'The Face of Creation' - Higgs Remix

Celebrate 2012's greatest scientific discovery with a remix by melodysheep:

Our Story In One Minute

A tapestry of footage tracing the cosmic and biological origins of our species, set to original music. Another great mash-up from Melodysheep.

Watch:

The Higgs Boson, A Cappella Style

Enjoy:

Richard Dawkins Speaks to CNN About Scientific Literacy, Morality & Creationism

CNN has a nice in-depth video interview with writer/biologist Richard Dawkins. It's definitely worth your time if you care about scientific literacy.

A few highlights:

On whether or not evolution should be taught to young children:

You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution. So I would teach evolution very early in childhood. I don't think it's all that difficult to do. It's a very simple idea. One could do it with the aid of computer games and things like that.

I think it needs serious attention, that children should be taught where they come from, what life is all about, how it started, why it's there, why there's such diversity of it, why it looks designed. These are all things that can easily be explained to a pretty young child. I'd start at the age of about 7 or 8.

There’s only one game in town as far as serious science is concerned. It’s not that there are two different theories. No serious scientist doubts that we are cousins of gorillas, we are cousins of monkeys, we are cousins of snails, we are cousins of earthworms. We have shared ancestors with all animals and all plants. There is no serious scientist who doubts that evolution is a fact.

On the source of morality:

We have very big and complicated brains, and all sorts of things come from those brains, which are loosely and indirectly associated with our biological past. And morality is among them, together with things like philosophy and music and mathematics. Morality, I think, does have roots in our evolutionary past. There are good reasons, Darwinian reasons, why we are good to, altruistic towards, cooperative with, moral in our behavior toward our fellow species members, and indeed toward other species as well, perhaps.

There are evolutionary roots to morality, but they’ve been refined and perfected through thousands of years of human culture. I certainly do not think that we ought to get our morals from religion because if we do that, then we either get them through Scripture – people who think you should get your morals from the Old Testament haven’t read the Old Testament – so we shouldn’t get our morals from there.

Nor should we get our morals from a kind of fear that if we don’t please God he’ll punish us, or a kind of desire to apple polish (to suck up to) a God. There are much more noble reasons for being moral than constantly looking over your shoulder to see whether God approves of what you do.

Where do we get our morals from? We get our morals from a very complicated process of discussion, of law-making, writing, moral philosophy, it’s a complicated cultural process which changes – not just over the centuries, but over the decades. Our moral attitudes today in 2012 are very different form what they would have been 50 or 100 years ago. And even more different from what they would have been 300 years ago or 500 years ago. We don’t believe in slavery now. We treat women as equal to men. All sorts of things have changed in our moral attitudes.

Watch:

Answers In Genesis Responds To Bill Nye's Anti-Creationism Rant

*sigh*


Of course, comments are disabled on YouTube.

Bill Nye's original post here.

Bill Nye: Don't Indoctrinate Your Children With Creationism -- The Future Needs Them

So many times, when discussing evolution, creationists will say, "Why do you care what I believe?"

Bill Nye answers the question.

"When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in [Evolution] it holds everybody back," Nye says. "Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates."

"[I]f you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them," Nye says. "We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people...engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."

"In another couple of centuries that world view [Creationism]...just won't exist. There's no evidence for it."

Watch:

The Difference Between Science And Religion, Explained With Bunnies

Via reddit:

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson Tweets More Baseball

During the 2011 World Series, Neil deGrasse Tyson treated his Twitter followers to an entertaining and informative stream of tweets about baseball from the perspective of an astrophysicist.

Tyson is arguably one of the most popular, charismatic, and likable scientists since Carl Sagan. It's only natural that we would want to know what it's like to sit on the couch with him during the All-Star Game.

I was pleased to find Tyson tweeting about baseball last night while the game was on. (It wasn't much of a game, so his commentary was probably the only thing keeping me from shutting the thing off.)

I've collected those tweets below for your enjoyment:

Would The Discovery Of Alien Life Spell Doom For Religion?

The vastness and complexity of the cosmos tends to bolster the faith in a creator for many. Certainly something so intricate and expansive could not have just 'happened.'

For many others, myself included, the more we learn about the cosmos, the more we question the validity of religion.

Mike Wall writes at Space.com:

The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity's place in the universe, but it probably wouldn't seriously threaten organized religion, experts say.

Religious faith remains strong in much of the world despite scientific advances showing that Earth is not the center of the universe, and that our planet's organisms were not created in their present form but rather evolved over billions of years. So it's likely that religion would also weather any storms caused by the detection of E.T., researchers say.

Many believers tend to compartmentalize their religion and their understanding of the world. How else would we explain geologists, astrophysicists, and biologists who adhere to a young-earth creationist belief system? (Yes, they do exist.) While this seems inconceivable, it speaks to the power of belief, and the unshakeable nature of faith.

While it is not inconceivable that people of faith could reconcile alien life with their faith, it certainly would seem to raise many questions -- questions that I often wrestled with during my time as a believer:

According to the Drake Equation, there are "at least 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if we assume that only one out of a billion of these stars have planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25×109 (billion) life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.

If we are to make a conservative estimate and say that there are 2 planets in the cosmos with intelligent life, we can extrapolate that there might be three major religions on each planet (if religions even exist on these planets). Considering that humans on earth only stumbled upon monotheism 3000 years ago, and that we have run through numerous deities, it is fair to say that none of these hypothetical alien religions are Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. What would that mean?

If Christianity is the one true religion, as many Christians will proclaim, did Christ also exist on these other planets?

If Islam is the one true religion, and if Islam doesn't exist on any other planets, are entire worlds of beings destined for Jahannam?

If religions did not evolve on other planets, what does that say about our own religions here on Earth?

Why do our religious texts (many of which are believed to be the word of God) not make any mention of life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a huge omission by an all-knowing creator?

Doug Vakoch, director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, doesn't think the discovery of alien life would have much effect on religious belief:

"I think there are reasons that we might initially think there are going to be some problems. My own hunch is they're probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think."

Rather than being shaken to its foundations by the confirmation of life on another planet or moon, organized religion may accept the news, adapt and move on.
Vakoch cited the example of Baptist theologian Hal Ostrander, who is an associate pastor at a church in Georgia.

"Dr. Ostrander is adamantly opposed to evolution, and yet he has no problem with the idea of there being extraterrestrials," Vakoch said. "He says it's as if a couple has one child, and then they decide to have a second child. Is that second child any less special? So too if God decides to have life on our planet, and then another planet, and another planet. It doesn't make us less special."

I especially believe this would be the case for many liberal religious people -- those who have not had any problems reconciling scripture with evolution, for example. These people do not tend to approach the scriptures literally. They understand that the scriptures were written by people with a limited understanding of the cosmos, and that much of the stories in the scriptures are parables, myths, and embellished accounts.

It is the scriptural literalists who may have problems with the news of intelligent life on other planets. If the evolution debate has taught us anything, we might expect them to doubt the science used to confirm intelligent alien life.

Or perhaps such a finding might finally be what allows these folks to evolve their religious views.

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

We're All Related

Mr. Rogers Remixed: 'Did You Ever Grow Anything In The Garden Of Your Mind?'

This might just be the best thing ever.

Mister Rogers remixed by Symphony of Science's John Boswell for PBS Digital Studios.

This is the first in a series of PBS icons remixed.


Related Posts:
Where Is Our Fred Rogers?
Additional Symphony of Science Posts

American Idiots: 46% Of Americans Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

If the recent political climate has you feeling that not much has changed in the past 30 years, the latest Gallup poll will come as no surprise.

According to Gallup:

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.

It's amazing, right? Despite the oceans of data supporting evolution, nearly half of all Americans believe humans were created in their present form. If Gallop had dug a little deeper, we would have learned that these folks believe that men were molded out of dirt, and that women were an afterthought, fashioned from Adam's rib.

Half of all Americans believe that National Geographic, The Smithsonian, The Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, and PBS are all part of a vast secular conspiracy (along with an overwhelming majority of scientists and every major US scientific organization).

Denial is a powerful drug.

We shouldn't be surprised, then, to learn that "the more religious the American, the more likely he or she is to choose the creationist viewpoint."

Two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services weekly choose the creationist alternative, compared with 25% of those who say they seldom or never attend church. The views of Americans who attend almost every week or monthly fall in between those of the other two groups. Still, those who seldom or never attend church are more likely to believe that God guided the evolutionary process than to believe that humans evolved with no input from God.

Now, if I were to ask you whether Republicans or Democrats were more likely to be creationists -- that's a no-brainer, right? Right.

"58% of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years."

Now, before you start laughing at the Republicans' ignorance, get this: "39% of independents and 41% of Democrats agree [that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.]"

We have a serious problem in America. It's a phenomenon unlike anything else in the world.

We are a different animal altogether.

All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins.

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature.

Symphony of Science - "We Are Star Dust"

The latest Symphony of Science is "We Are Star Dust," the 15th in the series. It features heavyweights Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Feynman and Lawrence Krauss.

Watch:

Pat Robertson: Scientists "Can't Speculate About The Origins Of Life Because They Weren't There"

Pat Robertson doesn't think scientists can speculate about the origins of life 'because they weren't there.' In the same breath, he also says it's okay to believe a 'geologist who tells you something existed 300 million years ago.'

Come again, Pat?

And, of course, it's also okay to believe the Genesis origin story that was written by guys who weren't there.

Watch:

Rick Santorum Actually Believes The Entire Cosmos Was Created For Homo Sapiens

Rick Santorum, like many humans, has a problem with perspective.

On "Face the Nation," Santorum attempted to clarify his accusations that Obama's theology is "phony":

"I accept the fact that the president is a Christian," Santorum said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "But when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man and says we can't take those resources because its going to harm the Earth, it's just all an attempt to centralize power and give more power to the government."

Santorum said that while Obama believes "man is here to serve the Earth," he believes "Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective."

Silly Rick Santorum.

Here are a few basic scientific considerations:

• The earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
• Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago.
• Scientists estimate that at least 99.9 percent of all species of plants and animals that ever lived are now extinct.
• Based upon evidence of past extinction rates, University of Chicago paleontologists David M. Raup and J. John Sepkoski (among others) have suggested that the average longevity of vertebrate species seems to be 2-4 million years.
• In 7.6 billion years, the earth will be swallowed up by the expanding sun.
• According to the Drake Equation, there are "at least 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if we assume that only one out of a billion of these stars have planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25×109 (billion) life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.

You do the math, Rick.

To think for a minute that man is the objective, you exhibit an embarrassing (and dangerous) level of ignorance about the vastness of time and space.

Someone who is capable of believing that homo sapiens are "the objective" is either deluded by their faith, or incredibly dense (and very likely both).

The Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing

Clay Interactive has produced an interactive Periodic Table of Swearing for Modern Toss. (They sell prints of the table, and even a tablecloth version).

According to Clay, "It was built in our Hoxton Street studio during our summer holidays. It's constructed from over 100 buttons, CNC'ed and laser cut MDF, direct to media printing, over 100 meters of cabling, over 300 soldered joints and a whole lot of swearing!"

Watch:

Institute For Creation Research's 'That's A Fact!' Video Series Doesn't Contain Any

If, for some strange reason, you enjoy pounding your forehead into your desk, I have great news for you.

Head over to the Institute for Creation Research's Vimeo page and behold their new campaign entitled "That's a Fact!"

I'm not entirely sure what "facts" they're referring to here, as each video is the same old creationist nonsense, just served up Web 2.0-style.

Consider this entry in the series, entitled "Useless Body Parts," which discusses vestigiality.

The Institute for Creation Research states:

Body parts like tonsils and the appendix were once considered unnecessary organs left over from evolution. But scientists have discovered that these “unnecessary” organs are actually very useful.

The video states that scientists now know that the appendix is useful to our immune system, and that the gall bladder is now known to be useful for digesting fats.

With this information, the video draws the following conclusion:

"God doesn't create junk. When he made Adam and Eve, he declared them...very good! Their sin against god started the process of sickness, decay, and death even after God's judgment upon creation, he activated intricately designed backup systems, like the immune system, so that Adam and Eve, and all their descendants could survive after the fall."

I believe that by "facts," they mean "myths."

While their remarks on the appendix and the gall bladder are partly true, they leave out a lot of important information (this seems to happen a lot with creationist propaganda).

For instance, if a supreme being had designed the appendix as part of a human (a human which was designed and created in its current form), then the appendix would be kind of like the Ford Pinto's exploding gas tank. (OK, that's a bad example, you actually need a gas tank to operate a car, but you get the idea) Yes, the appendix may provide some minor functions in modern times, but it might also kill you. Brandon Miller wrote in LiveScience: "In 2000, in fact, there were nearly 300,000 appendectomies performed in the United States, and 371 deaths from appendicitis. Any secondary function that the appendix might perform certainly is not missed in those who had it removed before it might have ruptured."

(Side bar: we have to stop looking at biological traits and features as having "purposes." A chameleon's camouflage mechanism doesn't have a "purpose" (i.e. hiding from prey), it is simply a mechanism that evolved because the chameleons who were less capable of camouflaging themselves died before they could reproduce.)

Regarding the coccyx, I'm not sure the Institute for Creation Research has a true understanding of atavism. Humans occasionally are born with tails.

There are numerous examples of vestigial limbs, organs, and other features: Hind leg bones in whales, male nipples, human wisdom teeth, goose bumps, and wings on flightless birds.

If a designer were hired to create efficient organisms, she would certainly be sent back to the drawing board for many of these useless and extraneous features. She certainly wouldn't be receiving praise for efficiency or conservation of building materials.

The kind of silliness we see in these Institution for Creation Studies videos are straight from the creationist propaganda playbook. The willful ignorance is astounding.

These organizations are so fixated on the mission of proving the Bible's inerrancy, that they are willing to completely ignore all evidence except for the few pieces of evidence that work in their favor. If they can blind their captive audience with just a little science, then they believe they have done enough and can then swoop in with their message of hope and salvation.

"Those silly evolutionists say X is true! But what about Y and Z? Wait! Look over there, it's Jesus and heaven and salvation forever! Amen!"

It's the same approach every single time.

Watch for yourself. Watch them all. Or save yourself the headache.

Bryan Fischer & The Creation Museum's Scientist Link Evolution To Hitler

Today, AFA spokesman and all-around horrible person, Bryan Fischer, had Dr. Georgia Purdom on his show.

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Purdom, she is one of the actual scientists employed by the Creation Museum. In other words, she is a scientist who has found a way to completely ignore science in order to indoctrinate children with the idea that the earth is only several thousand years old, and that God created humans in their present form.

As I've mentioned before in these pages, evolution deniers like Bryan Fischer, Ray Comfort, and the crew at Answers in Genesis love to play the Hitler card in their attacks on evolution.

Take Fischer and Purdom from today's Focal Point (video segment is below)

FISCHER: So it seems like you could draw a straight line between Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, the eugenics movement, and Adolph Hitler. You have an unbroken line from the theory of evolution to Hitler's Germany. Is that an over-exaggeration?

PURDOM: No it's not.

What Fischer and Purdom are trying to do is sully Darwin's name, and his theory of evolution -- a theory which is considered to be a fact by most modern biologists -- by association.

