Dogma vs. science vs. history

I don't, for the most part, frequent religious blogs and websites.  As I've mentioned before, the majority of religious writers are starting from a stance so completely opposite from mine that there is barely any common ground on which even to have a productive argument.  So I generally only address religious issues when they either stray into the realm of science (as with the conflict over evolution), or when they begin to intrude on social or political realms (such as Dana Perino's claim earlier this year that atheists should leave the United States).  Otherwise, the religious folks can entertain themselves all they like about the meaning of scripture and the nature of god, and I'll happily entertain myself with the equally reality-based discussions about Bigfoot and aliens.

But just a couple of days ago, Catholic blogger Stacy Trascanos came out with a claim that is so bizarre that I felt like I had to respond to it.  In her piece entitled, "Without Dogma, Science is Lost," Trascanos makes the rather mindboggling claim that not only does science owe its origins to religion, science needs religion today -- as a fact-checker:

People also wrongly assume that dogma restricts science too much.  On the contrary, divine revelation nurtured and guarded a realistic outlook in Old Testament cultures, in early Christianity, and in the Middle Ages.  This Trinitarian and Incarnational worldview was, and still is, different from any pantheism or other monotheism, and it provided the “cultural womb” needed to nurture the “birth” of science...

To do science well, a working knowledge of Catholic dogma is necessary.  To know what directly contradicts the dogmas of revealed religion and to make such distinctions guides the scientist.  The accomplishments of the medieval Catholic scholars demonstrate this abundantly. You’ve heard the axiom, “Truth cannot contradict truth.” The Scientific Revolution is evidence of it...  (S)cience needs to be guided by faith, and that the Catholic Church has a legitimate right and authority to veto scientific conclusions that directly contradict her dogma.  This is not about the Church being against science, but about the Church being a guardian of truth.

I probably wouldn't have been as shocked as I was by all of this if I hadn't read Trascanos's bio at the bottom of the page, in which she says she has a Ph.D. in chemistry.  So these aren't the rantings of someone who has never studied science; Trascanos herself is a trained scientist, who gave up a career as a research chemist to pursue an M.A. in theology.

But a deeper problem with all of this is that she's simply factually incorrect.  Rationalism, and the scientific method it gave birth to, started with people like Anaxagoras and Democritus and Thales, long before Christianity began.  The idea that we could find out about the laws of nature by studying lowly matter was profoundly repulsive to early church fathers, who by and large took the mystical approach -- also, interestingly, launched prior to Christianity, by people like Pythagoras -- that the road to knowledge came from simply thinking, not experimentation.  (The desperation of medieval astronomers to make planetary orbits conform to perfect circles and the "five Platonic solids" comes largely from this approach.)

And as far as Christianity's acceptance of, and nurturing of, science, you only have to look at the story of Hypatia to realize what a crock that is.  Hypatia was a philosopher, teacher, mathematician, and astronomer in 4th century Egypt, who ran afoul of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria for her "ungodly teachings."  On his orders, she was kidnapped on the way home from the Library of Alexandria, and was cut to pieces with sharpened roof tiles.  Her body was burned.

Cyril went on to be canonized.

The problem, of course, is one we've encountered before; science and religion approach knowledge two completely incompatible ways.  Science bases its understanding on evidence; if new evidence arises, the understanding must change.  Religion, by and large (although there are some exceptions), bases its knowledge on revelation and inward reflection, not to mention authority.  Change in scientific understand can occur at lightning speed; change in religious understanding is slow, and frequently met with much resistance from adherents.  As Trascanos said, "...divine revelation nurtured and guarded a realistic outlook in Old Testament cultures, in early Christianity, and in the Middle Ages."  I would argue that because of this, self-correction seldom occurs in religion, because any alteration in belief is much more likely to be looked upon by the powers-that-be as an error of faith.

But the bottom line is, Trascanos is right about one thing; if science and religion come into conflict, there is no reconciliation possible.  You have to choose one or the other, because their decision-making protocols are inherently incompatible.  Trascanos, despite her scientific training, has chosen religion -- a decision I find frankly baffling, given the fact that science's track record in uncovering the truth is pretty unbeatable.

