Downloading consciousness?

Have you heard of the '2045 Project'?  I started to hear a few whispers about this fascinating and seemingly impossible idea recently.

Founded by a wealth Russian entrepreneur, Dmitry Itskov, in February 2011, the project aims to develop the technology required to download a human mind into a robot avatar, essentially extending life, perhaps as far as immortality.  By that time Itskov will be about 65 years old.

Interesting!  Apart from the obvious worry about choosing exactly the right moment to kill your real self and transfer your 'soul' (for want of a better word) into a machine, there must be no end of other moral implications.  Does the 'robot you' then have human rights?  Does it have the right to reproduce, and if so, what algorithms go into the production of the offspring.  Is there a way to make the mingling of computerised brainwaves sound like a romantic encounter, and if not, in what way could this being be described as being fully human?  And if the avatar offspring went through the terrible twos while it effectively inhabited an adult body, how would the parents cope?

I can't resist asking whether it forces God out of the picture too?  After all, which part of the new synthetic 'you' did God create?  Unlike the conventional type of 'intelligent design', the success of this project might demonstrate that ID is real.

If it happens in your lifetime you can decide for yourself.

The Wedge

About 20 years ago, the Discovery Institute, that ivory tower of 'intelligent design', was caught out. 

Yes really!

It was revealed that they had a document that defined the Wedge Strategy - with a 20 year target of convincing the world that there was some science in the (not even a theory of) 'intelligent design'.  Of course there isn't!  (If you provide some evidence to dispute that claim then I will be happy to consider it.)

21 years later, we are still waiting for success and Dembski et al are back-pedalling. 

How to 'age' a fossil the fundie way!

I happened across this advice, thanks to a friend's Facebook page.  We wouldn't want to be led astray by science would we?

How to determine the Geological Age of a fossil - not like this!

Strangely, some of the advice seems almost sensible, but I don't think I can agree with the whole of any of the five points except number 4.

But why do they specify that it is the 'Geological Age', not just 'the age', and why put "Age" in quotes like that?  If point 5 is true, then the age is well defined, but let's face it, it isn't true and we all know it, even though the fundies exhort us to believe all that nonsense about 'the flood'.

The Times carries outrageous MMR headline

Seeing a copy of UK newspaper The Times today I was outraged to see the headline "Babies at risk from MMR jab timebomb".  After all the work that has been done to promote real science's findings about MMR, this headline sends exactly the wrong message.  It seems to be promoting the pseudo-science of the former-doctor Andrew Wakefield (who was struck off in 2010 for the damage that he has done to public health).

The Times seems to claim that babies are at risk from MMR

When you read the actual article it says the opposite.  This apparent timebomb is not a risk from the MMR vaccination, but the risk to the next generation because of the lack of vaccinations in children who are now approaching child bearing age over the next few years.

Teenagers are rightly being exhorted to get vaccinated - but the headline will have have caused much more damage as it will have been read on news-stands across the country by many more people than bother to read the content.

I deplore this behaviour from a newspaper which is said to be reputable.

Bad show, The Times!

Does an intelligent designer solve the ID problem?

Having been reading about the Cambrian Explosion which I mentioned recently, it might be a good time to contemplate the creation of information.

Can information be created without intelligent intervention?

Intelligent Design (ID) proponents claim that the existence of their 'intelligent designer' (who has no link with theology - honestly!) is implied by the diversity of new information created during the Cambrian Explosion.  Something intelligent must have interfered to make life blossom over that short period of 50 million years.  They can't think of any better explanations, so this has got to be the best one.  This idea comes from the Law of Conservation of Information.  That sounds scientific doesn't it, but as Wikipedia explains, it is not really a scientific law at all.  It is an invention of William Dembski, founded on a vaguely related topic by (real scientist)  Peter Medawar in his book The Limits of Science (1984).  Perhaps in the public mind it is also backed up by cherry-picked terminology from some very esoteric quantum mechanics.

Aside from the fact that their 'law' is just made up and that it is mathematically falsifiable, is their argument about information even reasonable?

