The odds against creation

New from the Department of Specious Statistics, the owner of a biblical timeline business and self-proclaimed mathematician has stated that she has calculated the likelihood of the biblical creation story being wrong as "less than 1 in 479 million."

Margaret Hunter, who owns Bible Charts and Timelines of Duck, West Virginia, stated in an interview, "I realized the twelve items listed in the Genesis creation account are confirmed by scientists today as being in the correct order, starting with light being separated from darkness, plants coming before animals and ending with man.  Think of the problem like this.  Take a deck of cards.  Keep just one suit—let’s say hearts.  Toss out the ace.  Hand the remaining twelve cards to a one year old child.  Ask him/her to hand you the cards one at a time.  In order.  What are the chances said toddler will start with the two and give them all to you in order right up to the king?"

Not very high, Hunter correctly states.  "Being a mathematician, I like thinking about things like this," she says.  "Moses had less than one chance in 479 million of just correctly guessing [the sequence of the creation account].  To me, the simplest explanation is Moses got it straight from the Creator."

Righty-o.  This just brings up a few questions in my mind, to wit:

• Are you serious?
• Where did you get your degree in mathematics?  Big Bob's Discount Diploma Warehouse?
• There's a town called "Duck, West Virginia?"

Of course, the major problem with all of this is that we can all take a look at the events in the biblical creation story, and see immediately that Moses didn't get them right.  Here, according to the site Christian Answers, is the order of creation:

• the Earth
• light
• day & night
• air
• water
• dry land
• seed-bearing plants with fruit
• the Sun, Moon, and stars
• water creatures
• birds
• land animals (presumably birds don't count)
• humans

One immediate problem I see is that there was day and night three days before the Sun was created, which seems problematic to me, as the following NASA photograph illustrates:

But of course, the problems don't end there.  Birds before the rest of "land animals?"  Plants before the Sun and Moon?  The plants are actually the ones on the list that are the most wildly out of order -- seed-bearing plants didn't evolve until the late Devonian, a long time after "water creatures" (the Devonian is sometimes called "the Age of Fish," after all), and an even longer time (about 4.5 billion years, to be precise) after the formation of the Sun.   Humans do come in the correct place, right there at the end, but the rest of it seems like kind of a hash.

So by Hunter's brilliant mathematics, if putting the twelve events of creation in the right order has a 1 in 479 million likelihood of happening by chance, then the likelihood of putting them in the wrong order by chance is 478,999,999 in 479 million.  Which is what happened.  Leading us to the inevitable conclusion, so well supported by the available hard evidence, that Moses was just making shit up.

You know, I really wish you creationists would stop even pretending that this nonsense is scientific.  Just stick with your "the bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it" approach, because every time you dabble your toes in the Great Ocean of Science, you end up getting knocked over by a wave and eating a mouthful of sand.  And it's becoming kind of embarrassing to watch, frankly.  Thank you.

Elf kidnapping

It's not often you get to be a witness to the birth of an urban legend.

Or not so urban, actually, as this one supposedly happened in rural Iceland.  Have you seen it?  It's making the rounds of social media -- a story about a Danish anthropologist, missing for seven years, who showed up last week, naked and confused, claiming that she'd been kidnapped and held hostage by elves.  As of now, I've been sent links to the story a total of six times, so chances are you've run across it, too.

The story is that an anthropologist, Kalena Søndergaard, went off in February of 2006, "seeking proof of elves," and vanished.  Searches for her, centered around the Álfarkirkjan -- the "Elf Church Rock" where she was last seen -- turned up no trace of the missing woman.  Then, last week, some hikers stumbled upon her, crouching on a rocky ledge, looking "more ape than human."  The article says:

Danish researcher Kalena Søndergaard was stark naked, covered by dust and babbling incoherently when rescuers found her outside a tiny opening in the famous Elf Rock, traditionally believed to house the underground dwelling place of mankind’s tiny cousins.

“She was crouching like an animal and spoke only in a language unrelated to any we know,” said Arnor Guðjohnsen of the National Rescue Service, which airlifted the 31-year-old survivor to a hospital by helicopter.

