Science

Darn, I was hoping that my occasional Twittering had some cosmic significance. But an article in New Scientist, "First Twitter experiment probes belief in the paranormal," describes a study that showed a lack of metaphysical ability among 7000 people who signed up for a scientific use of Twitter.The formal part of the study, which took place over four days, tested both whether the group as a whole was psychic and whether believers outperformed disbelievers. On each day I travelled to a randomly selected location and asked everyone to send tweets describing their thoughts and impressions about the location. In the…

Wow, this post title runs the risk of winning a blogosphere Yawn! award. But hang in there, reader -- this subject of subjectivity and objectivity actually is darn interesting.And as intimate to you and me as what we're doing at this very moment. Which, in my case, includes sipping coffee from a yellow cup and watching the letters I type on my laptop's keyboard appear on the screen. I'm experiencing those things, along with much more -- such as hearing my wife open a desk drawer and shuffle through some papers. Now, there seems to be a big difference between…

Quite a few mystical, meditational, and spiritual entities (organizations or individuals) claim to teach a science of the soul. See, for example, here, here, here, and here.My previous post about the scientific method stimulated some pondering: how would a science of the soul go about trying to discover what, if anything, lies beyond the physical human brain and material universe?I'm assuming that "soul" refers to something metaphysical. If not, then it doesn't make sense to speak of a science of the soul, because plain "science" would be sufficient -- plenty of researchers already are delving into how our minds work,…

It's amusing when anti-scientific true believers get on their fundamentalist soapboxes. I've had a good time reading the nonsensical comments on my spiritual pseudo-science post.I'll try to avoid sounding too condescending here, though I agree with biologist PZ Myers when he responded to a creationist with "I'll be condescending when condescension is deserved."First -- and probably most importantly -- everybody uses the scientific method in their everyday lives. Otherwise it would be impossible to live any sort of normal life. So those who criticize how science works are hypocrites, unless they also are criticizing themselves. Here's a simple depiction of…

Traditional religions embrace a lot of crazy unsubstantiated beliefs. But so do modern New Agey sorts of spirituality, which often take a speck of scientific truth and try to inflate it into a grand explanation of the cosmos.So in addition to fundamentalist dogma, we churchless types need to train our skeptical guns on targets such as the film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Personally, I liked this movie a lot more than, say, a speech by the Pope. However, since I'm fairly familiar with quantum theory (in a non-mathematical sense, at least), having researched it in the course of…

Ooh, I just love it when someone says something so brilliantly, it makes me think, "I could have said that myself!" (if I was that brilliant)Case in point: a wonderful YouTube video about open-mindedness that I learned about via Pharyngula, where blogger PZ Myers titled his post "Something a few of our commenters ought to watch."My sentiments exactly. It amuses me when fundamentalists wander onto this blog and start preaching, "Your skepticism is the real fundamentalism!" That doesn't make any sense, except in their twisted, tortured, thought-disordered illogic. I try to respond with reasonable statements like "not believing isn't a…

Is a depression coming? Will Obama's stimulus and budget plans get the country back on track? Does God exist? Is heaven the after-death destination for believers, and hell for doubters?These sets of questions seem very different -- economics is worldly; religion is other-worldly. But after reading a recent Newsweek article, "Why Pundits Get Things Wrong," I suspect there is a commonality between those who offer up answers in both areas.Ongoing research by Philip Tetlock, a psychologist, looked at 82,361 predictions by 284 pundits. Searching for an explanation of why some people were better predictors than others, he found that:The best…

I'm a day late on celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday with a blog post. But yesterday I listened to disbelievers in the theory of evolution hold forth on the radio, so I was thinking of you, Charles.What Darwin did, brilliantly, is point us in a vitally important direction: reality. That's what science does so well, and religion so poorly.Now, I realize that "reality" is a dirty word to many people, not all of whom are fundamentalists, because it sounds so elitist, unspiritual, objectifying, divisive. One guy I heard on a talk show claimed that he wasn't religious; he just wanted students…

Most religious believers consider that they're on the road to transcending the crudity and illusion of material reality. So, churchless skeptic that I am, it was hugely enjoyable to read in the latest issue of New Scientist about increasing evidence that the brain creates God.More accurately, a belief in God.An alternative being put forward by Atran and others is that religion emerges as a natural by-product of the way the human mind works. That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring…

"Into the Light" is the title of the introduction to Universe, which stimulated my "Greetings from the center of the galaxy" post.Reading about the electromagnetic spectrum, I don't see how anyone could doubt that science has a whole lot to teach us about opening ourselves to a broader understanding of reality.Despite being suffused with light, surprisingly little of the universe is visible to the naked eye. Unaided, we can detect only 6,000 of the universe's estimated 70 billion trillion stars from Earth -- and no more than a few thousand from any one location.Dust, distance, light pollution and a thick…

