And while I’m posting on evolution…

I found this absolutely fascinating run-down of the continuum that exists between creation and evolution.

The categories: (from most to least literal)
Flat Earthers
Geocentrists
Young-Earth Creationism
Old Earth Creationism
Gap Creationism
Day-Age Creationism
Progressive Creationism
Intelligent Design Creationists
Evolutionary Creationism
Theistic Evolution
Materialist Evolutionism

Latter-day Saints find justification in the Book of Moses for the Day-Age view, although many I have talked to actually slide up toward the Evolutionary Creationism side of things.

Of particular interest was the graphic that shows the ancient Hebrew conception of the universe.

Last week in church (yes, I do still go, it’s very complex, more later), they did the lesson on the Creation, and everyone’s all “What’s the firmament?” So the chart does double duty: it explains what the firmament is, and shows how loony you’d have to be to take any of it literally.

Update: Oh, all right, not loony. But in this day and age, you’d have to have something wrong with your mind to reject what we know about space in favour of the view of a nomadic people that didn’t have telescopes.

Or else you’re just not thinking. That was my problem. Everything was just, “Oh, I’ll figure that out later,” and then I would never think about it again. Too often, smart people in a religious tradition (which is how I somewhat conceitedly classify myself) make no attempt to apply sound reasoning to religious belief. It’s like that whole domain is exempt from analysis. Or they know the belief won’t stand up, and ditching it is too painful. So — blackout.

I have no idea whether anyone’s reading this because
a) I haven’t bothered to go out and find a counter to use (come on, Blogger, it’s not that hard to supply a basic one)
and b) no one has commented yet.

But comments are enabled, so please feel free to engage in spirited commentary, or just say hello and tell me what you’re listening to right now.

This was mentioned in Gilovich’s “How We Know What Isn’t So“, but it happened to me, so I’m going to mention it.

I was talking to a person who says that she can get a parking spot just by believing she’s going to get a parking spot. She swears it works.

It’s easy to see why she would think so. We’re good at detecting patterns that we’re looking for. So she goes to find a spot and sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t. But perhaps she used to think she wasn’t going to get a spot, and only noticed all the times she didn’t. Now she thinks she’s going to get a spot, and only notices the times she does. In either case, she’s not influencing the universe; she’s just altering her perception. Which, to many people, is the same thing.

This is the way that faith works. Faith is a kind of biased reasoning in which we interpret essentially random data in a way that benefits patterns we already believe in. Then when we see the patterns, we take it as validation for our theory. It’s very difficult to avoid this kind of thinking, even for people who are trained to watch out for it, but critical thinking helps to control for this kind of bias. In particular, statistics has many ways to test whether a pattern is essentially random or whether it’s significant.

I’m going to start calling this the ‘parking spot’ effect.

I did ask my ‘parking friend’ to keep track of the times she did and didn’t find a spot. If she actually comes back with results, I’ll have to crunch some numbers. But if she’s really committed to her belief, I think I’m pretty safe.

PZ Myers takes down Orson Scott Card on the subject of intelligent design.

I read Card’s original article. He takes the tack of not exactly defending ID, but taking the piss out of ‘Darwininsts’ who try to quash it. Whoever they are. Both of them.

An understanding of good science is always enough to sweep away the overclaiming of those “scientists” who, as the religious fanatics they are, wish to impose their faith on everyone.

Geez, I really hate it when people claim that evolution is a religion! Or that science is somehow a religion that people exercise ‘faith’ in. I suppose this is the kind of thinking you can expect from religious folk — everything looks like a religion to them because it’s a salient concept for them. But religion differs from science and evolution in a few key respects.

Science v. religion A belief system is a body of doctrines, or statements about the way things are. Science is not a body of doctrines. It’s more like a system of tools (or methods) to try to distinguish true propositions from false ones. (I like Richard Feynman’s quote: Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.) So science and religion are really not describing the same kind of thing at all. (In another sense, science and religion are opposites because science is about accepting ideas that are well-supported, but religion is about accepting ideas that are unsupported. But that’s for another post.)

Evolution v. religion The main difference here is that evolution generates testable hypotheses that can be verified (and has been, over and over). Religion offers no testable hypotheses, and advances propositions that can never be verified.

