Blocking the light

I'm not sure if it's troubling or reassuring that the United States isn't the only industrialized country who has problems with superstitious, hyperreligious wingnuts.

Over here, of course, it's usually about the fact that you can't say anything about evolution without it blowing up in your face.  The issue has become so contentious that a lot of politicians, especially those who are courting conservative voters, won't even go there.  Witness Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's response when someone at a question-and-answer session a couple of weeks ago asked him if he accepted evolution.

"For me, I'm going to punt on that one as well," Walker said.  "That's a question a politician shouldn't be involved in one way or the other.  So I'm going to leave that one up to you."

Saying that "a politician shouldn't be involved" in a discussion about science is diametrically opposed to good sense.  It's the anti-science sentiment that is rampant in the U.S. that has kept us in this mess over climate change, for example.  But Walker's response is disingenuous at best; even if he does accept evolution, he's afraid to say so for fear of alienating his religious voter base.

Other countries have been facing the same sort of thing, and have responded differently.  France has, for example, outlawed the hijab; women can face a 150 euro fine for being in public with a face veil, and possibly be forced to take "citizenship instruction" as well.  This has prompted half the country to laud the Sarkozy government's ruling for supporting French culture, and the other half to cry out against its legislating intolerance and über-nationalism.

Britain is having its problems, too.  Christianity has been on the decline in the UK for some time now; Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, went on record all the way back in 2001 as saying that "Christianity is almost vanquished in the UK."  Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, agrees, and said last year that "Britain is no longer a nation of believers...  We are a post-Christian nation."

Post-Christian, however, doesn't mean irreligious.  Immigrants now form the most religious sector in both France and Great Britain.  And as France found out, this means that the powers-that-be have to figure out how to respond to demands for acceptance and tolerance of all sorts of beliefs that we less-religious folks find pretty mystifying.  This is what led to the decision by a school in Southall, a suburb of London, to deny schoolchildren the opportunity to see yesterday's total solar eclipse, citing unspecified "religious and cultural reasons" for doing so.

Most people who are knowledgeable about the situation think this was out of deference to the school's large Hindu population.  Many devout Hindus apparently believe that seeing an eclipse makes you impure, and that the only way to combat this is to "bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of god in order to overcome the powers of darkness."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, I recognize my bias here.  But really, people, what century are we in?  A couple of days ago, I wrote about the contingent here in the United States who believe that the eclipse is a portent of the End Times.  Now we have a different bunch who think that the purely mechanical movements of the Sun, Moon, and Earth result in your having to take a shower and do a little chanting so you won't be "unclean."  I'm all for letting people believe what they want, but denying an entire school the opportunity to see a rare astronomical phenomenon because some of them believe in what is (let's be honest, here) a ridiculous superstition is taking political correctness too far.  It's blocking the light in an entirely different way.

And there were some parents who agreed.  Vehemently.  The Evening Standard interviewed Phil Belman, whose seven-year-old daughter attends the school.  Belman said:  "My child went in having spent an hour preparing and making up her pinhole camera.  This is an issue about scientific matters versus religious superstition.  I am outraged - is it going to be Darwin next? We will be like mid America."

Did any of my fellow Americans wince just now?  That's how the rest of the rationalistic, science-accepting world sees us.  If you're a superstitious wingnut, you're "like mid America."

So like I said, I've always been a pretty live-and-let-live kind of guy.  But at some point, don't we need to start calling out goofy superstitions for what they are?  No, I'm sorry, your belief that 666 is an evil number doesn't mean that you will be allowed to flout company policy.  You can't sue someone for calling creationism "superstitious nonsense," because that is, in fact, what it is.  No, you can't expect an employer to hire you even if you don't want to work on Sunday.

And for cryin' in the sink, you shouldn't deny kids the right to learn some astronomy because some of them will want to rid themselves of unclean forces of darkness afterwards.  The appropriate response is, "I'm sorry you believe that, but this is science.  Bathe when you get home.  And when you're a little older, you might want to have a chat with your parents about what possible evidence they have that these beliefs are true."

Heated exchanges

The battle over climate change seems to be heating up.  If you'll pardon the pun.

