The Scientific Method

I had the good fortune today to sit in on a couple of presentations at Fermi National Laboratory. There are two large research groups there representing the two giant detectors they have in the Tevatron. Each group has data and analysis that may be suggestive of the existence of the elusive Higgs particle which would be very large news.















Understand that I understood NONE of the physics per se but here’s what I observed:

• Calm and logical presentations
• Polite and attentive audience
• An almost crushing critical eye on their own data (more on this)
• Respectively presenting results from the other detector and from the big machine at CERN without any high fiving or end zone dances (but that would have been kind of awesome).
• Questions being asked and answered without any shouting or interrupting.

So, yes, all of this in direct opposition to what passes for public debate and intercourse these days (Republican “debates” or any asshole on FOX). I watched as each group looked very hard for ways their data could be WRONG. That’s right. That’s the real scientific method. You have a hypothesis, you collect data, it may be suggestive of the hypothesis but before you go there you check the 999 ways you could be wrong. They do a thing were they think they have a signal and then ask, “What are the odds that the background noise could have produced this signal”? They even have a thing called LEE which is the 'Look Elsewhere Effect'. I can only assume that that includes behind the sofa cushions. Stuff like that. They might not like the answer to those questions all the time but so it goes.

You’ll never find this among the creationists because they don’t understand the first thing about science or the scientific method. They have a preconceived idea about how the world works (not a testable hypothesis) then they put together ideas and things that may be suggestive of that preconceived idea, ignore all things that contradict, and call that science. What they are missing is the critical eye that would ask, what else might cover these observations? Is that more or less plausible than where we started? But no. They cannot accept any explanation that contradicts the initial world view because the whole point is to have another way to preach the world-view. . . science be damned!

We’re swimming in relativism where everyone with an idea thinks his is just as good as anyone else’s because he tweeted it. Luckily, real research doesn’t work that way. It’s god awful hard work but step by step our understanding of this universe increases. Any opinion you have about some piece of research better be well formed and based on the relevant and accepted theories around. You don't get to have an opinion just because it suits you. You don't get to have an opinion just because somehow you got it into your head that all opinions are equal. They're not.

Basic research may not lead to a world view that is exactly what we had in mind but that doesn’t matter. Keeping an open mind is critical if you expect to find anything new. Wherever pure research leads we all get to share in our increased understanding of this (one and only?) beautiful universe.

If we keep an open mind . . . and quit shouting!

What does the bible say about the bible . . and then I ramble.

I had this thought today. . . Does the bible itself actually claim to be 'the word of God' or written by God? If not then the 'good book' was handed down and at some point people started putting a magic cloak on it.

My research continues but I did find this nugget:

Christians believe that the Bible is from God, not because someone told them, but because the Bible claims it.

I'm guessing this won't be my last encounter with a circular argument. But then I guess I asked for it by asking if the bible referred to itself. Self reference, like time travel, always leads to difficulties.

The barber cuts the hair of all the people who don't cut their own. Who barbers the barber?
There are two indices in the library. One lists all the books that do not refer to themselves in any way and the other lists all the books that do. Which index is in which index?

Stuff like that.

Anyway, my bigger wondering was about the nature of the world and civilization at the time that we think the books of the old testament were assembled by Abraham and then maybe later by Charlton Heston.

From Wikepedia:
In historical archaeology, the ancient literature of the Iron Age includes the earliest texts preserved in manuscript tradition. Sanskrit literature and Chinese literature flourished in the Age. Other text includes the Avestan Gathas, the Indian Vedas and the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible. The principal feature that distinguishes the Iron Age from the preceding ages is the introduction of alphabetic characters, and the consequent development of written language which enabled literature and historic record.^[1]

(jeez they sure underline a lot!)

Wow, Looks like the Hebrew Bible (old testament) wasn't the only writing laying around. Were any of these other pieces of literature given the magic cloak?

Here's the thing. I'm a rotten history student. I like it. It interests me but there is just so MUCH of it! Suffice it to say that the ancient books of the bible were written a LONG time ago. Now it is said that they were 'inspired' so that they are actually the word of God. OK.

However, would you allow that perhaps there were some misunderstandings? Would you allow that due to the temper of the times and the vagaries of passing things down that things like slavery, role of women, etc maybe got a less than heavenly treatment? If so, how hard is it to get re-inspired and do a new edition? I'm half serious (the other half is all smart-ass). The religious get so much grief (and rightly so) about the atrocities that are promoted in the bible that I can't see a down side for them for a re-write.

