The signature of the creator

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Chase" is justly revered by Trekkies, and also by people who simply like a good story.  The gist -- giving as little in the way of spoilers as I can manage, if you've not seen it -- is that there's a message implanted in our DNA and the DNA of alien species across the galaxy.  No one species has the entire thing, so to find out what it means requires getting tissue samples from all over the place, extracting the piece of the message, then somehow putting the entire thing together to decipher what it says.

A secret code dispersed through time and space, so to speak.

While the quasi-scientific explanation behind the whole thing was a little dubious for those of us who know something about genetics and evolution, it was a hell of a good idea for a story.  A mysterious, super-powerful someone left its thumbprint on life everywhere in the universe, and there the message has sat, waiting for us to become smart enough and technologically advanced enough to find it.

"The Chase" brings up a theological question I've debated before with religious-minded friends; how, starting from outside of the framework of belief, you could tell there was a God by what you see around you.  I often hear "natural beauty" and "love and selflessness" brought up, but (unfortunately) there seems to be enough ugliness, hatred, and selfishness to more than compensate for the good stuff.  Put simply, how would a universe with a divine presence look different from one without?  I've never been able to come up with a good answer to that.  To me, the God/no God versions of the universe look pretty much alike.

Which is a large part of why I'm an atheist.  I'm perfectly okay with revising that if evidence comes my way, but at the moment, I'm not seeing any particular cause for belief in any of the various deities humans have worshipped along the way.

What brings all this up is a paper released last week in arXiv called, "Searching for a Message in the Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background."  The CMB is a relatively uniformly-spread (or isotropic, as the scientists put it) radiation that is the remnant of the Big Bang.  In the 13.8-odd billion years since the universe started, the searing radiation of creation has become stretched along with the space that carries it until it has an average wavelength of two millimeters, putting it in the microwave region of the spectrum, and that radiation comes at us from everywhere in the sky.

What the author, Michael Hippke of the Sonnenberg Observatory in Germany, proposed was something that is reminiscent of the central idea of "The Chase."  If there was a creator -- be it a god, or a super-intelligent alien race, or whatever -- the obvious place to put a message is in the CMB.  The minor fluctuations ("anisotropies") in the CMB would be detectable by a technological society pretty much from any vantage point in the visible universe, and so hiding a pattern in the apparent chaos would be as much as having a signature from the creator.

So Hippke digitized the most detailed map we have of the CMB, and then estimated what part of the signal would have been lost or degraded in 13.8 billion years due to quantum noise and interference with the much closer and more powerful radiation sources in our own galaxy.  After some intense statistical analysis, Hippke determined that there should be at least a one-thousand-bit remnant of sense somewhere in there, so he set about to find it.

Nothing.

"I find no meaningful message in the actual bit-stream," Hippke wrote.  "We may conclude that there is no obvious message on the CMB sky.  Yet it remains unclear whether there is (was) a Creator, whether we live in a simulation, or whether the message is printed correctly in the previous section, but we fail to understand it."

Despite how I started this post, I have to admit to being a little disappointed.  It was a clever approach, and no one would be more excited than me if he'd actually found something.  I don't honestly like the idea that we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe -- or, more accurately (and optimistically) that the only meaning is the one we create within it.  But if there's one thing I've learned in my sixty years on Earth, it's that reality is under no particular obligation to order itself in such a way that it makes me comfortable.  

But still, if there had been a message there, how cool would that be?  Even if, as the Cardassian commander Gul Ocett said in "The Chase," "it might just be a recipe for biscuits."

*************************************

I've always had a fascination with how our brains work, part of which comes from the fact that we've only begun to understand it.  My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Rita Calvo, professor emeritus of human genetics at Cornell University, put it this way.  "If I were going into biology now, I'd study neuroscience.  We're at the point in neuroscience now that we were in genetics in 1900 -- we know it works, we can see some of how it works, but we know very little in detail and almost nothing about the underlying mechanisms involved.  The twentieth century was the century of the gene; the twenty-first will be the century of the brain."

We've made some progress in recent years toward comprehending the inner workings of the organ that allows us to comprehend anything at all.  And if, like me, you are captivated by the idea, you have to read this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation: neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's brilliant Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

In laypersons' terms, Barrett explains what we currently know about how we think, feel, remember, learn, and experience the world.  It's a wonderful, surprising, and sometimes funny exploration of our own inner workings, and is sure to interest anyone who would like to know more about the mysterious, wonderful blob between our ears.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Deus ex machina

If you needed further evidence of how powerful surveillance technology has become, consider that Google Street View has captured a photograph of god.