Still, I'm left with feeling like I still don't quite get how an obviously well-educated person as Trascanos can make claims that are so clearly counterfactual.  The thesis she so passionately defends is contradicted not only by history, but by science itself -- given the number of unscientific stances that were once considered "revealed truth" by the church, and which have since been abandoned.  (The whole heliocentric/geocentric argument is so well-known as to be a cliché; but check out this article, which attributes much of Galileo's troubles with the Vatican as coming from his stance on the existence of atoms [they exist] and his explanation of why things float in water [low density].) 

But all other considerations aside, we're back to the condition of agree-to-disagree.  However Trascanos wants to try to reconcile science with religion, she has arrived at the appropriate conclusion of falling on one side of the fence or the other.  It's just that she's chosen a different side than I have (actually, I tend to think that the other side of the fence doesn't exist, but that's an argument for a different day).  And now, I really will leave behind the shaky ground of religion and philosophy, and return to my happy place, populated by Bigfoot and aliens.

To each his own, I suppose.

We found Noah's... no, listen! Wait! Where's everybody going?

Have you noticed that every few months, someone else finds Noah's Ark?

Just since I've begun this blog, I've written about four attempts, one of them "successful" (at least in the sense that the people running the expedition found some random rotting pieces of wood and declared victory).

Well, here we go again.  We now have another "successful Ark discovery," with the added filigree that there's a government coverup designed to prevent our finding out about it.  This should be fun, yes?  Religious whackjobbery + conspiracy theories = WHEEEEEEE!!!!!

This story, which has been making the rounds of social media, is described in some detail in the article by Mark Martineau entitled, "Noah's Ark Has Been Found.  Why Are They Keeping Us In the Dark?"  Here's a quote from the article that explains the gist:

In 1959, Turkish army captain Llhan Durupinar discovered an unusual shape while examining aerial photographs of his country. The smooth shape, larger than a football field, stood out from the rough and rocky terrain at an altitude of 6,300 feet near the Turkish border with Iran...  Capt. Durupinar was familiar with the biblical accounts of the Ark and its association with Mount Ararat in Turkey, but he was reluctant to jump to any conclusions. The region was very remote, yet it was inhabited with small villages. No previous reports of an object this odd had been made before. So he forwarded the photographic negative to a famous aerial photography expert named Dr. Brandenburger, at Ohio State University.

Brandenburger was responsible for discovering the Cuban missile bases during the Kennedy era from reconnaissance photos, and after carefully studying the photo, he concluded: "I have no doubt at all, that this object is a ship. In my entire career, I have never seen an object like this on a stereo photo."

We are then told that some folks investigated, but found nothing too spectacular.  Then a guy named Ron Wyatt decided to take a more thorough look at the site, and after his study, "The evidence was conclusive.  This is the Ark of Noah."

What evidence, you might ask?  Well, we have "traces... of wooden ribs":

We have "high-tech metal rivets":

We have "stone anchors":

Not to mention a plethora of other goodies, such as cat hair and fossilized animal poo.

But then Snopes got involved, predictably debunking the entire thing.   Most of the claims were outright false; there were no petrified wooden ribs, no exotic metal rivets, no subsurface features that look even remotely ship-like.  The animal poo is hardly unusual, given that animals do that.  And even a guy from Answers in Genesis, one Andrew Snelling, concluded that the site is natural geological feature caused by faulting, albeit a kind of peculiar-looking one.  (You should read the entire Snopes article for a piece-by-piece takedown of the claim.)

But so far, there's nothing much to separate this from all of the other times people have found Noah's Ark.  That's because you haven't heard about the conspiracy theory aspect.  "Ordinary people are hungry for this information, yet the organizations responsible to disseminate these facts seem to have an agenda to keep us in the dark," Martineau writes.  "This is especially true when it comes to our ancient human history."

Yup, I'm sure that the powers-that-be spend all of their time trying to figure out how to keep the average citizen from finding out about the Code of Hammurabi.  Makes total sense.

