A scientist beats up PZ

As if the Fowl Atheist didn’t have enough trouble with all the religious people methodically exposing his rank idiocy whenever he opens his mouth, now even atheist scientists are calling him out on his clueless nonsense. David Sloan Wilson points out the obvious, which is that PZ Myers doesn’t act or think in a scientific manner where religion is concerned.

In the spirit of science as a process of constructive disagreement, Evolution: This View of Life is pleased to feature a critique of my previous article “The New Atheism and Evolutionary Religious Studies: Clarifying Their Relationship” by evolutionist and prolific blogger PZ Myers, titled “You Want Evidence that Religion is Bad for Our Species? OPEN YOUR EYES.” Unfortunately, Myer’s critique raises the issue of whether he is functioning as a scientist at all on the subject of religion.

Imagine Myers teaching a class on his academic specialty — evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) — and telling his students that all they must do to understand the topic is to open their eyes. This would be absurd. The whole point of science is to understand topics that are too complex to be self-evident. I have written about the problem of scientists who use their reputation in one topic area to hold forth on other topic areas without doing the same homework that a good science journalist would do, and even without functioning as a scientist in any way at all. PZ Myers has a fine reputation as an evolutionary developmental biologist, but on the topic of religion he is defrocked.

As longtime readers here know, it’s not just the subject of religion concerning which PZ is hapless, but pretty much every subject he attempts to address outside of his own professional specialty. He’s equally incompetent with regards to philosophy, politics, and economics, just to name three more. And even with regards to his scientific specialty, he hasn’t mastered it sufficiently to be confident of winning a debate on evolution by natural selection with me. But for the purposes of both amusement and edification, consider PZ’s inept response to Wilson, especially the specific questions he poses:

Rather than condescendingly telling us about evolutionary dynamics, I’d like Wilson to get specific.

1. How does depriving girls of an education benefit women?

2. How does raising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children benefit women?

3. How does throwing acid in their faces when they demand independence from men benefit women?

4. How do honor killings benefit women?

5. How does stoning rape victims benefit women?

6. How does female genital mutilation benefit women?

7. How does letting women die rather than giving them an abortion benefit women?

What is amusing here is the way that PZ throws out these questions as if they are at all difficult to answer, as if he is making some sort of cogent point simply by asking them. Now, I’m sure Wilson would come up with some different answers, but as will be seen by the answers I provide, by asking some of them, Myers is doing little more than demonstrating the very unscientific attitude of which he is accused! It’s important to understand that one need not find these answers to be absolutely conclusive or even convincing to recognize that they are scientifically valid answers, which is to say that they can be used to generate hypotheses and then subsequently put to the scientific test, at least to the extent that social science can reasonably be considered science.

1. Because educating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves. Educating them tends to make them evolutionary dead ends. “Germany now has the highest number of childless women in the world. This trend has been going on since at least the 90s. What we also know is that the higher the level of education, the more likely a woman is to remain childless.” -Professor Norbert Schneider, Mainz University. 40% of German women with college degrees are childless. Does PZ seriously wish to claim that not reproducing is intrinsically beneficial to women? Does he really find it hard to understand how not reproducing is evolutionary disadvantageous?

2. Because raising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children allows them to pursue marriage at the age of their peak fertility, increase the wage rates of their prospective marital partners, and live in stable, low-crime, homogenous societies that are not demographically dying. It also grants them privileged status, as they alone are able to ensure the continued survival of the society and the species alike. Women are not needed in any profession or occupation except that of child-bearer and child-rearer, and even in the case of the latter, they are only superior, they are not absolutely required.

3. Because female independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

4. Because female promiscuity and divorce are strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills, from low birth and marriage rates to high levels of illegitimacy.

5. I don’t see how this benefits women in any way. The effect in dramatically reducing the number of false rape accusations would, of course, benefit men, but since there is no reliable penalty for false rape accusations in modern society, reducing it would be of little benefit to them.

6. By reducing female promiscuity, which is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills, from low birth and marriage rates to high levels of illegitimacy. But it may not even do so, in which case there wouldn’t appear to be any case for it, since female genital mutilation tends to make health matters worse, unlike male genital mutilation, which appears to improve health matters somewhat.

