Evolution is wrong, unproven and a blasphemy

Here's an imam in London who spoke out saying that evolution is not incompatible with the Koran, and then retracted his views because of threats against his life.

Recently you retracted your views because of the outrage they caused. Could you explain?

My retraction was saying that I misjudged how to go about explaining these things. Sooner or later someone will have to address the issue of evolution - it's a no-go area, especially with the clerics - but I'm abandoning my attempt to reconcile it with the Koran until things settle down. I am not willing to risk my life over this issue.

Good for him, I suppose. I would have made the same choice. It's just that it's a freakin' England! Why is there even the need?

How common is the creationist position among Muslims?

It is the default position. Most of us are taught that evolution is wrong, unproven and a blasphemy. A lot of people enjoy science programmes on TV such as those by David Attenborough, but they tend to say he's an unbeliever so we can't trust him.

Couple that with fanatical righteousness and a penchant for violence, and this is the result.

Doing science vs. writing science

These days I am writing up a paper on some metagenomics research I have been doing while at Michigan State. It is hard and takes time. For me. Not so for everyone that I know, and that's good for them, because writing is an essential part of being a scientist*. Doing the research alone is not enough - writing about it is of course part of the process.

However, it has made me think that maybe this situation is not the best of all possible worlds. Rather, I find that I am better at making models and analyzing data than anything else, while some other colleagues are really good writers. So, why shouldn't we split the tasks among us? Someone collects the data, I do the analysis, and someone third writes up the manuscripts. That would suit me just fine.

The analyst is always first author, right?

* By the way, I like to say 'scientist' rather than researcher. I once conducted a poll asking random people which term they would prefer, and the one airport security person I asked said that he liked 'researcher' better, because 'scientist' made you think of 'evil'.

Lars von Trier is a Nazi

Go to Politiken (scroll one page down for the movie) and see this clip of a press conference Lars von Trier gave about his new film Melancholia.

He says that he sympathizes a bit with Hitler, and that he is a Nazi. von Trier (that's pronounced 'fun', btw) is trying to make a joke with some truth in it. It's a very Danish thing to do, and a very Danish way to do it. Something that most Americans cannot understand. Look at Kirten Dunst. She is so uncomfortable that at one point she even leans over and says something to von Trier (maybe "time to shut the fuck up!") that makes him object that he is trying to make a point.

Granted, I cringed as well, but not because he talk about being a Nazi in order to make some point, but because his delivery was pathetic.

Also in video: why did Newt Gingrich say "Nice to live in a free country"?



Is it just me or did he really mean it's a bugger to live in a free country?

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Update 5/24/11:

von Trier has released this statement:

"In my opinion, freedom of speech, in all its shapes, is part of the basic human rights. However, my comments during the festival’s press conference were unintelligent, ambiguous and needlessly hurtful.

My intended point was that the potential for extreme cruelty, or the opposite, lies within every human being, whatever nationality, ethnicity, rank or religion. If we only explain historical disasters with the cruelty of individuals we destroy the possibility of understanding the human mechanisms, which in turn are necessary in order to avoid any future crimes against humanity."

Which I find very true.

Again, homosexuality is not a choice

New research strongly suggests that if human sexuality isn't determined before birth, then at least it happens shortly after. That is, way before any "lifestyle" choices can be made.

A group of 90 healthy gay and heterosexual adults, men and women, were scanned by the Karolinska Institute scientists to measure the volume of both sides, or hemispheres, of their brain.

When these results were collected, it was found that lesbians and heterosexual men shared a particular "asymmetry" in their hemisphere size, while heterosexual women and gay men had no difference between the size of the different halves of their brain.

In other words, structurally, at least, the brains of gay men were more like heterosexual women, and gay women more like heterosexual men.

A further experiment found that in one particular area of the brain, the amygdala, there were other significant differences.
In heterosexual men and gay women, there were more nerve "connections" in the right side of the amygdala, compared with the left.

The reverse, with more neural connections in the left amygdala, was the case in homosexual men and heterosexual women.

Homosexuality is not a choice. But we already knew that, because no one can say that they chose to be heterosexual at some age.



But, even if it was a choice, that would be their choice.

Oh, and, see this post by someone who knows statistics well, and found that something was amiss with the original paper.

Rapture May 21st - save your pets

Apparently the (next) Rapture is May 21st.

But what of your pets? They are not likely going with, so are they just to starve in you absence? No, they aren't, at least if you pay up $135 in advance (!) to a company of atheists who are as unlikely to be taken as your pets.

In 2009, he launched Eternal Earth-Bound Pets USA. Centre guarantees that if or when the Rapture comes he or one of his 44 contractors in 26 states, including Washington, will drive to your home within 24 hours, collect your dog, cat, bird, rabbit or small caged mammal, and adopt it. (Rapture rescue services for horses, camels, llamas and donkeys are limited to New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho and Montana.)

