Scientists and magicians

In the U. S. and many other places around the world, attitudes towards science are decidedly ambiguous.

This shows up in many different ways. During the last election, for example, various issues, about which science has much to say, were matters of contention. Global warming and climate change provide one example. Many issues related to sex and reproductive biology, including sex education and contraception, yield other examples. And of course, tangentially related to those issues was the embryonic stem cells issue. Then there's the matter of the need for protection of biodiversity and endangered species. Finally, opponents of evolution were afraid to make it a serious campaign issue, yet one of the presidential candidates was notably evasive on the question of how evolution should be taught in schools.

To the relief of most people who value science, the election turned out well:

Obama to restore science to its rightful place (1/20/09)

So, the 44th president of the United States has spoken. And what he said will please many supporters of science. Likewise, without explicitly mentioning the environment, president Barack Obama made it clear in his inaugural address today that the US needs to tackle global warming and switch to renewable sources of energy.

The speech will also please internationalists who feel that the US has lost touch with the rest of the world. Significantly for a US president, but less surprising given his African heritage, Obama called on Americans to reach out to and help the world's poorest citizens, clearly referring to the humanitarian and agricultural crises in parts of Africa.

But the nod to open science will be most welcome, given the political and ideological interference of his predecessor, who obstructed stem cell research and only grudgingly accepted that humans are driving climate change.

"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost," said Obama.

(That, of course, received widespread attention. Other reactions: here, here, here, here.)

There are several factors at work under the covers that help explain the political opposition to relatively straightforward science. Religious factors, obviously, play some part. Also economic factors, especially in cases where scientific considerations (related to the economics of energy production, and various public health issues, related to tobacco usage, for example) are in conflict with powerful economic interests.

So, what do magicians have to do with any of this?

Well, I've been re-reading Shakespeare's The Tempest, because I've also been re-watching Peter Greenaway's film adaptation, Prospero's Books.

Prospero, the protagonist, is the former Duke of Milan, who has been overthrown by his treacherous brother and exiled to a remote island. He's also a powerful magician, whose enrapture with intellectual pursuits rather than statecraft led to his overthrow.

Prospero can also be seen as a scientist of his era. Greenaway's film elevates the books to a starring role, acknowledged in the title. But this follows Shakespeare, who has Prospero explain how a sympathetic man of Naples (which city was the enemy of Prospero's Milan) furnished the deposed duke upon his exile with many of life's necessities – including books:

Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.

Greenaway links Prospero's books and his magic with more modern science. The books deal not only with occult arts (as was frequently the association in Elizabethan times), but more scientific topics like natural history, anatomy, and (especially) water.

In linking magic and science through the character of Prospero, however, Shakespeare was hardly alone among notables of Western literature. A recent (May 2008) essay by Philip Ball in Nature touched upon this theme. (Unfortunately, access to the article requires a subscription, but I'll quote a little.)

The topic at hand was the widespread panic last year, among nonscientists, but somewhat legitimized by journalistic sensationalism, that operation of the Large Hadron Collider could lead to the destruction of the universe. (How's that for human hubris?) Ball connects this hysteria with traditional literary associations between scientists and diabolical forces:

Of myths and men (5/2/08)

When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize.

In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn’t true, but in fact it is a story that is 'psychologically true'. A myth is not a false story but an archetypal one. And the archetype for this current bout of scare stories is obvious: the Faust myth, in which an hubristic individual unleashes forces he or she cannot control.

Fictional characters Ball mentions as being associated with intellectual overreaching include not only Faust, but also Dr. Frankenstein:

In part, the appeal of these stories is simply the frisson of an eschatological tale, the currency of endless disaster movies. But it is also noteworthy that these are human-made apocalypses, triggered by the heedless quest for knowledge about the Universe.

This is the template that became attached to the Faust legend. Initially a folk tale about an itinerant charlatan with roots that stretch back to the Bible, the Faust story was later blended with the myth of Prometheus, who paid a harsh price for daring to challenge the gods because of his thirst for knowledge. Goethe’s Faust embodied this fusion, and Mary Shelley popularized it in Frankenstein, which she explicitly subtitled ‘Or The Modern Prometheus’. Roslynn Haynes, a professor of English literature, has explored how the Faust myth shaped a common view of the scientist as an arrogant seeker of dangerous and powerful knowledge.

Many other mythological figures could be mentioned, such as Prometheus. Roslynn Haynes' book, titled From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature is, unfortunately, out of print.

However, a slightly more recent book by Christopher Toumey – Conjuring Science: Scientific Symbols and Cultural Meanings in American Life – is still in print, and makes the connection between the diabolical-mad-scientist stereotype and social and political attitudes towards science in the U. S. (and elsewhere).

