Policy and Politics

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There Ophelia Benson thinks I've misunderstood New Atheism when I say: New Atheism is hardly the only way for atheists - or nontheists more generally - to get the word out that they're here and want to be taken seriously. She insists…

Chris Mooney reports on Psych Evidence that Supports New Atheism, writing: In general, I believe what we know about human psychology runs contrary to the New Atheist approach and strategy. However, I do my best to follow the data, and here's a study that suggest at least one aspect of their approach may work. The tactic finding support here is not necessarily being confrontational-that would tend to prompt negative emotional reactions, and thus defensiveness and inflexibility towards New Atheist arguments-but rather, making it more widely known that you're actually there-as "out" atheists try…

A few days ago I was over at Jerry Coyne's blog and got into some conversations that regular readers here might be interested in. In the course of one of his regularly scheduled whinefests about how people are too mean to gnu atheists, Coyne wrote: we're not McCarthyites with a secret "list". Here are some professed atheists who have been unusually (and I'd add unreasonably) critical of Gnu Atheists: Julian Baggini, Jacques Berlinerblau, Andrew Brown, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Jean Kazez, Chris Mooney, Massimo Pigliucci, Josh Rosenau, Michael Ruse, and Jeremy Stangroom. There were two things that…

Point of Inquiry: Our guest this week is Josh Rosenau, the Programs and Policy Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and writer of the blog "Thoughts from Kansas" at ScienceBlogs.... In this interview with Karen Stollznow, Josh presents the "Three Pillars of Creationism", the beliefs and claims of creationists. He describes their rhetoric and propaganda, and the setbacks they cause for science, from legal cases to creationist theme parks. Josh also talks about some recent successes for science. The NCSE works tirelessly to battle creationists and improve the public…

Aaron Schwarz has a petition urging The White House and Congress to unlock science research: Three years ago this week, the National Institutes of Health announced that all medical research they fund would have to be published as "open access" -- available to anyone, for free, over the Internet. The policy has been a huge success, but now it's time for the rest of the government to follow suit. That's why we're teaming up with libraries, universities, and patient advocacy groups to demand every publicly-funded publication be made open access. If we're going to be spending billions of…

Via USA Today, we learn about a study showing that people who meditate frequently behave in a more rational manner than non-meditators, and they do so because different parts of their brain take charge of certain kinds of decisions. The study was based around a common test of rational behavior called the Ultimatum Game. Two people sit at a table. One of them is given a sum of money ($20 in this case), and is told to split that however she wants with the other. Before she makes that decision, the other subject is told that if he rejects the share offered to him, neither player will get any…

Chris Mooney has been hard at work lately, through his journalism, his blogging, and his podcast at the Center for Inquiry, trying to understand why denialism is so pervasive. In the new issue of Mother Jones, he lays out some of "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science": an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has ...demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find…

...Or "What I've been up to for the last week or so." Last week was a busy travel week. I was in West Virginia for the first half of the week, on a whirlwind tour of the Morgantown area, speaking in the geology department at West Virginia University, then twice at a symposium on science communication, and then at a local freethought group (meeting in a beautiful Unitarian church with a view of the valley). The video above is a slidecast from a talk NCSE's Steve Newton and I gave about the Process of Science and Scientific Controversy. Steve didn't record his talk, so you miss the lead-in,…

In my post about Pastor Jones and the Quran burning, I wrote that I'm a First Amendment maximalist, and so defend the right of someone to burn a Quran, but noted also that Jones' actions were clearly intended as a provocation, and that a smart lawyer could probably convince a court that Jones' actions fall into the "fighting words" exception to the First Amendment. Jones has a right to express his distaste for Islam and for Muslims, but he hasn't got a right to inspire a riot, and it isn't inherently unfair to hold him accountable for the predictable results of his actions. Setting aside…

John Pieret reads Jerry Coyne so you don't have to, and catches Jerry Coyne rewriting history. Pieret notes in particular that Coyne is insisting that "faitheist" was never meant as a pejorative, when it clearly was, and has always and exclusively been used as such. For Coyne to try to rewrite history and claim otherwise is shameful, especially from someone who insists he is the great defender of the principle that "the truth matters." Speaking of which, Pieret closes by noting: "As an aside, Coyne accuses [Center for Inquiry VP John] Shook of 'redefining' "accommodationism." Where, exactly…