To the first approximation, the answer has got to be NO!  Snowflakes have structure.  They happen to be created in a random sort of way but their crystal structure is certainly not free of information.  Similarly if you dissolve a lot of salt in hot water and then let the solution cool down, the salt will crystallise.  Surely this is information too - and it was definitely self-created.

Neither of those examples give information that is then read back and used to make a future action happen though, so in a sense they might not count.

Taking the opposite extreme, the creation of different forms of life, the question gets a little more complex.  Let's make the assumption - for the time being - that this new information did come from an intelligent designer in just the way that this blog post is new information created by me.  How did I develop the concept that I want to present, formulate it and publish it?

Obviously some measure of intelligence might have been involved for the latter two stages and I leave it to my intelligent readers to decide how much of it is demonstrated, but just invoking intelligence is not enough is it?  Aside from the fact that intelligence is a quantity that is notoriously hard to define and measure, intelligence in itself does not create new ideas.  Somewhere in the mind of a designer there has to be a 'spark' that starts off a thought process, leading to a train of thought.

Where does that spark itself come from?  Since I am not a dualist I cannot use my soul as an explanation of the source of inspiration.  Therefore I am left with the problem of finding an explanation for the information that has been conveyed by my own intelligence.

In other words, invoking an intelligent designer does not move us forward at all.  I think this condemns Intelligent Design to the realms of pseudo-science, if indeed it had not already managed to do that for itself in other ways.

Or perhaps the idea for this post came from the great Intelligent Designer in the sky?

Perspectives on the Cambrian Explosion

I must have been listening to too much pro-ID propaganda!  (I have!)  The proponents of Intelligent Design put up a superb, almost-convincing, smoke-screen and one of their favourite topics is 'The Cambrian Explosion' and that Darwin himself had recognised this as a problem.  They claim that the increased rate of evolution in that period of a few tens of millions of years, about half a billion years ago, shows evidence of the presence of an intelligent designer.  This seems to be based on a claim that information cannot be created except by intelligence.  More on that topic soon! 

Of course sometimes they take that trouble to pretend that this is not a religious claim!  Honestly it isn't.  You can believe everything they say, including this claim.

Reading the Wikipdia article about The Cambrian Explosion this evening, I was reminded that conventional science is by no means short of ways to explain the phenomenon, including:

• 'Large' animals of diverse types did exist before, and the evidence for them is growing steadily (in spite of the claims of ID's proponents)
• There are some special layers called lagerstätten, which preserved soft body parts unusually well, and several of these were in the Cambrian period
• Evolution was faster than 'normal' but not by more than a factor of ten or so, and there were other periods when 'explosions' happened, including the Devonian and Cretaceous
• A sudden increase in the amount of calcium in the oceans might have been significant for the innovative production of bony body parts
• The end of a previous ice age might also have mattered a lot.

All in all, the presence of an intelligent designer is not the only plausible explanation, and not even the most probable, for various reasons:

• How long did this particular intelligent designer live, as the Cambrian explosion lasted for tens of millions of years? 
• If it lived for that long, does that imply that it was God after all, or was it a family of shorter lived designers?
• If it was God, why was he so busy for that short period before leaving things to themselves for 500 million years?  Only after that time did he complete his perfect world, where he created original sin and all the other bad things.
• If it was God, how did he evolve anyway?  If you can't explain this then the problem has only been deferred, not solved.

Case for God not proven! I also note that I and D are the first two letters of an uncomplimentary five letter word.

Small note:  Obviously when Meyer's new book 'Darwin's Doubt' is released (at an exorbitant price from here, but only delivered within USA) we will learn the answers to all our doubts.  In the meantime we still have the opportunity to listen to the whining voice of Casey Luskin on the Discovery Institute's podcast ID The Future telling us that he has read it and that it explains everything beautifully.

Should psychics be prosecuted?

If psychics offer their services to the police in order to solve a mystery or a crime and it all goes horribly wrong, which party should be considered culpable?