“The only word we could understand was ‘alfur,’ an old Icelandic word for elves. On her back were strange tattoos similar to those markings Viking explorers found on rock formations when they settled Iceland in 874, traditionally known as ‘elf writing.’ ”

When I hit the name of the gentleman from the National Rescue Service, I frowned a little, because "Guðjohnsen" isn't a properly formed Icelandic surname -- all surnames in Iceland, by mandate, are the father's first name, in genitive case, followed by "-son" if it's a boy and "-dottír" if it's a girl.  So Arnor should have been "Guðjohnsson," not "Guðjohnsen."  (A similar problem happened later in the story, with a "folklore expert" named "Eva Bryndísarson" -- she would have been "Eva Bryndísardottír.")

Those, of course, could have been typos or mistranscriptions, and in any case are minor compared to the other whoppers that occur in the story.  Let's start with the fact that Kalena Søndergaard apparently doesn't exist, at least by my attempts to research her name online in connection to any citations for anthropological research.  Then let's take the photograph that was posted to "prove" the claims in the story:

So, on the surface, it does seem to be a photograph of some guy rescuing a naked woman sitting on a rock, and how many situations like this can have happened?  Turns out, it only took one, and it had nothing to do with elves; in March of 2011 the Daily Mail reported on the story of a woman in San Diego who had gotten stranded on a rock ledge trying to climb down to a nude beach, and had to be rescued from above.  Besides the very photograph that was used for the elves-in-Iceland story, the Daily Mail article had a series of further photographs showing the hapless nude sunbather being lifted to safety.

Then, there's the photograph that's supposedly of Kalena Søndergaard, prior to her harrowing experience with the Little Folk:

The problem is, this girl isn't named Kalena Søndergaard, she's not Danish, and she isn't an anthropologist.  Sharon Hill of the wonderful site Doubtful News found out that the photograph was grabbed from a Russian dating site -- probably selected because the girl looks vaguely like the woman in the rescue photograph.

So, due to the wonders of the internet, the whole thing was debunked in short order.  But the problem is that with hoaxes like this, often people only see the first half -- the claim -- and never run into the story disproving it.  It's probably human nature, of course.  Crazy claims have much more cachet than dry-as-dust debunkings do; who is going to forward a link making the not-too-earthshattering claim, "Elves don't exist?"

Anyhow, that's the straight scoop regarding the kidnapped Danish anthropologist and her terrifying encounter with the huldufólk.  The story is no more legitimate than the Crystal Pyramids of Atlantis thing or the Alien Mass Burial in Uganda thing.  Not that I expect this will make it die down -- for apparently one of the characteristics of bullshit is that once created, it never, ever goes away.

The evolution of Little Red Riding Hood

Every once in a while, I'll run across a piece of scientific research that is so creative and clever that it just warms my heart, and I felt this way yesterday when I stumbled onto a link to the article in PLoS ONE called "The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood," by Jamshid Tehrani of the University of Bristol.

The reason I was delighted by Tehrani's paper is that it combines two subjects I love -- evolutionary biology and mythology and folklore.  The gist of what Tehrani did is to use a technique most commonly used to assemble species into "star diagrams" -- cladistic bootstrap analysis -- to analyze worldwide versions of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story to see to what degree a version in (for example) Senegal was related to one in Germany.

Cladistic bootstrap analysis generates something called a "star diagram" -- not, generally, a pedigree or family tree, because we don't know the exact identity of the common ancestor to all of the members of the tree, all we can tell is how closely related current individuals are.  Think, for example, of what it would look like if you assembled the living members of your family group this way -- you'd see clusters of close relatives linked together (you, your siblings, and your first cousins, for example) -- and further away would be other clusters, made up of more distant relatives grouped with their near family members.

So Tehrani did this with the "Little Red Riding Hood" story, by looking at the similarities and differences, from subtle to major, between the way the tale is told in different locations.  Apparently there are versions of it all over the world -- not only the Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales variety (the one I know the best), but from Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Korea, and Japan.  Oral transmission of stories is much like biological evolution; there are mutations (people change the story by misremembering it, dropping some pieces, embellishment, and so on) and there is selection (the best versions, told by the best storytellers, are more likely to be passed on).  And thus, the whole thing unfolds like an evolutionary lineage.

In Tehrani's analysis, he found three big branches -- the African branch (where the story is usually called "The Wolf and the Kids"), the East Asian branch ("Tiger Grandmother"), and the European/Middle Eastern Branch ("Little Red Riding Hood," "Catterinella," and "The Story of Grandmother").  (For the main differences in the different branches, which are fascinating but too long to be quoted here in full, check out the link to Tehrani's paper.)

