My talk with Mormons and Other Stuff

I had a delightful conversation with two young Mormon missionaries while I was waiting at the bus stop just the other day. They started the conversation by asking if I had a relationship with Jesus, and I replied that no in fact I am an atheist but would be happy to talk with them. They asked me how I had come to such a position, so I told them my story of growing up in a fundamental church in Kasilof and my experiences in college, mostly though through my anthropology classes...

I started college in Hawaii as a Christian, sent by my best friend's parents to bring him back to god through our friendship and mutual interest in biking. My natural curiosities led me to my first anthropology class which outlined basic techniques for dating as well as detailing known frauds in the anthropological world. By chance a few of these frauds I had heard of, but not as frauds but touted as evidence for the historical accuracy of the bible. From dinosaur footprints next to man's in Texas to giant skeletons, we easily debunked these myths and correctly placed them into the fraud category. I learned dating techniques in this entry level class and later the math and principles behind them. These methods included, and these are off the top of my head, Potassium-Argon dating for igneous and metamorphic rocks, Carbon 14 dating for relatively recent carbon deposits to around 40,000 BCE, Dendrochronology, which in certain areas allows accurate dating of tree rings back to 35,000 BCE, Uranium-Thorium/Protactinium dating, which tracks the rate of decay of Uranium into Thorium or Protactinium depending on how many Neutrons are in the Uranium to start. This dating method is used for limestone deposits, in which Uranium is soluble by water with the Calcium Carbonate, and drips from stalactites down into the stalagmites. The Protactinium and Thorium is left in the ceiling and only Uranium is dripped to the bottom, because there is no Thorium or Protactinium to start with, any found in the stalagmite later is from decay, the center most point at the bottom of a stalagmite is the oldest part and has the most Thorium and Protactinium compared to Uranium. This method measures accurately for things approximately to 700,000 years BCE. Other dating methods include Ice Cores and Varves, Fluvial deposits- which include pollen, seeds and other particles deposited into lakes and rivers, most commonly into deltas for rivers. Chronostratigraphy, Luminescence dating, Obsidian Hydration dating, the final of which measures how much humidity from the atmosphere has penetrated the glass structures of obsidian on the napped edges of the glass. There is a slight color shift you can see through thin sections of the obsidian, the further the penetration, the more time it has been since the obsidian was cut, this is only a general dating method but still very accurate. All of these dating methods I learned and understood in this first year and yet I remained a Christian for a time, operating simply by Pascal's Wager. I was not willing to give up faith quite yet. Eventually however I was able to reconcile these facts with my beliefs after much consideration of the evidence. In retrospect it should have been a very easy decision given the amount of evidence for the truth that these dating methods suggest, that our earth is very, very old indeed. I was taught that the bible is inerrant and that if error could be found within its pages then it should be held as proof that it cannot be the word of god. The physical evidence against the genesis account in the bible was not the only thing that had prompted such a drastic change in my beliefs. Religious people still thrust god into the gaps of scientific knowledge. One of the many problems with this is that religious people do not keep up with the scientific data, they continue to point at 200 year old theories as proof that the science doesn't work, even though those theories have changed and been modified as more precise data has poured in through the centuries. Religious people talk about these old theories frankly because none of them seem to know anything about the new ones. The problem lies in two places when they do this, One, nearly all their straw theories of evolution have long been known as inaccurate and new theories have evolved as more evidence has piled in. Second, they are very simply claiming- you scientists cannot explain x therefore god must have done it. Simply because we cannot explain x does not mean that we never will, it means we haven't yet. The church has been saying the same thing for millenia, we can't explain sickness, therefore it must have a spiritual component, we cant explain mental illness therefore demons must be possessing people, and it goes on to this day, but when germ theory comes along, nobody seems to call these people out and say you have all been wrong, even admittedly wrong on all of these fronts, why should we continue listening?

The why becomes a fight about moral grounding, not about facts of matter. In my conversation with the Mormons, they did exactly this, pointing to the fact that the bible gives them a moral framework from which they live their lives. We are right because the bible says that Jesus was a perfect man and he died for everyone's sins so that we can all go to heaven if we believe that he did it for us. A complete nonsequiter. Moral superiority is great to have but it does not come from Jesus any more than anyone else. It comes from each person and their actions. You cannot claim moral superiority as a group if your members do not act differently than another group. A better function for a groups claim would have to be the mean of the group, but come on, were dealing with people here, not numbers. If, and this is a big if, if god were a real entity that worked in our lives, then we should see the results of real change in the lives of people who join the correct religion. We don't need anecdotes of the biker who drinks a lot and finds Jesus or the prison inmate who now speaks in front of kids, but a real trend toward life change in one religion over another. The fact is that we can find such anecdotes in many religions, people change their lives because they want to belong to something and many things fit the bill. The yearning in a Mormons heart is no more satisfied and no more life changing when he thinks of Jesus than anyone as deeply involved in any other religion. There are no scientific anomalies that show us that religion x makes people behave better than religion y.

