Transformers

Having already taken two hours of my life I was reluctant to give any more time to this movie by posting about it. But as I contributed to the hype I think that I've got a moral duty to say something. If I can save just one life, I've made a difference. Right?

It's bad. The last big movie I can remember that was this bad was Return of the Sith. Or it might have been Mr. & Mrs. Smith? Then before that it was The Planet of the Apes remake. Usually I can find something to take away from the flick that redeems it, so I don't often see a movie that truly disappoints. But with Transformers all I could take away were the SPX, and superb though they were, they were just the sugary coating on a flavorless base.


I won't talk about it anymore now except to repeat - save your money. Maybe like me you heard it was dumb but fun. It's half right. It's just plain dumb.

Maybe I'll do an FF on it, but probably not. It would be one of those FFs that are so time consuming because its hard to forensic it without rewriting the whole thing so that it makes some kind of sense to anyone over the age of 5. That's the job the scriptwriters are paid to do. Paid with my money. Argh!

The God Truthiness: Never underestimate the power of...

science / a good metaphor.

From dr clam:

The classic statement of the incommensurability of the two things is the book metaphor which Rilstone discusses at some length. What do you think of his arguments there, eh? Basically, even if science gives a full explanation for all the events *inside* the book, it is incapable of answering the question: 'Why isn't this book writen in Japanese?'. Dawkins would say that this was a meaningless non-question, but surely that is a cop out.

Yes, Dawkins would say its meaningless. No, that's not a cop out. Not as far as Dawkins is concerned. YMMV.

Over the last week or so writing these posts I've seen a clash of ways to view the world. I'm sure there's a nice word which encapsulates someone's frame of reference for the world, but I'm not erudite enough to know it. Dawkins prefers to explain the world through science, for others a good metaphor will suffice. Dawkins is a stickler for the scientific method, which “is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning, the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.” Others quite happily see a lack of evidence as an invitation for faith.

So when I look at this definition I've got to do an about face and agree with marco that “God can neither be disproven nor proven.” Science is concerned with the observable natural world, not the supernatural. Dawkins can at best claim (and he does) that God is “though not technically disprovable, [He] is very very improbable indeed” (136).

I'd have to say I come down more on the science side. I'm not that knowledgeable about science, but I do require more proof than the warm fuzzy of a good metaphor before I'd devote my life to the not sky fairy. Again YMMV and I hope it does.

I'll leave these posts for now with this quote from Dawkins that I think answers dr clam:

My own feeling... would have been an automatic, deep suspicion of any line of reasoning that reached such a significant conclusion without feeding in a single piece of data from the real world (106-107).

I'm going on holidays so there'll be no posts for a little while. Enjoy whatever you're doing and thanks for the all comments. I've greatly enjoyed having the visitors.

The God Truthiness: Island Hopping

In writing the last post I neglected to look at the second last section of chapter 4 - 'An Interlude at Cambridge'. I want to give it a separate post because it touches on stuff which arises out of the chapter and comments made about Dawkins' use of science to critique the existence of God. marco recently declared that “My not reading it [The God Delusion] is in part a protest by one as me who believes that the existence of God can neither be disproven nor proven.” (italics mine) I'll soon examine the implications of that stance, but by way of introduction let's look at 'An Interlude at Cambridge'.

Dawkins attended a conference on science and religion where of the 18 speakers he was the only atheist. In his words:

The theologians of my Cambridge encounter were defining themselves into an epistemological Safe Zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not. Who was I to say that rational argument was the only admissible kind of argument? (184)

I'm going to talk about my opinion here, and it relates to the 'God of the Gaps' that Dawkins previously mentioned. By building a 'Safe Zone' around God the theologians of the conference are making the same mistake that ID proponents make when they secreted God in a gap of scientific knowledge. Science marches on whether philosophers and theologians wish it to or not. Recently I foolishly claimed “You won't find God being dismantled by philosophy and theology. They are the house of cards that Dawkins is pushing over using science.” and dr clam quickly took me to task for it with “You can't push philosophy over using science any more than you can find the prime factors of the colour blue.” He's right, and I thank him for exposing the flaw.

If philosophy and theology continue to barricade themselves they won't be dismantled by science, they'll just be made irrelevant by it. For thousands of years events in the natural world were explained as supernatural. But now we have the sciences of Geology, Physics, Chemistry etc. Science then turned inwards. Previously Psychology was regarded as part of Philosophy, but in the last 200 years has grown into its own science. The working of the mind is now being demystified by scientific approaches. The ancient science of Medicine now joins in this, too. Gradually Philosophy and Theology are whittled away as a scientific discipline takes over.