The cost is $135, plus $20 per additional animal. Payable upfront, of course, and good for 10 years.

"Right now, we have over 250 clients," said Centre, 62, who is retired and pens anti-religion books under the name Dromedary Hump.

Centre says he has carefully screened all the rescuers. They have to love animals, of course, but just as important is that they don't love Jesus. For obvious reasons, they're all atheists.

[Source.]

Keller shows robots evolving altruism - Nowak dismisses simulations

As also reported on Panda's Thumb, Laurent Keller's group have evolved robot behavior in a computer (report in Science). The robots were given the ability to share food with each other, and more related groups quickly evolved altruism, sharing food with other robots they were related to. Classical and unsurprising, at least given our theoretical understanding of the evolution of altruism.



However, Martin Nowak, champion of the anti-kin-selection view, in a stunning feat of denial, dismisses the result because they are mere robots.

But Harvard University theortician Martin Nowak is more cautious about drawing conclusions based on computer simulations. Virtual robots are not a stand in for real life, he says. "[The work] tells us nothing about whether Hamilton's rule makes a correct prediction for actual biological systems," he says.

If you don't think that's ironic, then you don't know much about Nowak's work. Nowak mainly uses mathematics to make inference and draw conclusions about "actual biological systems". In my book, robots that actual do stuff seems much closer to biology than equations.

That being said, as I've previously noted, I am personally agnostic about the role of kin-selection in group selection.

altruism quickly evolved in the simulation, with greater food-sharing in groups where robots were more related, the researchers report online today in PLoS Biology.

Yes, but the fact that individuals groups that are more altruistic are related begs the question of causality. Did altruism evolve because they were related, or did groups of related individuals evolve because they were altruistic? In a situation like the one by Keller's group, these two scenarios may be inseparable. Is there another way to test what comes first, altruism or relatedness? Or rather, can we get altruism in groups of no relatedness?

Check out some other cool robots.

Waibel, M., Floreano, D., & Keller, L. (2011). A Quantitative Test of Hamilton's Rule for the Evolution of Altruism PLoS Biology, 9 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000615

Grow up, Americans!

Seriously, Americans. What is this infatuation you have with your founding fathers?

Whenever Americans from the right of the political spectrum (which, btw, is far right compared to normal countries*) insist that America is a Christian country, they turn to the founding fathers to prove their point. And when Americans from the left of the spectrum (why is quite far to the right compared to normal countries**) counter that it is not, then they too turn to the Constitution. Fair enough, you might say. It is the law, after all (at least the Constitution is, which says nothing about America being a Christian nation: We The People ring a bell?). However, it is the law as written centuries ago. Newsflash: it is outdated.

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed David Barton about whether America is a Christian nation.

See it here:



Should we*** have prayer be in school? Whenever Americans discuss whether we are a Christian nation, they always look to their dear founding fathers. Of course, they can't agree on what they meant, which makes it extra ridiculous. But the really stupid part is that it is so infantile.

It's infantile because America and Americans have changed, so what the founding fathers said is outdated. It's immature because when discussing how things should be, arguing over what your parents thought they should be really should be beside the point.

Instead, we should be talking about how things should be today based on what the current conditions are. Take guns. Back then it made a lot of sense to write into law that a militia should be allowed to carry guns. The threat from governments was real, and guns weren't used to kill schoolchildren. Today, there is no threat from the government, despite conspiracy theories originating on the stupid right side of the political aisle. And guns aren't muskets that take minutes to load, but things that the British could have won the war with had they had just five men armed with them. And they are used mainly for killing schoolchildren. So, allowing everybody to buy guns is stupid, so the freaking Constitution needs to be changed. It is outdated.

Completely ignoring the notorious discussion about many of the founding fathers not really being religious, letting your forefathers dictate how you should live centuries hence is puerile. It's tantamount to tradition. Eeew! Tradition is one of my favorite hating words. Tradition means doing something just because people did so in the past. Tradition is eating lutefisk because your parents did it. Tradition means not thinking for yourself. Which is something Americans excel at.

Time to grow up, Americans!

* Yes, normal countries, such as those where people care for each other by paying taxes in order to provide universal health care and the sale of guns are restricted to hunting rifles - for hunters.

** No, we are not talking about communism, you ignorant tools.

*** I say 'we' deliberately. While I am not American myself, I have lived here for most of my adult life, and my children go to school here, so it matters to me, too.

Carnival of Evolution #35

The thirty fifth Carnival of Evolution is up on Lab Rat.

Are carnivals relevant?

Recently I have been thinking about the use of blog carnivals. Do they get read by enough people to be considered useful? Do the people who read them actually click through to blog posts they wouldn't have otherwise? Presumably people who read carnivals regularly read a number of blogs regularly, too. So does the carnival add anything for these readers? And what about people who aren't regular readers of featured blogs? Are there any? Do people who don't usually read about the subject matter learn about it through carnivals?

Read more at Carnival of Evolution.

Evolutionary psychology assumes a simple genotype-phenotype map

Satoshi Kanazawa on why older parents are almost twice as likely to have a daughter than a son:

Because both the quality of the eggs and the quality of the sperm decrease with age, it is tempting to explain the declining likelihood of having a son among older parents potentially in terms of such quality of gametes (although I’m not aware of any argument that suggests that lower-quality gametes are more likely to produce girls). However, such explanations, even when correct, are proximate, not ultimate. They answer the question of how; they don’t answer the question of why. The lower quality of gametes, if it indeed lowers the probability of producing boys, is the mechanism that evolution employs to make sure that older parents are more likely to have daughters. But such a proximate mechanism does not explain why evolution “wanted” to make sure that older parents are more likely to have daughters, in other words, why it is adaptive for older parents to have daughters, not sons. That requires an ultimate evolutionary explanation.

The adaptive explanation is given as a necessity. Yes, proximal and ultimate explanations aren't the same thing, but the point here is that there need not be an evolutionary reason. Being more likely to have girls when above 40 does not need to be adaptive, as assumed by Kanazawa. This very assumption, however, is the very livelihood of working evolutionary psychologists.

Here's Kanazawa's proposition:

Being orphaned young is bad both for boys and girls, but it’s much worse for boys than for girls.

Sure, I'll bite. That is a great explanation right there, but in order to work with this hypothesis, it helps (though isn't strictly necessary) to further assume that there is enough variation for selection to act on. For example, it would without a doubt be great for humans if they had evolved flight to better escape predators back in the day, but also without a doubt selection couldn't select for flying humans because no children were ever born with this ability (or even anything that comes close).

In terms of genotype-phenotype maps (the relationship between a given genotype and the phenotype it codes for), it is not easy to reconfigure the genome so that humans are born with rudimentary wings. Some things are more likely to evolve than other, simply because they can occur at all - and wings aren't so likely (though not impossible). Genetic constraints make some things more likely to appear, and for selection to act on - or not. As with the observation that older parents are more likely to have daughters, which may stem from genetic constraints which make it less likely to make sperm with Y-chromosomes, for example. So, even if there is no advantage for older parents to have daughters, it could still be that way without it being selected for. Having more daughters could be a neutral trait.

But that's no fun. It does not make for a newsworthy story, so people in that business are more apt to assume that selection did it. But it really lacks scientific rigor.

In my browser I am...

• Trying to get around to reading these new journal articles:

Bacteria-Phage Antagonistic Coevolution in Soil
Molecular Evolution, Mutation Size and Gene Pleiotropy: A Geometric Reexamination
On the Evolution of Mutation in Changing Environments: Recombination and Phenotypic Switching
Which Primates Recognize Themselves in Mirrors?
Human-specific loss of regulatory DNA and the evolution of human-specific traits

• Trying to get around to reading these other items of interest:

Lawrence Krauss vs. William Lane Craig
Kunstige knogler er rykket et stort skridt nærmere

• Trying to buy these:



• Listening to this:

A.C. Grayling's Bible

A.C. Grayling et al. is just out with The Good Book: A Humanist Bible (Amazon). It's a book supposed to replace the Bible, for those who need someone else to guide them through life. Judging by how many needs the real Bible to tell them how to behave, perhaps many ought to read this one.

Or perhaps not, because after all, even those who claim to get their morals from the Bible really don't. The Ten Commandments and other guidelines say nothing of many of the moral dilemmas we often find ourselves in (human cloning), are unfailingly broken by Christians (covet not your neighbors possessions would be the very fabric of how capitalism works), contain lots of parables of supposedly good men who behave in utmost appalling manner (giving your wife and daughter to a mob so that they may "know them"), and all of the horrifying acts perpetrated on innocents by God himself (plagues on the people of Egypt, despite only the Pharao refused to let his people go). Also, shellfish are not an abomination.

It is an often repeated canard that we get our morals from the Bible or from God. We all (more or less) come equipped with a sense of morality that tells us how to behave, and this sense of morality comes from our evolutionary history. Empirically, many other primates have been shown to possess morality, from which we can infer that it is not something unique to humans or to the religious. Theoretically, we have a very good understanding of why individuals should behave altruistically towards others. It is no mystery why we don't go around stealing and killing, and it is not solely because the law says so. Rather, the law says so because we all (mostly) think so. There is no law against eating shellfish - my guess it's that in the Bible because the author thought they were nasty.

Grayling offer these ten to replace the original ten.

