Anger Acceptable for Atheists

[jakee 1,594]

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The difficulty is that scientists rarely, in presenting material to the general public, distinguish between those statements that they are reasonably certain are accurate because of repeated experiments--and those statements that are speculation or of dubious accuracy.

Like?

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I took an astronomy class as an undergrad in the 1980's. The professor turned out to be one of the biggest drunks on campus. Usually he didn't even show up to class, but on one of the days when he was able to stagger in, he commented on the Hyades star cluster. He said that all of modern astronomy depended on the computation of the distance to the Hyades star cluster, and that if that proved to be incorrect, it would completely screw up modern astronomy.

Because he was drunk, he was letting us students in on a few of the secret vulnerabilities of astronomy that a more sober professor would have kept secret.

Yeah...

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What happened in 1997 is that

Link?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[nerdgirl 0]

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I just heard on the news this morning that two major cholestrol lowering drugs just aren't doing the job.
I think my scepticism about the scientific community is justified. It's more about the money than the truth.

Is that skepticism directed to the appropriate community? Or is your skepticism an indication of how much science has been co-opted for political goals and for/by those who want to sell something? (The latter is my speculation. The goal of advertising is to use every (reasonable) means to get you to want to buy a product – that’s the spots of the leopard.) Might there also be some component of unrealistic expectation that ‘a pill can solve everything’ & make you happy too driven by marketing and advertising?

Btw, by what method was the ineffectiveness determined?

There may be a case for inappropriate marketing or manipulation of science by people wanting to make money, eh? Is this an issue of regulatory agencies? … or success of regulatory agencies and/or scientific community in determining and communicating that what was being marketed is not effective?

And w/r/t marketing and advertising, I will agree heartily that skepticism is warranted.

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And if they ever found Noah's Ark, what kind of song and dance do you think unbelievers would be doing?

I thought there was evidence that archeologists found geological indications and remnants of flooding in the Mesopotamian region, perhaps the Black Sea “deluge” or later flood(s) in the area that is now southern Iraq, that was (likely) the basis of the flood stories? The “Great Flood” was first recorded in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[Everon 0]

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An example: Carl Sagan made much of the fact that the star Vega was allegedly 26 light years from Earth in his novel Contact. However, right around the time that the movie Contact came out, new scientific measurements came out showing that Vega is actually only 25 light years from Earth. Kind of embarrassing for Mr. Sagan, wouldn't you say?

They think nothing of tossing around a few million years here on earth. Why should 1 yr. of light speed make a difference?

Is that what you think scientists do - toss around a few million years? Distance and age measurements of the universe are only approximate. The age of the earth, for example, is approximately 4.5 billion years, give or take 200 million years or so. This is determined by the measurements of radioactive decay of SEVERAL elements. An error of 100 million years either way makes for quite an accurate estimate.

[nerdgirl 0]

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What happened in 1997 is that--true to this drunken professor's prediction--the distance to the Hyades star cluster was, indeed, discovered to have been miscomputed--and the whole structure of the universe had to be reassessed as a result. Hence--among many other things--the correction of the distance to Vega.

You're correct that the galactic (Milky Way) stellar calibration distance scale w/r/t Hyades was revised.

To state that "the whole structure of the universe had to be reassessed as a result" is hyperbole (to put it diplomatically).

It was a function of improved precision w/improved instrumentation. Basically, a space-based telescope no longer had to deal w/distortion looking through the atmosphere. It was stongly suspected in the 1960s.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[SivaGanesha 2]

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What happened in 1997 is that

Link?

The Hyades ...

The link is actually from 1998...so it looks like the above paper was in press in 1997 when I heard about this. Obviously if original research about the distance to the Hyades was being published in 1997-1998, previous estimates must have been wrong.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[SivaGanesha 2]

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To state that "the whole structure of the universe had to be reassessed as a result" is hyperbole (to put it diplomatically).

I don't remember all the details from the course--and the professor was indeed a drunk, that part is not hyperbole--but my recollection is that proper classification of stars, and hence understanding the nature of our universe, depends on knowing certain characteristics of those stars, one of them being the distance to the star.

