Occam’s Blender

This week’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, was predictably uneventful, with the participants talking past each other most of the time. This was not surprising at all. Nye is a scientist, and Ham is a mystic. Their world views are incompatible.

A wise person reexamines long-cherished assumptions when presented with new evidence. A fool clings to beliefs in spite of the facts. At the close of the debate, the participants made clear to which group they belonged. When asked what it would take to convince either man to change his mind, Nye said ‘just one piece of evidence.’ Mr. Ham said nothing could convince him to change his mind.

Confirmation bias is a well-researched phenomenon within psychology, and it can affect scientists as well as laypeople. The advantage of the scientific worldview is that it is designed to actively fight the pernicious and truth-corrupting influence of bias. Fundamentalists institutionalize confirmation bias, apparently unaware that it’s even a problem.

There was a time when the seasons, earthquakes, lightning, and celestial events were considered supernatural phenomena. Ancient men had no better explanations than the myths they invented. Today we have the benefit of centuries of advancement of knowledge, and the modern person no longer need resort to supernatural explanations. The devout however, are emotionally dependent on a worldview wherein supernatural causes are still important. These are erstwhile modern people, encumbered by a Stone Age mindset.

Occam’s razor states that all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Ham and his ilk do not appear to follow the principle of parsimony. On the contrary, they ascribe to what I’ll call Occam’s Blender:

No explanation is too complicated, provided it confirms pre-existing beliefs.

It was clear to anyone who is familiar with Mr. Ham that he is simply incapable of entertaining ideas that do not conform to his pre-existing beliefs. I actually found it rather ridiculous that Nye stooped to debunking the glaring physical impossibilities of the Flood, Noah’s Ark, and so on. To a thinking person, these arguments are obvious; to a believer, factual defects in scripture can always be answered with magic. Not enough room on the boat for all the species? Magic. Not enough time for rock layers to have formed? Magic. For every impossibility in Ham’s account of Biblical history, the answer is always the same: God.

I’m not sure what Bill Nye thought he could achieve during the debate. Perhaps he hoped to reach out to an audience of young people who might not otherwise be exposed to an enthusiastic proponent of the scientific worldview. I hope that he accomplished this goal. It’s clear though that he wasn’t able to reach everyone. These hilariously ignorant comments from self-identifying creationists are a staggering display of purposeful and prideful stupidity. They exemplify the backward anti-knowledge worldview that is holding back an otherwise great nation.

Women dress up when they’re fertile

I enjoyed reading this brief article in New Scientist. Apparently, women make themselves pretty when they're ovulating. Here's an excerpt:

[I]t is the first evidence that women openly advertise their fertility. Interestingly, all the women in the study group described themselves as being in committed relationships with men. So why go to the trouble of dressing up? Perhaps to attract other men. “Women with high fertility tend to feel attracted to men other than their primary partners...”

So ladies, if you're getting that wandering eye, check the calendar — what part of your cycle are you in? If you can resist temptation for a few days, the feeling might very well pass.

Why do people believe in god?

I was raised to be skeptic, by two loving and well-educated parents. I probably also have my grandfather Lorn to thank for my scientific worldview. Ever the scientist, my mama-papa always encouraged me to ask questions, to think in new ways, and to just plain figure out how things work.

Even so, my familiy was (and still is) quite religious, although the Methodist church to which most of my family belongs is on the more liberal end of the American religious spectrum, and these days my closest relatives are less observant than when I was a child.

So I wonder: in this modern world, where rational explanations are sought for everything, what purpose is served by religious belief?

Ever since I began to question religion at an early age, I have wondered why people held religious beliefs so strongly. Studies in biology, along with what I learned from my two psychologist parents, informed my thinking into this matter. When I began to learn more about evolution in college, and particularly evolutionary psychology, I began to wonder what adaptative advantage a gene endowing its owner with religious belief might bestow. In other words, perhaps a tendency toward religious faith — thought not overtly advantageous today — was advantageous at some time in the distant past.

Some years ago, this theory began to take shape in my mind. In the environment during which the human brain was undergoing its last surge of evolution, language and consciousness appeared on the scene. For the first time, it became possible for humans to examine themselves mentally. With these newfound abilities though came perils. When one can comprehend one's own mortalilty, for example, this understanding can be debilitating. Perhaps a predisposition towards mysticism allowed people to posit (or accept from others) quick-and-dirty solutions to the unfathomable problems made possible by human cognition.

Imagine two of our ancient ancestors: one guy who pondered his mortatlity but found no comforting answer, and another fellow who had the same questions, but answered them with a story about an afterlife. Apply the same idea to other areas of religious belief: heaven & hell, the observance of rituals, and so on. Perhaps, my thinking went, the guy who had a quick answer to the unanswerable questions was more able to just get on with life than his cohort who lacked the easy answers.

Yesterday my dad — the brother and son of Methodist ministers — sent me a link to a fascinating article in the New York Times. The article covers in a fair amount of detail the current state of research into the evolution of religion. I'm glad to see that some of my ideas are shared by renowed scientists, and that the topic is getting the attention it richly deserves.