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Category: science (page 8 of 8)

Is atheism falsifiable?

1 September 2007 / / 4 Comments

I was invited to a semi-formal dinner by a charming and gracious coterie of students the other evening. Speeches were made, dessert was had, and the wine and the orange juice were mingled in equal measure. It’s always a pleasure to have a few hours of conversation with intelligent people. My only concerns were keeping my forks straight, and not seeming to be the crusty atheist professor of university lore. I’m not all that crusty really, so I did okay.

But one student, knowing my views, asked, “Is atheism falsifible?”

I’d been talking about falsifiability in class, you see. In order for a theory to be scientifically valid, there needs to be a way to prove it’s wrong. In class I’d used the example of last-Thursdayism: the belief that the entire universe was created last Thursday, complete with buildings, people, and everything, mostly just as it is now. And if you tell a last-Thursdayist “I think I can remember stuff that happened before last Thursday,” they’ll say, “Those are false memories that were created in your mind at the same time as everything else.” There’s no evidence you can present that would disprove their theory. And theists often say “You can’t prove God exists, but you can’t disprove it either,” as though this was a strength. In fact, this non-falsifiability is reason enough to throw it out. If a theory isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t helpful.

So, is atheism falsifiable? My first response was “Atheism makes no claims, it merely asserts that the claims of theists are baseless.” Which is a kind of claim, so I wasn’t entirely happy about that answer.

When I thought about it for a few more seconds, I realised that there are many things that would conceivably falsify atheism:

  • God, angels, or supernatural beings could appear and allow themselves to be examined.
  • There could be a study that shows that some goddy practice leads to some effect, in such a way that only supernatural forces could be at work. Many such studies have been tried (for example, the healing power of prayer), but so far nothing has worked reproducibly.
  • Evidence of something having been created.
  • Any kind of reproducible phenomenon that could only be explained by resorting to some kind of supernatural force.

So far, such evidence has not been forthcoming, and I’m not holding my breath. That’s why I provisionally accept the atheist point of view. If such evidence comes to light, I’ll examine it, and change my view.

However, if this evidence were to appear, it wouldn’t necessarily drive me back to church. I’d still have the question of which religion to use. There are millions, and believers have no consensus about which one is correct because there’s no data to appeal to. Just another problem for a non-empirical theory.

Bridge collapse

13 August 2007 / / 3 Comments

I realise it’s been a while since the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge, but it’s taken me a while to sort out my thoughts on it. I’ve thought about how we trust others as we cross bridges and eat food and breathe air, and for the social contract to be violated in this way I find inexcusable. I’ve thought of how we plan our lives, and how those plans can be cut short.

But the thought that keeps coming back to me is this: No astrologer saw it coming. No one’s horoscope said ‘Don’t cross the I-35W today.’ No psychic predicted the collapse. No tea-leaf reader prognosticated such a tragedy. No readings of entrails gave a hint. And no prophet, priest, or pastor prophesied the event in any way that would have been of any help to anyone.

Foretelling the future is something that they all claim to be capable of, but they never actually do. Because they can’t. The only thing that could was the scientific method — someone inspecting the bridge and looking for things that would signal danger. And it turns out that no one was listening.

Mirror neurons, gesture, and culture

13 August 2007 / / 3 Comments

Interesting things, those mirror neurons. They’re in our brain, and they fire not only when we do something, but also when we see someone else doing that thing. They’ve been credited with paving the way for language, since they allow us to not only make noise but also perceive when the other person is making noise. They may even provide an evolutionary explanation for human attributes like compassion and empathy, since they allow us to feel the feelings of others.

But mirror neurons may have some not-so-salubrious effects. I have a suspicion that they may contribute to the deplorable discourse we find on the web. Think about it. Some moronic troll appears and acts like an idiot. Now what happens? Everyone’s idiot mirror neurons fire, and the whole discussion deteriorates unless thinking people make a conscious effort. Trenchant humour is a way out of the cycle; it’s just a shame not everyone’s capable of it.

Now a study from UCLA examines the effect of culture on mirror neurons.

When it comes to the influence of culture, the researchers found that the mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether individuals are looking at someone who shares their culture or someone who doesn’t.

The researchers had two actors — one American, the other Nicaraguan — perform a series of American, Nicaraguan and meaningless hand gestures for a group of American subjects. A procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to measure the observers’ levels of corticospinal excitability, which scientists use to gauge the activity of mirror neurons.

Molnar-Szakacs and Iacoboni found that the American observers demonstrated higher mirror neuron activity when observing the American making the gestures — whether they were American, Nicaraguan or meaningless — than when viewing the Nicaraguan. Even when the Nicaraguan actor performed American gestures, the observers’ mirror neuron activity dropped.