From time to time we hear about cases where psychics seem to offer that vital clue that police needed in order to solve a difficult case.  Correlation does not always imply causation of course, but facts like this do not often convince a gullible public who are left thinking that 'there must be something in it'.

One recent case where a psychic's total failure has been revealed was that of the investigation of the disappearance of kidnap victim Amanda Berry about 10 years ago.  With the final escape of Amanda we now discover for certain that the psychic Sylvia Browne had (at least) made a mistake.  Her claim that Amanda was no longer in the land of the living has now been shown to be complete fabrication.  I seem to remember that there was a similar case in Bristol UK, just last year, resulting in a false accusation of an innocent man.

Now I wouldn't like to suggest that this particular failed psychic is necessarily using her fame to interfere malevolently with police investigation.  It is quite possible that she truly believes in her abilities (not that she is just using a high profile case like this as a publicity stunt to bring the punters in to see her stage performances.)  I have a friend who also believes that she has these abilities even though she is a scientist.  She realises that the evidence is not yet compelling enough to convince me. 

However, the simple belief in one's abilities is one matter, but when interfering in matters that are truly a matter of life and death, actions should surely carry a degree of responsibility.

No doubt Sylvia Browne's stage work carries the disclaimer "For entertainment purposes only" in small writing, for legal reasons.  So I wonder why her work with the police should not be treated in the same way - also for legal reasons.  Should a prosecution be initiated for supposed psychics who waste police time in this way?  I speak in general terms - not necessarily in this specific case, but surely YES.

On the other hand, are the police failing in their duty by even considering that a psychic might be able to help?  In my view, the answer is an emphatic YES.  Disciplinary action should be taken against the officers who have failed in their duty to the public by even entertaining the idea that this might be useful.  Naturally it might have been a media propaganda stunt on their behalf too, but this sort of thing is at best a smoke screen to placate the credible public.

It is time to stop tolerating interference with the due process of law.

My two 'spirit guides'

A dear friend told me today that I have invisible companionship.

This is not just one spirit guide, but two!  Apparently not everyone is blessed in this way, but it is far from unusual.  My friend claims to have more guides than me.

I find it genuinely interesting that I know people who believe in things that I can't recognise in the world.  My Christian friends know God through his son Jesus (in spite of all that nonsense about the Trinity which makes no real sense to anyone as far as I can tell).  My Islamic friends have faith in Allah and his prophet Mohamed (upon whom I wish no peace or blessing whatsoever).  At least Islam is a little less 'spooky', even though I find it more frightening in other ways.  And my own sister sees ghosts and has always been much more sensitive to the paranormal than I am.

I'm almost jealous of them.  It seems that I am missing this special, interesting, sixth sense.

I don't even believe that we have souls in this dualistic sense, so I find it very difficult to believe in ghosts or spirits.  But I am still fascinated by the idea.

As for these invisible companions who (apparently) know so much about me, very little has been revealed.  They don't have names and nothing is known of the lives that they no longer have.  Both are (or were?) male, which I find genuinely surprising since the minority of my close friends would want to claim that. 

Apparently one is mischievous and the other is 'a free spirit'.  What that happens to say about me is unclear.

What questions can I ask my friend to find out more about my guides?  Your input would be useful.  Please leave a comment if you can help.  I can already think of a few questions.

• Have they chosen me of have I chosen them?
• Do they like me?
• Do they 'guide' anyone else?

Any more?

Sanal Edamaruku in Oxford this week

Sanal Edamaruku, President of the Indian Rationalist Association, was in Oxford this week, and he took the opportunity to speak to an audience of about 50 at Oxford Skeptics in the Pub.

This was not the usual 45 minute talk that we are accustomed to.  I thought I saw an interesting twinkle in his eye when he was introduced with the statement that he would talk for about that long.  In fact he treated us to and hour and three quarters of interesting anecdotes about the role of superstition in otherwise progressive India.