At least that's what some people think.  The photograph, taken near Quarten, Switzerland, shows two blurry figures hovering above a lake, and some people have decided that they are the Father and the Son.

I've beaten unto death the whole why-the-human-brain-is-wired-to-see-faces thing, so I won't revisit that topic, but for myself, I'm not seeing Jesus and God the Father in the photograph.  The one on the left looks too tall and gawky, and the one on the right far too short and tubby, to fit my image of the Supreme Being and his Only Begotten Son.  In fact, if the rightmost is the one people think is God, my personal opinion is that the Big Guy needs to lay off the Hostess Ho-Hos and Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a few months.  On the other hand, if it's not God and Jesus, who is it?  After studying the photograph carefully, I've decided that it's Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria.  Why they'd be visiting a lake in Switzerland in the afterlife, I don't know.  I guess there are worse places to take a vacation.

On the other hand, if I were a deity, I'd definitely opt instead for a pub on the southeast coast of Australia, which is another place that Jesus has been spotted lately. The front wall of the Seanchai Irish Tavern in Warrnambool, Australia, was in need of a paint job, and the flaking of the paint left a bare patch that looks by some stretch of the imagination like a tall, thin figure with outstretched arms.
  

The manager, John Keohane, who is a devout Roman Catholic, immediately decided that it was Jesus.  Many of the pub's patrons agreed, which goes to show that pints of Guinness definitely don't contribute to rational thinking.  The priest of a local Catholic parish is apparently interested in the image, and encouraged Keohane to place a protective screen over the image so that over-enthusiastic tourists (evidently there have been busloads of them) don't touch the image and cause more paint to flake off, thereby causing Jesus to morph into Queen Victoria.

Lastly, there was a sighting in my home state of Louisiana of Jesus on the cross. Rickey Navarre, of Hathaway, Louisiana, saw a vine-covered telephone pole which looked to him like a crucifix.

Navarre was inspired to devotion by the image, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although I do wonder what he would expect a bunch of vines on a cross-shaped telephone pole to look like.   Concerned electrical company workers hastily cleared away the vines, fearing that hordes of the devout would attempt to climb the pole to touch the vines and summarily be ushered into heaven via electrocution.  One disappointed resident placed flowers at the base of the pole, but on the whole, I think that it's probably better that they're gone.  The last thing we need is people erecting a shrine around an electrical pole.  The electric companies think they're omnipotent enough as it is.

That's about it for Jesus sightings lately.  It's a bit of a nice change that he seems to be avoiding food items these days -- tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches really don't have the gravitas that you'd like to associate with the Almighty.  And although there are clearly rational explanations for all of the above -- vines on a cross-shaped pole, randomly flaking paint, and what was probably just two blobs of schmutz on a camera lens -- if you prefer to think of them as images of god, don't let me discourage you.  Humble human that I am, I wouldn't presume to tell Jesus where he should visit.  I will suggest, however, that if he appears anywhere near where I live, he should dress warmly, as this time of year upstate New York can be a little "brisk," as the eternally-cheery weather forecasters like to call it.  He might want to mention the same thing to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria, in case they decide to tag along.

God in the driver's seat

I'm firmly of the opinion that you are free to believe anything you want, religious or otherwise.  People come to their understanding of how the universe works in their own fashion, and I really don't object if someone has come to a different understanding than I have, unless (s)he tries to force that understanding on everyone else.

That said, I am also of the opinion that religion makes people do some really bizarre things, sometimes.  Take Prionda Hill, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who just last week ran into a motorcyclist with her car because she had decided that it was time for Jesus to take a turn driving.

Hill was driving down the road, and all of a sudden her car swerved, and ran straight into motorcyclist Anthony Oliveri.  Hill kept on driving, despite the fact that she had damn near killed Oliveri.  According to the police report, Hill said that "she was driving and out of nowhere God told her that he would take it from here, and she let go of the wheel and let him take it."

Well, that didn't turn out to work so well.  God, who (at least in Hill's worldview) created the laws of physics, has also seen to it that they're strictly enforced, and her car went where not where god took it but where momentum took it, which was right into Oliveri's motorcycle.