7. Because far more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.

The scientific attitude would be to develop a hypothesis and test it as best one is able. But it’s quite clear that PZ doesn’t want to consider the possibility of anything beyond his philosophical commitment to the unicorn of so-called “equality”. Wilson is right to observe that PZ’s behavior with regards to these matters is entirely unscientific, indeed, one might even surmise that it is outright anti-scientific.

Not a bad day

Hit 200k words on the novel this morning and 5×260 on the bench for the first time in a while. Not ideal, but not bad either. It almost makes up for that choke in front of goal that cost my team a victory instead of a tie last week – I changed my mind at the last possible second and the hesitation took all the velocity off my shot so it blooped up and right into the keeper’s hands. That was the last game of the season, so I’ll be seeing that one all summer. The trick now is to try to stay in cardio shape so the first August practices don’t hit like a truck. Like a very large truck with malicious intent.

Ender’s team did surprisingly well at the large international tournament. They finished in the top half thanks to a big upset on the first day of the Ukrainian team that finished fifth overall. They would have won their last game, too, if their coach hadn’t made an inexplicable tactical blunder and subbing out their staunch central defender for a mediocre female midfielder who had literally no clue how to play defense. They went from being up 1-0 and in near total control of the game to spending the rest of it on the backs of their heels and eventually losing 2-1. Neither I nor the other fathers, including the girl’s father, have any idea what inspired that coaching masterpiece. I explained to Ender that coaches have bad games sometimes just like players do, but it’s difficult to see the kids play so hard and then get undermined by a momentary flash of unfathomable stupidity.

WND column

Sudden Vaccine Death Syndrome

Vaccine advocates – although propagandists would be a more accurate term – often correctly claim that there is no scientific evidence proving that vaccines have ever killed anyone or caused autism. Therefore, they claim vaccines can be considered the cause of nothing but a cure for cancer, an end to war and the elimination of all human disease except that caused by dirty, unvaccinated children who are homeschooled by religious bigots. To even consider the mere possibility of questioning the intrinsic and perfect goodness of vaccines, any vaccine given for any reason, is to be not only anti-science, but personally responsible for murdering anyone who died of a disease that would have been prevented by vaccination.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, please note that there is a site called “The Jenny McCarthy Bodycount,” which claims that the blonde actress is responsible for 888 deaths since June 3, 2007, which makes her the second most lethal American after Chuck Norris.

Additional vaccine info

After yesterday’s post on the potential link between the vaccine schedule and the twin VAERS and SIDS death spikes at 2-4 months, I spent a little time playing around with the VAERS database myself. Here are some of the things I found interesting:

1. In the last five years, from 2007 through the end of 2011, 28.5 percent of ALL reported vaccine-related deaths for ALL AGES occurred between the ages of 2-4 months. It is truly remarkable that a two-month period that represents one-fifth of one percent of a person’s expected lifespan should account for nearly a third of the reported vaccine-related deaths, especially because the death rate is much higher than in the two months that immediately follow childbirth. That percentage is 13,500 percent higher than would be statistically indicated. The pattern continues in 2012 as 55 percent of the 20 vaccine-related deaths reported so far this year took place in that same two-month window.

2. I was too conservative in my estimates yesterday. During that same five year period, 60 PERCENT of all reported vaccine-related deaths under the age of one occurred between 2-4 months. The period from 2-3 months alone accounted for the previously estimated 40 percent.

3. The 2-4 month death spike appears consistently even if one goes all the way back to 1990, the earliest date available. The situation appears to have improved consideraby, as the worst years were 1991 through 1994, so it would be informative to learn if there was a change in the vaccine schedule between 1994 and 1995. It is also interesting to note that SIDS deaths are reported to have declined from 1993 to 2004, and by a proportion similar to the decline in VAERS-reported deaths. Of course, it’s also theoretically possible that the anti-SIDS sleep campaign which began in 1994 is responsible for decline in vaccine deaths, as perhaps stomach sleeping somehow exacerbates the problem of receiving a vaccine overload.