Put all together, Tehrani came up with the following cladogram:

WK = "The Wolf and the Kids," TG = "Tiger Grandmother," "Catt" = "Catterinella," GM = "The Story of Grandmother," and RH = "Little Red Riding Hood;" the others are less common variations that Tehrani was able to place on his star diagram.

The whole thing just makes me very, very happy, and leaves me smiling with my big, sharp, wolflike teeth.

Pure research has been criticized by some as being pointless, and this is a stance that I absolutely abhor.  There is a completely practical reason to support, fund, and otherwise encourage pure research -- and that is, we have no idea yet what application some technique or discovery might have in the future.  A great deal of highly useful, human-centered science has been uncovered by scientists playing around in their labs with no other immediate goal than to study some small bit of the universe.  Further, the mere application of raw creativity to a problem -- using the tools of cladistics, say, to analyze a folk tale -- can act as an impetus to other minds, elsewhere, encouraging them to approach the problems we face in novel ways.

But I think it's more than that.  The fundamental truth here is that human mind needs to be exercised.  The "what good is it?" attitude is not only anti-science, it is anti-intellectual.  It devalues inquiry, curiosity, and creativity.  It asks the question "how does this benefit humanity?" in such a way as to imply that the sheer joy of comprehending deeply the world around us is not a benefit in and of itself.

It may be that Tehrani's jewel of a paper will have no lasting impact on humanity as a whole.  I'm perfectly okay with that, and I suspect Tehrani would be, as well.  We need to make our brains buckle down to the "important stuff," yes; but we also need to let them out to play sometimes, a lesson that the men and women currently overseeing our educational system need to learn.  In a quote that seems unusually apt, considering the subject of Tehrani's research, Albert Einstein said: "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world."

Magic rock knowledge

The one thing I appreciate most about science is that it gives you a standard protocol by which to determine if a claim is supported or not.

That's not to say that the scientists can't get it wrong.  They do.  But science is self-correcting -- it is based on evidence and logic, and if at some point evidence and logic send you in a different direction than the prevailing wisdom, you have to abandon the prevailing wisdom and head off where the arrow points.  So the oft-quoted criticism of science by high school students everywhere -- "Why do we have to learn this, when it could be proven wrong tomorrow?" -- is actually science's great strength.

Better than studying something whose "truths" couldn't be falsified whether you wanted to or not, where there is no way to tell if a claim is wrong or right, where the directive is "just believe it because."

And I'm not just pointing a finger at religion, here.  Much of pseudoscience operates by this same evidence-free approach.  Take, for example, the page called "The Health Effects of Gemstones" on the site PositiveMed.  On it, we are told that rocks can help us in all sorts of ways, from physical health to mental health to relationships to "activating various chakras."

As an example, we are told that fluorite "enhances memory, intellect, discernment, and concentration, (and) brings wisdom."  Which sounds nice, doesn't it?

(photograph courtesy of Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com, and the Wikimedia Commons)

Selenite "stimulates brain activity, expand(s) awareness, develops telepathy, and symbolizes the clearest state of mind available."  Carnelian "enhances creativity and sexuality, recycles past-life experiences, (and) speeds up the law of karma."  Black obsidian is a "spiritual protector, (and) helps one to understand and face their [sic] deepest fears."  Labradorite, on the other hand, "protects ones [sic] aura, (and) keep(s) the aura clear, balanced, and free of energy leaks."

Psychic Fix-a-Flat, is kind of how I see the last-mentioned.

All through reading this, I was thinking, "How on earth do you know any of this?"  There is no possible evidence-based way that someone can have come up with this list; it very much has the hallmark of some gemstone salesperson making shit up to sell polished rocks to unsuspecting gullible people.  I very much doubt, for example, that anyone did an experiment by leaving his black obsidian home, and seeing whether his deepest fears were more or less terrifying to face that day.

The whole thing, then, is a completely fact-free way of knowing the world, which I find fairly incomprehensible.  Even before I knew much science, I remember pestering my parents about how they knew things were true, and (more specifically) how you could tell if something was real or not.  As a five-year-old, I remember having a discussion with my mom about how she knew that Captain Kangaroo was real but Bugs Bunny was not, since she had clearly never met either one in person.

A junior skeptic I was, even back then.

It is perpetually baffling to me that there are so many people who don't see the world that way -- a bias, I suppose, that represents my own set of blinders.  My failing as a thinker seems to be that I just can't quite bring myself to believe that everyone doesn't evaluate the truth or falsity of statements the same way I do.

So those are today's philosophical musings, brought about by a rather silly website about magic rocks.  And now that I've gotten this written, I should go and apply some aquamarine to my forehead, which is supposed to "encourage the expression of one's truth, (and) reduce fear and mental tension."  Heaven knows I could do with more of that, some days.

One ring to fool them all

There are some swindles that are so clever that you can't help but feel a grudging admiration for someone who could pull them off straight-faced.

P. T. Barnum, he that observed that "There's a sucker born every minute" and who co-founded Barnum & Bailey's Circus, perpetrated some doozies in his life.  But I think my favorite was one that was brilliant in its simplicity.  In his circus, he'd sometimes put up a big, elaborately-painted sign that said, "This way to the Egress!"  You followed the arrows, and saw subsequent, even bigger and more attractive signs, until finally you got to one that said, "To experience the AMAZING EGRESS, if you dare, go through this door!"

So you go through the door, and find yourself outside the circus -- and then have to pay to re-enter.  Because "egress," of course, is just a fancy way of saying "exit."

I ran into an example of this just yesterday on The Million-Pound Page (subtitled "Have a Bright Future!"), where we meet a gentleman named Alex Chiu who has developed something called an "Immortality Ring."  Before I tell you about immortality rings, though, you should check out Alex's "About Me" page, wherein we find out a variety of weird facts about Alex, including:

• He thinks that China should take back Taiwan, and that any Taiwanese who doesn't agree with him "doesn't deserve to be immortal."
• If Hilary Duff threw herself bodily at him, Alex would still prefer his cat over her.
• He has had four stepmothers.
• He thinks Alicia Silverstone represents physical perfection.  No mention of whether he'd choose her over his cat, however.

None of this, of course, gives us any information supporting the contention that we should believe anything he says, so I guess we'll have to evaluate his "immortality rings" on their own merits.

So, what are they?  Apparently they're a pair of magnets encased in ceramic rings that you are supposed to wear, one on each pinky, and they'll give you eternal life.  There's a cheaper pair (at $28, plus shipping and handling), if you're satisfied with a bargain-basement kind of eternal life; or the upgraded neodymium-based pair (at $39, plus shipping and handling) if you want grade-A eternal life.  The better pair has a field of 21,000 gauss (compare that to 50 gauss for a typical refrigerator magnet) -- wearing something like that on both hands seems to me to be fraught with risks, such as completely fucking up every computer you walk by, attracting metallic objects like meat cleavers and sledgehammers, and possibly becoming accidentally stuck to the side of a moving city bus as you're crossing the street.

Remember this scene?  It didn't end well for Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

Be that as it may, Alex Chiu is claiming that if you wear his rings, you'll live forever, as long as you don't get your head chopped off in the kitchenware department of WalMart or get dragged to your death by a metro bus.  How does it work, you may ask?  Well, Alex Chiu has answers for you:

How do Eternal Life Devices fix the wounds and scars back to perfect or close to perfect, in order to free blood circulation?

Alex believes this is how it works: "Well, every cell in our body is a magnet. Cells have north and south poles. They attract each other. That's why cells form into a straight line. That is also how they form into a community, an animal body."

And lo, he has pictures to prove that cells form into a straight line:

So q.e.d, as far as I can tell.  Furthermore:

Cells with weak magnetic energy don't attract too well. Cells with strong magnetic flux attract to each other strongly and tighter. Just like magnets.  But strong magnets attract strongly and tight - just like human cells.  If cells are weak. if cells don't have enough magnetic flux, they break apart easily and heal back slowly, or sometimes don't heal back.

We then find out that if your cells don't have enough "magnetic flux" they grow back "unstraight" when you're injured, and you form scar tissue, which is bad.

But here's the punch line:

Now cells can grow back 100 percent or close to perfect. Remember, every cell is a magnet. If magnetic forces are applied, cells attract to each other more strongly. Ugly scars disappear. Cholesterol, which jammed in damaged areas, slowly desolves [sic]! If cholesterol desolves [sic], blood circulation is liberated. With blood circulation liberated, enough food and oxygen goes to every cell of your entire body. Then, at this stage, you turn physically younger or stay physically young FOREVER. You will have a never ageing [sic] body. Your body condition stays the SAME for years and years!!

Well, that might sound more attractive to me if I didn't already have arthritis to the point that my knees sound like velcro when I stand up.  But maybe the rings could fix that first, and then I could stay the same for years and years after that.

The most hilarious part of all of this, though, is that there's a money-back guarantee if they don't work.  But how could you apply for it?  Just imagine the phone call to customer service:

You:  I'd like to return my "immortality rings" for a refund.

Customer service: Why?  Are you dissatisfied with them?

You:  Yes, I don't think they're working.

Customer service:  Are you dead yet?

You:  No, but...

Customer service:  There you are, then!  100% success rate achieved!  What are you complaining about?

The whole thing reminds me of what Woody Allen said, when someone asked him what he'd like written on his gravestone.  He responded, "He's not here yet."

So, that's today's contribution from the Chutzpah Department.  I wish Alex Chiu luck, although I have to say that I won't be buying any magnetic rings.  I already have enough computer problems, and the other risks just don't seem to me to be worth it, even if I would end up with "cells forming into a straight line."

Lies, evangelicals, and girly hats

Is it just me, or do others find it weird how much the Religious Right focuses on issues of sexuality, and ignore the other biblical rules?

And I'm not just talking, here, about the oft-quoted bits in Leviticus that are just plain weird, such as the prohibition against wearing cotton-polyester blends (Leviticus 19:19).  I'm talking about much bigger stuff.

The whole thing comes up because of Gordon Klingenschmitt, the outspoken evangelical Navy chaplain who has been increasingly in the news because of his vitriolic opposition to anything approaching LGBT equal rights.  Most recently, he weighed in on the story that President Obama was changing the United States Marine Corps dress uniform code to require unisex hats, which an article in the New York Post described as "so 'girly' that they would make the French blush."

I'll ignore the Post's obnoxious characterization of the French, which I would have thought would be beneath any reputable news source, because that snide little remark was minor compared to the outcry from conservatives that erupted when the story hit.  The howls from Fox News alone were enough to bring down the walls of Jericho.  And then Klingenschmitt and other members of the Religious Right took up the thread, claiming that the whole thing was part of an evil plot to turn the members of the military gay.

"You can't have men in the United States Marines wearing clothing that's designed for women," Klingenschmitt said, on his weekly show Pray in Jesus' Name. "So you know what President Obama's solution is?  To make all the uniforms the same.  And this is going to usher in the possibility of transgender, cross-dressing men who want to look like women, they'll be able to wear a women's uniform.  This is not just a fashion stunt, it's setting the stage for transgender cross-dressing men to enter the military.  This decision came down from on high, I guarantee it, and that's a demonic spirit."

Righty-o, Reverend Klingenschmitt.  The only problem is, the entire story is false.  There was no command from President Obama, no plan to change the design of the Marine Corps' dress hats, no evil desire to turn everyone in the military gay.  And worse still, Gordo, you knew that, didn't you?  Because immediately after the story hit the Post (and launched into Fox News), the Marine Corps' own news source -- Stars & Stripes -- ran a story debunking the whole thing.  "The president in no way, shape or form directed the Marine Corps to change our uniform cover," said an official statement from the Marine Corps headquarters.  "We are looking for a new cover for our female Marines for one overriding reason: The former manufacturer went out of business. … The Marine Corps has zero intention of changing the male cover."

That's right; given that the story from the Marine Corps headquarters predated both Klingenschmitt's screed, and most of the hoopla on Fox News (and that it took me a thirty-second Google search to find the story debunking the claim), it's not too far-fetched a surmise that Klingenschmitt, and the reporters on Fox News, weren't just wrong; they were lying.

So it's all very well for Klingenschmitt and his pals to indulge in their peculiar obsessions about what people might be doing in their bedrooms, and claiming biblical justification for their stance.  The problem is, doesn't the bible have a few things to say about lying?

Oh, yeah, like the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."  And Leviticus 19:11, "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie to one another."  And Psalms 101:7, "He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight." And Proverbs 19:9, "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish." And Jeremiah 9:3, "And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord."  Oh, and my favorite one: Zechariah 13:3, "...Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord."

Hmm.  A few more lying-related verses to fret about, there in the bible, than there are ones defining what people are allowed to do with their naughty bits.  A bit worrisome, that.

It's funny to me, in a wry sort of way, how the evangelicals claim the moral high ground over atheists like myself, and yet so many of them are perfectly happy to twist the truth into knots to support whatever political position they prefer.   And they will stand there and declare, with no apparent sense of cognitive dissonance, that because my general attitude is that I don't give a rat's ass what two consenting adults do in their bedrooms (and, if they're having fun, more power to 'em), that I'm the one who is somehow evil and depraved.

On that count, Klingenschmitt et al. might want to refresh their memories about another biblical verse that comes to mind, namely Matthew 7:1-5: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

The different flavors of "why"

In my last few posts, we've been looking at some of the various reasons that people believe odd, counterfactual things.  We've looked at fear, wishful thinking, lack of knowledge, and being hoodwinked by fast-talking, plausible charlatans, each of which plays its role in drawing people into the ethereal realms of pseudoscience.

There's one more, though, that we haven't looked at; and that is the desperation people have to know why things happen.

Most folks are uncomfortable with the idea of chaos -- the thought that there are random forces at work in the world, that some things are simply the result of chaotic processes that we couldn't predict if we tried.  This idea was brilliantly investigated in Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which I can truly say is one of the few books that changed my life.  When I read it, in my Modern American Literature class when I was in 11th grade, I felt like my outlook on life would never be the same.

In it, Wilder's main character, Brother Juniper, an 18th century Franciscan monk, witnesses the collapse of a rope bridge in Peru.  Five people are on the bridge at the time, and all die.  He sets out to trace the history of the five victims, to see if there was some underlying reason why those five people, and no others, were killed.  And in the end, he realizes that if there was an explanation -- if god really did have a plan in engineering this situation -- it is so subtle that we could never know what it is.  And for this heresy, Brother Juniper and his book are both burned at the stake in the public square.

We always, somehow, want to know why.  And when science came along, there was a lot of hope that it would supplant religion in answering that question.  In some ways, it succeeded; but it didn't give people the answers to the "whys" that most were looking for, because there are different flavors of "why" -- and science is exceptionally good at answering one of them, and not so good at the other.

There are proximal "whys" and ultimate "whys," and the first is easy, and the second spectacularly difficult.  I saw a good example of the difference when, in an AP Biology class a few years ago, I asked, "Why are virtually all marsupials found in Australia?"

A student responded, in complete seriousness, "Because that's where they live."

Well, yes, but that's not what I was looking for.  I was looking for a deeper why -- an answer to the question of why marsupials had survived in Australia, but very few other places (the North American opossum being the sole counterexample).  And that's a difficult question, one that requires speculation.  Frequently questions of "ultimate why" either lead to unprovable guesses, or else are outside of the provenance of science to answer.

Which is why people have been turning to woo-woo craziness to explain the devastation that Typhoon Haiyan has wreaked upon the Philippines this past weekend.

Why did the typhoon form?  Why did it become so powerful?  Why did it take the path it did?  Science can explain how it formed, and give some answers to the proximal "whys," answers that involve steering currents and sea-surface temperatures.  But as far as the ultimate "why" -- why Haiyan devastated the city of Tacloban, why it struck where it did and not somewhere else -- science is silent.

So we're already seeing the nonsense rearing its ugly head.  Haiyan was created as part of a super-secret experiment by the US military, using a microwave burst.  It was sent on the path it took because the US was trying to divert radioactive water coming our way from Fukushima.  Even further out, we have loony evangelicals claiming that god sent Haiyan to devastate the mostly-Catholic Philippines in order to punish them for "worshiping idols."

It's not hard to see how some people see science as offering incomplete answers.  Because it does, honestly.  Whenever we're in the realm of "why" we have to be careful, as scientists, because the ultimate "whys" often don't admit easy explanation.  Even such simple "whys," often taught in elementary school science classes, as "why do giraffes have long necks?" are almost certainly oversimplified answers to questions that are much more difficult to answer than they would have appeared at first glance.

So no wonder some turn to other realms, where the answers to "whys" come hard and fast -- conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and (okay, I know I'm gonna get flak for this) religion.  Those models for understanding the world give the comfort of explaining why things happen -- sometimes, even the horrid things like illnesses, accidental deaths, personal losses... and typhoons.  Science is silent on the ultimate "whys," most of the time, and if you are uncomfortable with that, you either have to do what I do -- remain uncomfortable -- or leap outside of science.

Because, as Brother Juniper learned, if you don't make that leap, you just have to accept that sometimes the events in the world are subtle and unexplainable.