NationalJournal.com - Six of Ten Political Insiders Believe Public Is Ill-Informed: When it comes to policy, the political class doesn't have a lot of faith in the public's IQ. In the latest National Journal Political Insiders Poll, a solid majority of political operatives â 59 percent â said the public didn't "know enough about the issues facing Washington to form wise opinions about what should be done." There was a sharp partisan difference between the two parties: By more than a 2-to-1 margin, Democratic Insiders believed the public didn't "know enough," while a slight majority of…

Sam Harris has a brand new blog, and already has managed to lard it with roughly what you'd expect: tendentiousness, insistence that religious is wrong because it won't change (and that religions which do change are illegitimate for doing so), and the usual pro-repression politics. Referring to Florida's Pastor Jones, who finally burnt a Quran after spending the last year threatening to do so, and who inspired (as predicted) violence in Afghanistan as a result, Harris asks Do We Have the Right to Burn the Koran?. To which the simple answer is: Sure, but that doesn't mean anyone should do so…

From Denial Depot, Jaws: A movie review: A group of so-called government funded "experts" whip up alarmist fears of a killer shark off the coast of Amity, a sea side town. Their goal is to destroy the local tourist industry, send Amity back to the dark ages and thus achieve their underlying socialist agenda of wealth redistribution. The heroes of this tale are the local major and business leaders who lead a successful audit of the alarmist claims and by doing so manage to delay action long enough that the beach remains open. In the end it turns out a shark has been eating people. Read the…

Via the Monkey Cage, a study which used an interesting survey technique to assess just how wingnutty the teabaggers really are. They did a survey focusing on issues involving race and politics, especially in states where Tea Party candidates did well last November, and along the way managed to tease out some important differences between various branches of conservatism. For instance, they found that 76% of self-identified teabaggers want President Obama's policies to fail, compared with only 32% among conservatives not affiliated with the Tea Party. Four in ten non-teabag conservatives…

In the course of talking about other things, Jason Rosenhouse raises a tricky issue: Fundamentalists are rightly excoriated for pretending that theirs is the only acceptable form of religion. But it is hardly an improvement when academics suggest that real religion is high-minded and metaphorical and intellectually deep, with the more commonplace version being a distracting side show. This idea of "real religion" is tricky, and is at the heart of a lot of the disputes between gnu/New/extreme atheists â who think religion is bad and favor eradicating it â and "accommodationists" â who don't…

Jerry Coyne then: Rules for life: If two friends tell you the same thing about yourself, it's probably true. Jerry Coyne now: thinks the several friends saying the same thing about him must be wrong: more Gnu Atheist-bashing from fellow atheists... inspired by Michael Ruse's rants equating Gnus with Tea Partiers... Jacques Berlinerbrau at the Chronicle of Higher Education... R. Joseph Hoffman at his own website... Both level the same old charges at Gnus: we're strident..., politically impotent, and motivated solely by a desire for publicity, fame, and money. But they also level a new charge…

Shorter Longer PZ Myers: Why are we bombing Libya?: I don't see any difference between Barack Obama responded to a request by the Arab League, endorsed by the United Nations, to establish a no-fly zone with a clear end-game and limited engagement which will prevent Gadhafi from murdering his people and allow a legitimate popular uprising to succeed, and George W. Bush circumventing the UN and international law to take revenge on Saddam Hussein for trying to kill Bush's dad in a costly and ill-defined war with no clear goals or endgame which installed a puppet government with no indigenous…

In my twitter feed, I commented briefly on the election results in Egypt. The vote was on a package of constitutional reforms. As I understand it, more liberal Egyptians opposed the amendments because they wanted more wholesale reform of the constitution. But the amendments passed overwhelmingly. I noted: 18.5 million votes were cast in #egypt, 77.2% favored the amendments, including a nativist requirement on presidential spouses. And added: It was the first election in #egypt when people didn't know the outcome beforehand. Lots of people voted for the first time ever. I also retweeted…

The problem of evil has become a topic of discussion again. I don't think I've blogged about theodicy in any depth since 2006, so I guess it's time to take it up again. In brief, the problem of evil is classically posed as a question of why evil should exist in the world if there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. By straightforward logic, one can argue that the existence of evil is evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, there are a lot of theodicies - attempts to defend the…

Mike the Mad Biologist weighs in on a debate Brad Delong has been curating, about the status of economics as a science. Noting that examples from biology are being introduced as comparisons for economics, Mike writes: It really does matter: if economists are going to use biology as a model for their discipline, we need them to understand ours, to help improve theirs. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Upon which, he administers a firm but gentle smackdown to Russ Roberts. Read it, enjoy it.