They won't have to prove that the re-write was actually written by God since they can't prove that model 1 was either. It's a faith thing. Some modern 'inspired' writers could really have at it! They could get the age of the universe correct. They could have the modern bible jibe with evolution! You could teach the new bible in Bio class and all are happy! You could keep the old stories about Noah etc. but perhaps the flood was not world wide but local and he took some cats and dogs. You could put in some fancy language about the big bang and you get some traction there because to date nobody knows what CAUSED the Big Bang. You could have some newer stories that include such modern characters as Archimedes and Galileo, Martin Luther and Muhammad Ali perhaps. You could fill in things about dinosaurs, the Chinese, the Aztecs, and the Whig Party. Stuff like that. Why in the end you'd have a wonderful book that would be. . .


Maybe a very nice set of science/history texts! Praise the Newton and pass the ammunition!

Hand of God

Theists are fond of seeing the hand of God in such things as devastating tornadoes. The two obvious questions are:

1. How does it work? Really, how does it work? What is the mechanism by which an entity controls the weather. I'll give you that he has the power to do it. What is the mechanism by which it works?

2. I like to ask, ok, they how would it have looked different if it were just random weather and not the hand of God? Look about the same I'm thinking. A family huddled in their house praying their asses off got carted off to heaven. Hmmm...maybe that's what they were praying for and it DOES work!

In short you only see the hand of God if you already believe in the hand of God. There is no objective proof of the work of a deity. As my boss at the museum used to say, "If I hadn't believed it with my own mind I never would have seen it".

Hoping and Knowing

There’s hoping and then there’s knowing. Religion is devoted to hoping and science and rationalism are devoted to knowing. When you pray you are hoping a LOT of things. You’re hoping that the lines are up, you’re hoping that the message will be answered. When you go to church and express your faith you hope that you are going to heaven. Even the faithful will agree that they don’t know any of those things but that they have faith. They’re hoping.

People are fond of saying that they know something “in their hearts”. This is put up as an unassailable position when in fact it's just a metaphor. Moreover, by saying you ONLY know something in your heart means that you’re hoping. Flowery language cannot be used against cold hard facts. You’re basing your premise on what you want to be true based on no information or research and probably via ignoring information that contradicts that which you are hoping.

When you know something (no matter how much you may wish it weren’t true) you know it based on research, facts, known theories, and testable and re-testable experiments. Your knowledge is firmly attached to reality. There is nothing between you and your knowledge that has to be accepted to move on. Nothing is based on hoping. Everything is open to examination and tests. That’s real knowledge. And if someone says to me, "Yes, but what about other realities or the supernatural", I say, well just show me an example and we'll take it from there. Experiments will continue and would frankly be fascinating!

I get the hoping part. It’s a scary world out there. Our lives are so short. We wish things were different perhaps. But hoping they were different doesn’t make it so. Every parent teaches their kids this pretty early on, right? You may wish your child didn’t have to go through the pain of a dying pet but making up a doggie heaven doesn’t change the facts. As kids grow they have a pretend world that meshes with the real world and that's great but we all know the difference, right?

None of this would be worth writing about nor would it be a problem except for the fact that hoping and reason are hoisted up on the dance floor as if they were on equal terms (because the former might actually be worth more votes). When it comes to the death of Bowser I could give a rats ass really what you tell your kid. But when it comes to how we operate something as complicated as the US of A I get a little nervous. Why should I care what invisible deity what candidate sends his hopes to. Why do we still say that someone is a “man of faith” as if that makes him qualified to lead the nation. If that were all it took we’d draft Tim Tebow and be done with it.

Examples abound. When the religious right tries to pretend that there is controversy regarding evolution they are putting their hope that the bible is true and accurate and that man is special up against tons of reality based research that says we are no more special than any other of our fellow creatures and that clearly there has been a plodding progression from simple organisms to more complicated. We’re part of that progression. How could we not be without being aliens from another planet? That these two positions are put up as if they were worthy debate contestants is ludicrous.

When people listen to congressmen instead of scientists when it comes to global warming it’s because they HOPE that it just isn’t true and that it’s really still 1957, gas is 29 cents a gallon, and Wally and the Beaver are on their way home from school. Sorry, the planet is definitely warming up and anyone who can read and think a little will agree with the thousands of SCIENTISTS who also agree that the planet is warming up and that it is industrialization that caused it. It’s a tough reality so just deal with it and let’s start working on solutions. There is nothing in the way of solving problems except denying that they exist!

anti evolution

There’s still a anti-evolution bill pending in New Hampshire.

Do these people have the remotest idea of how science works? You don't get a bug up your ass about your pretend friends and then try to get a fucking bill passed in support of it. No. You do real scientific research and publish your results in a peer reviewed journal.