But what makes this even crazier is that Oliveri, whose injuries include breaks in all of the ribs on his left side, a damaged spleen, and a bruised kidney, is attributing his survival to divine intervention.

"I remember it happened and I didn’t quite know what was going on for a split second," Oliveri later told reporters.  "As I grabbed the handle bars as the bike was losing control and I looked back around my left shoulder, all I see is her tire and the left bumper getting ready to run my face over.  Literally I was inches from that bumper and I just said to myself today is the day I die.  I just shut my eyes and said if this is the way that God wants to do it then I guess that this is the way we’re going to do it.  But I guess God has other plans for me, and I survived."

I... what?

A woman hands the steering wheel over to god because she trusts that god will take charge of things, and runs over a motorcyclist, who thinks he survived because god takes charge of things?

I don't know about you, but I feel like I just got an irony overdose.

Of course, this sort of thing is what devout Christians really profess to believe, isn't it?  I mean, few of them take it to these sorts of extremes, but still.  When something good happens, it's because god has showered them with his blessings.  When something bad happens, "it's all in god's plan."  I don't know about you, but I think a lot of stuff just kind of happens because it happens, and the laws of physics really don't give a damn what your religious beliefs are.  If you let go of your steering wheel, your divine buddy is not going to take a turn driving.

So anyway, another hat tip to loyal reader Tyler Tork for this story.  His comment, which seems a fitting way to close:  "I expect that SCOTUS would rule that she was within her rights."

A trip through the vegetable aisle

Times are tough for psychics.  There have been the legal troubles dogging famous names like "Psychic Sally" Morgan and Theresa Caputo, "The Long Island Medium," not to mention the efforts of people like The Amazing Randi to debunk professional psychics as charlatans and hoaxers.

So with all of this unpredictable bad stuff going on, you can imagine that it's becoming increasingly difficult for your average working psychic to afford crystal balls and magic wands and flowing robes, and all of the other necessities of the job.  That stuff has got to be expensive.  So no wonder that some of them have turned to doing divination using cheaper tools...

... like garden vegetables.

You probably think I'm making this up, but in a link sent to me by the inimitable writer, skeptic, and deep thinker Tyler Tork, we meet one Jemima Packington, a British woman who says that she is the world's only "asparamancer."

Yes, "asparamancer," as in "asparagus."  Because what Packington does is she goes out and buys some asparagus spears at the local grocery store, and then comes home, tosses them in the air, and then from the pattern they make where they fall, she tells us what's going to happen.

In the video in the link, which you all must watch, she does a demonstration of "asparamancy," in which the asparagus spears are supposed to tell us about the weather.  So she chucks her asparagus spears around, and proceeds to tell us that because some "little bits and pieces" fell off, that "this would suggest some rain."

What, the fact that you live in England didn't suggest that to you by itself?  I was in England on holiday for the entire month of July about fifteen years ago, and it rained pretty much continuously.  The locals, of course, didn't seem to be bothered at all.  I walked into a pub, soaked to the skin after a ten-mile hike in the Yorkshire Dales in a chilly downpour, and the owner of the pub looked over at me as I stood there, dripping and shivering, and said, and I quote, "Mistin' a bit thick out there today, ain't it?"

For cryin' in the sink, predicting rain in England is a little like predicting that January in upstate New York is going to be "a bit nippy."

She also said that because of the direction of the spears, there was going to be a lot of wind.  Note, in the photograph I posted above, her hair blowing in the wind, which once again you'd think would be sufficient, without the asparagus.  It reminds me of the magical Weather Forecasting Stone, have you seen it?

But Packington doesn't just forecast the weather.  According to the article, she has made a number of other predictions, to wit:

1. There will be sad a loss to the Royal Family.
2. But there will also be a happy addition.
3. A major entertainment mogul will retire.
4. Politics in the Middle East will continue to raise concern.
5. One political party leader will be dogged by turmoil and not recover.
6. A storm this month will bring more misery to Britain.
7. The weather in the Far East will deteriorate as the year progresses.
8. A musical supergroup will split.
9. There will be a string of celebrity divorces.

Whoo!  Trouble in the Middle East and a string of celebrity divorces!  Those are some insightful predictions, there.  It's no wonder that Packington says that her predictions always come true.  That happens when you predict things that everyone already knew were going to happen.