But apparently, that's not all that the powers-that-be are trying to do.  If you take a look at the comments on the original site (Not directly!  Always use eye protection!), you'll see that apparently everyone is lying to us, especially Snopes.  Here are a few examples, as many as I was able to copy before the neurons in my cerebrum started whimpering for mercy:

After [Snopes] said that Obamas Birth Certificate was real...All their credibility was out the window

it a proven fact science does not have all the answers.

I don't use MY real name and I have a picture of Obozo getting ready to masturbate (what he always does right after burning the Constitution that he was HIRED TO PROTECT!). My reasoning is this... if Obozo's Mooselick Booboohood retards saw my REAL face, I would have to spend all my time killing the punk ass wannabe ragheads they send to behead me for being a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT... killing them in self-defense, of course. Not EVERYONE is stupid enough to put their real face out there where Satan's Minions (spelled MUSLIMS) can lock in on them. Enjoy your eternity in Hell that you will deserve for following Satan's Spawn Osama Obama!

Snopes is a propaganda tool of the far left!

Snopes has been discredited for producing any truth. Wake up and smell the Communism.

Yes, it IS good that previous commentor wasn't born in the islamic world of murdered and taken-over populations and destroyed cultures. That is why islam has spread all over the world, as it is spreading more by murdering Christian populations that have lived in the middle east for hundreds or thousands of years. Thanks all to OUR islamic communist puppet regime's support of money and weapons. But don't worry, it isn't only Christians being murdered, but those of the far east too.

So, I only have two questions about all of this: (1) what the fuck is a "Mooselick Booboohood?" and (2) do the people who comment on sites like this talk this way in real life?

Because if they do, I'm surprised that their loved ones don't stage an intervention involving the administration of horse tranquilizers.

The whole thing is profoundly unsettling, especially given that Snopes has a pretty good track record of establishing fact from fiction, and that there are people who think that the logical next step after "science doesn't have all the answers" is "so the bible must be literally true."  The problem, of course, is one we've seen before; if you can be duped into thinking that the facts are spin, and that the scientific method itself is invalid, you can be convinced of anything.

In any case, it seems pretty unlikely that this rock formation in Turkey has anything to do with either Noah's Ark or government coverups.  Which is a relief, frankly.  Because we've got to get this one debunked in order to make way for the next one.  Only one Noah's Ark allowed at a time, you know.

Siri, conspiracy theories, and the Gates of Hell

It doesn't take much, unfortunately, to get the conspiracy theorists all shook up.

Take the discovery a couple of weeks ago that for certain Siri users, the question "What is July 27, 2014?" elicits a response of, "It's Sunday, July 27, 2014.  Opening the Gates of Hades."

William Blake, Dante's Gates of Hell (1826) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I can see how this could be a little startling.  The last thing you want is to be checking your calendar and find out you'd scheduled a date on the day that the Beast With Seven Heads is supposed to eat one-third of humanity.

You can see how that could make dinner conversation a little awkward.

The reason for the weird response hasn't, as far as I've found, been explained yet.  Some have said it's a joke planted there by a waggish programmer; others that it's some kind of weird glitch, similar to the one last year that directed users to Ron Paul's website if they asked questions about politics.  The most popular explanation, however, seems to be that it has something to do with the first day of "Ghost Month" in certain traditional Chinese beliefs, on which (similar to Halloween) the gates of heaven and hell are said to open.

But of course, you can't have something like this occurring without the conspiracy theorists getting their knickers in a twist.  Take a look at this YouTube video, courtesy of Alex Jones' nutty site InfoWars, where we are shown the Siri response and then told, "Let us know what you think in the comments section."

Here are a few selected samples of the result of that request:

Could they be thinking about opening portals in the the spiritual world to bring the devil into this world in another form through manifestation using technology?

the abyss or the bottomless pit is opened by an angel, thats after alot [sic] of other things have happened. If so, the next 6 months gonna be a rough ride.