The secular humanist version of the Ten Commandments:

1. Love well
2. Seek the good in all things
3. Harm no others
4. Think for yourself
5. Take responsibility
6. Respect nature
7. Do your utmost
8. Be informed
9. Be kind
10. Be courageous

And who can disagree with those? Really, tell me if you do.

Personally, I go by George Carlin's ten two commandments. Watch:

Simona drums on after four engagements and two marriages

[I just read this fascinating story about a Muslim girl growing up in Denmark in Politiken (Danish newspaper). Here's a translation, with apologies.]

Written by Ditte Giese, published online on Politiken April 7, 2011.

Politiken just asked me to removed the translation due to copyrights. I'll ask if they will allow me to put it back up with proper acknowledgments.

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Update 4/8:
Yeah! They allowed me to post it - for a fee of 750 Danish kroner (~$150). I think they should be paying me.

So, instead here's a great quote from this excellent article. You can read the rest here in Danish, or run the whole thing through Google Translate here.

Already when she was 15 years the young men began to propose. Flirting is totally banned in that environment, so we meet each other at weddings and engagement parties.

We do not talk at all, but maybe steal a few looks at each other. Or a man could have seen her standing on the balcony and then decided to propose. Simona Abdallah is trying to explain the peculiar process, while laughing at it:

"First our mothers call each other. Then his mother comes for coffee and ask for my hand on her son's behalf. Then the bridegroom and his family comes for coffee, and I would then run around looking good with red cheeks while serving them, and maybe even look him in the eyes to see if there is a... connection, right? And I have to constantly clean and show that my mother has raised me well. "

"You usually have two weeks to think about it. One must NEVER say yes immediately, but should play hard to get. Finally my father asks if I want him. And then I try to assess from what others have said about him and that one time we saw each other. If I accept the negotiations begin'.

Pretty grim outlook for girls raised in such families, I think. Congratz to Simona for breaking free of such narrow-mindedness.

Chinese artist fights the system

This is fascinating.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

No book is worth even one life

This morning I heard people arguing on NPR that, yes, the killing of 12 UN officials by an Afghan mob is horrible, but must be seen int he light of Pastor Terry Jones burning the Qur'an. Then I got angry.

12 UN officials lost their lives because of a book burning they had nothing to do with. I must take the book burning into consideration because... what? Because that's the kind of reverence we have for scripture? Fuck off!

Quoting PZ Myers, who says it right:

Don't even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other — the comparison is obscene. Do not try to tell me that some people are 'moderates' when they tolerate or even support and applaud war and death and murder for any cause, whether it is oil, or getting even, or defending the honor of wood pulp and ink.

Pastor Terry Jones is an idiot. A big one. The Afghan mob that killed 12 people have blood on their hands, and that is just much, much worse.

I was not in favor of starting a war in Afghanistan because of terrorists attacking the US. I am in favor of getting out of Afghanistan today.

34th Carnival of Evolution

Just up at Quintessence of Dust.

Get your arsenic-based Sea Monkey kit

Just today I hear of the fruits of the NASA big-deal research on arsenic-based lifeforms: Monkeys. In the sea. Of Arsenic.

You can buy them right here.

Touché!

The Cuttlefish

Oooh... PZ is Cuttlefish! Now that is a surprise, for once. Even if he reveals it today of all days, he still has me convinced.

That he is leaving ScienceBlogs: not as convincing.

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Update 4/2:
Aaah... PZ is not Cuttlefish. He got me, and I think many others. Good one.

No more blogging for me

Yep, that's right. As of today I am giving up blogging.

I could tell you that doing a postdoc is both far more interesting than blogging and far more time consuming than merely working towards getting a PhD. But that would be lying. Those are both true, but that still isn't enough reason to quit blogging.

Rather than wasting a lot of time explaining the real reasons (something that I believe we humans don't really do very well in the first place, when it comes to explaining our own behavior), here's a list that may or may not include some or all of the factors that today has led me to make this hard choice:

• Blogging doesn't pay enough (so far I've earned a meager $37.28 through Google's Adsense).
• People don't comment enough, which makes me think no one cares what I write.
• I only have 58 followers on Blogger, and a paltry 120 subscriptions on Google Reader.
• Blogging is hard. It requires that I read about evolution and other things of interest (which I abhor).
• No other rewards have come of it (unlike PZ Myers who gets invited to give talks at meeting solely because he blogs).
• No matter what I write, it seems someone else have or will say it better.
• People don't stop me in the middle of the street and ask me if I'm not the writer of that cool blog Pleiotropy (they do it at the end of the street).
• My wroting, hasnt became any better since begon blogging, so whatz teh point reallly!!! :[

And there you have it. So bye. Go find your daily fix somewhere else.

I'm done.

...

P.S. And that Carnival of Evolution can suck it, too!

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Update: April 1st:
One click today and Adsense pays me two dollars!