless acupuncture study.  And after that, you can bet that yet “more studies” will be called for.  I’d put money on it.

More Acupuncture Links

Articles by Steven Novella:

Does Acupuncture Work or Not?

Acupuncture Does Not Work for Back Pain

Acupuncture and Back Pain - Part II

Orac’s Yawn...another overhyped acupuncture study

Several posts by me:

Placebo - pregnancy pain cure

Acupuncture does not cut blood pressure

Still no evidence acupuncture works

Acupuncture – it really really doesn't work

No point to acupuncture on animals

Equivocation on acupuncture

One More Time - Acupuncture Does NOT Work

Acupuncture - Still Doesn't Work

Proof That God Exists (Not)

From PZ I found Proof That God Exists – a series of questions designed to force the conclusion that (you guessed it), god exists.  The site presents a series of yes/no questions about whether laws of logic, science and absolute morals exist – questions to which I answered “yes”.  Sure, I guess “absolute moral laws” might be debatable, but I thought, murder is always bad and so I answered yes.

When I answered the last question with “I do not believe that God exists”, I got the following “proof”.  Well, not so much.  I imagine the logical fallacies employed will be obvious:

Denying the existence of God is not unbelief but an exercise in self-deception. You may know things, but you cannot account for anything you know.

And neither can you.  The difference is that you make up an answer - “God” – and put him in the place where you have no answer.  But it’s just a made up explanation – you have no reason to suppose it’s true, other than that you just like it.  And it’s a useless explanation. Unless you know something about this “God” – how he created everything; why he created it; what he’s likely to do next - it’s a lack of an explanation. It’s just a placeholder until a real explanation comes along.

Arguing against God's existence would be on par with arguing against the existence of air, breathing it all the while.

False analogy.  If a living animal is deprived of air, it will die.  This is a repeatable, reliable and undoubted observation.  I wouldn’t have to put up some lame 20 questions website to prove it either.

You use the universal, immaterial, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and absolute morality in order to come to rational decisions, but you cannot account for them. These laws are not the only way God has revealed himself to you, but they are sufficient to show the irrationality of your thinking, and expose your guilt for denying Him.

Pure assertion, unsupported by arguments presented so far. 

There is a reason that you deny the existence of God and it has nothing to do with proof. I can show this to you. Examine what your initial reaction was to the proof of God's existence offered on this website.

OK.  My initial reaction was… “let’s list the logical fallacies you’re using and put up a blog post”.  What’s your point?

Did you think that you could continue to deny God because you are not a scientist, or philosopher but 'Surely somewhere, sometime, a philosopher or scientist will come up with an explanation for universal, immaterial, unchanging laws apart from God?' Did you try to come up with an alternate explanation on your own?

No – see above.  I don’t need to come up with “an alternate explanation” – you’re the one making the claim so it is up to you to support that claim.

OR Did you even consider that the proof was valid?

First – it wasn't proof.  Proof only exists within math.  This was an attempt to prove something using logic only.  Even if the logic wasn’t flawed (which it was, but let’s say it wasn't), it would still not be “proof”, or even particularly good evidence.  Logic is great, but at the end of the exercise when you have your logical conclusion, you still have to test your conclusion against reality to see if it is true.  Science is full of experiments that seemed logically sound but failed the experiment and were discarded.  When I agreed the laws of logic exist, I didn’t agree that logic is always correct and will always lead you to the correct solution.  So for many reasons, your “proof” is quite obviously not valid.

Hoping that an alternate explanation for universal, immaterial, unchanging laws can someday be found apart from God, is a blind leap of faith, or wishful thinking. Isn't it interesting that this is exactly what professed unbelievers accuse Christians of?

Yeah, but that’s not what I did.  I’m just saying that if you or I don’t have the answer, you don’t get to say “therefore God” by default.

Please examine the real reason why you are running from God. It is my prayer that God will open your eyes and change your heart so that you may be saved from your sin, embraced by His forgiving love, and come to know the peace which passes all understanding.

I’m not running from something that (probably) doesn’t exist.  And we know that prayer is useless so go on, knock yourself out, pray for me.  Pray for some better logic while you’re at it.

The whole website was an exercise in argument from ignorance – you can’t explain it, therefore God.  Throw in an argument by bad analogy, some confident assertion that you have proved your point, and the customary attempt to assign motives to disbelief (“running from God”) and it’s the same standard vacuous religious drivel we’ve all heard before.  Nothing to see here.