I guess the idea is that if they keep repeating over and over that "evolution = Hitler," the poor souls who pay attention to these loons (over 200 radio stations and over 1 million visitors to the Creation Museum) will simply say, "Welp, Hitler was evil, so evolution has to be a lie!"

Here's the thing:

Evolution doesn't care. Evolution happens, has happened, and will happen, regardless of who embraces it, or who mirrors its mechanisms for whatever nefarious purpose.

It doesn't matter if Mother Theresa, Pope Benedict, or Adolf Hitler embraced the theory of evolution. It doesn't change anything. Because change is always occurring, and it doesn't give a shit about you, politics, religion, or Bryan Fischer.

Next thing you know, Fischer and Purdom will be bad-mouthing Sir Isaac Newton and his theory of gravitation because of the millions who have died by falling.

Get Your Crayons Ready! It's The Creation Museum Dinosaur Coloring Contest!

The folks over at Kentucky's Creation Museum have announced a fun way to get your children on their way to needing remedial instruction in science.

Can you draw a saddle and a human?

The Creationist Disneyland, as NCSE director Eugenie Scott likes to call it, will give your child $5 off their admission for coloring a picture of their friendly dinosaur. (The dinosaur was created by God on day 6, it says on the page.)

Or, if your child likes to draw, they can turn in a drawing of their favorite dinosaur. If a child were to go this route, I imagine they might get bonus points for drawing Adam & Eve, perhaps saddled atop the dinosaur on a romantic ride through Eden.

The contest will be judged in four age groups: preschool, 5–7 year olds, 8–11 year olds, and 12–14 year olds.

While the Creation Museum is a bit vague about what exactly kids might win, they have confirmed that "prizes will be awarded."

One can be fairly certain that science education is not among the prizes.

Here's what some smart people have had to say about the museum:

British scientist, doctor, and professor Robert Winston:

It was alarming to see so much time, money and effort being spent on making a mockery of hard won scientific knowledge. And the fact that it was being done with such obvious sincerity, somehow made it all the worse.

The National Center For Science Education received over 800 signatures from scientists in the three states closest to the museum (Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) on the following statement:

We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis.

Lisa Park, professor of paleontology at University of Akron, and an Elder in the Presbyterian Church:

I think it's very bad science and even worse theology... and the theology is far more offensive to me. I think there's a lot of focus on fear, and I don't think that's a very Christian message... I find it a malicious manipulation of the public.

British writer A.A. Gill:

A breathtakingly literal march through Genesis, without any hint of soul...This place doesn't just take on evolution—it squares off with geology, anthropology, paleontology, history, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, biology, and good taste. It directly and boldly contradicts most -onomies and all -ologies, including most theology.

I think they owe thousands of childen an ap-ology.

The Modern Holy Shroud

This morning, neuropsychologist Vaughan Bell tweeted a link to a most bizarre scientific paper.

"This is the weirdest forensic science paper I have ever read...and that's saying something," he wrote.

He's not lying. Not only is that 'saying something' (Bell's Twitter feed is a constant source of bizarro scientific links), but it is indeed a very weird forensic science paper.

The paper came out of the University Center of Legal Medicine, Lausanne-Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, and is titled, The Modern holy shroud.

Here's the abstract:

Testimonies disclosed that a 44-year-old pedestrian was struck head-on by a truck while she was roaming on the motorway; at the time of collision, the truck was travelling at a speed of about 90km/h. In the second phase of the collision, the pedestrian was projected about 100m before her body was run over by the truck and then by a car. The autopsy revealed extensive mutilations, making it impossible to verify the testimonies of witnesses to the collision as regards the pedestrian's position at the moment of the first impact. However, the reports produced by the technical expert and the forensic pathologist were able to confirm the testimonies, based on an impact zone on the front panel of the cab of the truck, where part of the pedestrian's face was reproduced like a "modern holy shroud".

And here's a picture of the front panel of the cab of that truck (Bell tweeted this image directly after his initial tweet).

You're welcome.