Now the other big if, if god does not exist and we are all hurtling through space on our nice bubble of a planet that teams with life, then a simple theory would say that we have each evolved a set of characteristics that give us part of our personalities and predispositions and that our experiences have just as much effect on ourselves and our beliefs as anything else and that we can choose to be good, bad, mean, cruel, helpful or kind. Other people in our lives affect our decisions based on how much we want their affection or how much we get pissed off by someone cutting us off in traffic. Such a model would suggest that people make their won choices and most people, even religious, would probably agree. But god, if he does exist, seems not to play favorites with religions and in no way can we claim that he backs us when in comes to moral superiority.

At this point I let the Mormons talk about the evidence for why the bible offers the real truth. his claim pivoted around the notion that he knows it is true because his prayer and council with god is answered by a thirst for more of god. His reference to this subjective experience was short-lived, and because that was all he had to offer as evidence, I cut in. There is no way to determine how you feel about something measures up to what I feel. Subjective experience cannot be replicated. Claims that can be made without evidence can be dismissed as easily, without evidence. This is beside the point though, what you or I feel about something has no bearing on whether it is true. The truth of a matter is independent of our ideas about it. How often have we lived a dilution only to find we were wrong all along? No matter how we felt while believing wrongly, did it change the truth of the matter? Did it occur to us that our fanatic adherence was anything but normal? Of course not. Our thoughts and feelings do not change matters of fact. The strength of our believe has no bearing on the probability of its accuracy. When the evidence suggest we are wrong, we must skeptically look at that evidence for accuracy, not against our current beliefs, but against the physical world, and then change our minds, admit we were wrong and move on with life.

Now when the conversation turned to evidence, I was a little surprised as they willingly gave ground to the historical inaccuracy of the old testament. Now no fundamental Christian would give up ground here, but Mormons, I found, had no qualms in saying that humans screwed up god's word. They did not agree or disagree with my views on evolution, merely sidestepped the issue. They simply said that it was the message that was important. This is actually a core tenant of the Mormon faith that allows them to make further claims. Every time we screwed up god's word, he had to send another prophet to straighten things out, which brought us all the prophets of the old testament, Jesus, Joseph Smith and every leader of the Mormon church since Joseph Smith. Because they gave ground here, I will have to rant instead about fundamental Christians. Despite all evidence for a very old planet, they hold to a literal six day creation, and only because they believe in a book they claim has no errors. If there were a few verses left out, you know the ones that claim that the whole book is inerrant, then they would be able to say "oh well that's just an allegory for creation," but know those verses are in there, so their stuck. So, despite the evidence, they pick through the facts ignoring most of it to find a few bits that don't fit, for example a snail that has been radiocarbon dated to 1.3 million years old even though it is still alive. This was a problem for scientists at first as this should indicate that dating methods are inaccurate and hardly worth our time. Now I did not discuss C14 dating in great detail before because I intended on doing that now. First I will explain what C14 is and how we get it. Our atmosphere had approx 21% Oxygen, and 70% Nitrogen and some other stuff including C12 which is carbon in its neutral state. Now as the sun's radiation hits our atmosphere, it hits stuff, which is why we don't get radiated down here, and why astronauts wear so much stuff out there. We get C14 when a Neutron from these collisions is absorbed by a Nitrogen molecule. The relative number of C14 in the atmosphere is stable compared to the number of C12 and C13 in the atmosphere. As plants perform photosynthesis they take Carbon 14 and Carbon 12 both into their systems where it becomes part of the plant. Animals too breath it in and eat it which allows it to become part of their bodies. Carbon 14 is an unstable isotope which means that it slowly breaks down into Nitrogen 14. So in a piece of burnt charcoal from a site, C14 is compared to the C12 to find out the time that the piece of wood died. The half life is 5730 years which means that half of the C14 will become N14 over that period. There are many ways to find this out, one is to take core samples of living trees that grow in places that have cold winters and warm summers, so as to maintain a yearly growth pattern, some of these trees, such as the bristle cone pine, many of which are over 5000 years old are living today, and core samples show us that the C14 in the center has decayed predictably along a 5730 year half life. The other dating methods I discussed earlier are cross referenced so thoroughly that there is no question these methods work. So how does a snail get dated to 1.3 million years? A hard question for the fledgling C14 dating method. Well it turns out that C14 is produced in the atmosphere and only in the atmosphere. For C14 to reach say, the bottom of a lake or ocean, there must be upwelling currents that allow molecules to be transported to the top and bottom of the water. This doesn't happen very well though, and so bottom of ocean life cannot be dated accurately using this method and will appear much older than they really are. Current scientists know this and so radiocarbon dating is no longer used to date most animals and plants that live primarily underwater. But, people like Kent Hovind, who touts himself as a science teacher, still uses the million year old living snail as his single example of why radiocarbon dating does not work, despite the volumes of evidence to the contrary that he had to wade through to find the one little gem. Because we can explain why this phenomenon that excludes underwater plants and animals from carbon dating, it means that all our other data is safe. The fact that people Hovind's position ignore or refuse to acknowledge or refute the evidence that points to an old earth shows how fanatic they are. They stand on the sidelines shouting and driving from the back seat without producing any evidence for their own position that the earth is very young. They look at the grand canyon next to the sign that says it was formed from slow erosion over millions of years and proclaim "amazing, god did this in a few days with a flood!" They say this because an old book says there was a flood about 4,000 years ago, a book written on the other side of the world about a group of people who had no idea how large the earth was. The grand canyon is still trickling away as it has for millions of years and bit by bit showing us how absurd that notion is.