Cargo Cult Religion

Several bloggers have commented on this article by Tom Stern about Ken Ham’s creation museum published in The Point magazine.  While Stern’s article was generally OK in its presentation of Ham’s museum as pseudoscience unsupported by facts, he spoils the ending with a false conflation of science with religion.  And although he claims he isn’t doing this (“Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges…” etc), he really is and in a most intellectually lazy way.  This is what you find towards the end of the article:

I was taught the earth is four billion years old and, going around the Museum, I realized I don’t actually know how “they” know that.

This isn’t the tired retort, often aimed at Dawkins et al., that science is just another faith. Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges, it puts Americans on the moon and finds extraordinary new ways for us to kill each other. But it has more in common with faith than either the religious or scientific community would like us to admit. For Nietzsche, this was particularly evident in the consideration of scientific methods: there’s something comforting about the repetitive rituals of the scientific and technical life, which mimics the priestly cure of the Hail Mary or morning prayer. And there’s something silencing, too, about the way facts are presented to the public—as fossilized nuggets of information not to be questioned. Where once we used to turn to the priest for advice and guidance, now we turn to the scientific expert; we bend to the stamp of his authority, his status, his style—compare the expert witness in the courtroom to the priest at the hanging.

So science isn’t faith, but Stern doesn’t know how we know the age of the Earth and Nietzsche wrote something about the rituals of science being like religion, and so science really is like faith, except it isn’t.  I find it telling that Stern finds the the time to mention Nietzsche seven (count them) times (why?) but apparently doesn’t have ten seconds to put earth is four billion years old into Google and find out how we know the age of the Earth.  (If he had, he would have soon found this nice explanation of Isochron Dating.) 

So what if there is “something comforting” about the rituals of science?  Many secular activities include comforting things.  The rituals of baseball are comforting to fans, the ritual of cooking a meal for friends can be comforting, the rituals associated with Star Trek fandom can be comforting to trekkies… you get the idea.  But that doesn’t make these things religions.  Or if it does it uses a definition of religion that is so wide as to be virtually meaningless.  If everything is like religion, then nothing is.  In reality, the “rituals” of science (which are not “rituals”, but procedures), since they are performed for a reason, are further from religion than the rituals of baseball etc.  And frankly, I imagine many of the detailed procedures necessary for many science experiments are more tedious than comforting, anyway.  So Stern is wrong here in at least two different ways.

This idea that science has religious-like “rituals”, scientists are “priests”, or “men of the white cloth” (lab coats), science journals are “holy scriptures” etc etc is something I have heard a lot of recently.  It’s old, tired drivel.  Science can be questioned.  And, amazingly, this applies even to subjects that Tom Stern does not fully comprehend.  Science is questioned by both scientists and non scientists.  Only, unlike with religion, there is a basis for questioning and determining what scientific theories we accept and what we don't – the evidence.  What do they use in religion to determine what to accept?  Well, nothing really, other than what some authority just happens to think.  They have no externally verifiable basis for determining what is true and what isn’t.  By comparing scientists to priests, Stern is just lazily looking at the surface – what might appear to be happening – without delving any deeper.  Then it occurred to me this is just cargo cult religion. 

In 1974 Richard Feynman gave a lecture at Caltech where he described what he called cargo cult science - work that has the semblance of being scientific, but is missing the things necessary for real science:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. [My bold.]

It struck me that referring to scientists as “priests”, or science journals as “holy books” is cargo cult religion.  Stern is examining scientific things that look similar to religion and using this to conflate the two.  But this conflation of science and religion is cargo cult religion the same way as pseudoscience is cargo cult science.  It may have the semblance of religion, but is missing the things necessary for real religion.  (Thankfully.)  Although science may have the appearance of some aspects of religion, it is different in all the ways that actually matter.

Of course, in an ideal world we should not just accept everything scientists tell us, but should examine their arguments to see if they are valid.  But not everyone has the time or the inclination to do this with every claim they hear.  Stern himself is proof of this.  And even scientists cannot be experts in fields that are not their own.  But just because each one of us hasn’t personally performed every scientific experiment ever performed in the history of the world, that doesn’t mean our acceptance of scientific knowledge is like religion.  We trust what science tells us because science has a track record of being right more often than any other method of inquiry.  But trust is not faith, and trusting experts in areas where we are not experts, is not religion.

Few if any of the similarities between science and religion are interesting or useful.  On the other hand, the differences between science and religion are profound.  Stern spoiled what could have been a reasonable expose of Ken Ham’s silly museum by dragging out this discredited canard once again.

Do You Have Frog's Legs?

…Then hop over the bar and get me a drink.

Ba-Boom!

A frog that constantly changes color is being worshipped as a god in India:

Hundreds of people are flocking to Reji Kumar’s home in India daily to pray and ask for miracles.

[…]

The frog was a dazzling white colour when Reji, who is from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, in south India, first spotted it.

