Check It Out: The Science of Religion

In 2003 Richard Dawkins gave the Tanner Lectures at Harvard University. I spent most of the afternoon today listening to these lectures. Richard Dawkins is one of the many contemporary scientists I admire a lot. I have read many (if not all) of his books, including the most recent one - The God Delusion. I admire Dawkins primarily because of his knack of explaining complex ideas in a clear and logical fashion. I admire him even more for his polite yet forceful arguments against religious extremism, in fact religion itself and against irrational, non-scientific ideas like 'creation science' and 'intelligent design'.

In the first of the two lectures, Dawkins talks about the science of religion. The Darwinian framework of evolution through variation and natural selection is the most elaborate explanation we have to explain the evolution and diversity of life on earth. Any phenomena that have survived for millennia in human populations therefore beg an evolutionary explanation. Religious beliefs have appeared and continue to appear independently in human societies across ages in all parts of the world. The ubiquity of religious beliefs in human society makes it imperative to explore the evolutionary origins of such beliefs. Dawkins focuses exclusively on this topic in the first of the two lectures. Dawkins has devoted a full chapter of his latest book - The God Delusion - to this topic. I would urge anyone who is interested in this subject to listen to this lecture.

In my opinion this topic is of utmost importance today. Religious zealots are wrecking havoc in every part of the world. Islamic extremists in the middle east, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world; fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the USA, fundamentalist Jews in Israel, fundamentalist Hindu groups in India all want to impose their particular religious world view and way of life upon the society at large. Many, if not all of them are using violence to terrorize people into submission. Only by understanding the evolutionary origins of religious beliefs can we begin to treat the virus of religious extremism and perhaps some day cure ourselves of all faith based propositions.

In the second lecture, Dawkins talks about the Religion of Science. A common retort of people of faith against science is that science itself is a form of religion. They point out that the core hypothesis of science, that the universe is governed by a set of laws which we can reveal through careful investigation, is a faith based proposition in itself. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." There is profound mystery, wonder and awe in the universe. There are befuddling questions such as why are the laws of that govern the universe the way they are? Why do the fundamental constants of physics have the peculiar values they have? Dawkins draws out the stark contrasts between the scientific, - evidence based - world view and the religious - faith based - world view. He concedes that there may be questions which science in principle cannot answer but he lands firmly against the proposition that the scientific world view IS in itself some sort of religious world view.

The whole series is available in mp3 format on Dawkins's website which is a worthwhile place to visit for anyone interested in evolution, reason, atheism etc. There is also a seminar with Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Keith DeRose as a follow up to the lectures.

Happy listening!

More Elephants...

More elephants in the family:

Shimba is the latest member of our elephant family. We fostered Shimba in September 2006. He was just two months old baby at that time. Shimba was found near his dead mother trying to raise her up. His mother's trunk had been severed (probably after being caught in a wire snare) limiting her ability to forage. That and the fact that she had just given birth to a baby bull elephant had weakened her and probably was the cause of her death. Click here to read the full story of Shimba's discovery and arrival at the Nairobi Nursery run by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Shimba is a healthy and playful baby now and is in good company and care.

The other elephant member of our family is little Lualeni - who has been mentioned on this blog before. Lualeni has now graduated from the nursery and has been transferred to a group of slightly older elephants (the Ithumba unit) living in closer proximity to her ultimate destination - the jungle. She is enjoying the mud baths, wading in ponds and the great green salad bar over there.

Media Coverage for David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust:

In a previous post I wrote about the BBC documentary titled "Elephant Diaries" about the elephant nursery operated by Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. The BBC team went back to film an update [read more] on the documentary in July '06 and "Elephant Diaries II" will air on the BBC sometime soon.

Sky News also ran a story about the elephant nursery on January 22, '07. You can watch the video clip here (you may require Windows media player 10.0). The clip features Shimba along with other baby elephants - Lesanju, Lempaute & Gladessa. Dame Daphne Sheldrick - the founder of the nursery - talks about the impact of ivory trade on the elephant conservation efforts in Africa.

Please learn more about the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and support their efforts in any way possible.

An elephant sanctuary in the U.S.:
While browsing the WWW I recently discovered that there is an elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. The sanctuary was founded in 1995 by Carol Buckley and Scott Blais. The mission of the sanctuary is to provide a natural habitat and care for sick, old and retired circus and zoo elephants:

The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, is the nation's largest natural-habitat refuge developed specifically to meet the needs of endangered elephants. It is a non-profit organization, licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, designed specifically for old, sick or needy elephants who have been retired from zoos and circuses. Utilizing more than 2700 acres, it provides three separate and protected, natural-habitat environments for Asian and African elephants. Our residents are not required to perform or entertain for the public; instead, they are encouraged to live like elephants. (read more)

The use of animals for entertainment in circuses is a cruel practice. I have mixed feelings about keeping animals in zoos as well. However, The Elephant Sanctuary's mission is admirable because it finally gives these elephants a chance to experience life in a natural habitat, a thing that was robbed from them when they were captured. The sanctuary serves a very important role in conservation and education.