At this point, I was thinking, “Why are they calling it ‘culture’? Aren’t their brains just switching off when they see someone with different skin colour?” Apparently not entirely. When Americans watched the Nicaraguan doing Nicaraguan gestures, activity was once again high.

It appears that neural systems supporting memory, empathy and general cognition encode information differently depending on who’s giving the information — a member of one’s own cultural or ethnic in-group or a member of an out-group. Ethnic in-group membership and a culturally learned motor repertoire more strongly influence the brain’s responses to observed actions, specifically actions used in social communication.

“An important conclusion from these results is that culture has a measurable influence on our brain and, as a result, our behavior. Researchers need to take this into consideration when drawing conclusions about brain function and human behavior,” said Molnar-Szakacs.

It’s good to be aware of how deep this in-group out-group stuff can go.

World Environment Day

5 June 2007 / / 5 Comments

In honor of World Environment Day, I’d like to invite you to tell a global warming denier to get nicked. I did recently, and it was a good experience.

This time it was the LaRouche folks, back on campus after a long hiatus. The newspaper handout said “Global Warming is a Fraud!”

Now it’s one thing to see all sides of an issue and take a critical stance on the issues of the day. It’s quite another to create doubt where none exists, which is after all the business of global warming deniers, intelligent design creationists, flat earthers, and (dare I say) holocaust deniers, all of whom refuse to accept consensus when the evidence is in.

And yes, global weather is a really complex thing. The problem with these guys is that they’re not good at complex. Have a look at the nuance these guys are capable of:

Not that I disagree with Dick Cheney as Child of Satan, but if I ever hand out something like this on street corners, please restrain me. Thank goodness for LaRouche’s tireless efforts to, er, bring Cheney down.

So when offered the newspaper, I genially invited the gentleman to shove it up his ass. His friend muttered “idiot” after me. It was the most productive conversation I’ve ever had with global warming deniers. Took less time, and had the same outcome.

Science v religion

24 March 2007 / / 13 Comments

With apologies to Wellington Grey, here’s a comparison of how to evaluate ideas using science versus religion.

Click the image to enlarge in a new window.

The earth… no, wait… the… uh…

22 January 2007 / / 2 Comments

This is old, but it absolutely floored me when I found it today.

Every couple of years, the National Science Foundation puts out data from surveys about science and technology. And every once in a while, they ask this innocuous question:

Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?

Think carefully.

Now in 2004, what percentage of Americans got it right? Take a guess, and then highlight the blank space underneath to see if you were close.

Only 71% got it right.

And other countries are even worse, except on the evolution question, where the US is among the worst. Here’s a messy text file with more results, and here’s an Excel file if you’re keen.

What are we to make of this in this day and age? That the difficulty of eradicating ignorance increases asymptotically?

We shall use my largest scales!

29 October 2006 / / 9 Comments

That’s what I said when I saw the Teacher’s scale today. It was Open Day at our school, so I poked my head into his room and saw it on display. The scale was taller than me, all wood and ropes. A few large rocks were at the side.

“It’s very impressive,” I said. “Did you build it yourself?”

“Yes, that’s right. I use it when teaching about weights and measures, levers, and so on.”

“Shouldn’t it be balancing?” I asked. Nothing was on the scale, but it was lopsided.

“Well, that’s the thing I can’t figure out,” he said. “I can attach little weights to either side to make it even, but sometimes one side will be heavier, and then in a little while the other side will. Maybe it’s evaporation or something. I don’t understand the physics of it.”

“Huh,” I said. “Maybe if the arms were longer.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe there’s an angel sitting on one side!”

“Perhaps,” I smiled, remembering that angels and fairies have a big part in the Steiner School aesthetic. Then I had a thought.

“Say,” I said, “if angels can influence the weights, they could be doing it all the time and we wouldn’t even know. So how can we ever trust the scales?”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if I weigh two things on a scale, is one thing really heavier than the other, or is God just fiddling with my data?”

If it’s possible that there might exist a supernatural being that could influence the results of a scientific test or measurement, we could never really expect those results to be reliable. We couldn’t even do anything as simple as weigh anything. Scientific research itself would be impossible. But because scientific research is possible, such beings cannot exist.

Let’s dust off the old believer’s hat and see if it still fits. We could argue that God could intervene, but chooses not to. God works with laws of nature. In which case God is indistinguishable from the laws of nature, and our theory of the universe would lose nothing by cutting him or her out. Occam’s razor again.

This is a striking illustration of how science and spirituality the supernatural are not in harmony. They are two opposing approaches to the universe. One precludes the other.

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