For example, Indian technology has enabled the country to launch satellites, but astrologers are still consulted when deciding the best time to launch them.  We were treated to a long list of more and less shocking anecdotes on similar topics included fire-walking, 'The Milk Miracle' (where statues appeared to drink milk from a spoon), the Prahlad Jani hoax (where he pretended to have fasted for 70 years) and tales of the famous Sai Baba who has been debunked many times by Sanal and his crew.  You can see more of the tales on  this video from Vimeo (which I shared with you a few days ago).

He described how his organisation runs 'Inspire Camps' in schools all over India, teaching the children how to do the tricks that a lot of gurus and holy men use to fleece their customers.  They then give the kids a kit of the ingredients that they need so they can go and show their parents and friends how it is done.

A few other interesting facts:

• The average age of an Indian is currently 22.  Within 10 years the average will be 18.  By comparison in most EU countries the average is over 40 and sometimes over 45, and increasing.
• The terms Humanist and Skeptic are used little in India.  Generally the two groups are combined and referred to as Rationalists.
• You will see people in India rubbing their hands in a particular way because they believe it will stop them going grey.
• There is still a culture of child marriage in India, even though it is illegal.
• Until the 1930s, people suspected of theft could be tried by fire - fire-walking that is!  If they were not burnt then they were considered innocent.
• I was a bit surprised to hear him invoke ball-lightning as an explanation for some events in Utna Pradesh.  Still - even 'Rationalists' can have areas of non-skepticism.

All-in-all he did not disappoint.  He concluded with the story of the recent event that resulted in him having to leave the country.  You can read more about that in a previous post on Something Surprising, here.

I was most surprised by events the next day when I was telling a Christian about him.  She dismissed him out-of-hand and said she thought people shouldn't go round debunking other people's beliefs like that, whether or not they happen to be harmful beliefs.

I disagree. 

Sanal Edamaraku at Oxford Skeptics in the Pub

On Monday evening this week, Oxford Skeptics in the Pub will host the Indian star skeptic Sanal Edamaraku.

You can see some of his work in this video from Vimeo.

If you can make it, it will be interesting to see you there.  I won't be carrying a copy of 'The Financial Times' or wearing a pink carnation - but you might find me chatting with anyone who wants to talk.

Links here and here.

The surprising origins of YEC - 'The Genesis Flood'

Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is a surprisingly recent phenomenon!  Yes - I know that some of the old arguments are based on the work of Archbishop James Ussher, but Ussher's ridiculous literal calculation had gone out of favour long ago.  Christianity had settled into an acceptance that science had the answers to some of the questions about the universe and his claim about the creation happening 'on the night preceding Sunday 23rd October, 4004 BC(E)' is risible for many reasons.  Presumably that was 'the night' in Greenwich Mean time?  But GMT was not a concept that had been formulated at the time.  Perhaps it was in Local Time at Armagh in Northern Ireland - or perhaps during 'the night' somewhere more holy - like Mecca or Jerusalem?  Anyway, how could there have been a night preceding the creation? 

But all that changed in 1961 when a book called "The Genesis Flood" was published.  Interestingly, the original publishers, Moody Press, pulled out when they found out about the actual contents, but the company that stepped in, Reformed Publishing Company, found itself very fortunate!  They sold 200,000 copies over the next 25 years, and started a powerful movement in some otherwise civilise and rational countries..

The authors, John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris set the cat among the pigeons, and they are widely blamed for re-starting the YEC movement.  Fundamentalist home-schoolers refer to this 'scholarly work' in order to justify to their children that their claims are true - which of course they are not.  How can the children be protected from such lies though?

One of the worries of the original publishers was that the accepted (but still bonkers) traditions of Day Age Creationism and Gap Theory Creationism were threatened.  Indeed they should have been worried because neither of those points of view remain as prevalent as they used to be, especially outside USA.

So where does that leave us?  The rational scientific world has been downgraded especially in USA, and people who believe in science when they board a plane lose their faith in it when it comes to estimating the age of the Earth.

So now we are stuck with the pseudo-scientific claims of people like 'The Discovery Institute' who propagate YEC and Intelligent Design.  Thank goodness that some people keep an eye on their activities and report what they are up to!

Only an opinion about nothing . . .

Oxford Skeptics in the Pub had an unusually 'empty' talk this week, entitled "Why nothing matters".  An I'm not saying that the talk didn't happen but that it was full of nothing.

An audience of only about 30 heard Ronald Green speaking about "Why Nothing Matters", hawking his book and clearly expecting to be heckled.  Indeed his style was more-or-less confrontational while he told us that he had spent 5 years studying 'nothing' very seriously.  It is not quite clear where he was when he did that study, nor indeed which universities he has taught at in various continents, or exactly what post-graduate studies he participated in at Oxford University (or indeed which university in Oxford).  But maybe I am too skeptical in wondering about those questions.

Was it obvious that it is true that nothing matters?  You have to ask yourself how deep the following comments are.

"There has to be something around nothing, and there has to be nothing around something."

"Luke says 'nothing is impossible with God' ".

"Zero apples is not the same as zero oranges" and "there are different kinds of nothing".

"Really, nothing is the absence of everything, including ourselves"

Apparently 'silence' might be one kind of nothing [but I don't think the absence of sound is enough to count a real 'nothing']. But he claims that you can never actually have complete silence.  I venture to disagree with this particular claim on grounds of some physics.  If you were in a vacuum there definitely would be silence.  His claim that you hear yourself when it gets quiet enough and that there there is never silence is surely philosophically flawed, because the role of the observer is irrelevant.  If you were not alive and were in a vacuum there definitely would be silence and it doesn't matter a jot that you therefore don't know about it.

More interesting was the tale of the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. Apparently far more people queued to see where it had been stolen from than had wanted to see the painting itself. 

But my final point is that I prefer the approach taken by Peter Atkins in his recent talk and Lawrence Krauss in his "A Universe from Nothing".  Green claims that "even Krauss gets terribly mixed up about it".  I think I would ask whether it is overwhelmingly probable that that is true.  Ask who is more mixed up, and I think the answer seems obvious.

On the other hand I saw a review of his book . . .

[Unlike the talk] This is not a book to be dipped into or skimmed over a coffee break. Green writes very clearly and with a great deal of humour, but he is dealing with ideas that perhaps go to the very core of what it means to be human. That he can do so without the nihilistic melancholy of so many of the people he quotes is a tribute to his writing skills. Would I recommend this book? Yes, with the proviso that if you choose to read it you give the time and thought it deserves.

So maybe I misjudge him. 

ID - not even a theory

Creationists dress up their wacky beliefs in a variety of ways.  'Intelligent Design' (ID) is one that has been quite popular in recent years, but in USA it was clearly recognised in the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial that is not a legitimate science.  In the findings of the court you can read:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science.

Nevertheless, ID is still heralded by supposedly 'respected' organisations like the Discovery Institute, (deliberately not linked from here as it might make them feel more important).  But even they are going to have to change terminology just as they changed the name of their Center for Science and Culture from its original name of Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).  The word 'renewal' in that context must have give the game away!

Just listen to their podcast, 'ID The Future', a few times to hear what I mean.  You will find it a good way to exercise your skills at spotting logical fallacies in seemingly reasonable arguments and exorcise any credibility that you might lend to their point of view.

Intelligent Design. Not even a theory!

ID is not a theory.  It is not even worthy of the name hypothesis!  It is not science, but merely another form of religious dogma dressed up as some sort of science to confuse the gullible.  It is a blanket non-explanation which only leads to regression to the further question of 'who designed the designer?'

Watch out for the next incarnation of creationism and be ready to treat it in the same way.  There are already signs of the way it might go.   We hear whining about how ID is ignored by the scientific press, and claims of discrimination against their pet ideas. We hear them asking for the teaching of the (non-existent) controversy.  I think we can tell that they are developing a new approach to replace the tired idea of Intelligent Design - although they will continue to promote the ID smokescreen in parallel.

Another blog, The Sensuous Curmudgeon, seems to share my amusement and my desire to ridicule the work of the Discovery Institute.  Have a look at this entertaining article for the New Theory of Improvident Design.

Stenger 1 : God 0

Today I am continuing (and completing) my commentary on contents of Victor Stenger's challenging but excellent book The Fallacy of Fine Tuning.  You can find the first two posts here and here.  He referred to the list of 34 quantities that he plans to refute.  (You can see them at this link.)

You might be surprised that the universe's ability to support life may have been affected by the way that stars produce carbon in just the right quantities.  Carbon atoms are produced by combining the particles from the nuclei of three helium atoms.  This is done in the nuclear furnaces of the stars, but therein lies a problem.  Two helium-4 nuclei might collide and fuse to create a beryllium-8 nucleus quite often but it is very unlikely indeed that three heliums will collide at exactly the same moment to make carbon-12 in one step.  In fact the process goes in two steps, with the second step being the fusion of beryllium and helium ions to make carbon.

The problem is that beryllium-8 is VERY unstable, (lasting for only for a thousand million millionth of a second), so it is surprising that it lasts long enough to combine with another helium.  The fine tuners claim that the existence of a particular excited state of carbon makes the reaction very much easier because of a phenomenon known as a resonance, and physicists agree.  However, they say that the energy of this resonance has to be exactly the value that we find, or else it will not work.  There is no need to understand the details because Stenger explains that it is not true to claim that the numbers have to be so accurately defined.  Going through detailed mathematical explanations he shows that the energy of the excited carbon could have been anywhere in quite a wide range - including the value that is observed.

One of the interesting aspects of the whole saga is that carbon combines further with helium, and that in doing so it creates oxygen-16, which is also critical for life of the form that we know.  It is just as well that this reaction doesn't happen too easily or there would be no carbon left.  But this brings us to another point.

Who can say that in an alternate universe with different physical constants it might not be possible for life to be based on a different chemistry.   The claim that it can only be based on the chemistry that we have in our universe is sometimes known as carbon chauvinism!   Life might flourish with a different form of tuning. 

I should also say that Stenger took care not to rely on the concept of a multiverse in order to refute fine tuning arguments.  He managed it quite well enough by using evidence from the one universe that we know about.

I'm not going to cover any of the other interesting aspects of the book in any detail here, but he mentions the poor arguments using probability, and spends a lot of time on the first instants of the universe.  Fine tuners often take a sample sentence from Steven Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time out of context, rather than reading the full explanation about how it would lead inevitably to much of the claimed fine tuning of the universe's expansion rate.  

Stenger also mentions the good reasons for some of the other fine tuning claims, such as why we should not expect there to be different numbers of protons and electrons (to a very high accuracy). 

In conclusion I would say that he covered the subject very thoroughly, sometimes using more mathematics than I wanted to see, but that it is easy to get a lot out of the book without a full understanding of the maths.

As he points out, in order to refute claims of fine tuning arguments he does not actually have to give any reasons for his claims, but only to show that a wide range of parameters could lead to a universe that supports life.

I think he succeeds!

Stenger 1 : God 0!

Exposing finely tuned fallacies

Yesterday I started to describe the contents of Victor Stenger's challenging book The Fallacy of Fine Tuning and referred to the list of 34 quantities that he plans to refute.  (You can see them at this link.)

Stenger starts out with several excellent lines of reasoning.

First he points out that all the models produced by physicists are man-made and that they do not necessarily claim to contain any ultimate truths about the universe.  They are just the best efforts available at the moment to explain the observations that are made by experimentalists, and the best test of their value is to see whether they are able to predict things that have not been tested yet.  All the best theories can claim to do this, and the ones that are shown to be wrong are not forgotten but generally they are discarded when better models are developed which approximate to reality a bit better.

All today's physics models are based on principles that are used throughout the science.  He spends some time explaining that conservation of momentum, angular momentum (or spin) and electrical charge are three of the underlying assumptions in physics.  He spend several pages show in mathematics how the special relativity can be applied a lower speeds, deriving familiar classical physics from the more complex models of the last century.  He also describes how physics requires that the same answer is reached, whatever the point of view of the observer.

I did mention that his reasoning gets complicated didn't I?  Still - with a little persistence I succeeded in skipping over the mathematics and got back to the words without feeling too depressed at my own inadequacy and I think you could do the same if you are equally allergic to maths.

Stenger then goes on to explain that many of the 'fine tuned' quantities are not independent of each other.  Proponents of claims of 'fine tuning' seem to think that they can vary one quantity but leave all the others unchanged, even though they might be co-dependent.

Then he describes some of the quantities that are defined arbitrarily on the basis of the scales of units that we have chosen.  As such, if we preferred to make the units for the constants simpler, we could set some of them arbitrarily to a value of 1.  For example, physics will still work as well if you set the speed of light to be 1, the Gravitational Constant to be 1 and Planck's Constant to be 1. If you do this, the answers you get by solving the equations will not be in units that we recognise, but they will still be correct and meaningful.

He further points out that gravity is not a real force in the same sense that a centrifugal force is not real.  It is useful to use it to describe the way the universe works from one point of view, but it is an emergent property of the distortion of space time rather that a force of the same type as magnetism or electro-static forces.  Then he moves on to attack one of the favorite fallacies of many scientific writers, who claim that gravity is a very weak force compared with electrostatics.  He does it like this.

'Fine tuners' take the example of a hydrogen atom to prove their point.  They say that the gravitational attraction between a proton and an electron is negligible compared with the force arising from their electrical charge.  For some reason they suggest that all natural forces really ought to be of comparable magnitude if they were the result of a natural origin, but in fact they are different by 39 orders of magnitude.  (Heaven alone knows why they think this!)

Stenger argues that they have no justification for choosing a system containing a proton and an electron.  A proton is not even a fundamental particle, after all.  He suggests that these particles have not been chosen arbitrarily but just to prove a fallacy, and that if you used a quantity known as the Planck mass as your starting point the whole argument would fall apart.  He argues that the Planck mass is the only non-arbitrary unit of mass.  Whether that is a reasonable claim or not, it does at least undermine the assertion that gravity is a weak force.

Next time you fall over, try telling yourself how weak gravity is!

So you see, the whole topic of fine tuning is a battle of words and equations.  There will be one more post on the subject soon.

Fine tuning explained . . . or is it?

I have been saving a book for holiday reading, and looking forward to understanding all about "The Fallacy of Fine Tuning".  I have always admired Victor Stenger's explanations of scientific (mainly physical) concepts.  To me, he generally uses accessible words and methods that I can learn from.  And so, having thoroughly enjoyed reading God: The Failed Hypothesis a few months ago I approached this book with some enthusiasm.

The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning by Victor Stenger

What I found was not at all what I expected.

Of course the topic is going to be complicated.  The basis is the claim by many religious apologists that the universe is fine tuned for human life.  Great debaters such as William Lane Craig use this rhetorical device to convince believers that their beliefs are firmly based in science.

One of the web sites referenced in the book is Evidence for God by Rich Deem.  Stenger refers to Deem's claims quite often.  In particular, the page of Evidence for the Fine Tuning of the Universe contains some of the outrageously plausible sounding rationale for the argument for fine tuning.  Deem lists 34 physical quantities that he claims to be critically tuned to allow life to exist.  (Craig sometimes claims that there are 50, but since he fails to list them at all we can tell with greater certainty than usual that he is talking out of his a**e!) 

Victor Stenger's job in the book is to convince us that these claims are only rhetoric and that they have no foundation in science at all.  He uses a mixture of logical reasoning in words, and fairly complex mathematical physics

In a couple of posts over the next few days (probably tomorrow and Monday) you will have to draw your own conclusion about whether he succeeded.  What I will say just now is that this book is absolutely not for the faint hearted!  Even though I have a degree in physics I found some parts of it incredibly challenging.  That is probably because I never was a very good physicist, and my maths is not nearly good enough. The book definitely fails the 'two equation test'.

However, all is not lost.  All the equations are neatly surrounded by boxes which allow the non-mathematician to skip over the mathematical reasoning and move on to the explanations.

So don't let the appearance put you off.  Read on.

Creationist makes nearly ALL the common mistakes

If you would like to practise spotting almost all the common mistakes that creationists make when the are speaking about evolution, I recommend you to listen skeptically to an episode of the Discovery Institute's podcast, ID The Future.  On 11th June 2012** there was an interview interview with Dr Ben Carson who kindly provided a lesson in the recitation of persistently regurgitated and easily answered bunkum.

The show notes give some background:


On this episode of ID the Future, host David Boze speaks with Dr. Ben Carson, renowned paediatric neurosurgeon and Darwin doubter. Dr. Carson was recently invited to deliver the commencement speech at Emory University. Unfortunately, upon uncovering his non-allegiance to Darwinian ideology, 500 faculty members and students alike signed a letter in protest of his welcome. Listen in to hear Dr. Carson discuss this ill treatment and why his acute knowledge of the brain has led him to reject Darwinism. Dr. Ben Carson is the Director of the Division of Paediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. An internationally renowned physician, Dr. Carson has authored over 100 neurosurgical publications, along with three best-selling books, and has been awarded 38 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of national merit citations. 


Dr Carson might indeed be a renowned neurosurgeon and in that capacity he has my admiration.  However, I think he should also now become renowned for his misunderstanding of the Theory of Evolution, which he pejoratively refers to as 'Darwinism'.

To take a few of them with my comments in small text:

• Darwinians are so closed minded.  Yes that's always an argument that convinces people.
• In the history of science, people have come up with some 'pretty outlandish things' that have turned out to be wrong.  True but only the evidence will tell us whether evolution is one of them.  I wouldn't put money on it myself.
• Evolution does not explain the origin of life.  That's true, and well spotted!  his is classic error number one.  It is just as relevant to say that the Theory of Gravitation does not explain the origin of life either.  Evolution doesn't claim to be able to do that.
• How does anything come out of nothing and how does life evolve from non-life.  Just saying that we don't yet know makes the existence of a designer no more likely.  For example - we do know about self-replicating proteins, called prions, that are not alive themselves but they do replicate.
• Although 'fully accepting the concept of natural selection' he thinks that it is taking it a little bit too far to claim that it is the foundational pillar of proof that evolution occurs.  Yes - and what does that mean?  This is not an unusual claim.  I think it means that they don't think natural selection goes as far as speciation, so one wonders what use it is after all..
• Evolutionists [not Darwinists in this case] look at similarities between life forms and infer that they are related, but wouldn't a designer use the same designs if they were successful?  He then uses an analogy - and all analogies are wrong - different models of cars from the same manufacturer share common components.  He says that they have not evolved from each other - which is clearly not true anyway.
• The human genome is a complex sophisticated coding mechanism.   He then makes an analogy to computer programming with 4 digits instead of 2, which he claims is twice as complex.  In fact it is 4!/2! = 12 times more complex - but hey!  What is a factor of six between friends?  It still explains nothing about the need for a designer - this is the argument from personal incredulity.  [The 4! symbology indicates a factorial = 4x3x2x1]
• Complexity of the brain is amazing.  To say that it came about randomly doesn't make sense.  Shades of Michael Behe's 747 from a junkyard here - often rebutted.  Randomness is involved, but it is absolutely not the key to natural selection.  Survival is the key.
• Apparently there are no intermediate species.  No-one has ever found them.  Actually ALL species are intermediate, including our own.  See this Dawkins video for a lovely explanation.
• A single neuron in the human brain can process 50K interactions per second.  If true, that's a very impressive thing that evolution has developed isn't it.
• His message to the young scientists in his field is to 'be wise'.  [i.e. don't tell them until you get tenure?]  Is this just 'lying for Jesus'? He was rather careful not to go as far as actually recommending this though.

All in all this interview is remarkable, even compared with the Discovery Institute's usual fair.  The God of the Gaps argument/fallacy is thinly disguised, but visible to anyone who looks at it.

** Beware that the Discovery Institute tends to recycle its podcasts, so you might have heard this a few times before if you enjoy the masochistic experience of listening to ID The future.  It is good practise!