I couldn't think of a better Christmas day greeting than this one -- a marvelous image of the Milky Way galactic center. (Click on "full size" for higher resolution image.)Yesterday I saw it as I was garnering churchless inspiration from an astronomical picture book, "Universe: Journey from Earth to the Edge of the Cosmos."Tears came to my eyes. Sitting on a cushion in my meditation area, I felt very, very small. Also, very, very fortunate to be living in a time when science could show us so vividly what lies beyond the confines of everyday experience.The caption in the book,…

Believing in the supernatural is easy: our brains lead us down the belief road without our knowledge. So there's good reason to be skeptical of religious, mystical, or spiritual experiences.Much, most, or all of the time (depending on your level of skepticism) your brain is fooling you.Such is the fascinating message of Sharon Begley's "Why We Believe" in a recent issue of Newsweek. I read her piece the day after my wife and I believed we were at the right election night party place, but really weren't. We weren't in a supernatural frame of mind, but some of Begley's believing…

I've never understood why science isn't worshiped by religious believers. After all, most religions believe that God or a higher power created the cosmos. So seemingly the next best thing to knowing God would be knowing how our universe works, since it stands to reason that the consciousness of the creator would be reflected in the creation -- in the same way as the psyche of an artist shines through his or her paintings. Normally my meditation nook's reading corner has several science books nestled comfortably next to spiritual and philosophical titles. I jump back and forth between them most…

Today Pharyngula, a terrific science/ progressive/ anti-religion blog, hit the mark with links to stories on three of my favorite subjects. Exposing Sarah Palin for the fool that she is. Palin is against science. She's for the teaching of creationism. She doesn't think humans have much to do with global warming. Picturing her as vice-president of the United States: too irrationally scary to contemplate. This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise…

It's well accepted that our universe came into being about 13.7 billion years ago with a bang. A big bang, in fact. So big, and yet so small. Because the energy which became at least 100 billion galaxies each containing about 100 billion stars, supposedly was contained within a singularity of infinite density and temperature that wasn't even a point in time and space – since a singularity is where the laws of nature (including general relativity) break down. This helps explain why the Catholic Church has looked with favor on the big bang theory, as have theologians of other…

There's nothing wrong with churches that some churchlessness won't fix. After all, that's what this blog is. This morning I was inspired to become the first member of another churchless church, that of Holy Fuck! In chartering this institution within my own psyche, my first decision was whether the exclamation point was necessary. Grammatically, it could be confusing – as in the title of this post. Does the ! go with the entire sentence, or just with Church of Holy Fuck! I've concluded that it's better to be confused than lackadaisical. Hence, I'm decreeing that an exclamation point shall always…

Often a cartoon speaks more truth than thousands of words. Thanks to Pharyngula, here's a great example: The complete comic says even more. Yes indeed, "the truth will set you free." Which leaves religion out of the picture, because it puts barriers between us and reality – substituting wishful thinking for clear-eyed understanding of the universe. A recent comment conversation over on last year's "Atheists crush Christians at 'Does God Exist?' debate" post is a good example. I appreciate that "C," a Christian, was willing to enter into a dialogue with us churchless heathens (see his July 7, 2008 comment…

It's strange, but the most familiar sensation we have also is the most mysterious: knowing. I know this. And yet, I don't. Just like everything else that I know. Or you know. Or anybody knows. We don't know how we know. Which means we can't trust what we know – not with 100% certainty. So this should squash fundamentalism of every variety. Except…people can't control their knowing. Reason, facts, information, persuasion: our sense of knowing isn't influenced by any of that. Our knowing can't be trusted. Yet it's what we rely upon at every moment. Go figure. (But you can't,…

You can't have "right" without "wrong." So if what you say is absolutely 100% certain, no doubt about it – that can't be true. The Taoists figured this out a long time ago. Yin requires yang. Up needs down. Truth depends on falsity. Much more recently, Karl Popper made falsifiability the cornerstone of what distinguishes a scientific theory. I echoed his ideas in "If a religion can't be wrong, it surely is." I keep coming back to this notion, because both intuitively and logically it appeals to me. Sure, something may be real, yet improvable or indescribable. Existence, for example.…

Jill Bolte Taylor had what she calls a "stroke of insight." In her case it was an actual stroke – which produced a blood clot the size of a golf ball that pushed on her language centers in the left side of her brain. Watch the nineteen minute video of her talk about the experience. Or read the transcript. It's fascinating and moving. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by…