But that doesn't stop her from claiming that she has magic powers that allow her to make accurate predictions about the future.  And you can follow her on Twitter if you want to keep up with them, @Asparamancer.  As for me, I think I'm going to go to the grocery store, but not for asparagus.  I think I should buy some eggplant instead.  Just last week a chef in Baton Rouge, Louisiana found an eggplant slice whose seeds spelled out "GOD," and promptly declared that it was a miraculous message from the Lord.

If I was a deity, I'd find a better way to sign my name than to inscribe it inside an eggplant, but what do I know?  Maybe vegetables do channel magic and/or holy messages, and instead of the bacon and eggs I had planned for breakfast, I should go cook up some brussels sprouts or something.

Hallmark, censorship, and the culture of persecution

So apparently, someone over at the Hallmark Channel thought it'd be a good idea to censor out the word "god" in their broadcast of the movie It Could Happen to You.

The backlash was immediate and vitriolic.  The Facebook page for Hallmark Channel USA erupted in comments like the following:

I watch you [sic] channel all the time. WHY DID YOU BLEEP OUT THE WORK [sic] GOD IN THE MOVIE IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.  Same [sic] on you.....Without GOD you would have no network. 

REALLY HALLMARK!!!!  BLEEPING OUT THE WORD GOD!!!!  HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT YOU USED TO BE A CHRISTIAN NETWORK!!!  WTH!!!  HOW ABOUT NOT OFFENDING CHRISTIANS!!!! 

We are very disappointed in Hallmark's decision to delete the word GOD from their presentation of "IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU"...  We will wait for Hallmark to issue a public apology before resuming our support of the Hallmark Channel etc... 

Why did you bleep out the word God from the movie "It Can Happen To You" broadcast today? I think it is time to block your channel. You make a lot of money off the rising of God's only son who died and rose again day of rising [sic], yet you bleep his Name.  I am beyond disgusted. 

Some freak High on pot says it was ok for them to do this.  I bet he collects a check on our dime.  This is exactly what is wrong.  When you are high~~you think you are god! 

I am so furious and upset. I am sick and tired of "god" offending people.  Hallmark has some explaining to do!  I have written Glenn Beck, Bill O' and Hannity.  This country is so far gone!

Marvelous.  Go ahead and tell Hannity, Beck, et al., and they'll make a capital case out of it, giving the pathological persecution-culture that is becoming more and more common amongst American Christians further fertilizer to grow on.

And fertilizer it is, friends, as in the bovine variety.  Because the reason that Hallmark censored the word "god" in It Could Happen to You wasn't because they were trying to eliminate the mention of a deity from the movie; it was because it occurred in the phrases "oh my god" and "I swear to god," and therefore constituted biblically-forbidden instances of taking the Lord's Name In Vain.  Yup -- that's right; they didn't bleep out "god" because it was holy, but because it wasn't holy enough.

[image courtesy of photographer Kevin Probst and the Wikimedia Commons]

And it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened.  Back in 2002, a mention of "Jesus" by the co-host of The View (in the context of saying "Thank you, Jesus," for her losing weight) was censored out on similar grounds, leading to a petition by outraged Christians who thought that this constituted suppression of religion.  In 2007, an ABC censor mistakenly bleeped out all mentions of the word "god" in the in-flight version of the movie The Queen, because he thought it contravened the rules against blasphemous use of religious language.

Each time, censors erred not because they were trying to offend, but because they evidently knew that these people have the sensibilities of petulant children.  For all the good it did.  If there's nothing to be angry about, they'll find something.  The phrase "damned if you do, damned if you don't," comes to mind.

Okay, I know that Hollywood is a pretty liberal place, and that much of what's on the air these days is there because of its capacity to shock (Family Guy, I'm looking at you).  But picking on The Hallmark Channel?  Really?  The network that was created from the merger of the American Christian Television System and the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network?  You'd think that someone watching a movie on Hallmark would take for granted that whatever was being done was somehow motivated by an attempt to honor Christian values.  I mean, I can see assuming the worst of Syfy or Comedy Central, but Hallmark?