Other sterotypical mad scientists that Toumey mentions include Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll, H. G. Wells' Dr. Moreau, and Ian Fleming's Dr. No (and Ernst Stavro Blofeld as well, I might add).

Does this hoary literary mythology of mad scientists influence public attitudes towards science? Like Philip Ball, I rather suspect the answer is yes, definitely. We see this all the time in the public hysteria surrounding biotechnology and "genetically modified organisms" and "frankenfoods", as the hysterics like to call them. There's also the ridiculousness over the resistance of the public to the possibility of food from cloned animals, even milk from cloned cows. (See here for an example.)

Now, apparently, this hysteria has spread to nanotechnology as well. There are, to be sure, legitimate concerns about health aspects of some current nanotechnology products. These certainly need to be carefully studied – and that is happening, due to the proper concern of many people who haven't forgotten all the major public health problems of a few pharmaceuticals (e. g. Thalidomide, Fen-phen (see here)) – not to mention things like tobacco and asbestos, which are problematical yet hardly products of modern science.

However, the objections to biotechnology are not only based on public health, but on "moral" issues as well (especially with respect to stem cells, cloning, chimeras, etc.) And we're seeing the same thing happen with nanotechnology – which some now think is also a "moral" issue:

For Nanotechnology, Religion In U.S. Dictates A Wary View (12/7/08)

When it comes to the world of the very, very small — nanotechnology — Americans have a big problem: Nano and its capacity to alter the fundamentals of nature, it seems, are failing the moral litmus test of religion.

In a report published Dec. 7 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, survey results from the United States and Europe reveal a sharp contrast in the perception that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. Those views, according to the report, correlate directly with aggregate levels of religious views in each country surveyed.

In the United States and a few European countries where religion plays a larger role in everyday life, notably Italy, Austria and Ireland, nanotechnology and its potential to alter living organisms or even inspire synthetic life is perceived as less morally acceptable. In more secular European societies, such as those in France and Germany, individuals are much less likely to view nanotechnology through the prism of religion and find it ethically suspect.

But it's about more than nanotechnology. It's about attitudes towards science in general:

The survey findings, says Scheufele, are important not only because they reveal the paradox of citizens of one of the world's elite technological societies taking a dim view of the implications of a particular technology, but also because they begin to expose broader negative public attitudes toward science when people filter their views through religion.

"What we captured is nanospecific, but it is also representative of a larger attitude toward science and technology," Scheufele says. "It raises a big question: What's really going on in our public discourse where science and religion often clash?"

I'll come back to this aspect of things another time.

Tags: biotechnology, nanotechnology

What Pinker said

The Stupidity of Dignity

To understand the source of this topsy-turvy value system, one has to look more deeply at the currents that underlie the Council. Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.

The report's oddness begins with its list of contributors. Two (Adam Schulman and Daniel Davis) are Council staffers, and wrote superb introductory pieces. Of the remaining 21, four (Leon R. Kass, David Gelernter, Robert George, and Robert Kraynak) are vociferous advocates of a central role for religion in morality and public life, and another eleven work for Christian institutions (all but two of the institutions Catholic). Of course, institutional affiliation does not entail partiality, but, with three-quarters of the invited contributors having religious entanglements, one gets a sense that the fix is in. A deeper look confirms it.

Here's Pinker citing an especially choice quote from Leon Kass, the high-guru of right-wing "bioethics"

Kass has a problem not just with longevity and health but with the modern conception of freedom. There is a "mortal danger," he writes, in the notion "that a person has a right over his body, a right that allows him to do whatever he wants to do with it." He is troubled by cosmetic surgery, by gender reassignment, and by women who postpone motherhood or choose to remain single in their twenties. Sometimes his fixation on dignity takes him right off the deep end:

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. ... Eating on the street--even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat--displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

And here is my own take on Kass, from almost three years ago.

This new 555-page report that Pinker writes about is just one more salvo in the right-wing war on science. Fortunately, their war is going about as well for them as their war in Iraq. And even more fortunately, the dimwits behind this nonsense seem to be on track to lose big at the polls this fall.

Tags: bioethics, human dignity, Steven Pinker

The religious right is wrong again

Here's a cheery follow-up of more news of the sort in this earlier post.

Report: Abstinence Not Curbing Teen Sex

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."

Sadly, some Congressional facilitators of the religious right want to waste more of our tax money ($141 million) on more of this same sort of tax-sponsored religious propaganda:

A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for community-based, abstinence-only sex education programs, $4 million more than what President Bush had requested.