Why no anti-gravity bill? or anti-neutrino bill? Or why not just come out and write an anti-science bill because you just can't handle all that logic and want to live about 5000 years ago.

Enjoy the cholera?

Why do we insist on remaining so stupid?

10 reasons to not vote for Santorum

I read today an article at CNN (why do I keep going to their site?) entitled: 10 Reasons Religious Conservatives Love Rick Santorum.

My comments are inserted in RED. (I used to grade a LOT of papers.)

1. Santorum’s a family man. “He’s got this big, vibrant family and he left the campaign trail last week to go back and be with his daughter in the hospital,” says Eli Bremer, chairman of Colorado's El Paso County Republican Party, centered around evangelical-heavy Colorado Springs. Santorum recently returned to Pennsylvania to respond to a health scare involving daughter Isabella – the youngest of his seven children – who suffers from a genetic disease. “I spent time with him last year, and he’s constantly thinking about his family,” Bremer says of Santorum. “It’s not just a political stunt.”

We've only had one president who was a bachelor - Franklin Pierce (the 15th . . . president, not the 15th Franklin Pierce). So, yeah, you're not going to get elected these days and not be a 'family man'. But what does that mean? Josh Powell was a family man. So were Robert Lynch, Bruce Sweazy, and Anthony Paul...they all killed their families. You elect a guy . . . not a family. Would it be possible for a single guy to be a good president? Of course so this item is a wash. There are good family guys and bad family guys and either way it's not a qualification for the presidency.

2. He’s not averse to getting politically incorrect when donning culture warrior chain mail. “So if the baby’s toe is in you can’t kill the baby – how about if the baby’s foot is in?” he famously asked U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, in a 1999 debate over a rare, later term abortion procedure that anti-abortion groups call a "partial birth" abortion.

I'll step back a little on this one. I'm actually for being politically incorrect (you BITCH!) but I will say that whether a stranger has an abortion (and I might be against abortion in philosophy) will affect my world not one whit. The president of the United States frankly cannot rule on abortion. It's the law of the land and will take 2/3 of the states to change that. The president of the United States should focus on what really affects the working people of this country and unborn (or partially unborn) children do not. That's just a cold hard fact. This is an emotional issue and one where you obviously take the stand that is required by the votes you are trying to get. I get that.

3. Santorum’s a homeschooling dad. His wife, Karen, is homeschooling or has homeschooled their seven children, making them a poster family for a movement populated largely by evangelical Christians and other serious believers. “It matters because it shows he’s a real part of our movement rather than simply someone who is politically sympathetic,” says Michael Farris, an evangelical conservative who leads the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Home schooling is a way to keep your kids ignorant. It's stupid. It's a way to hide them from scary things like evolution (150 years old), global warming (it's real), and negros. You're raising defective children who cannot work with anyone who thinks or looks different from them. Shame on you.

4. He’s a devout cradle Catholic. As a kid in Pennsylvania, Santorum the altar boy would spend Sunday mornings pushing hospital patients in wheelchairs to Mass. As a U.S. senator, Santorum attended Mass at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill each day before work. That piety gets respect with religious voters, regardless of affiliation. “Evangelicals have made him an honorary evangelical,” said Richard Land, public policy chief for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Well now. . . ok. He believes in invisible spirits. Luckily we live in a land where you're free as free can be to believe whatever. But we're talking about running the country. How does this belief in magical beings help one run the country?

5. Santorum’s not Mitt Romney. Millions of socially conservative voters still distrust the former Massachusetts governor on the hot button issues – abortion and same-sex marriage. Some, though not all, are put off by Romney’s Mormonism.

The US is mired in debt. We are still hated by a great number of countries. China is building EVERYTHING we invent. The planet is heating up. THESE are issues. How in the fuck is abortion and same-sex marriage a button at all let alone a hot one?

6. Santorum’s not Newt Gingrich. Many social conservatives, particularly those of the female persuasion, continue to be turned off by Gingrich’s two failed marriages and his admissions of past marital infidelity.

Adolf Hitler, Adam Sandler, and the Queen of England are also not Newt Gingrich. Next!

7. Santorum doesn’t just talk about opposing abortion, he’s legislated on it. As a senator, he was an architect of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. He pushed the ban even in the1990s, when Bill Clinton was in the White House and the legislation stood nary a chance of a presidential signature. “He walked the walk,” Land says. “When no one else would carry our water in the Senate, he would.”

Just a quick reminder. . . does not affect your basic American o n e w h i t! This is posturing. This is taking a stand so that you can get votes from the mentally defective who pride themselves in liking babies. OK, who doesn't?! I like babies. I like puppies too! But it is not a day to day agenda item for the president of the United States. Get it?

8. Ditto on same-sex marriage. Santorum sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage at a time when many Republicans lawmakers didn’t want to touch such a hot potato.

Sigh. . . Let's say you're a conservative evangelical and you DO get the country to outlaw same-sex marriage. How will your life change? How will this be a better land? All you'll get is a way to add to that smugness you already carry around because you believe in invisible people. You'll wake up and get to say, SO THERE! Oh, and by the way, the president cannot make this happen for you.

9. Santorum’s big on compassionate conservatism. Though he gets the most ink for controversial stances on issues such as homosexuality, Santorum has also been a leading advocate for funding to fight AIDS in the Third World and has led conservative responses to poverty. “A lot of people have a hard time getting Rick Santorum because they’re used to a debate between liberalism and complete free-market approach and he’s not either of those things,” says Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

I like pistachio nuts.

10. Santorum isn’t afraid to challenge science, questioning the theory of evolution and dismissing global warming as “a hoax.” The former senator “confirms (social conservatives’) view of science as being at odds with a Christian worldview,” tweets Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College, an evangelical Christian school in Pennsylvania.

Ok, here we go. This is either ignorance or pure posturing and I suspect the later. There is NO controversy in the biological sciences about evolution. There is only 'controversy' that is created by assholes who want schools to teach religion which is what creationism is. There is no university you could attend and major in intelligent design. It is transparent as hell and courts have seen intelligent design for that and ruled accordingly.

As for global warm the verdict is in. Here's a link to some quick references that show why it is real and that we caused it. The really scary part is that his counter argument to the scientific evidence that supports global warming is that, wait for it. . . .IT'S A HOAX! Oh sure. A few million scientists got together and decided to create this most giant of hoaxes since the landing on the moon. Yeah that is a LOT more believable than the data supporting global warming itself. Again, the only reason to say such a thing is that you are a complete unread idiot or that you are just posturing to an obvious group to get votes.

I think I'm leaning toward NOT supporting Rick Santorum for any office and especially the presidency.

Book Review: Mr g by Alan Lightman

I should say first off that I’m a big fan of Alan Lightman. I read his clever little book, Einstein’s Dreams, years ago when I was teaching physics at Maine East High. I used to buy a copy for each of my AP seniors as a graduation present. That said I recently saw Mr g sitting on the featured table at the neighborhood bookstore (Borders is gone but the mom and pop shops live on!) and just bought it without another thought.

As you may have already guessed, Mr g is a all seeing, all knowing, immortal, omnipotent being that lives in the ‘void’. He is accompanied there by his aunt and uncle - a literary or philosophical gizmo that has escaped me so far. Mr. g, after waking up from a nap decides to create a universe. He goes through may prototypes experimenting with what the initial conditions need to be to have it not blow up in 2 seconds and so forth. With zillions of his prototypes zinging around the void he settles on a favorite and gives it a name that involves the 10,000th prime number.

Lightman being an MIT physicist and professor of humanities gently works in good physics about time, the big bang, and evolution. Mr g is tempted to cause the creation of sentient beings and is surprised to find that with matter, energy and his initial boundary conditions it happens spontaneously all over the billions of galaxies in his favorite universe.

By Mr. g’s inherent ‘goodness’ the creation of a universe caused to be created his opposite - Baalial. He goes by various names but he is the cynic to Mr. g’s optimism. They have many interesting discussions about goodness, free will and more.

A thought provoking book, a quick read, and Mr. g never reveals himself to the sentient beings of the universe he created. . . .or does he?

Link to the book below. . . I notice that the reader reviews on Amazon are all over the place. I'd be interested to know what my fellow atheists think of the book.

Mr g by Alan Lightman

Joe Pa

Just read an obit of Joe Pa - the Penn State football coach. Nice guy, too bad the way it ended. But to the point of this blog here's a quote from the piece I read by Jack McCallum at SI.

But when the end came, it came with such breathtaking suddenness that even non-believers must pause for moment to wonder if it wasn't part of some cosmic script.

I guess this is just a writer trying to make a deadline or trying to a little more than a sports guy but what kind of a sentence is that? I'm a non-believer and I don't see any cosmic script here. Things happened as reported and all explainable by the vagaries of human behavior.

It's this kind of 'cosmic glasses' that a huge number of people enjoy looking through to help support their world view. This is not evil. This is just what people do. When there is a particularly beautiful sunrise some tend to think that some super being made is special just for them. Perhaps some cannot separate beauty from that beauty being connected to someone or some super-being creating it.

To me the oceans, the sky, a sailboat, a summer day . . . all of that is particularly beautiful. My thinking stops there and I just enjoy it as is.