I'm going to put on my Damien Broderick cap. Its a funny little cap that gives me a wide-eyed faith in science. But its a cap that becomes weightier as every year more is added to the several thousands of years of accumulated scientific knowledge. Our schools and universities are now predominately scientific institutions (although recently universities seem to be devolving into business colleges and MBA production lines, but that's another matter). I really don't see the future learners at these institutions participating much in Philosophy and Theology. Whether philosophers and theologians like it or not their field is being subsumed by science.

And now even God, once a bailiwick of only philosophy and theology, is being encroached on by science. It's early days, but for every one of today's established sciences there was early days. Days when that science was if not ridiculed by religion, then sometimes actively and brutally opposed by it. But slowly superstition was replaced with fact. Thankfully these days we live in a world where dissent with religious doctrine won't have your books banned or even burned, and you placed under house arrest. My Damien Broderick cap informs me that science will make inroads to the God of Philosophy and Theology at a speedy rate. Dawkins' book is now making headlines about the controversy, but I'm sure others will soon follow. A perusal through his “Books Cited or Recommended” shows there's already a wealth of like-minded books available.

So I'd be very careful in mounting a defense of God by getting him to stand on the beach of his little island refuge with a “No Entry to Science” sign hanging around His neck. It may well take on the appearance of a noose. For as the Allies did in the final days of the Pacific theater of WWII, you don't have to confront an enemy to capture their territory. You can just steam on by leaving them alone on their island wondering where everyone else has gone, thinking that a war long over is still being fought.

The God Truthiness: Building the Ultimate 747

Chapter 4 is where Dawkins lays it all out. It has his central ideas for “Why there almost certainly is no God”. As the title shows he's still open to the existence of God, but the proof has got to come from science. “Why there almost certainly is no God” is the scientific explanations for creation rather than the hand wave that believers accept.

One weakness of the chapter is that it is written as an answer to Intelligent Design (ID); doing away with all creation myths is just a byproduct. Dawkins begins by showing how ID consistently misunderstands evolution. In ID literature it is referred to as chance. Chance is the bugbear ID frightens people with into accepting their argument for design.

IDer: Do you really think we're here by chance?

Us: No.

IDer: Well we must be here by God. QED.

For an inquiring mind “God” as the answer answers nothing. The ID's answer of “God” is interchangeable with “magic”. If you think I'm being harsh, then take a look at Judge John E. Jones III's decisions in the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a case where the science (or lack thereof) of ID was put on trial. It must be noted that Judge Jones is a Republican and a churchgoer. If you can't even preach to the choir then its time to give up.

Dawkins then talks about the consciousness-raising power of natural selection. The way natural selection totally changed the way the problem of the abundance and diversity of life was looked at. Before natural selection it was assumed that it had to have come about by a creator, for only a being of immense power could have the ability to create the wonder of our living natural world. Natural selection turns this idea on its head; its actually small steps over a long time. Natural selection is a crane that builds rather than ID, which is a skyhook that suspends. Since Darwin's time the fields of genetics and molecular biology have added to the theory of natural selection, so that even without the fossil record there would be enough grounds to accept natural selection. Thank goodness scientists questioned what religion taught. But I digress, for Dawkins point is that by solutions like natural selection he'll show that creation doesn't require God.

Dawkins begins with life on earth and moves back to the formation of the cosmos. I'll look at Chapter 4 the other way around, because his strongest writing is in what he knows best, whereas when he writes about cosmology he's out of his field and quoting others. His arguments are to show that our existence on this planet at this time has little to do with chance.

'The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version' is an overview of current scientific theories for the origin of the universe (multiverse). I won't pretend to understand them. I did some cursory wikipediaing and was left with the understanding that I have little understanding. I feel pity for theoretical physicist's because after applying the last full measure of their brain power to this stuff their brain burns out and they are carted away to the funny farm to sculpt baskets out of gnocchi. Dawkins favors some theories over others, but I don't get why. Nothing is proved, but nothing can be. This is the origin of everything so right here, right now its going to theoretical. The point I took away from it was that at least these scientist are taking measurements, looking at data, forming theories. In short they are applying the scientific method to our deepest question, the origin of the universe, and not just saying “God”.