Apple obviously know something that the masses do not and this can be said about all individuals in power.the government are nothing put [sic] puppets and all these big organisations are the exact same.they all serve satan and are trying to exexute [sic] that one goal

what is troubling is the tunnel they are carving through under the ground in seattle-something has stopped it in its tracks-they want to open the seattle underground tunnel in 2014 and something big is stopping there progress from going any further with it-they are sending men inside this thing to take a look and they are saying that something demonic is down there.

well, no [sic] much surprise here, since many things are already programmed to be done.  To my point of view, and according to some prophecies summer 2014 seems to be doomed.  Actually i believe that things will turn bad much earlier. 2014 will be the year of WW3, i am pretty sure about it (again, according to my sources)

Okay, can all of you people just calm down for a minute?

What comes to mind about all of this nonsense is that the conspiracy theorists aren't seeing the fundamental underlying contradiction in their stance.  They believe that the Illuminati are ultra-powerful, ultra-intelligent guys, with super technology, maybe even in cahoots with evil aliens, and yet are simultaneously so stupid that they would leave clues on Siri so easy to find that anyone checking their online calendars would ultimately stumble upon them.

I mean, you can't have it both ways.  Either the Illuminati are intelligent, or they're not.  If they're intelligent, they're not going to be found out by some clown who thinks that Alex Jones is the reincarnation of Einstein.

So, bottom line: could there be some kind of ultimate evil super-top-secret conspiracy?

Yes, I guess there could be.  But then we wouldn't know about it.  Because that's what "super top-secret" means.

Of course, this isn't about logic, is it?  Rationality is the last thing these people are interested in; most conspiracy theorists take the religious paradigm ("believe this even though there's no evidence") and walk it one step further ("believe this because there's no evidence").  And once you're there, there's no arguing with you, is there?

My general take on this is that you shouldn't worry.  If you are planning on a vacation to Costa Rica next summer, and will be leaving on July 27, don't apply for a refund quite yet.  Whatever this Siri glitch is, I'll bet you cold hard cash that it has nothing to do with the End of the World.

And second, if I'm wrong, and the Gates of Hell open, might as well be in Costa Rica, right?  I hear Costa Rica is really nice.

Elf highway blockade

One thing I would love to know is how groups of people end up being superstitious.  Not individuals; you can see how specific individuals could become superstitious about odd things, through a combination of classical conditioning and confirmation bias (you wear a specific t-shirt to a football game, and your team wins; you link the t-shirt to the win, and every time something good happens while you're wearing that shirt, it reinforces the belief.  Voilà -- "lucky t-shirt").

But how do specific counterfactual beliefs become so entrenched, despite a complete lack of evidence, that entire cultures begin to buy in?  I know that this is skating onto some seriously thin ice for some people, and I've no intention to skate any closer.  In any case, as you'll soon see, I'm not talking about what you probably think I'm talking about.

The reason this question comes up is because of a link sent to me by a frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, regarding a highway project in Iceland that has been blocked -- because the project will upset the elves.

Meadow Elves (Ängsälvor) by Nils Blommén (1850) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The project was designed to create a direct route from the Álftanes peninsula to the Gar∂abær suburb of Reykjavík.  But the highway was supposed to cut across a lava field inhabited by huldufólk, the Icelandic version of the Little People, and this got some people seriously up in arms.  A group calling themselves the "Friends of Lava" banded together with the intent of stopping the project, citing "detrimental effect on elf culture" -- and amazingly enough, it worked.

"(The highway project) would be a terrible loss and damaging both for the elf world and for us humans," said Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a folklorist and seer from Reykjavík who was instrumental in halting the project.  "If you ask an Icelander about elves, they might say they don't believe.  But we always have stories of them, if not from ourselves then from someone close like a family member. Of course, not everyone believes in the stories, but the stories and the elves are still there and being told."

So the project appears to have been scrapped.  "Some feel that the elf thing is a bit annoying," said Andri Snær Magnason, a prominent Icelandic environmentalist.  "However, I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common [with Icelanders]."

What I find interesting about these beliefs is that they run counter to the usual perception of superstition being more common amongst the poorly-educated.  Iceland has an amazing educational system, resulting in a citizenry with a near 100% adult literacy rate.  They have the world's highest percentage of their GNP (8%) used for supporting education.