Then it changed to yellow and had gone grey by the time he got it home.

“By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs," Reji, a life worker, reportedly said.

"It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

I suppose it’s about as much use as praying to any other god.  Which is to say, completely useless.  There is a more serious problem though – it seems the frog won’t eat anything:

My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it

Yeah that's right - they're worried he might croak.  (Croak.  Frog - croak.  I kill myself sometimes.)  But why?  Hey, it couldn't be down to the fact that he's keeping the damn thing in a glass jar could it?

Seriously - that's no way to treat your lord and savior.

I pray that you buggers let me go.

Oprah Dissembles

Several bloggers have reported on the recent Newsweek story that exposed some of the dangerous nonsense and pseudoscience that Oprah Winfrey insists on including in her TV show. From obviously crackpot ideas such as The Secret to dangerous pseudoscience such as the anti-vaccine nonsense spouted by celebrity idiot Jenny McCarthy, Newsweek did a pretty good job of calling nonsense nonsense.

Now Oprah has responded with a statement, as reported by EW.com:

I trust the viewers, and I know that they are smart and discerning enough to seek out medical opinions to determine what may be best for them.

This is a highly dishonest statement from Oprah.  You’ll note there is no attempt to justify any of the bogus* medical advice given on her show; no evidence that any of the quackery* she features actually works or is valid in any way.  So what is she saying, exactly?  That, yes, my TV show includes crap but my audience will realize it’s crap?  No, sorry, not good enough. If you have the sort of power that Oprah  has to influence opinion, you have a responsibility to make sure that the advice you give is good.  You should not just show any old crap and expect your viewers to do their own research to determine what is real and what is not, you should determine for yourself if it is real before you feature it in front of millions of viewers.  And you should then be able and willing to defend what you have promoted and rebut any criticisms with facts and evidence, or retract and admit you were wrong.  Instead Oprah hides the truth of what she is doing behind this sham claim that she trusts her viewers to discern what is real and what is not. It’s dishonest, unethical and cowardly.

You only have to read the comments to that EW story to see that many of Oprah’s viewers are neither smart nor discerning enough to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Just a couple of comments in and you will read the regurgitated lies and logical fallacies of the anti-vaccination loons, repeated in all their idiotic glory.  Those comments are, unfortunately, proof of the damage that Oprah has already done.  Her lame self serving statement does not even begin to address her critics.

More on Oprah’s support of pseudoscience:

Combatting the Oprah Effect

Say It Ain't So, O

Oprah's ugly secret

The Oprah-fication of medicine

* Deliberate deception not implied.

Moron

That’s the word to describe Thomas Sam, the homeopath pictured above who watched his daughter die of a curable disease while he repeatedly ignored what he was told by real doctors, to treat her only with magic water.  Sam and his wife have just been found guilty of manslaughter for this crime, although my guess is it’s the husband who should shoulder most of the blame.

I won’t labor the details - read Orac’s earlier posts on this: A real death by homeopathy and Homeopathy kills a child.  But here are some brief lowlights:

The court heard the couple took Gloria to various health professionals, but while they abandoned each conventional medication she was prescribed within a short time of starting it, they solidly pursued homeopathic remedies.

[…]

By the time she died, she was the weight of an average three-month-old, her body was covered with angry blotches and her once black hair had turned completely white.

[…]

A general practitioner booked them an appointment with a dermatologist they did not attend because they took the child to India instead, a course of action the doctor told them was "cruel".

They also visited two doctors in India, but discarded the advice of one to return to him every second day, instead consulting a succession of homeopaths including Thomas Sam's brother, who had recently completed his dissertation on eczema.

The arrogance and stupidity is breathtaking. This homeopath decided it was more important to him to treat his sick child with his own brand of magic water and/or sugar pills than to seek real treatments.  And even after this experience he had still not learned his lesson, as can be seen from this quote:

"Conventional medicine would have prolonged her life ... with more misery. It's not going to cure her and that's what I strongly believe."

Yeah, I’m sure he believes this.  Unfortunately for this child, just because her moron father believed that homeopathy was real medicine, that didn’t make it so.

September 28, 2009 Edited to add:

The parents were just sentenced to six years (the father) and four years (the mother): 'Cruel' parents jailed over baby's death.

This Includes Everything

From James Randi this morning I give you this link to the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy’s website – specifically their Basic ideas of homeopathy page. I think you’ll find it contains all the evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy in one easy to read summary.

Reproduced below, just in case.

July 09 - Edited to add

They have changed the page.  Well, almost.  It is the same as before but they have added the words, "You are not authorised to view this resource. You need to login." Yeah.  Right.