I am working on some very smart things to say here. Really. Meanwhile, there's 
Enemies of Reason is a two part series presented by Dawkins on Channel 4. The first part was broadcast yesterday. I missed the first half hour but did watch later half.
As always, Dawkins is passionate and eloquent in identifying and rallying against the enemies of reason. He takes us into the twisted superstition of dowsing: it is where people allegedly find water, gems, etc with sticks (if it works at all, they should first look for their brains, ahem). A double blind experiment is shown where the stick-men and stick-women go nuts on TV. The psychologist who conducted the study thinks they really believed in their stick-power and were not pretending. The diviners were genuinely shocked when the results showed they fared no better than blind guesswork. Fittingly, Dawkins presents us with Skinner's superstitious pigeons to fix the context. Our brains are hardwired to find patterns. Supertition is the case where brains misfire, again and again, in the face of contrary evidence. We humans are pathetic.
Later, Dawkins meets with one Mr Satish Kumar, a spiritualist and the editor of Resurgence magazine. Mr Satish shook my world when he uttered, "I represent the entire history of evolution, I was present in the beginning, the first big bang, and I'll be here for billions of years to come." Shit, man. If you are the representative of all that, we are fucked. Between, Mr Satish apparently counts Prince of Wales and the Dalai Lama as fans. I mention this only to indicate that superstition is oblivious to one's 'princely' or 'spritual' conditions. (I should note that I have nothing against Dalai Lama. He is a cool guy, when he is not peddling 'spirituality' to scientists).
After these depressing people, it is uplifting to hear Dawkins end with these wonderful words: "There is poetry in the world. Science is the poetry of this world."
The next part of the programme is on Aug 20.