It is difficult to determine the distance to a star if it is too far to determine by parallax methods. The fact that the Hyades is a star cluster--hence all stars in it likely have roughly the same relative movement to the earth--provides important clues to the classification of stars too far to measure by parallax. The Hyades is unique among star clusters in terms of the richness of information available.

So, yes, an error in the distance to the Hyades has huge ramifications for astronomy.

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It was stongly suspected in the 1960s.

Precisely. Mr. Sagan, writing and speaking in the 1970's, should have said so.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[nerdgirl 0]

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To state that "the whole structure of the universe had to be reassessed as a result" is hyperbole (to put it diplomatically).

I don't remember all the details from the course--and the professor was indeed a drunk, that part is not hyperbole--but my recollection is that proper classification of stars, and hence understanding the nature of our universe, depends on knowing certain characteristics of those stars, one of them being the distance to the star.

It is difficult to determine the distance to a star if it is too far to determine by parallax methods. The fact that the Hyades is a star cluster--hence all stars in it likely have roughly the same relative movement to the earth--provides important clues to the classification of stars too far to measure by parallax. The Hyades is unique among star clusters in terms of the richness of information available.

So, yes, an error in the distance to the Hyades has huge ramifications for astronomy.

Thank you for the additional information. This is actually a *really* neat case for illustrating all sorts of things – in a genuine, non-snarky way. It helps sharpen & make more precise how I communicate – so thank you!

Please bear with me to work through this: Illustratively (& I suspect that you recognize this), before Galileo invented the optical telescope, inhabitants of the Earth couldn't see beyond the limitations of our own ocular system.

On the other end of the distance scale, when all that was available was the optical light microscope, we could see a lot. But until Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscopy (STEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Near-Field Scanning Microscopy (NSOM), and X-ray crystallography was invented, one couldn't measure the things that STEM, AFM, NSOM, & X-ray can with the precision that those techniques & the refinement provide, along w/computer power to deal with data sets and visualization.

W/r/t the Hyades Cluster, it wasn't an issue with the scientific method or 'lies.' It was instrumentation. Your second paragraph is right-on for the most part; the uniqueness of Hyades is debatable – every star cluster is unique in its own way. (For a long time Aldebaren (sp?) was thought to be part of the cluster.) Hyades is the nearest, brightest, open cluster visible in the northern hemisphere. It can be seen (fuzz-i-ly) with the naked eye, along w/ the Pleides, etc. When Hyades cluster was selected it stood out for the reasons you described; there’s also some part of historical & geographical artifacts.

It was a significant increase in the accuracy of measurements (distance) due to better instrumentation ... & the ability to launch it into orbit & transmit back large amounts of information & process that information that led to re-evaluation of the distance to Hyades as the “yardstick” for galactic stellar measurements.

Beyond the Milky Way used different methods; non-stellar objects used different methods; structure of the Universe implies everything from sub-atomic particles to macroscale interactions and Newtonian physics to dark matter at the edge of the Universe. None of that was impacted by the data that came back from the Hipparcos satellite.

And back to what I think is actually more important than distances between stellar objects in our galaxy …

It was not “speculation” or “dubious accuracy”; it was uncertainty w/r/t precision of the measurement due to the limitation of the “yardstick.”

As a scientist, you know that scientists are very comfortable with that kind of uncertainty. If it *isn't* reported, I am more concerned. I want to know the uncertainty in a measurement, e.g., + x ug, + y nm, etc.

The "So What? Who Cares?": Policy-makers, news reporters, and the public are much less comfortable, particularly because of the vernacular connotation of uncertainty. Therefore scientists are responsible for better communicating what uncertainty means ... & what it doens't mean.

Neat conversation – thank you!

VR/
Marg

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A Hipparcos study of the Hyades open cluster: Improved colour-absolute magnitude and Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams A&A 367, 111-147 (2001)

"The precision with which the new parallaxes place individual Hyades in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is limited by (systematic) uncertainties related to the transformations from observed colours and absolute magnitudes to effective temperatures and luminosities. The new parallaxes provide stringent constraints on the calibration of such transformations when combined with detailed theoretical stellar evolutionary modelling, tailored to the chemical composition and age of the Hyades, over the large stellar mass range of the cluster probed by Hipparcos."