So the whole idea of education and superstition being inversely correlated apparently isn't true -- if we can draw such a conclusion from a sample size of one.  You would think that as the population becomes better educated, the amount of adherence to odd cultural beliefs would diminish, but despite the dramatic advances in education in Iceland in the past century, the belief in the huldufólk remains strong enough in Iceland to generate a legal block to a highway project.

I still think that learning critical thinking is the best way to counter non-evidence-based ways of thinking, so it appears that something else must be going on here.  One thing that comes to mind is that Icelanders are, as a group, extremely proud of their heritage, language, and history, and this is bound to make them more culturally conservative.  Beliefs and practices can be powerful indicators of cultural identity -- witness the members of my wife's family, who are descended from Lithuanian Jews, and who still celebrate a lot of the Jewish holidays and rituals -- although they have, by and large, abandoned the religious underpinnings. 

So I still find the Icelandic elves a peculiar thing, but I'll have to leave it to someone with a better background in folklore and anthropology to answer the question in a more rigorous fashion.  I guess it's to be expected that certain vestiges of old beliefs persist, even if the rest of the system has gone by the wayside.  Now, y'all will have to excuse me, because I need to finish this up.  I've got Christmas presents to wrap.

Rapture letters and wingless angels

And the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2013 goes to:

The guy who came up with the concept of "Rapture Letters."

You probably all know about the Rapture, the future event in which all of the True Believers are assumed bodily into heaven, leaving behind the rest of us to deal with the Antichrist, the Beast With Seven Heads, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and other special offers dreamed up by the God of Mercy to keep us unbelievers entertained until Satan turns up to make us into giant shish-kebobs.  Well, I don't know if it's ever occurred to you that given that the ones who are left behind are going to be those who don't believe in all of this stuff, there will be a rather awkward period after the Rapture (but before the Antichrist et al. show up) where we'll be wandering around, thinking, "Where did Phil go?  He was right next to me in the duck blind just a minute ago."

So to explain to your Godless Heathen friends where you went, given that you won't be around to do it, you can sign up for the "Rapture Letter" service.  For only seven dollars, you can add your name to a registry, and after your sudden disappearance an email will be sent to your loved ones that says:

Dear Friend;

This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world.

The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went.

This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven.

If you read a Bible, you will see that after chapter three in the book of Revelation, the church is no longer mentioned as being on earth. (The church are [sic] the believers in Jesus Christ, not the buildings in which people meet.)

In the Bible, 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 verses 16 and 17 tell how Jesus came to take away His church. But, you have to believe the Bible is the Word of God in order to believe this.

I am sure that there will be a lot of speculation as to what happened to all these people. The theories of some scientists and world leaders will have so much credibility that most of the world will believe them.

It will sound like the truth!

But, there is only one truth. And, that truth is that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came back to earth and took with Him to Heaven all who believed in Him and made Him their Lord.

If you would like to give your life to Jesus Christ and be born again, it is not too late. First you must pray to God saying "Father I admit I am a sinner, and I will turn from my sin and do good. I believe that Jesus was your son and that He came here to die for me so that my sins would be forgiven. I ask you to forgive me and I will repent of my sins. In Jesus name I pray."

If you just prayed that prayer and meant it with all your heart, then God will know you as one of His own. You should now seek out others who have also given their lives to Christ, read a Bible daily, and do your best to bring others to Christ.

God bless you.

We're also told that the letter will also serve the purpose of saving our friends' immortal souls -- apparently the logic being that if you miss the first bus to heaven, there will be others, even though you will have to wait for a while at the bus stop with a lot of sketchy characters.  "This service will cost you seven dollars," the home page says, "and will hopefully gain the person you send it to an eternity in heaven."

Well, all I can say is: well done.  You've devised a way for gullible people to send you seven dollars for doing precisely nothing.  And given the number of devout gullible people in the world, I'm guessing the money is going to be rolling in for quite some time.