Contact your Congressperson and complain.

And incidentally, not only do abstinence-only programs not work, they are based on misinformation and myths about comprehensive sex education:

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs [i.e. comprehensive sex education] improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

Additional information:

Emerging Answers 2007

National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Teenpregnancy.org

Religion and war

People bitch a lot about violence featured in movies and TV, but ignore a worse problem – how the sort of real (not make-believe) violence known as war is often associated with religion.

Now there may be a better theoretical understanding of how and why this association between religion and war may exist. Two articles in the October 26, 2007 issue of Science discuss evolutionary simulations which show that war drives the joint evolution of altruism and hostility to outsiders. Based on (but going beyond) this work, we will see how religion may be associated with warfare.

The first "perspectives" article gives an overview:

The Sharp End of Altruism

Which would you prefer: a society of selfish but tolerant freetraders, or a warrior society in which people help one another but are hostile to outsiders? If you value both altruism and tolerance, neither seems ideal. Societies of tolerant altruists, however, are exceedingly rare in the simulation presented by Choi and Bowles on page 636 of this issue. Instead, altruism flourishes only in the company of outgroup hostility (parochialism), with war as both the engine of this coevolutionary process and its legacy. For a compatriot, the parochial altruist who risks his life is a shining knight, whereas the outsider encounters the sharp end of this altruism.

The second article is a technical presentation of the research itself, which was the work of Jung-Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles:

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War

Altruism—benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself—and parochialism—hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group—are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two—which we term "parochial altruism"—is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

Unfortunately, both articles require a subscription for access.

Curiously, there appears to have been almost no reporting on this research in the usual places that report on scientific research for a general audience. (Wonder why that is....) And this is even though the Santa Fe Institute, with which one of the researchers (Bowles) is associated, did put out this press release:

The coevolution of parochial altruism and war

In "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War" appearing in the October 26 issue of Science, SFI researcher Samuel Bowles and colleague Jung-Kyoo Choi of Kyungpook National University in South Korea suggest that the altruistic and warlike aspects of human nature may have a common origin.

Altruism – benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself – and parochialism – hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group – are common to human nature, but we don't immediately think of them as working together hand in hand. In fact the unexpected combination of these two behaviors may have enabled the survival of each trait according to Bowles and Choi.

They show that the two behaviors – which they term "parochial altruism" – may have in fact coevolved. On the face of it joining parochialism to altruism is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because both behaviors reduce one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by avoiding them. Aggression consumes resources and risks death; altruism, particularly toward those with whom we have no direct relationship, has the effect of helping other genes advance at our expense. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to the success of these conflicts.

Using game theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations Bowles and Choi show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans neither parochialsim nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

"But even if a parochial form of altruism may be our legacy," said Bowles, "it need not be our fate." He pointed to the many examples of contemporary altruism extending beyond group boundaries, and the fact that hostility toward outsiders is often redirected or eliminated entirely in a matter of years.

Now, none of this actually mentions religion. Choi and Bowles don't discuss it. So where does religion come into it? We'll get to that shortly. But first, let's review a bit about how altruism and cooperation in human cultures are thought to have evolved.

At first, it could seem that altruism and cooperation are unlikely to have evolved in humans at all, because they seem to be traits of an individual that are of more benefit to others than to the individual who happens to possess them.

However, there is a long history of evolutionary studies that have suggested how tendencies toward altruism and cooperation could have evolved in human groups. For example, starting in 1964 William D. Hamilton argued that altruism toward blood relatives helped to favor shared genes that fostered such altruism. This was termed "kin altruism".

Additional scientific consideration of the evolution of morality, altruism, and cooperation took off in the 1970s, in the work of people like Robert Trivers and Robert Axelrod. Using game theoretic arguments and simulations they showed how another type of altruism – "reciprocal altruism" – could arise in populations where individuals interacted frequently and could learn which others had earned a reputation for dependability in their dealings with other group members.

Many, many others have written on the subject since then, such as Edward O. Wilson (e. g. Consilience, published in 1998), and Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works, published in 1997). A very good history of the subject up until 1996 can be found in Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue.

On the other hand, in spite of arguments advanced showing the benefits to individuals of practicing altruism within a single tribe or cultural group, the fact remains that separate, unrelated groups could easily come into conflict over access to resources (e. g. water, game, other food sources, etc.), especially in times of scarcity due to overpopulation, unfavorable climate, etc. The result would be warfare.

Many people have also studied how evolutionary tendencies have contributed to aggression and warlike behavior between competing human groups. It seems that separate groups that have relatively low genetic similarity to each other and must compete for scarce resources have a notable tendency to come into conflict with each other, and to solve their problems of overpopulation or resource scarcity by killing as many members of the other group as possible. A good exposition of such ideas can be found in this article by Keith Henson: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.

It seems very reasonable to see such considerations as the source of the very human tendency to exhibit distrust and even hostility towards other humans who are noticeably "different", especially in physical characteristics, but also when there are simply cultural differences in taste, belief systems, etc.

Furthermore, when conflict between groups does occur and takes the form of open warfare, there is a distinct advantage for groups that have a high percentage of individuals who behave altruistically and cooperatively with each other. If you accept the (somewhat controversial) notion of evolutionary "group selection", this fact provides yet another evolutionary argument for the development of a third type of altruism – parochial altruism – within groups – because groups with the higher percentage of members who cooperate with each other will tend to prevail.

However, there is another side to this story. Individuals will not entirely lose a tendency to gain personal advantage through selfish behavior (such as hoarding food). Altruism can be disadvantageous for an individual if it goes too far, so there is some evolutionary pressure against it also. In an environment where scarcity of resources is not a large problem, individuals can serve their own interests by being open to interaction with members of other groups – especially for commerce and trading of "excess" goods. Individuals who are selfishly willing to trade their goods with members of other groups for the best exchange they can achieve will tend to do better for themselves since they are willing to "sell" to the highest bidder, regardless of group membership.

This, then, is the setting on which Choi and Bowles based their simulation. They considered two kinds of traits an individual could have. One related to altruism (A) vs. selfishness (N, for "not altruistic"). The other related to tolerance (T) vs. hostility (P, for "parochial") towards member of other groups. Any given individual could have one of four possible combinations (AT, AP, NT, NP). They started with groups having members with differing proportions of each possible combination.

Absent intergroup conflict, NT individuals (the most tolerant but selfish) tend to be most successful, and AP the least successful. But when intergroup conflicts occur, groups with the most AP types do better than groups with the most NT types. The simulations proceeded over thousands of generations, and a variety of parameters, all believed to be consistent with what is known about late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer human tribes, were tested.

The net result was that groups with many NT or AP individuals can both be successful, depending on how much warfare occurs (which depends on environmental conditions). But in most cases, groups with high proportions of NP or AT individuals lose out under any conditions. So one conclusion is that in order to have a lot of altruism within a group, you have to expect a lot of parochial intergroup hostility. Conversely, in order to have groups with a lot of tolerance towards other groups, you should expect less altruism and cooperation within the group. Choi and Bowles maintain that the same results tend to arise from a wide variety of different initial conditions.

True, this is "only" a simulation study. And it rests on the assumption that altruism and parochialism (or their opposites) are heritable traits (which alternatively might be transmitted culturally rather than genetically). But it seems to give results that accord well with what we know of human history. And that's where religion enters the picture. (Choi and Bowles do not discuss religion, so what follows is based on their findings, but also the contributions of others.)

In evolutionary terms, why is it that religion is so widespread in human societies? There are a variety of plausible explanations. One is that religion provides the rationale for moral and ethical principles that promote intergroup cooperation and altruism. The argument made by supporters of this idea – such as David Sloan Wilson in his book Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society – is that societies and cultures with strong religion-based ethical and moral principles have a competitive advantage over other groups.

However, what the Choi-Bowles simulation suggests is that this advantage is realized only when groups often engage in conflict and war. For otherwise, there is an advantage for groups with lots of tolerance towards other groups, and lots of free-traders working for their own self-interest.

So, ironically, religion may have developed as a result of intergroup warfare, as a social artifact that helps justify intragroup altruism that actually was selected for because of the warfare. And at the same time, religion would also incorporate a justification for the intergroup hostility and aggression that arose from the same evolutionary process.

In other words, evolutionary pressures tend to bring about an association of religion and warfare. Note that this is not saying religion "causes" war. Indeed, evolutionary theory suggests that overpopulation and resource limits usually tend to be what "causes" war. But when such conditions prevail, it isn't too surprising to find a close association between religion and war. Just recall the slogan some religious believers are so fond of: "There are no atheists in foxholes." (In other words, most of the cannon fodder found in foxholes and military cemeteries is (or was) religious believers.)

Of course, most religions aren't pro-war full time. Many religious believers oppose war because of their faith. Nevertheless, most religions have their holy warriors, such as Mujahideen and Crusaders. (Military equipment of predominantly Christian nations is sometimes named a Crusader.) Most religions have their own versions of Onward Christian Soldiers. And most religions celebrate war in other ways.