I'm taking this as a good sign.  As long as the climate change deniers were able simply to wave their hands and say, "Pfft, it's not happening," and the only ones who reacted were the scientists, it was easy enough for politicians to ignore the whole thing.

And the disinformation campaign worked.  A poll last year showed that 23% of Americans disbelieve in climate change altogether, and another 37% believe the Earth is warming up, but that the shift is unrelated to human activities.  This by itself shows that relying on popular opinion to figure out what's true and what's not is specious reasoning, given that 97% of climate scientists (i.e. the experts) think that climate change is anthropogenic in origin.

[image courtesy of NOAA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Many politicians, however, have been reluctant to go along.  Now, though, their recalcitrance is being shown for what it is, a willful stubbornness that is finally being cast in the harsh light it deserves.  Whether this will put a dent in the numbers of disbelievers remains to be seen; but at least we're getting more than dead silence in the popular media.

First, we have Senator Ted Cruz, chairperson of the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space, an appointment that has always struck me as putting a weasel in charge of a henhouse.  Cruz appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers earlier this week, and laid out his ignorance about the endeavor he's supposed to be overseeing thusly:

I just came back from New Hampshire where there's snow and ice everywhere. And my view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there's been zero warming, none whatsoever. It's why, you remember how it used to be called global warming, and then magically the theory changed to climate change?

"It's cold outside, so the Earth isn't warming up" is beginning to piss me off as much as the creationists' canard, "if we came from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?"  Of course, both of these are talking points that appeal to people who don't understand science in general, and who therefore form Cruz's voter base.  But what's interesting is the response to his moronic statement.  Instead of the usual -- which is that the only negative press the story received would be amongst the tree-hugger contingent -- Cruz is getting a shellacking in the popular media.  Kevin Trenberth, a leading climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has been quoted in dozens of places as calling Cruz's statements "a load of claptrap... absolute bunk."  Slate jumped into the fray, with a piece by astronomer Phil Plait that was pretty unequivocal:

What Cruz said, in its entirety, is what comes out of the south end of a north-facing bull... Cruz is right in one sense; we should follow the science. But the realscience, not the nonsense he’s saying. Real science doesn’t cherry-pick one result that appears (incorrectly) to back up an outrageous claim, but ignore the overwhelming amount of evidence that this claim is dead wrong.

The story was also covered by EOnline, the Washington Examiner, and Vice, although we had the aptly-named Hot Air lauding Cruz for his idiotic stance, and calling all but 3% of working climatologists the "left's climate alarmists" and their data-driven science a "liberal fad."

So you can't win 'em all.  But even Cruz came off well as compared to Florida governor Rick Scott, whose administration has banned state employees from using the words "climate change" and "global warming" in official communications.

Because, you know, if you don't say something, that means it's not happening.

The new rule, which many people (including myself) thought couldn't be serious, was implemented for the first time only two weeks after it was put into place.  Barton Bibler, DEP Land Management Plan Coordinator for the state of Florida, was put on involuntary leave last week for uttering the forbidden words.  A press release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility states:

Mr. Bibler’s official notes on this meeting reflected all of that discussion.  He was directed to remove any hot button issues, especially explicit references to climate change, and then was given a letter of reprimand for supposedly misrepresenting that the ‘official meeting agenda included climate change.’  As he was given the reprimand on March 9th, Mr. Bibler was told to not return to work for two days which would be charged against his personal leave time.

Bibler was told not to return to work until he had filed with the DEP a medical release form from his doctor evaluating him for an unspecified "medical condition and behavior."

Sounds a little Orwellian, doesn't it?  You have to wonder if Bibler is going to find that he has a new doctor, one who works for the Ministry of Truth.

But Scott hasn't had things all his way, either.  On Monday FEMA issued a statement that they would not provide emergency relief money for states that didn't plan ahead for the effects of climate change themselves, which puts Florida squarely in the bullseye, given that when I go upstairs into my attic I've exceeded the elevation gain over the majority of the state.  The new guidelines state:

The challenges posed by climate change, such as more intense storms, frequent heavy precipitation, heat waves, drought, extreme flooding, and higher sea levels, could significantly alter the types and magnitudes of hazards impacting states in the future.  States must assess vulnerability, identify a strategy to guide decisions and investments, and implement actions that will reduce risk, including impacts from a changing climate.