I found out about this from a Facebook post, where I saw yet another comment by an outraged Christian, to wit: "14% atheists in the US, and 71% Christians, and for some reason we're letting the atheists run the show!"  Which might qualify as the single most moronic statement I've seen in months.  "Run the show?"  Being an atheist in the United States pretty much automatically dumps you into the category of "politically powerless."  If we were running the show, do you seriously think that there would be a bill that looks likely to pass in Louisiana declaring the bible to be "the official state book?"  Would there be a bill still in conference in South Carolina declaring that the mammoth is the official state fossil -- and that it was created on the Sixth Day?  Would the governor of Iowa have just signed a proclamation stating that July 14, 2014, be set aside as a "day of thoughtful prayer and humble repentance according to II Chronicles 7:14?"

Running the show, my ass.

Censor that, Hallmark.

Go away, atheists. We're tired of you.

Many of you have undoubtedly heard about the lawsuit currently making its way through the courts in Massachusetts, in which the state's Equal Rights Amendment is being used to argue that the words "under God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.

I realize that this is a hot-button topic on both sides of the issue.  Christians argue that our nation was founded by Christian men (a claim that has its own problems -- but which, as a non-historian, I am unqualified to weigh).  Atheists and agnostics object to a statement being read in public schools and at the beginning of government meetings of all sorts that asserts the existence of a deity, and which attendees are expected to recite.

Now, far be it from Fox News to refrain from throwing gasoline on the fire.

Dana Perino, Fox News commentator and former press secretary to President George W. Bush, was asked about the lawsuit last week, and had some fairly strong words to say about it.

"I’m tired of [atheists]," Perino said, in a discussion of the lawsuit with co-host Bob Beckel.  "I remember working at the Justice Department years ago when I first started right after 9/11 and a lawsuit like this came through, and before the day had finished, the United States Senate and the House of Representatives had both passed resolutions saying that they were for keeping 'under God' in the pledge.  If these people really don’t like it, they don’t have to live here."

Excuse me?

But, of course, instead of saying, "What the hell are you talking about?", Beckel simpered back at her, "Yeah, that's a good point."

"If you don't believe, then why do you care?" Perino added.  "It's just, like, some guy's name."

Is it really?  So, Ms. Perino, would you have no problem with saying, "One nation, under Ralph?"  After all, it's just some guy's name, and you don't believe that Ralph is a deity, so why do you care?

You know, what gets me about all of this is that no one seems to be able to come up with a cogent reason as to why the "under God" thing should be retained in the Pledge.  Nor, for that matter, why "In God We Trust" should be on our currency.  Christians are free to pray in their churches; they're free to pray in their homes; Christian children are, contrary to popular opinion, free to pray in public schools as long as (1) it is not a mandated, school-sponsored activity, (2) they don't disrupt class by doing so, and (3) they don't coerce other children into praying along with them.  (I've known more than one teenager, in our relatively liberal school, who has quietly said grace before eating lunch -- and never noticed anyone giving them any trouble over it.)

Why must we include statements that imply that in order to be an American, you have to be Christian?

Or, for that matter, religious at all?

The tacit assumption here -- that I, as an atheist, can't be a "real American," that I am somehow unpatriotic and unfaithful to the values on which this nation was founded -- is profoundly insulting to me.  My political views, and my loyalty to this country, are entirely unrelated to my belief or disbelief in a deity.  (Cf. "Separation of Church and State.")

So, Ms. Perino, what do you suggest for me, an American citizen and an atheist, as an option?  When I stand for the Pledge during my first period class, when I recite it when I attend school board meetings, that I just say "under God" even though I don't believe it?  In other words, that I should lie outright, in public?  Or that I should just skip that part -- inviting questioning looks and (occasionally) disapproving frowns?

Can you honestly tell me why any mention of a deity should be on our currency and in our public statements of allegiance?

And I'm very sorry, Ms. Perino, that you're "tired" of people like me, but you know what?  I think you're gonna have to take a couple of No-Doz, put your big girl pants on, and deal with it.  Because atheists, rationalists, agnostics, and the like -- the sort of people who put "none" under "religious affiliation" on official forms -- now make up 20% of the American population, according to a Pew Research study done late last year.  And we are no less likely than Christians are to be loyal, law-abiding citizens.

So unless you seriously want 1 in 5 Americans to leave the country, you might want to reconsider your rhetoric.

Not that what you think makes any difference.  Because I don't believe that atheists are planning on going anywhere -- and I suspect that, given current trends, we're only going to become more numerous.