None of this can be considered conclusive yet. Perhaps it is just a 22-year coincidence that parents and doctors are more likely to report the deaths of 2-4 month old children than those of 8-10 month old children, or any other age, for that matter. But the statistical evidence is unusually consistent and the growing number of correlations does appear to indicate that there is a causal factor involved, most likely concerning the size of the child and the amount of the vaccines administered, which suggests that simply delaying the current schedule by six months or more would significantly reduce the risk of fatal vaccine damage to a child.

Counterproductive

After Qaddafi is shot dead, Mubarak is sentenced to life in prison:

For nearly 30 years he was the pharaoh-like ruler whose word was law; the plunderer of billions of pounds of government money and controller of Egypt’s brutal police state. On Saturday night Hosni Mubarak began a new life as a convicted murderer. A broken and humiliated man of 84, he was flown by helicopter to Torah prison – where many of his enemies had once been jailed – just two hours after hearing a Cairo judge pronounce a life sentence on him for complicity in the murder of 850 protesters.

Well, if Western leaders are looking to make sure that Assad and the remaining Arab dictators fight to the very last drop of their people’s blood, they’re certainly going about it the right way. If you want to get rid of a rat, always leave him a safe out.

Neocon-occupied territory

You don’t have to take my word for it. Or Pat Buchanan’s, for that matter. That’s Bill Kristol’s position concerning the Republican Party and he’s proud of it:

“The big story in the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and I’m very happy about this,” said Kristol, is the “eclipsing” of the George H.W. Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realists, “an Arabist old-fashioned Republican Party … very concerned about relations with Arab states that were not friendly with Israel … .”

That Bush crowd is yesterday, said Kristol. And not only had the “Arabists” like President Bush been shoved aside by the neocons, the “Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type” of Republican has been purged. “At B’nai Jeshurun,” writes Weiss, “Kristol admitted to playing a role in expelling members of the Republican Party he does not agree with.” These are Republicans you had to “repudiate,” said Kristol, people “of whom I disapprove so much that I won’t appear with them.”

“I’ve encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party. I’d be happy if Ron Paul left. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was allowed—really encouraged … by George Bush … to go off and run as a third-party candidate.”

Kristol’s point: Refuse to toe the neo-con line on Israel, and you have no future in the Republican Party.

Since I’m not a Republican, I’m not terribly concerned that it happens to be under the influence of big government neocons instead of big government pseudo-conservatives. It’s probably all for the better, in fact, as monomaniacal lunatics like Kristol will always overreach themselves and sow the seeds of their own destruction. It’s fairly apparent that the Republican Party has essentially become the Democratic Party of thirty years ago. But I think there are a lot of grass roots Republicans who would be surprised at the idea that both Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan should be purged from the Republican Party in the name of an Israel Über Alles foreign policy.

Kristol’s crowing is a little ironic these days, as Jewish congressmen are beginning to learn that the third world immigrants they have championed in their effort to strengthen America through diversity and vibrancy tend to be unimpressed by boasts about how much money they have helped funnel to Israel. Given the demographic patterns, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Israel lobby lose control of the Democrats even as they exercise greater influence over Republicans. Christians of European descent can be convinced to support Israel through Christian Zionism or Holocaust guilt, but it’s a little tougher to play those cards with atheists, Muslims, Africans, Hispanics, and Asians.

I wonder what Kristol’s reaction would be if the Republicans decided to expel him and other neocons like him instead?

Godless creationists

This poll may be worth keeping in mind the next time someone attempts to equate creationism with Bible-thumping.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God’s guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

I don’t think it’s interesting that so many Americans believe God created Man within the last 10,000 years. That’s not news; the percentage apparently hasn’t changed since 1982. What is absolutely fascinating is the fact that at 25 percent, almost as many people who “attend church seldom or never” are young Earth creationists as the 26 percent who believe God had no part in human evolution.

As for my position, I believe God created Man, although I don’t pretend to know when or how. I think the question may even be something of a category error, since it’s conceptually possible that the creation of Man was the ensoulment of an existing animal form.

Lethal lies and the vaccine schedule

It is not at all difficult to conclusively demonstrate the deceitful tendencies of the vaccine propagandists. For example, yesterday Instapundit linked to the Jenny McCarthy Bodycount, on which it is claimed that the former Playmate is responsible for 888 preventable deaths over the course of the last five years. Furthermore, it claims that there are 0 “autism diagnoses scientifically linked to vaccinations”. That makes it look as if vaccines are much safer, infinitely safer, in fact, than not getting vaccinated.