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[SivaGanesha 2]

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As a scientist, you know that scientists are very comfortable with that kind of uncertainty. If it *isn't* reported, I am more concerned. I want to know the uncertainty in a measurement, e.g., + x ug, + y nm, etc.

The "So What? Who Cares?": Policy-makers, news reporters, and the public are much less comfortable, particularly because of the vernacular connotation of uncertainty. Therefore scientists are responsible for better communicating what uncertainty means ... & what it doens't mean.

Neat conversation – thank you!

Thanks for the further info about the Hyades!

With regard to uncertainty, I think it is often very difficult to communicate to the public ideas of uncertainty. It can be misinterpreted (by the public) sometimes as incompetence--ie if something is in a particular range, it sounds (to the public) like the scientist doesn't really know enough to be more precise--whereas in fact the scientist has made a quite precise calculation both of the estimated number and the maximum possible error.

With regard to evolution, which was the original discussion point--I guess my observation is that there is a particular part of the theory of evolution that bothers creationists/ID people more than anything else--and that is the claim that humans evolved from something that was not human. My question is whether, if you add up all the various uncertainties in the various links in the chain of reasoning, whether this particular claim that humans evolved from something that was not human can be stated to be proven beyond a doubt.

Clearly there is a lot of evidence supporting evolution and virtually none supporting creationism. I suspect it is quite well established that "evolution is the only known way by which new species can arise on the earth, and there is strong evidence that countless new species have, in fact, arisen by evolution on earth." But it is a much stronger claim to say that "evolution is the only possible way by which new species can arise on the earth." Unless this strong claim can be proven, I think the creationists will always claim that evolution has not been proven.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[maadmax 0]

Can you provide the specific statistical analysis that you did to support your claim?

I'm curious to see the math, thanks.

VR/Marg

[maadmax 0]

It is more scientifically valid. And since it was arrived at via the scientific method (i.e. hypothesis, experimentation, verification) it is taught in science class. Intelligent design/creationism, since they were arrived at by a completely different manner (oral tradition, biblical authors, scholars arguing over what God really meant, political angling to get God into school) it gets taught in religion class.

[SivaGanesha 2]

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And back to what I think is actually more important than distances between stellar objects in our galaxy …

I guess the question in my mind is at what point mere quantitative errors become significant enough that it affects our qualitative view of things. My recollection is that where a star is placed on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (thanks for reminding me of that term) depends on a number of factors, some of which may be determined partly from distance. If errors in distance are significant, they may affect how we view things qualitatively.

So to me the question to me is primarily--for both astronomy and evolution--is there sufficient confidence in the quantitative results that any lingering errors are not likely to affect the qualitative conclusions?

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[billvon 3,114]

>What I am talking about is the mammoth absence of scientific verification
>concerning the scientific hypothesis and experimentation relating to the
>transformation of aeromatic hydrocarbons into living, energy consuming,
>reproducing ,evolving entities. At our current level of scientific
>enlightenment, saying "chance occurrence" is a reasonable scientific
>explanation for the origins of life is no different than saying "God did it".

"We don't know how the first organisms formed. But basic hydrocarbons and amino can be formed in a primordial atmosphere, and we know that RNA can spontaneously replicate, consume energy and evolve in the proper conditions. We know that an iron sulfide metabolism can start from basic chemicals and synthesize oligomers, polymers, dipeptides and tripeptides. Scientists are currently working on explanations as to how these steps all worked together to produce the first proto-organisms."

Gravity is basically the same. We have no firm idea how it works. But we teach the law of gravitation in science class.

[Hausse 0]

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Can you provide the specific statistical analysis that you did to support your claim?

I'm curious to see the math, thanks.

VR/Marg

I can not put my hands on the particular articles I have read concerning the probability of the universe turning out to be pro-life. But the math is easy. Just multiply the probabilities of all the events that have occurred from the big bang until Homosapien sapiens took their first steps. If the answer is not astronomical I bet it is close.


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[Hausse 0]

Doesn't string theory explain gravity?

[kallend 2,147]

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Doesn't string theory explain gravity?