'The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version' answers the Intelligent Designer's question about the chance of life appearing in this universe. In answering chance Dawkins invokes statistics:

It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reason of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe... If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets. (165-166)

That's quite amazing. At a billion to one against we'd still have a conservative estimate of a billion planets. And remember, we're not talking about the chance of something which we could conceive of happening, say a planet existing made of fairy floss. We are talking about something which has happened - we are the living proof of that.

'The Worship of Gaps' apart from showing the vacuousness of ID as science, should also be of a warning to religious apologists to start searching for new sanctuaries for God before His refuges disappear altogether. The gaps spoken of are the gaps in scientific knowledge. ID's proponents argue that since science has no explanation for some things, it must be God. Dawkins sums it up, “'I [insert own name] am personally unable to think of any way in which [insert biological phenomenon] could have been built up step by step. Therefore it is irreducibly complex. That means it is designed.'” It is the laziest of reasonings, and at its heart unscientific. Dawkins goes on to give the analogy of watching a magician's trick. The art of the world class illusionist is such that we cannot fathom how the trick was done. But do we believe it to be supernatural? No, and the same should be with the natural world. Mysteries of the natural world require a natural explanation, not recourse to the supernatural. And so as science fills in the gaps, ID scurries for new gaps to house God.

Dawkins finishes the chapter with an overview of 6 points. For brevity I'll paraphrase:

1. For centuries their has been the problem of how to explain the apparent appearance of design in the universe.

2. The natural temptation has been to ascribe it to a designer.

3. This is false because it explains nothing. A crane not a skyhook is need.

4. The best crane we have so far is Darwinian natural selection. It build an improbable complexity from the gradual accumulation of the plausibly simply.

5. We don't yet have a crane for physics.

6. We shouldn't give up hope that a crane for physics will be found. After all, there was no crane for biology until fairly recently.

The God Truthiness: Interlude

Let's have a bit of a laugh.

The God Truthiness V: Children are Stupid, Cults are Smart

dr clam's two posts about The God Delusion's Chapter 5 really stick it to the man. We've commented a little on “The Selfish Meme”, and I'm left with the opinion that further study of the Gospels would be required if we were to make headway in that area, so I'll leave it for now.

“Adaptive? Aye!” is dr clam at his strongest worrying Dawkins at his weakest. In 'Group Selection' Dawkins waffles between the camps of group selection as significant or not in the promulgation of religion. Dawkins claims “there are formidable objections” to group selection (198), but then on the next page states “Those of us who belittle group selection admit that in principle it can happen. The question is whether it amounts to a significant force in evolution” (199). He seems a little unsure about, or maybe he's just hedging his bets about, the importance of group selection. I recommend “Adaptive? Aye” to readers because it's the kind of counter-argument Dawkins' has left himself open to. Gut his exposed underbelly dr clam, gut him!

And Dawkins' hypothetical of the coward in the tribe of warriors concludes with “Hence tendencies towards martyrdom will decline in future generations” (199) is, rather than being a “simplified toy example”, an oversimplified toy example. Maybe its only contrariness because Dawkins blithely dismisses group selection as as a factor, but I' d really like him to have treated it a little more.

However while 'Group Selection' is a weak section, at least it doesn't contradict the purpose of the chapter.

Dawkins' is much more taken with the theory “of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful” (218). And so the next two sections 'Religion as a By-Product of Something Else' and 'Psychologically Primed for Religion' are more persuasive. These talk about the role of children's brains in the acceptance of religion. The ideas that children are very capable dualists (they readily make a distinction between body and mind) and teleologist (they assign a purpose to everything) demonstrates the susceptibility of children to religious ideas. Further I was impressed with Daniel Dennet's 3 stances (physical, design and intentional) (211-212), and Lewis Wolpert's “irrational persistence” (it's bad to keep changing your mind) (217) and Lionel Tiger's “perceptual defense” (humans consciously see what they wish to see) (218) as persuasive arguments.

But in all of this Dawkins focuses on the role of children. What about believers who came to the religion as adults? I don't know what percentage of believers fall into this area, but it could be important. If believers who were brought up since children in a faith constitute a small percentage of total believers, then Dawkins' argument is significantly weaker. So while I think he's worked a fairly strong argument, he could tighten it up considerably.

But after all of these sections 'Cargo Cults' is a very strong finish to the chapter. It was fascinating to read about the formative state of a cult. A cult's growth is fast, and its so adaptive. It would be very interesting reading if a well documented ancient cult could be compared and contrasted with a modern (urban?) cult. After reading 'Cargo Cults' I could easily picture how the cult of Jesus took hold.