So Scott might want to reconsider his stance, given that a minor sea level rise could result in half of the state he governs being underwater.

All of which leaves me guardedly hopeful.  The science disbelievers still have a strong voice, but at least we're seeing good sense reaching more of the public, given the way these stories have been covered.  I hope the politicians can take action before it's too late; we're already seeing some pretty wild extremes in the weather, including last week's Typhoon Pam, a category-5 storm that flattened every structure on several islands in the nation of Vanuatu and whose death toll is yet to be determined.

But the whole thing puts me in mind of the famous quote from Mohandas Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you... then you win."

We seem to be on the third step in Gandhi's hierarchy, which should give us all reason for hope.

Spells for sale

Today I learned that you can buy magical spells on Etsy.

When I found out about this, I thought, of course you can.  Everything else is for sale, so why not this?  So out of curiosity, I went to the Etsy site of the particular witch I heard about, one Victoria Zasikowski of Cardiff, Wales, to take a look around.

I clicked on the first one on the site, which was "Love and Relationship Spells."  (And for the curious, no, it wasn't because I need any particular help in that department myself.)  There's a description of what we get for our $22.64, and it includes the following:

• The lighting of a handmade candle that has been consecrated in our honor
• The use of "spellvelopes," small envelopes of a particular color depending on what sort of spell we'd like cast; the envelopes are burned in a cauldron
• Messages written in magickal [sic] "Dove's Blood Ink"
• Chants of spells done in our honor
• Photographs of the spell casting, sent to us via email; one will be of the burned-down candle, to prove that she let it burn all the way down

As far as what she'll cast a spell for, it can be for any of a number of things; attracting a significant other, separating from someone you've decided you don't like, making sure your lover stays faithful, having more sex, having better sex, attracting back an ex-lover, or finding out about your future lover.

And this is just scratching the surface.  She also does psychic readings of photographs, tarot cards readings, pendulum readings, and past life readings.  And for a cool $188 she will do five days worth of "Black Magick Spells" that will really heat things up in the bedroom for you.

The Magic Circle (1886) by John William Waterhouse [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

As you might guess, this site had me caveat emptor-ing like mad.  Especially when I read the disclaimer that's on each of the pages for specific spells:

PLEASE NOTE THAT NO DECENT SPELLCASTER WILL EVER GUARANTEE A SPELL WILL WORK. If it were oh so simple, we spell casters would all be filthy rich ! YES, there is a very high effectiveness rate for properly-performed magick, but sometimes things don't quite work out. This could be for the following reasons : 

1. A single casting was not suffice [sic], as the situation was too complex or deep rooted
2. Spell castings alone were not enough - the situation might benefit from you yourself working with a range of physical products to pour your own energy into things
3. You have an excessive amount of negative energy about it all, or about it's [sic] chances of working, which poison's [sic] the magick
4. You are being unrealistic, for example trying to win an ex back after 3 years of being without him
5. It might not have been "meant to be". The universe has other plans for you.

Which all sounds mighty convenient.  It boils down to spending 22 bucks for something that might or might not work, and if it doesn't work, it could be the spell's fault, your fault, or the universe's fault.

But before you laugh too hard, how different is this from the practice of petitionary prayer?  The devout are always asking god for things, from the banal ("please lord let me not get in a traffic jam on the way to work this morning") to the catastrophic ("cure my father of terminal cancer").  And of course, sometimes these prayers seem to work, and sometimes nothing happens.  If they don't work -- well "god works in mysterious ways" or "god has something better planned" or "you didn't pray hard enough" or "it was god's will that it happened this way."  If it does work, then hey!  Praise the lord!  He is so wonderful!

And I was going to say that the difference between the Etsy spell-caster and conventional petitionary prayer was that in prayer, no one's asking you for money.  But then I remembered that just a couple of days ago, the aptly-named American televangelist Creflo Dollar asked his faithful followers to give him $60 million so that he could buy a new luxury jet with which to Spread the Holy Word.

So maybe there's no difference after all, except one of scale.

And interestingly, there's a contingent amongst the witching community that actually thinks it ruins things to ask for money.  Somehow, being associated with profit will damage the energy, or some such.  Zasikowski, predictably, disagrees.  "There is a belief among some that ‘spiritual’ gifts should be given free of charge,= because they are spiritual," Zasikowski said.  "Time and effort spent should apparently be given free of charge, whereas if you are a hairdresser or nurse, etc, it is your right to be paid.  This double standard is ludicrous."

Except that when you're a hairdresser or nurse, your clients have the right to expect that their hair will end up looking nice and their health care needs will be addressed, respectively.  Here, it seems, you stand a good chance of spending $22 and getting absolutely nothing in return but a photo of a burned-out candle.

Anyway.  I'm unlikely to ask Ms. Zasikowski (or anyone else) to cast a spell for me.  For one thing, I'm pretty good with my life as it is.  For another, there are better uses for twenty bucks, which include, in my opinion, using it to start a campfire.  But if you're interested, might I suggest the "Angel Messages Reading?"  In it, she will get in touch with some angels, who will then relay to her messages that they feel "have the most important meaning for you at this time in your life."  However, you are advised that these messages "may not necessarily have anything to do with something directly bothering you."

You'd think angels could be a little more specific than that, wouldn't you?  Oh, well.  Maybe they "work in mysterious ways," too.

Signs in the skies

This Friday is the Vernal Equinox, known colloquially as the "First Day of Spring," a designation we here in upstate New York find grimly amusing, given that we can still get snow in mid-May.  Be that as it may, the day does seem like a turning point, a Day of Significance, a step toward shorter nights and warmer weather.

This year, it's also the day some of us will get to see another landmark natural phenomenon: a total solar eclipse.  Unfortunately, it will only be visible in areas even further north than I am.  The path of totality will spiral counterclockwise from the southern tip of Greenland, heading between Iceland and Scotland, passing over the Faeroe Islands and Svalbard, and finally ending near the North Pole.

[image courtesy of photographer Luc Viatour and the Creative Commons]

And there's nothing like a coincidence to get the apocalyptoids babbling away like mad.  Over at the hyper-religious wacko website World Net Daily, we find out that this is a sign of the End Times.  How many signs that The End Is Near does this make, now?  I haven't kept track.  Probably better that I didn't waste my time counting, because they keep coming even though the Earth is showing no sign of ending.

But they don't let a little thing like a 0% success rate slow them down at all.  "The North Pole can’t really be called the territory of any particular nation or people," [Root Source Ltd.'s co-founder Bob] O’Dell said.  "This is likely a message from God to the entire world."  The article puts a particular emphasis on the fact that this confluence of events only happens once every 100,000 years, which is kind of funny because World Net Daily keeps telling us that the Earth is (1) only 6,000 years old, and (2) is going to end soon, so you'd think that they wouldn't worry much about the timing of the event either way.

But they go on to tell us how significant this all is anyhow:

Pastor Mark Biltz, author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs,” sees a heavenly warning in the consequences of the eclipse, especially for the northern Europeans, who will be most affected. 

In an exclusive interview with WND, Biltz explained, “In Jewish tradition, a total solar eclipse is a warning to the Gentiles and a sign of judgment on the nations. When we look at where the darkness will be, it will be in northern European countries like England and Sweden where we see the rise of Islam and anti-Israel sentiment. Europeans especially should take heed.” 

Biltz also sees significance in the timing of the solar eclipse. 

“An event of this magnitude at the very beginning of the religious new year demands attention. As the Bible tells us, there will be signs in the heavens on the feast days, and this is a very significant sign on a critical day.

Given that the "very significant sign" is mostly going to be visible to polar bears, you have to wonder who god was trying to send a message to.  But He Works In Mysterious Ways, and all that sort of stuff.

And of course, it's not the only sign we're going to be given this year.  There's also the whole "blood moon" thing, better known to sane people as a "lunar eclipse:"

"Only a few weeks after this total solar eclipse, there with be a blood moon over Passover," [Biltz] said. "If the total solar eclipse is a sign to the gentiles, this will be a sign to the Jewish people.

"This comes at a time when American aid for Israel has become an important political issue in the United States. But Israelis know they cannot put their survival in the hands of one who wishes their demise."

So there you are, then.  Two celestial omens and a pot shot at President Obama, all in the same article.

What makes me wonder even more about this worldview, however, is how they can think eclipses are a portent in the first place.  We now can predict eclipses centuries into the future; they occur regularly, often several a year (although extended total solar eclipses are less common).  They're no more mysterious than all three of a clock's hands landing simultaneously on the 12 twice a day.

So the whole apocalyptic prophecy thing implies that if god wanted to, he could make the eclipses happen on a different day, that somehow the timing is a warning of imminent catastrophe, not a purely mechanical outcome of the movements of the Earth and Moon.  Or is it the other way around, that god is required to begin the End Times right after Friday's solar eclipse, that he's been sitting up there twiddling his thumbs until the planets all align?

Either way, it seems like they're implying that god doesn't have much choice in the matter, that either (1) he couldn't make the eclipse occur on a different day even if he wanted to, or (2) he is being forced to bring the world to an end by the position of some random astronomical objects.  Which kind of makes you question how almighty these people think he is.

Of course, I realize that this is not about logic.  It's about putting the fear of the lord into the hearts of the true believers.  And it's also about money; the main promoter of the whole "blood moon" thing is our old pal John Hagee, the multi-millionaire pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.  Shut off your brains and open your pocketbooks, that's Reverend Hagee's motto.

So anyway.  Don't cancel your plans for April, because I'm pretty damn sure that the solar eclipse isn't warning us of anything but the fact that the Moon goes around the Earth and sometimes blocks the light from the Sun, which we knew anyway.  And the Spring Equinox isn't about anything but axial tilt and the Earth going around the Sun, which most of us also knew, and which will eventually bring warmer weather even to the "four-season climates" like upstate New York.  I hear that this year, summer is scheduled for the second Thursday in July.  I can't wait.

The partisan brain

I tend to avoid politics, both here on Skeptophilia and also in my personal life.  There are two reasons for this: first, I find most political issues such a snarled Gordian knot that I have no idea how anyone could be smart enough to solve them; and second, even on the issues about which I have strong opinions, I've found that arguing with people seldom changes minds on either side.  So entering into an argument that basically is "I think so because I think so," and is unlikely to convince anyone of anything, might be the very definition of the word "pointless."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I do find it interesting, however, to consider why people so seldom shift their political views, even when presented with facts and data to the contrary.  It's like we're stuck in our worldview, unable to move away from the narrow little window we're looking out of.  And now, some scientific research might have an answer for why that is.

Darren Schreiber et al. of the University of Exeter published a fascinating paper last month called "Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans" in the online journal PLOS-ONE, which has as its main claim that there are fundamental differences in brain function between liberals and conservatives.  Studies had already shown that there is a brain structure difference; liberals tend to have more gray matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, conservatives in the amygdala.  But suggestive as that is, differences in structure don't always imply differences in function, so it was premature to conclude that these structural differences caused individuals to adopt particular political stances.

In this case, however, it appears that the earlier researchers were on to something.  In particular, there seemed to be a biological underpinning to the well-demonstrated tendency of conservatives to be risk-averse and liberals to be risk-seeking.  The authors write:

(C)onservatives demonstrate stronger attitudinal reactions to situations of threat and conflict. In contrast, liberals tend to be seek out novelty and uncertainty.  Moreover, Democrats, who are well known to be more politically liberal, are more risk accepting than Republicans, who are more politically conservative.  While ideology appears to drive reactions to the environment, environmental cues also influence political attitudes.  For instance, external threats prime more conservative attitudes among liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

Schreiber et al. set out to see if the different attitudes toward risk would show up on a fMRI, which would indicate that there was a functional difference between the brains of liberals and conservatives:

To test a conjecture that ideological differences between partisans reflect distinctive neural processes, we matched publicly available party registration records with the names of participants (35 males, 47 females) who had previously taken part in an experiment designed to examine risk-taking behavior during functional brain imaging...  Individuals completed a simple risk-taking decision-making task during which participants were presented with three numbers in ascending order (20, 40, and 80) for one second each.  While pressing a button during the presentation of the number 20 on the screen always resulted in a gain of 20 cents, waiting to select 40 or 80 was associated with a pre-determined possibility of either gaining or losing 40 or 80 cents.  Therefore, participants chose between a lower “safe” payoff and a higher risky payoff.  The probabilities of losing 40 or 80 cents were calibrated so that there was no expected value advantage to choosing 20, 40 or 80 during the task, i.e. the overall pay-off would have been the same for each pure strategy.

They found that the two groups did, indeed, show different levels of activity in the two parts of the brain that earlier research had shown to differ:

Consistent with the findings of structural differences by Kanai et al, significantly greater activation was observed in the right amygdala for Republicans and in the left posterior insula (near the temporal-parietal junction) in Democrats when making winning risky versus winning safe decisions. No significant differences were observed in the entorhinal cortex or anterior cingulate cortex. All attempts to use behavior to distinguish Republicans from Democrats were unsuccessful, suggesting that different neural mechanisms may underlie apparently similar patterns of behavior.

The authors are clear in their conclusion that they, too, have established correlation, but are yet to show causation; "One might infer that the differing brain structures identified by Kanai et al. suggest genetic foundations for the differences in ideology," they write, in their discussion of results.  "However, recent work has shown that changes in cognitive function can lead to changes in brain structure."  So how much of the difference they and others have shown is genetic in origin, and how much due to remodeling of the brain's circuitry because of the environment, is still uncertain.

It does support, however, the fruitlessness of political argument.  If there is a biological underpinning to political stance, it's to be expected that it's not going to be easy to change.  There are cases, of course, where it's important to try -- in issues of social justice and care for the environment, for example.  But this research shows pretty clearly that such battles aren't going to be easy to win.

And you have to wonder what a fMRI would show for a generally apolitical person like myself.  No brain activity whatsoever?

Maybe I'm better off not knowing.

Science-friendly illogic

I usually don't blog about what other people put in their blogs.  This kind of thing can rapidly devolve into a bunch of shouted opinions, rather than a reasoned set of arguments that are actually based upon evidence.

But just yesterday I ran into a blog that (1) cited real research, and (2) drew conclusions from that research that were so off the rails that I had to comment.  I'm referring to the piece over at Religion News Service by Cathy Lynn Grossman entitled, "God Knows, Evangelicals Are More Science-Friendly Than You Think."  Grossman was part of a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's yearly Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, and commented upon research presented at that event by Elaine Howard Ecklund, sociologist at Rice University.

Ecklund's research surrounded the attitudes by evangelicals toward science.  She described the following data from her study:

• 48% of the evangelicals in her study viewed science and religion as complementary.
• 21% saw the two worldviews as entirely independent of one another (which I am interpreting to be a version of Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" idea).
• A little over 30% saw the two views as in opposition to each other.

84% of evangelicals, Grossman said, "say modern science is going good [sic] in the world."  And she interprets this as meaning that evangelicals are actually, contrary to appearances, "science friendly."  Grossman writes:

Now, the myth that bites the data dust, is one that proclaims evangelicals are a monolithic group of young-earth creationists opposed to theories of human evolution... 

(M)edia... sometimes incorrectly conflate the conservative evangelical view with all Christians’ views under the general “religion” terminology. 

I said this may allow a small subset to dictate the terms of the national science-and-religion conversation although they are not representative in numbers -– or point of view. This could lead to a great deal of energy devoted to winning the approval of the shrinking group and aging group that believes the Bible trumps science on critical issues.

Well, here's the problem with all of this.

This seems to me to be the inherent bias that makes everyone think they're an above-average driver.  Called the Dunning-Kruger effect, it is described by psychologist David Dunning, whose team first described the phenomenon, thusly:

Incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are...  What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge. 

An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.

Now, allow me to say right away that I'm not calling evangelicals incompetent and/or ignorant as a group.  I have a friend who is a diehard evangelical, and he's one of the best-read, most thoughtful (in both senses of the word) people I know.  But what I am pointing out is that people are poor judges of their own understanding and attitudes -- and on that level, Dunning's second paragraph is referring to all of us.

So Ecklund's data, and Grossman's conclusions from it, are not so much wrong as they are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if evangelicals think they're supportive of science, just like my opinion of my own driving ability isn't necessarily reflective of reality.  I'm much more likely to take the evangelicals' wholesale rejection of evolution and climate science as an indication of their lack of support and/or understanding of science than I would their opinions regarding their own attitudes toward it.

And, of course, there's that troubling 30% of evangelicals who do see religion and science as opposed, a group that Grossman glides right past.  She does, however, admit that scientists would probably find it "troubling" that 60% of evangelicals say that "scientists should be open to considering miracles in their theories."

Troubling doesn't begin to describe it, lady.

That doesn't stop Grossman from painting the Religious Right as one big happy science-loving family, and she can't resist ending by giving us secular rationalists a little cautionary kick in the ass:

[S]cientists who want to write off evangelical views as inconsequential may not want to celebrate those trends [that young people are leaving the church in record numbers]. The trend to emphasize personal experience and individualized spirituality over the authority of Scripture or religious denominational theology is part of a larger cultural trend toward rejecting authority. 

The next group to fall victim to that trend could well be the voices of science.

Which may be the most obvious evidence of all that Grossman herself doesn't understand science.  Science doesn't proceed by authority; it proceeds by hard evidence.  Stephen Hawking, one of the most widely respected authorities in physics, altered his position on information loss in black holes when another scientist, John Preskill, demonstrated that he was wrong.  The theoretical refutation of Hawking's position was later confirmed by data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.  Significantly, no one -- including Hawking himself -- said, "you have to listen to me, I'm an authority."

If anything, the trend of rejection of authority and "personal experience" works entirely in science's favor.  The less personal bias a scientist has, the less dependence on the word of authority, the more (s)he can think critically about how the world works.

So all in all, I'd like to thank Grossman and Ecklund for the good news, however they delivered it in odd packaging.  Given my own set of biases, I'm not going to be likely to see the data they so lauded in anything but an optimistic light.

Just like I do my own ability to drive.  Because whatever else you might say about me, I have mad driving skills.

Pi à la mode

Well, it's Pi Day -- 3/14 -- at least if you live in the United States, where we put the month first.  Otherwise, it's 14/3, which is much less momentous.  But we can do what we want, rest of the world be damned, because, you know, we're 'Murica and all.

But if you accept that the month comes first, this is actually a really special Pi Day, because at a little before 9:30 AM, it will be 3/14/15 9:26:53, which is pretty cool.  And pi, you have to admit, is an awesome number.  It's the first number most of us run into in school that's irrational -- that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers, and whose decimal expansion never terminates or repeats.

Pi is formally defined as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter.  Its approximate value was known to Chinese, Indian, and Greek mathematicians as far back as 2,500 years ago; a more precise method for determining the value of pi was discovered by the extraordinary Indian mathematician Madhava of Sangamagrama in the 14th century, and rediscovered by Gottfried Leibniz of Germany three hundred years later.  Both of them had uncovered the peculiar relationship now called the Madhava-Leibniz formula:

This was just the first of many appearances of pi in unusual places -- it's a number that crops up over and over in physics, for example.

All of which has made it important that we know pi to a great degree of accuracy.  Computers have now been used to calculate pi to 13.3 trillion digits, which is pretty damned impressive, and which makes what a wingnut who calls himself "Jain108" is claiming even crazier.

Jain108 says we've got pi wrong. Pi, he says, is actually 3.144.  Give or take.  Which, I think we can all agree, is far less than accurate to within 13.3 trillion digits. But this doesn't dissuade Jain108 at all.   He says if we just accept his value, we'll find our pipes fitting together better:

(A)n ex-Engineer from NASA, "Smokey” admitted (via email) that when he was making metal cylinders for this same Mooncraft, finished parts just did not fit perfectly, so an adjusted value for Pi was also implemented.  At the time, he thought nothing about it, but after reading an internet article called The True Value of Pi, by Jain 108, he made contact.

Because that couldn't have anything to do with inaccuracies of construction, or anything.

But that's not his only argument.  We should accept his higher value for pi because, I dunno, mysticism or something:

For reasons that will be soon explained, traditional Pi is deficient because historically it has awkwardly used logical straight lines to measure illogical curvature.  Thus, by using the highest level of mathematics known as Intuitive Maths, the True Value of Pi must be a bit more than anticipated to compensate for the mysterious "Area Under The Curve”.  When this is done, the value, currently known as JainPi, = 3.144… can be derived, by knowing the precise Height of the Cheops Pyramid which is based on the Divine Phi Proportion (1.618…).  Instead of setting our diameter at 1 unit or 1 square, something magical happens when we set the diameter at the diagonal length of a Double Square = 2.236… which is the Square Root of 5 (meaning 2.236… x 2.236… = 5). This is the critical part of the formula that derives Phi (1+√5)÷2, and was used by ancient vedic seers as their starting point to construct their most important diagram or ‘Yantra’ or power-art called the Sri Yantra.  With a Root 5 diameter, the translation of the Phi’s formula into a geometric construct derives the royal Maltese Cross symbol, concluding that Phi is Pi, that Phi generates Pi, and that Pi must be derived with a knowledge of the Harmonics of Phi.  When this is understood and utilized, we will collectively enter into a veritable Space Age.

Oh! Okay! I mean, my only question would be, "What?"  This is about as lucid as when people like Diane Tessman start to babble about using quantum physics to explain astrology.

But I thought I'd soldier on, so I kept reading.  And then I ran into a section where Jain108 claims that his ideas are proven because Queen Elizabeth and "Pope Benedictine XVI" both have worn robes with Maltese crosses, and something about the Ark of the Covenant.  So despite my earlier objections, I think we can all agree that what we have here is an "air-tight case."

Other fun stuff abounds in this website, such as when he calls 3.144 "the PIN number of the universe."  But my favorite part of what Jain108 calls "3.144ology" is when he starts talking about a guy named Billy Meier, who is "one of the most controversial members of the UFO community:"

Billy Meier is a Swiss farmer in contact with Plearjen people (humans like you and me) since the age of 6.  In Contact 251 it is stated :
"In the process they will discover that the base for pi was miscalculated.  By eliminating the error in pi, and correcting future computations based on pi, scientists and their amazing, highly developed technology will have the capability to make unimaginable energies accessible to the people of Earth”.

So if the "Plearjen people" are "humans like you and me," what makes them "Plearjen people?"  And how could changing the value of pi make us access "unimaginable energies?"

The only thing in the way is the pride and arrogance of mathematicians who cannot conceive of such a notion that Pi could be anything else than what their books have instructed them to believe.  It is their lack of understanding of Fractal Harmonics (based on the cascading proportions of the Fibonacci Sequence) which hinders them to comprehend the elegance of the geometric solution known as the Fairywand Method identical to Saint Germain’s Maltese Cross.  Fractal Harmonics allows us to zoom forever into the Area Under The Curve and detect more infinitesimal Areas Under The Curve, concluding that old Pi is only an approximation, a limit of millions or billions of straight lines, that it is deficient, that the True Value of Pi must be a fraction more than we estimated, and that it must be based on Phi, The Golden Mean Harmonics.  Thus 4 divided by the Square Root of Phi (1.272…) gives the correct frequency of 3.144… its really very simple. 

True Pi is like a crystalline seal or a Recoding ready to unlock, to override the old genetic imprint of degeneration, of lack and sickness.  It will, in effect, spark a Process of Purification.

The "Fairywand Method" allows you to "zoom forever into the Area Under The Curve."  So there you are, then.

In any case, I'm sorry if you thought you were going to be able to celebrate the extra-special Pi Day today.  Since Jain108's version of pi is, more exactly, 3.14460551..., you'll have to wait until March 14, 2046, at five minutes and 51 seconds past midnight, to be able to celebrate your Pi Moment.

I hope the thousands of pies people have purchased to celebrate the occasion will keep until then.