I guess the upside is that if it keeps the nutcases busy, then it's all good.  I feel the same way about the recent news that after a great deal of research, and contrary to the highly accurate art work posted above, Catholic church fathers have determined that angels don't have wings.  The unfortunately-named Father Renzo Lavatori, who calls himself an "angelologist," said in an interview, "(Y)ou have to understand that these are not real representations.  Angels do not have wings or look like cherubs...  You do not see angels so much as feel their presence - they are a bit like sunlight that refracts on you through a crystal vase."

So I'm glad we've got that settled, although it does make me wonder whether, since Father Lavatori calls himself an "angelologist," if I could declare myself to be a "dragonologist."  I've always rather liked dragons, which is why I have one tattooed on my leg, despite the fact that Leviticus 19:28 expressly says I can't do that, a defiance that probably disqualifies me for the Rapture right from the get-go.  So if you want to include me on your email list of people to be notified when you're Raptured, I'd appreciate it greatly.  May as well get the most for your seven dollars.

Duck amuck

I told myself that I wasn't going to write about Phil Robertson, the guy from Duck Dynasty who has become the darling of the Religious Right for saying that he has a hard time understanding gays.  I kept seeing article after article and tweet after tweet on the topic, and sat there going, "Uh-uh.  Nope.  Not doin' it.  Nope."

I think it may have been Sarah Palin's tweet that tipped the balance.

Free speech is endangered species; those "intolerants" hatin' & taking on Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing personal opinion take on us all

At that point, I said, "Screw it."  Just about everything I'd read about the situation from both sides was pissing me off, so I decided to write about it, because my cure for being pissed off is to write a post here on Skeptophilia and thus piss everyone else off.  So here we go; the 1,283,298th person to opine about the brilliance, ethics, and philosophy of Duck Dynasty.

Since I mentioned Sarah Palin, let's begin there, okay?  Starting with the fact that this is not about free speech.  Not one person I saw who objected to Robertson's pronouncement (which I shall quote momentarily) said anything about how he didn't have the right to say what he said.  They did, however, say he was bigoted and homophobic, and called him a variety of other epithets that I will refrain from mentioning, which is not the same thing.  A&E, the network that runs Duck Dynasty, suspended him because he'd crossed the line from homey and redneck and quaint into being offensive, a decision that the network executives have every right to make.  Free speech means that you have the right to state your opinion, but it doesn't protect you from the repercussions thereof with respect to keeping your job.

Of course, that didn't stop other political pundits from jumping on the bandwagon.  Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is considered a front runner for the Republican nomination in 2016, showed that his understanding of constitutional rights was a little sketchy for someone considering a run for the White House when he weighed in with, "I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment.  It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended."

Much as it pains me to admit that I agree with Jindal about anything, I have to say that in my opinion, the video of Miley Cyrus "twerking" was about as sexy as a dog humping someone's leg.  But that's as far as I'll go, and Jindal's claim that this has anything to do with the First Amendment is patently ridiculous.

So anyway, now it's time to throw out there what exactly Robertson said.  So here goes:

It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical...  Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong.  Sin becomes fine...  If somebody asks, I tell ’em what the Bible says.  All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups.

So, yeah.  I just have three things to say about all of this.

First of all, sexual attraction has very little to do with logic, so saying that it's logical for a guy to prefer a woman's naughty bits over a man's isn't so much bigoted as it is idiotic.  It's not like straight people sit around when they hit puberty thinking, "Hmmm, which set of parts do I find attractive?  Let's see, I dunno... but I'm sure I can use logic to figure this one out!"

Secondly, I'm calling bullshit on Robertson's claim of living biblically.  Let's start with all of the kosher laws in Leviticus, which I highly doubt that the squirrel-eating chaps on Duck Dynasty have even read, much less follow.  Also, it bears mention that anyone who lived by all of the precepts of the bible would be in jail, given that the bible has verses that explicitly command you to stone disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), allow you to own slaves as long as they come from another country (Leviticus 25:44-46), and order you to burn to death members of other religions, along with all of their livestock (Deuteronomy 13:13-19).  To name just a few.  So the whole idea of living your life by the bible's commands is ridiculous.  Folks who claim to be fundamentalists are automatically cherry-picking the stuff they like, especially from the Old Testament, which means that the people who are using biblical justification to hate on gays are actually just bigoted assholes who are afraid to come right out and admit it.

But third -- and this is directed at all of the people who are outraged by what Robertson said -- what exactly did you expect him to say?  Did you not know he was a bible-thumper?  This guy thumps the bible so damn hard it's surprising he doesn't dent the cover.  Was it really such a surprise that he doesn't like homosexuals?  And for cryin' in the sink, this is a "reality show," which means that the whole thing -- including the article in GQ that started this tempest in a teapot -- was engineered for one reason, and one reason alone, and that is publicity.  If they can rile people up, even offend the hell out them, that's okay, as long as their audience keeps watching.  This is why I'm guessing that the executives at A&E will very quickly step down from their high horses and reinstate Robertson.  This is too good a money-making opportunity to pass up, especially given that #PhilRobertsonForPresident is now trending on Twitter.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Robertson.  It's just that the last thing anyone should expect from a reality show is reality.

So the whole thing is just annoying, and I am seriously looking forward to it all dying down, which considering the attention span of the average American, should take about three days.  The bloviators over at Fox News will probably try to string it all out for longer than that, but chances are, we'll be on to the next celebrity gossip really soon, and I'll be able to move on to more important topics myself, like the fact that Spike is going to be airing a show called 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty starting January 10.

Now there's a show that isn't afraid to look reality in the face.

Climate change, sea ice, and regression to the mean

One of the least-recognized statistical phenomena, at least by your average layperson, is called regression to the mean.

Let me give you two examples.  Let's say that I gave some American, English-speaking students a true-or false test in Swahili, and told them to fill it in.  Their results, in other words, would be random, and you would expect (with a large enough sample size) that the average score would be right around 50%.

That doesn't mean, of course, that everyone got 50%.  Again, with a large enough population of test-takers, the scores would very likely fall on a normal distribution (also known as a "bell curve").  So far, nothing surprising here.

But suppose you took the top 5% of the test-takers -- the ones who scored well above the mean score of 50% -- and asked them to take a second test, this one written in Latvian.  What would happen to their scores?

The answer, of course, is that virtually all of them would fall -- not because they suddenly got stupider, but because their first scores were so far outside the norm that their second is extremely likely not to be.  If you gave all of the original students the test in Latvian, there would once again be that 5% who got anomalously high scores -- but it almost certainly wouldn't be the same students.

It doesn't need to be a random process to generate a regression to the mean.  I see this happening all the time with my students, who (I hope) aren't simply guessing answers randomly.  As a second example, let's say we have a kid who usually scores around 85%, and then she scores a 65% on a twenty-point quiz.  Her next score is pretty likely to rise -- even assuming that she studied the same amount on both of them.  The 65% was simply an anomalous low score.  Bouncing back up to 85% could just be a regression to the mean, especially given (1) how many factors can be involved in missing questions on quizzes, and (2) the fact that the difference between a 65% and an 85% on a twenty-point quiz is only four additional questions correct.

It's the reason why so many people expect "lucky streaks" (or unlucky ones) to keep going -- and they almost never do.  You're much more likely to see a regression to the mean sooner rather than later (or a "correction," as they call it in the stock market.)

So, the question I'm sure you're all asking by this point is: how does this relate to climate change?

Some of you may have seen recent articles, mostly in conservative media outlets, that have headlines like this one from The Daily Caller:  "Global Warming? Satellite Data Shows Arctic Sea Ice Coverage Up 50%!"  The author, Michael Bastasch, writes:

The North Pole is still there, and growing.  BBC News reports that data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft shows that Arctic sea ice coverage was nearly 9,000 cubic kilometers (2,100 cubic miles) by the end of this year’s melting season, up from about 6,000 cubic kilometers (1,400 cubic miles) during the same time last year... 

This is good news for the Arctic, but presents somewhat of a tough problem for environmentalists and some climate scientists who have been pummeled with evidence this year contradicting the theory of man-made global warming.

Scientists have been struggling to explain away the 15-year pause in rising global temperatures. Some have turned to solar activity or natural climate cycles to explain the hiatus in warming.

Oh, those poor scientists, always "struggling to explain away" stuff.  Well, sorry, Mr. Bastasch, but no climate scientist I've ever heard of has trouble understanding regression to the mean -- which is what you and your climate-denier friends, in your apparent ignorance, are referring to as a "pause."

Amusing, too, that The Daily Caller chose to illustrate their article on Arctic sea ice with a photograph of ice... that includes a penguin:

Be that as it may, let's see what an actual climate scientist has to say about this year's miraculous rebound, okay?  Here's what Andrew Shepherd, climatologist at University College London, has to say about the situation (quoted in an article in The Independent):

"The 9,000 cubic kilometres we measured in October is still very much smaller than the 20,000 cubic kilometres we estimate for the same time in the early 1980s. So today's minimum still ranks among the lowest for the past 30 years," Professor Shepherd said.  "The October figure is still a significant result and it's not to be underestimated, but it's not an unexpected result. We do see year-to-year variations in the sea ice due to changes in weather patterns."

Oh, and then there's this quote, from David Kennedy, deputy undersecretary for operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:  "The Arctic caught a bit of break in 2013 from the recent string of record-breaking warmth and ice melts of the last decade. But the relatively cool year in some parts of the Arctic does little to offset the long-term trend of the last 30 years: the Arctic is warming rapidly."

In other words: the previous years' ice coverage was so low that sooner or later, there was bound to be a cooler year.  It's just regression to the mean, even if the overall trend is still obvious to anyone who is not willfully blind.

Scientists look at patterns, not at cherry-picked data points that happen to support their favorite biases -- unlike the agenda-driven climate deniers who are (with luck) decreasing in number as the data piles up.  And the data is piling up.  NOAA's National Climatic Data Center just released November's Global Climate Report, and reported that the globally-averaged sea and land temperatures for November were the highest for that month since record keeping began in 1880.  "Aha," the deniers might say.  "Couldn't this just be an anomalously high number, just like our kid who got a 90% on a Swahili test that he couldn't read?  Aren't you committing just what you said was a statistical fallacy, in your opening paragraphs?"

Sure, could be.  Until you add the second thing that this month's report announced; that this is the 37th consecutive November, and 345th consecutive month, with an average temperature higher than the 20th century mean.

That, my friend, is a trend.  Show me a kid who can score higher than the mean on a test in Swahili 345 times in a row, and I'll show you a kid who is lying about the fact that he can actually read Swahili.

So, yeah.  Slam dunk.  Not that I expect that this will change the minds of the climate change deniers, any more than the retraction of the Seralini study will change the minds of the anti-GMO crowd, or the retraction of the Wakefield study will change the minds of the anti-vaxxers.  But it is becoming clearer and clearer that the people who are denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change are deliberately misinterpreting the data, or else ignoring it entirely.  The scientists, however they are portrayed as "struggling," seem to have a pretty good consensus about what is happening.

But unfortunately, nobody much seems to be explaining all of this to the layperson, leading lots of them to believe what the media is claiming -- that the climate is yo-yoing all over the place, and no one knows why, not even the scientists.  But what started out as legitimate questioning, back in the 1980s when the alarm bells on climate change first began to sound, has now turned into nothing more than "la-la-la-la-la-la-la, not listening."  Agenda-driven political organizations like the Heartland Institute are, at this point, no longer simply pointing out uncertainties in the data and analysis; they are lying outright.

To buy that this regression to the mean in the Arctic pack ice coverage is significant, and means that climate change isn't happening, requires you simultaneously to ignore a mountain of other data.  Meaning that you are coming to that conclusion for some other reason than science.  But the deniers don't want you to know that -- because a confused populace, who thinks that no one can know what's causing climate shifts and that (anyway) we couldn't do anything about it even if we did, is much more likely to vote to keep doing what we've always done.

Convenient for the powers-that-be, isn't it?