But is there scientific evidence of a relation between religion and war? Yes. Consider this:

When God Sanctions Violence, Believers Act More Aggressively

Reading violent scriptures increases aggressive behavior, especially among believers, a new study finds. The study by University of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman and colleagues helps to illuminate one of the ways that violence and behavior are linked.

"To justify their actions, violent people often claim that God has sanctioned their behavior," said Bushman, faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research and lead author of the article published in the March 2007 issue of Psychological Science. "Christian extremists, Jewish reactionaries and Islamic fundamentalists all can cite scriptures that seem to encourage or at least support aggression against unbelievers."

To be sure, this is hardly a new observation. Mark Twain, as well as many others before him, had already nailed it.

Update (11/13/07): I see that I missed one of the U. S. military's pricey toys proposed artillery systems (which was canceled in 2002) that used the "Crusader" moniker – the Crusader 155mm Self-Propelled Howiter. See here or here. Onward, Christian soldiers, indeed.

The religious right has it wrong

As usual.

Just about everyone except the RR knows this, of course. But here are some recent scientific findings that document the falsity of some common claims of the RR.

Children Of Lesbian Couples Are Doing Well, Study Finds

A study of families in the Netherlands indicates that children raised by lesbian couples “do not differ in well being or child adjustment compared with their counterparts in heterosexual-parent families.”

Doctor-aided Suicide: No Slippery Slope, Study Finds

Contrary to arguments by critics, a University of Utah-led study found that legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and the Netherlands did not result in a disproportionate number of deaths among the elderly, poor, women, minorities, uninsured, minors, chronically ill, less educated or psychiatric patients.

More: here, here

Legal Status Doesn't Deter Abortion

Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday.

In a study examining abortion trends from 1995 to 2003, experts also found that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries, and that half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe.

(So legality has no effect on the frequency of abortion; it only makes it safer.)

More: here, here, here

Physics of religion

Here's an interesting way to think about the spread of religion. Intuitively, it spreads like an infectious disease, so it could be modeled mathematically as a process of contagion, such as influenza or plague. Now some physicists have proposed modeling it like the process of crystallizaton:

Physicists make religion crystal clear

The rise and fall in the popularity of major religions can be described using the same mathematics that is used to model crystallization processes, claim physicists in Belgium. The researchers have modelled the time evolution of the numbers of adherents to religions and claim that their work sheds light on an important social phenomenon -- how a religion such as Christianity can grow rapidly from very small beginnings (Europhysics Letters (EPL) to be published).

Physicists have a long history of applying statistical models to the study of human behaviour and have tackled problems as diverse as the performance of financial markets and the spread of languages. Now, Marcel Ausloos and Filippo Petroni at the University of Liege have turned their attention to the dynamics of religion by relating the emergence, growth and demise of religions to phase transitions that occur during crystallization and other physical processes.

It seems to me that this sort of technique could be applied not only to religions as a whole, but also to smaller-scale phenomena, such as the explosive growth of evangelical Christian megachurches in the U. S. Many of these operations serve thousands of customers and seem to spring up almost overnight. They tend to be started by charismatic individuals who have a special flair for showmanship, such as Ted Haggard (blogged about here).

Of course, some of the ideas behind this line of thinking have a long history – in such fields as crowd psychology. It would be interesting if the research mentioned above could actually produce models that yield quantitative predictions for the nucleation and growth of megachurches in a geographical area, based on sociological variables (demographics, population density, etc.).

Tags: religion, megachurch, crowd psychology, crowd behavior

Dawkins vs. Haggard

Ted Haggard is the evangelical mega-star currently in the news because... well, you know. Everyone knows who Richard Dawkins is, but he's currently in the news because of his new book The God Delusion.

So it's interesting that Dawkins interviewed Haggard not so long ago as part of a documentary on the mad, mad world of hyper-religion. See the YouTube video of it here. Notice how Haggard's lips are twisted into a vicious snarl during the 1-on-1 interview with Dawkins. Guess T. H. was needing a meth fix, or at least a "massage".

On a lighter note, check out the Dawkins interview with Stephen Colbert here.

And then, since this is a science blog, check out Sean Carroll's review of The God Delusion.

Lastly, I might as well mention my own article on Steven Pinker's essay on Dawkins.

Tags: Ted Haggard, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The politics of ignorance

Great commentary by Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith) prompted by G. W. Bush's quasi-endorsement of "Intelligent Design".

He captures the basic problem in a nutshell:

Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

And his advice for addressing the problem hits the mark:

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.

This response by Richard Dawkins contains some good advice as well.