Our future depends on it

In the wake of Sarah Palins nomination to the GOP ticket I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of our country’s mindset. Let me explain, hopefully it’ll all connect together in the end.

Over the past decade America has seen a steady decline in the number of science PhDs we are graduating. This shift in our educational priorities is mirrored by a sharp rise in science PhDs graduating in Asia, especially in China. I see the results of this every day at my office desk; Americans are producing less and less scientific research while the rest of the world is producing more. The effects of this are both immediate and long-standing. In the immediate future America loses its position of scientific prowess; the best research occurs elsewhere, university prowess shifts to the east (and west) and thus the world’s best and brightest seek better places. The economic impact from losing the industrial innovation this research produces is clear, but continues into other spheres as well.

A 2006 NSF study found that just 23% of Americans could explain what it means to engage in a scientific study. John Miller of Michigan State University has been tracking science literacy in America for the past 20 years and recently published a study which states that a basic level of science literacy in this country is at 28% and falling each year. Most Americans are completely confused about the very basic principals of empirical evidence, composing a hypothesis, and proposing a theory. This bothers me greatly because this process of thinking is essential to the process of composing coherent beliefs about the world we live in. If you don’t understand what constitutes evidence, and why, then you are not equipped to engage a world that is increasingly dependent upon scientific progress.

In philosophy we call this type of thinking ‘reason’. Reason, it appears, is fighting a losing battle against the forces of credulity, fear, and superstition. This is where Sarah Palin ties in.

Sarah Palin, the woman whom the republicans believe is fit to rule the most powerful country on earth believes the earth is 6,000 years old. To be clear, this is no minor mistake. Current scientific estimates, corroborated by mutually agreeing standards of measurement peg the earth’s age at 4-5 billion years old. The magnitude of Palin’s disconnect reality is comparable to stating the distance between New York and San Francisco is 200 feet. This is no minor mistake.

As a country, as a world, we can no longer afford to elect officials with minds that belong in the Dark Ages; we simply cannot afford it. Religious belief, if it must exist, has to be a private affair. Our world is one of nuclear weapons, fanatical religion, and environmental disasters. We cannot damn our tumultuous future even further by placing it into the hands of someone who believes that hurricanes are an angry god’s punishment. We need leaders who are able to engage the world as it really is, not as they wish it to be. Faith, in a world of very real crisis, is an anchor that will pull our collective future to the depths of misery. History bears the scars of leaders who governed their people from a position of wanting reality to be a certain way rather than looking at the evidence and making prudent decisions. I dearly hope the citizens of this country will question our leaders with skeptical rigor. We can’t afford not to.