Visit their website or watch an informational video [11 min., plays in RealPlayer] about The Elephant Sanctuary. You can also watch the "Elecam" which is a live video feed from the sanctuary.

Other Elephant news:
:: In a recent study elephants in the New York zoo passed the "mirror test" [video] for "self awareness". Elephants now joint humans, apes and dolphins - the only other mammals who possess such awareness.

:: In bit of older pieces of news, another study found that elephants remember - or rather recognize their own kind among the dead - a trait that was previously thought to be uniquely human.

:: Stale news (but interesting nonetheless): Scientists used to think that there were two distinct species of elephants - The African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana) and the Asian Elephant (Elephas Maximus). DNA tests have revealed [article link] that there are two distinct species of African elephants - the African Savanna elephant (Loxodona Africana) and the African forest elephant (Loxodonta Cyclotis). The forest elephant was previously thought to be a sub-species of the African elephant. Out of these the Asian Elephant is classified as endangered while African Elephant is classified as vulnerable species on the IUCN red list.

Here is a quiz question before I sign off..
How do you distinguish between African Savanna elephant and the African Forest elephant?

Technorati Tags: Elephants, Conservation, Africa

Non-science and Nonsense

I came across this post on the digital divide on Atanu Dey's blog the other day. It has an interesting bit about the south sea cargo cult. I had heard this phrase "cargo cult science" before somewhere, but never bothered to investigate I guess. Turns out it is about things that seems like science (because they go through the motions of scientific inquiry) but actually are not!

This reminded me of the website publicizing the dangers of DHMO (Dihydrogen Monoxide), that I had come across few months ago. It is a really great and amusing website. DHMO can be extremely harmful, even kill people in many cases. The website clearly warns us about the ill effects on this page:

The dangers, uses and potential threats posed by this chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide, are widespread, and some feel, terrifying. Here is just a small taste of what Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is:
* Some call Dihydrogen Monoxide the 'Invisible Killer'
* Others think dihydrogen monoxide should be Banned
* Dihydrogen Monoxide is linked to gun violence
* Dihydrogen monoxide was found at every recent school shooting
* Athletes use DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE, or DHMO, to enhance performance
* Dihydrogen Monoxide has been found in our rivers, lakes, oceans and streams
* Dihydrogen Monoxide is a major component of acid rain
* Thousands die each year after inhaling dihydrogen monoxide
* Dihydrogen Monoxide can be deadly
* Find out the truth about Dihydrogen Monoxide

DHMO is ofcourse not really harmful. After all about 60% of human body is "contaminated" with it. If you haven't guessed it by now, DHMO or dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) is just a clever way to say "water". The website www.dhmo.org was started in 1997 by Dr. Tom Way, a research scientist in Newark, Delaware. The motivation behind creating it in his own words:

"The original purpose of the site was as a sort of writer's therapy to blow off steam about all the devious (and sometimes just ignorant) ways the truth is bent to prove a point by some in the media, politics, sales, environmental activism, organized religion, web site authoring, etc."

The website then took a life of its own. The city councilors in Aliso Viejo, CA went so far ahead as to vote on a ban on styrofoam cups because DHMO was used in their manufacture (Check out this article in Scientific American). When they were made aware of the truth (probably while some of them were consuming some DHMO themselves), they blamed the fiasco on some paralegal doing bad research. You can read more interesting stuff about dangers of DHMO on the website itself and about the Aliso Viejo incident on this page.

We are being bombarded with all sorts of poll results all the time. Columnists and TV anchors quote results from "latest studies" every day. This DHMO website is a great example of how people can be fooled by seemingly scientific sounding information. It also bring out the importance of ascertaining the facts. That ofcourse takes time and effort which most of us are unwilling to spend. Perception is everything. In India there are all sorts of advertisements where people wearing white lab coats show the effectiveness of a product (like a soap or toothpaste). The ads are full of pretty looking graphs and animations showing the germs being killed. All these things in the media have a huge effect on shaping the public opinion. I guess there is no real way to judge how much of the information we are presented makes sense and how much is pure BS (bad stuff!).

The importance of ascertaining the facts behind everything is obvious. That of course takes time and effort which most of us are unwilling to spend. So who is looking out for me? Is every man to himself when it comes to finding the truth behind the stuff we get from media? I hope not! Blogs are doing a good job at keeping checks. There are some good websites too. Phil Plait's bad astronomy website and others like Fact Check are some examples. I am more and more convinced that participatory internet (through blogs, podcasts and what not) and the mechanics of competition may be robust enough to keep things in order!

Techorati Tags: Science, DHMO, Cargo cult

Dunking doughnuts and weighing souls

Few days ago I finished reading an amazing book: "Weighing the Soul - Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the bizarre". The author of the book is Len Fisher; the honorary research fellow at University of Bristol and more interestingly the winner of the Ig Nobel prize for his research into the science behind dunking biscuits and doughnuts. His first book "How to dunk a doughnut: The science of everyday life" is next on my reading list.

"Weighing the soul..." is captivating. It talks about the debates and fights that led to the evolution of some of the most important scientific ideas in today's world. Len Fisher takes the reader behind the curtains of some of the best dramas on the stage of science in the 20th century. He describes the bizarre experiments attemting to weigh the souls (of humans, dogs and rats!) and attempts to convert ordinary materials into gold. We hear about the travails of Galileo and how they may have helped bring forth some great science which finds widespread relevance today. We learn the interesting details in the efforts to understand the nature of light and electricity. Len Fisher gives the account of "battles" between two ideas proposed by scientific minds...E.g. Isaac Newton and Thomas Young about the nature of light or between Galvani and Volta about the nature of electricity... or even more interesting between the pointed lightening rods proposed by Ben Franklin and the blunt tipped ones proposed byBenjamin Wilson.

In the chapter on the nature of life, Fisher portrays the attempts to understand what life means and the clash between the mechanists (who sought to explain all life phenomena by the means of known physical laws) and the vitalists (who proposed the necessity of a "vital force" being imbued in living organisms). It is interesting to find that although the mechanists won the day... the contributions to the science made by both sides are equally valuable. Fisher brings out this point very cogently. The "battle of ideas" described by him form a backdrop to the emergence of the winning idea with each side making significant contributions to the final appearance of the winner.

Seeing this "behind the scenes" footage I realized that science is afterall a human enterprise... and it comes with all the usual baggage... ego clashes, personal attacks and pitched battles for dominance. I also thought about the ridiculous "debate" going on in US these days over Darwinian evolution. The ideas that are being proposed as alternative "theories" to Darwin's evolution have been proposed before and they have lost. The vitalist proposing the necessity of a "vital force" were definitely influenced by their religious beliefs. They lost the battle of ideas not because they were not good scientists... they lost the battle of ideas because they could not provide any testable, measurable evidence of their idea... experimental evidence which forms the bedrock of science. They lost because the opposing idea could be tested, could be observed and could explain all the phenomena in question.

I guess today there is so much anxiety and fear about the idea of evolution because it seems like it is out there to remove the role of God from human life. Scientists are not out there to destroy God... but so far science has not felt the need to invoke God into the picture. Scientists are not atheists bent on destroying religion... but science has been successful to an amazing degree in explaining almost all of the things around us without invoking a God or a creator or a designer. Scientists take this success as an indicator that nature is "knowable".... that we can understand phenomena in nature by means of "laws" and "principles" and "theories" which can be tested. Some think that this "knowability" of nature is an article of faith among the scientists. But I feel there is huge degree of success to back it up.

However I cannot bring myself to disagree with one point that Fisher makes in the chapter "What is life?". In the concluding paragraph discussing about the issue of what we know about the nature of life (p163) he says...

No amount of extra scientific information is likely to resolve this issue. The argument is not scientific alone, although some scientists argue there is no point in believing something that cannot be confirmed or refuted by scientific tests. To my mind, this is committing the same fallacy as Driesch did when he could only imagine one way that an intracellular machine might function and decided this was therefore the only way it could function. The fallacy in the first case leads to a hubristic materialism and in the latter case to an equally hubristic philosophy of vitalism. The balance point of view is surely to say that any belief (such as a mechanistic view of life) that can be tested against reality should be, but that does not mean that beliefs that cannot be tested are not true.

It is clear that the difference between science and "not science" IS the difference between beliefs that can be tested and those that cannot be tested. But Fisher issues a note of caution to believers on both sides. I think this kind of balanced stance in necessary if we want to avoid the battle between science and faith that seems ever so close.

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"Weighing the soul - Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre", Len Fisher. Arcade Publishing, New York. 1st U.S Edition. 2004. (ISBN 1-55970-732-1)

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Technorati Tags:Len Fisher, Ig Nobel Prize