However, the statement is only true because there has never been a genuine scientific study of vaccines and autism. Or of vaccine safety in general. There have only been statistical surveys, which are not, by any reasonable definition, actual use of the scientific method, nor can they even be considered very statistically reliable given the reporting methods. Regardless, statistical review is no more science than astrology or playmatology, even when it is done by credentialed scientists. But the real deceit is the way in which reference to actual VAERS-reported deaths were omitted. Despite being underreported by a factor estimated to be as much as 100x, there have been more than 5,310 deaths directly caused by vaccines registered in the system since 1992. Using the most conservative under-reporting estimate, 10x, because one can assume that a death is more likely to go unreported than a minor adverse reaction, that means vaccines are known to be directly killing about 2,665 people per year, compared to the 178 putatively committed per year by the homicidal blonde. And this doesn’t take into account the much larger number of people who have been damaged by them in some way.

Even worse, the vast majority of these deaths are not only children, but children of a very specific age. A more detailed chart of all 5,310 deaths shows that more than a third of them, nearly 40 percent, occurred in between the ages of 2 and 4 months, which just happens to be when the US vaccine schedule calls for children to receive no less than 10 shots, including 2xRV, 2xDTaP, 2xHib, 2xPCV, and 2xIPV. They may also receive an eleventh shot, for Hepatitis B, as well.

Looking at the VAERS data and comparing it with the schedule quite clearly implies that children are being fatally overloaded with doses that their bodies cannot handle.  While it is theoretically possible that this massive spike in vaccine-caused deaths is only coincidental with the largest number of vaccine doses that a child will ever receive in its life at a time when it is very small, that seems unlikely.  Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that one of the easiest ways to reduce the likelihood of vaccine death, and presumably non-fatal vaccine damage as well, is to simply push back the vaccine schedule by at least three months, or better yet, one year, when the child’s body will be bigger and therefore more capable of dealing with the foreign substances being injected into it.  Of course, there is always the option of not vaccinating the child for the less dangerous diseases; the spike in 65+ deaths is almost certainly the result of adverse reactions to the various flu vaccines.

One needn’t be a rabid opponent of vaccines to find this death spike at 3 months to be troubling and indicative of a need to rethink the current vaccine schedule.  And everyone, pro- and anti-vaccine, should be concerned about the shameless vaccine safety propaganda that is so easily shown to be false.  Laws are passed and governments engage in ad campaigns to help reduce the 200 children’s bicycle deaths each year, so clearly it is worthwhile to look more closely and scientifically into the issue of vaccine safety when an estimated 1,060 children are dying between 2 and 4 months of age each year from the vaccines being injected into them.

Für Elise

Congratulations to the daughter of a certain member of the Dread Ilk. She made it to the third round of the National Spelling Bee and got both of her words in the round right, but unfortunately didn’t make the cut for the semifinals for reasons I won’t pretend to understand. Well done, and congratulations to her and her parents.

Sam Harris and the epic self-evisceration

My original intent upon finishing Sam Harris’s latest book was to write a detailed critique of it. However, in reading it, I realized that it actually contained something much more interesting than the expected collection of conventional Harrisian errors, as it amounted to a rebuttal of the man’s previous work! So, although I intend to critique Free Will in the near future, I thought it would be more important to look at how Harris’s latest arguments affect his earlier ones. In The Irrational Atheist, I noted that Christopher Hitchens had committed a marvelous exercise in self-evisceration when he declared that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”, then proceeded to pronounce no fewer than 52 different declarations, each of which was presented completely without evidence. However, it would appear that Sam Harris is more than worthy of filling the late Mr. Hitchens giant clown shoes, as he has effortlessly surpassed that feat of self-defeating logic with his latest adventure in science-flavored polemic. However, to fully appreciate the full scope of Harris’s unique achievement, it is necessary to return to his most popular work, The End of Faith, and revisit that book’s central thesis.