Bighoax

Well, a hoax it was. Not that anyone should really be surprised. If Bigfeet really existed we'd have found many bodies by now not to mention those of the living variety. Anyways, here is how the hoax went down:

Tom Biscardi, the man involved with two previous Bigfoot hoaxes paid an undisclosed amount of money to the Georgian rednecks Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, for the right to hold a press conference parading them and their discovery to the world. While the conference was taking place Biscardi supposedly sent Bigfoot researcher Steve Kulls to examine the body. What Kulls found was a stuffed Bigfoot costume complete with rubber feet frozen within a freezer. Angry, Biscardi apparently tried to track down Whitton and Dryer after the conference but they had fled their hotel room, money in towe.

The remaining question is to what extent Biscardi was involved with the organization of this stunt; given his track record I'd say he knew all along, especially since he was selling pay-per-view pictures on the supposed creature on his website. The real disappointment in this whole case is not that the Bigfoot was a fake, that was obvious from the beginning, but that the international news circuit jumped on board the story with so little skepticism. 30 seconds of research on Google would have given a back-story to Biscardi, yet almost no journalists even went that far; they stuck with sensationalism instead of level headed reporting and we are all worse off for it. The quality of science reporting in the media is terribly low and this Bigfoot ordeal is just another sign of the times.

Snake Oil

There remains a very popular idea amongst westerners that ancient people had some form of medical knowledge that surpasses the scientific achievements we've accomplished largely over the past 200 years. Acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism, and holistic ideas have many adherents despite the fact that the evidence in support of these old practices is often completely non-existent. Consider the following statistics:

According to the WHO (World Health Organization) the life expectancy at birth in the United States, in the year 1900 was 47. Today the number is approaching 80 years. Medicine and nutrition have dramatically increased our life spans, but the WHO says the largest contributing factor is the reduction of death in childbirth due to the ubiquity of hospital births.

Humans in Swaziland live an average of 31.99 years. In Japan, 82 years.

In the 20th century scientific medicine has cured dozens of ailments such as diphtheria, the whooping cough, Hib disease, malaria, measles, polio, tetanus, typhoid & yellow fevers and others which were previously considered death sentences.

GMO (Genetically Modified Food) advancements have allowed us to produce greater crop yields, foods with increased nutritional value, resistance to pests. All in quantities required by our planet's growing population.

We live longer and healthier lives free from so many ailments purely because of advancements in the scientific understanding of biology and genetics so why do prejudices continue to exist in the face of such progress? Most likely a lack of understanding. Humans tend to believe what they wish to be true rather than what the evidence dictates, and beyond religion this is nowhere more evident than in medicine. The fallacy of Ancient cures is strong and plays upon our behavioral biases; we long to trust our elders and wish to hold to the wisdom of our ancestors. We suppose that if a practice has been around for centuries that it must be true. and while this behavior was once useful, in the face of science blind trust of dogma is purely a hindrance.

Lunar Eclipse - Demons in the Dark

A few things were rattling around inside my mostly empty head tonight:

We were treated to a full lunar eclipse tonight. I made a point of spending an hour outside under the stars to chart the slow progression of the earth's shadow as it cast itself over the moon, and then moved back away. I couldn't help but wonder what it must have been like for European explorers in ancient times when they would visit the natives of some far-off land and impress them with predictions of eclipses, accurate down to the hour. Surely the natives would have thought them in possession of divine knowledge. I'm sure the white man's 'fire sticks' helped to solidify their deistic image even further.

We may laugh at the natives now, how could they be foolish enough to attribute simple astronomical predictions to the realm of the gods, but are we 'moderns' really so different? Millions of people in the scientifically enlightened west believe that the positions of the planets in the Zodiac affect our lives in predictable ways. People believe that drinking water endowed with the mystical memory of certain molecules can cure any illness. Others believe that crack-pots like chiropractors and acupuncturists can actually heal the body in ways that scientific medicine cannot.

Billions of people the world over believe that the universe was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago because a creator God was lonely and wanted to be worshiped. Do their beliefs carry any more weight than the natives own?

I think in some ways we are the natives of those forgotten years. We may understand the mystery of the eclipse but we greedily clutch at so many other psychological comforts, and like the natives we cannot be persuaded of more prosaic explanations for the realm of the gods. We want mystery, we shun the light and instead turn towards the dark. We find comfort there, safety in numbers and community. It is surprising how easily the still small voice of reason can be silenced by our more impressionable side.

It has been said that any technology sufficiently advanced will appear as no different than magic. I often wonder about this. Is our species really ready to branch into the enveloping cosmos? We have such a strong opposition to rational thought; what if we encounter life much more advanced than us. What will we do?

I think it is a safe bet that the fate of our species is directly tied to how well we listen to reason, even though we may not like what we hear.