Unlike evolution, there is no experimental evidence that suggests that string theory is correct.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,114]

> Doesn't string theory explain gravity?

It's a good candidate. But it has not yet been developed enough to create repeatable results from experiments, and thus isn't widely accepted as "the explanation of gravity."

[Hausse 0]

Ah okay I thought that string-theory explains gravity.

[mnealtx 0]

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Doesn't string theory explain gravity?

Unlike evolution, there is no experimental evidence that suggests that string theory is correct.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[philh 0]

Siva Ganesha
Your comparison that scientists have faith in evolution as the religious have faith in the bible is not valid. Evolution makes a number of testable predictions which could easily have falsified evolution and evolution has passed the test every time.
Evolution is a big topic and I think you are right to say the issue that is of most concern is whether or not humans and chimps share a common ancestor. I would say there’s very little uncertainty as to whether this happened or not. We have many independent lines of quantifiable evidence that it did. Here’s a few predictions made and verified by the common ancestry hypothesis:
Palaeontology: We will find a gradual change in fossil hominids so that the further back in time we look the less human like features we will find, we will also find less diversity in the hominid populations as we get earlier specimens. This is exactly what we do find.
Chromosomal Studies: If humans and chimps share a common ancestor then we need an explanation for why chimps have one more set of chromosomes than humans. Evolution explains this by predicting a chromosome fusion site. This site was found on chromosome 2.
Genetic Evidence:
Pseudo genes are genes that are in the genotype but are no longer expressed in the phenotype. Evolution claims then that the distribution of pseudo genes should be predictable. Human and chimps should share the greatest number of pseudo genes, they do.

I’ve just picked out three independent lines of evidence but there are many more. If you want to see a list of 29 independent lines of evidence for evolution try this:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

or a very good book detailing the testable quantifiable claims of human evolution is Relics of Eden by Daniel Faribanks

http://www.amazon.com/Relics-Eden-Powerful-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1591025648
or try the evolution podcast:

http://www.drzach.net/podcast.htm


So I would say it doesn’t take any kind of faith to accept evolution and human evolution in particular.

As to your 4% error claim. I don’t see how this is relevant, no one is suggesting there are never any errors in measurement. If we asked two people to measure the length of my desk they might not get the same answer but we wouldn’t doubt there was a desk. If we find the date of the human chimp split was 4% different than our current estimates, so what? That has no bearing on whether it happened or not, only when it happened. If the distance of to Vega was corrected by astronomers that gives me more confidence in science, not less. It tells me that its conclusion are always open to revision in the light of new evidence. That’s not something you so frequently see in religion. Also you Wall Street comparison is miss- leading. You have found an example where 4% is a lot, I can equally find an example where 4% is not a lot. (I’m a derivatives trader) Suppose I’m running 960 lots of Eurodollar future and my boss asks me what my position is, Ill say I’ve got 1,000 lots. No one in their right mind would care less that I was out by 4%. Just because in the example you thought of 4% was a significant number, does not mean it would be significant in all cases. Certainly in the case of human evolution if we got out dates wrong by 4% it would not change the conclusion that humans and chimps have a common ancestor.

[jakee 1,594]

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Clearly there is a lot of evidence supporting evolution and virtually none supporting creationism. I suspect it is quite well established that "evolution is the only known way by which new species can arise on the earth, and there is strong evidence that countless new species have, in fact, arisen by evolution on earth." But it is a much stronger claim to say that "evolution is the only possible way by which new species can arise on the earth." Unless this strong claim can be proven, I think the creationists will always claim that evolution has not been proven.

Of course. Creationists will always play there get out of jail card that "God could have made it look that way". And when they are talking about an omnipotent God then they are quite right right. If it existed it could do whatever the hell it wanted, including faking the entire evolutionary timeline and there is absolutely no method of gathering evidence in favour of or in opposition to that assertion.

That is precisely why science is better han religion, and precisely why your attempt to put the two on a level footing is so lame.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Shotgun 1]

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>How would they be able to prove that the remains were actually Jesus
>and not someone else?

Genetic match between the remains and traces at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would be one way.