The next person that tries this on me will get a stern but patient explanation.

Dick Cheney sez “it’s not an accident that we haven’t been hit in four years.”

This is what’s known as ‘playing both sides of the fence’. If there are no terrorist attacks, they say “We’re doing a super job.” But if there are attacks, they never say, “We’re doing a lousy job.” They say, “They’re getting desperate! We need more resources, more power, more everything to fight this devious enemy.” Either way, they work it to their advantage.

And what about four years ago? Does that mean that 9/11 wasn’t an accident either? By their logic, they should claim some responsibility for it happening, like perhaps their penchant for ignoring memos. But strangely, this idea never seems to occur to them.

Google does the right thing and refuses to hand over its records to the U.S. Government.

To me, the request was especially galling in the light of recent revelations regarding the Bush Administration’s illegal monitoring of U.S. citizens. The Bush team has never done anything to reassure the public that they will do the right thing with the power they’re given, or that they’ll be able to manage it intelligently.

As a researcher in language technology, I wonder if we’re going to be feeling a bit Oppenheimer-ish in ten years after our labours are used to unleash spybots onto every SMS, phone conversation, and email in the world. It’s not a topic that ever gets treated anywhere in the literature that I’ve seen (although more general AI work does cover this sometimes). Not even the Corpora list has had a whisper about the ramifications of this work. I think we’re due for a conversation about our responsibilities and our rights.

In the meantime, I hope Google fights that pack of maniacs off. So do many politicians of the Christian Right persuasion, I am sure. Bet there’s more than a smidgen of porn in those search histories.

My youngest, age 7, wanted to buy a toy gun. Two dollars at Chickenfeed.

I hate guns, and toy guns more specifically. In fact, I think I hate toy guns more than real guns. A real gun could potentially have some use, but a toy gun is just education.

So he knew that I hated guns, but he still wanted one, and he was prepared to pay for it

And so I mulled over the reasons pro and con.

Reasons against:

Reasons for:

Hmm, I thought. That’s more Good Reasons to let him get it than not to. But then I don’t get the outcome I want. What’s a parent to do?

So in the end, I said, “Get the gun, but leave it at Grandma’s.”

And as a result, he was happy. He got to choose. I communicated my Values clearly, but preserved his freedom of choice (which is another of my values). A clamp-down would have given me the outcome I wanted, but at the cost of his freedom and his belief that he can reason with me. That might have cost me later on.

It was a good balance. Except that he has a toy gun. I’m still not completely happy about that.

But he is.

I haven’t seen ‘Brokeback Mountain’ yet, but I was amused by this story in the Australian:

No Christian Hoorays for Hollywood

CHRISTIAN groups have launched a furious campaign against Hollywood, claiming the Golden Globe Awards promote films with gay or “leftist” themes to serve a political agenda.

Okay, now since when did homosexuality become inextricably linked with ‘leftist themes’? Are we saying that gays are in with the lefties? If I were a conservative gay person, I’d be incensed. Come on, right-wing gay folks, they’re trying to besmirch your image! Let’s hear you!

“Once again, the media elites are proving that their pet projects are more important than profit,” Janice Crouse, of Concerned Women for America, said.

“None of the three movies – Capote, Transamerica or Brokeback Mountain – is a box office hit. Brokeback Mountain has barely topped $US25million ($33million) in ticket sales.

“If America isn’t watching these films, why are they winning the awards?”

I don’t know; because the biggest moneymakers aren’t necessarily the best films?

Now there’s an idea: automatically give the Oscars to the highest grossing pictures. We can replace the Academy with a team of accountants. Quantity is quality.

Sheesh.

The criticism from the American heartland carried more weight than usual this year because Hollywood suffered the biggest decline in attendance in two decades last year.

It’s not hard to see where this reporter is coming from. How is this criticism carrying any weight at all? Is this criticism really from ‘the American heartland’ (whatever that is), or is it coming from the right-wing noise machine?

And that’s how it works, folks. Right-wing nutcases make noise pollution. And rather often, the news folks push it.

Of course, the right-wing nutcases can go ahead and make all the noise they want, just like left-wing nutcases can. I just wish people were as good at spotting the right-wing nutcases as they are at spotting the left-wing nutcases. I’m thinking Ward Churchill.