The basic concept at the heart of The End of Faith is that belief is the root of all human action. From this core postulate, Harris then concludes that because belief causes action – he actually goes so far as to state that “beliefs are action” – that some actions are so potentially dangerous that they justify pre-emptively killing people who possess the beliefs that cause them. He then attempts to show that those causal beliefs are generally religious in nature; the end of faith to which he refers in the title is the violent elimination of faith by, (or on behalf of), a one-world government justified by the religious faithful’s opposition to global government as well as faith’s potential danger to the human race as per the extinction equation, in which Religious Faith + Science and Technology = Human Extinction.

This encapsulation of Harris’s argument will likely sound outrageous until one considers the evidence taken directly from The End of Faith:

“A BELIEF is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings.”

“As a man believes, so he will act.”

“It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia. The belief that it will rain puts an umbrella in the hand of every man or woman who owns one.”

“Given the link between belief and action, it is clear that we can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene…. Even apparently innocuous beliefs, when unjustified, can lead to intolerable consequences.”

“There seems, however, to be a problem with some of our most cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another. A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion. It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like “God” and “paradise” and “sin” in the present that will determine our future.”

“The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others.”

“We can say it even more simply: we need a world government…. The diversity of our religious beliefs constitutes a primary obstacle here…. World government does seem a long way off—so long that we may not survive the trip.”

Now, Harris’s argument is as fallacious as it is dangerous, for as I showed in TIA, even if one accepts the logic of the extinction equation, a perusal of history shows that the danger purportedly posed by religion is a second-order one at most, and furthermore, is not supported by the historical evidence, whereas the first-order danger stems directly from science. In 116 centuries filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of diverse religions, all competing for mind share, resources and dominance, the species has not merely survived, but has thrived, while a mere four centuries of modern science has created multiple clear and present dangers to the continued existence of the human race. Even if one accepts the general thrust of Harris’s argument in The End of Faith and believes that the danger to the species demands immediate action, it is obvious that Harris’s target is the wrong one and he should have been advocating the end of science rather than faith.

However, instead of either retracting or revising his argument, Harris has taken the surprising approach of undermining it by destroying its very foundation in his most recent book, Free Will. I suspect, however, that he has done this unintentionally and in complete ignorance of having done so, as he happens to be one of the laziest and most careless intellectuals to ever be embraced by the public. For in Free Will, he completely disassociates action from belief, in fact, he disassociates it from conscious thought altogether. Consider the following quotes from Free Will:

“The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false.”

“The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.”

“The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it…. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.”

“The brain is a physical system, entirely beholden to the laws of nature—and there is every reason to believe that changes in its functional state and material structure entirely dictate our thoughts and actions.”

“Our sense of free will results from a failure to appreciate this: We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.”

“Unconscious neural events determine our thoughts and actions—and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware.”

“People feel (or presume) an authorship of their thoughts and actions that is illusory.”

As he declares that the illusory nature of free will erodes the concepts of moral responsibility, punishment, and the religious concept of sin, Harris appears to be completely unaware of how he has also destroyed his previous case against faith and religion. Being either the product or the resident of the conscious mind, belief can no longer be equated with action or serve as its causal factor, indeed, we are informed that the very possibility that belief can even be linked with action is nothing more than an illusion. He not only abandons, but actively attacks the basic concept upon which all the arguments in his previous book rest, the idea that belief is the root of all human action. Now he insists that a man will not act according to his beliefs for the obvious reason that he cannot; at most, his beliefs can only be seen as consequences that run more or less in parallel with his actions and therefore cannot serve as indicators of his future actions. This severing of the link between belief and action completely eliminates the viability of Harris’s claim that religious beliefs are intrinsically dangerous as well as any justification for the sort of lethal pre-emptive action he previously declared to be ethical.

Therefore, in light of the new material, one of his previous declarations quoted above must be rephrased thusly: “Given the absence of the link between belief and action, it is clear that we can tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs as well as diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene…. Even apparently deadly beliefs, whether they are justified or not, cannot lead to harmful consequences.”

One imagines that one of his more intelligent fans will eventually notice the way in which Mr. Harris’s latest arguments have rendered his older ones incorrect and bring it to Mr. Harris’s attention, so I’m sure we can all anticipate a retraction of the various anti-religious claims presented in The End of Faith in the reasonably near future.