Hmm... Even as an atheist, I don't think this would convince me of anything. So I wouldn't blame a Christian for not accepting it as proof either.

[SivaGanesha 2]

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Certainly in the case of human evolution if we got out dates wrong by 4% it would not change the conclusion that humans and chimps have a common ancestor.

Of course a 4% difference in dates could make a HUGE difference in whether we accept evolution as proven.

Let us suppose that Species A is claimed, by supporters of evolution, to be the nearest ancestor of Homo Sapiens. (In saying this I'm not hypothesizing that Species A is the common ancestor of Homo Sapiens and chimps, merely that Species A is the most recent ancestor of Homo Sapiens to be classified as a different species.)

Now suppose (I have no idea how reasonable these dates are but this is just a thought experiment) the last known appearance of Species A was 30,000 years ago, and the first known appearance of Homo Sapiens was 31,000 years ago. Then you have no problem with the theory of evolution. But let's say instead the date of Species A was wrong and its last appearance was actually 31,200 years ago (a 4% error). Then you have a 200 year gap between the last appearance of Species A and the first appearance of Homo Sapiens, which creates a huge problem for the claim that Homo Sapiens descended from Species A.

I certainly never got away with the kind of cavalier estimate on Wall Street that your boss seems to accept. If my boss asked my position in Eurodollar futures, a quite probable reason is that he wanted to hedge the position and cared quite a good deal whether the position was 960 or 1000.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[billvon 3,114]

>Let us suppose that Species A is claimed, by supporters of evolution, to
>be the nearest ancestor of Homo Sapiens. (In saying this I'm not
>hypothesizing that Species A is the common ancestor of Homo Sapiens
>and chimps, merely that Species A is the most recent ancestor of Homo
>Sapiens to be classified as a different species.)

I think what you meant to say is that "let's suppose that species A and Homo Sapiens share a common ancestor, and they represent the most recent split from that common ancestor."

>Now suppose (I have no idea how reasonable these dates are but this is
>just a thought experiment) the last known appearance of Species A was
>30,000 years ago, and the first known appearance of Homo Sapiens was
>31,000 years ago. Then you have no problem with the theory of evolution.

Wait - are you claiming that Species A _is_ the most recent common ancestor between chimps/bonobos and humans? That's a bit different than what you said, but OK.

>But let's say instead the date of Species A was wrong and its last
>appearance was actually 31,200 years ago (a 4% error). Then you have a
>200 year gap between the last appearance of Species A and the first
>appearance of Homo Sapiens, which creates a huge problem for the claim
>that Homo Sapiens descended from Species A.

?? No it doesn't. Do you imagine that the instant that an organism speciates, every one of the "older" members dies? We still have gray wolves, even though chihuahuas evolved from them.

I am curious whether you apply the same standards to religion. The first book of the Old Testament contains some egregious self-contradictions. (Try to discover whether man came before or after livestock, for example.) Does that mean that the Bible is totally invalid?

[SivaGanesha 2]

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?? No it doesn't. Do you imagine that the instant that an organism speciates, every one of the "older" members dies? We still have gray wolves, even though chihuahuas evolved from them.

I am curious whether you apply the same standards to religion. The first book of the Old Testament contains some egregious self-contradictions. (Try to discover whether man came before or after livestock, for example.) Does that mean that the Bible is totally invalid?

No I'm saying that if the opposite scenario occurred--if gray wolves became extinct BEFORE chihuahuas appeared, then either their must be an intermediate species or there is some kind of a problem with evolution.

Basically I'm trying to nail down the pedigree, so to speak, of humans. If scientists aren't entirely clear who we evolved from, or when, then it is hard to accept evolution as it applies to humans as fully proven. Vague timelines do not inspire confidence.

I think the last paragraph illustrates what is wrong with the scientific perspective on this. The scientists argue that they've done a better job than the religious people in justifying their position. I don't dispute that. The problem is that scientists generally set a very high bar for themselves. But on the controversial issues where they tend to get into dispute with religious folks, the bar tends to get lowered to some point just above the bar that religious folks set.

Scientists have met a higher standard of proof than religious folks on this but they haven't met their own high standards.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[Lindsey 0]

pedigree

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail