Now this is a documentary you don't want to miss!

Via John Farrell.

Weekly sampler 15

Last quiz on genome size, with animals chosen at random. The first quiz post explains what this is all about, the second one has additional commentary, and the answers to both previous quizzes are in previous Weekly samplers.

Which organism has the larger genome?
	This one?	Or this one?
1
2
3
4

Here's some help for you. These are the C-values (amount of DNA per cell) for those animals, in ascending order:

0.23 -- 1.50 -- 2.24 -- 2.72 -- 2.91 -- 3.00 -- 3.29 -- 5.87

And here's a hint: the biggest number does not go with the biggest animal. Good luck!

1. We're living in the postgenomic era, and comparative genomics has already made it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled anti-evolutionist. I've written before about genome sequencing and the imminence of large-scale and inexpensive sequencing. Well, the first super-fast (4 months vs. more than a decade for the Human Genome Project), super-cheap ($1.5 million vs. billions for the HGP) human genome sequence is now official. It's Jim Watson's genome. Blecch. Someone should use BLAST to search his coding sequences for this amino acid sequence:
Alanine - Serine - Serine - Histidine - Glutamine - Leucine - Glutamic acid
Don't get it? Think about this guy's conduct, then check out the amino acid code.

2. If you think I'm never nice to Reasons To Believe, check out the discussion this week at the ASA listserv. The topic: RTB's statement in which they distance themselves from Expelled.

3. Speaking of Expelled, which I will do infrequently, here's a good reason to avoid the movie and its cynical attempt to enlist and co-opt evangelical Christendom: its indefensible linkage of "Darwinism" with Nazism. If that's not bad enough, check out John Lynch's examination of the diabolical credentials of one "expert" interviewed in the film.

If you're a Christian who thinks that the Nazis are a useful polemical tool against evolution, then maybe you should read about some of Hitler's best-known influences. In my view, if you can read Luther's words and still think there's any moral high ground surrounding the Holocaust that can be claimed by Christendom, then you're crazy. The Holocaust is an unspeakably abhorrent stain on the Church, if you ask me, and it's not Darwinists (whoever they are) who have hard questions to answer. I, for one, believe that Christians should be overwhelmingly humbled by the occurrence of the Holocaust, and not because of the Problem of Evil.

Christopher Heard has several recent posts on Expelled that are worth checking out. Just promise me you won't give any money to these chowderheads.

I say: skip Expelled. Send the money to Compassion International. Or give it to a library or school. Say no to the minions of the Discovery Institute who have given up the pretense of "scientific" explorations of "design" and have lustily embraced full frontal culture war. [spits]

3. [Deep breath] So, were you alive in the 1980's? Remember Bloom County? It's my favorite comic strip of all time (apologies to Calvin & Hobbes). The strip often tracked current events; during the 1981 Arkansas creationism trial, Bloom County presented the famous "penguin evolution" trial in which "scientific penguinism" was being advocated by certain characters. Some classic excerpts from that brilliant series are illicitly available in the blogosphere; don't miss the one (second from the bottom) in which the scientific expert states, "Penguin evolution is a fib." You can find some similarly scintillating examples on Berkeley Breathed's site. My favorites: the first and the next to last.

4. Kevin Corcoran writes this about a recent piece by Stanley Fish on deconstruction:

John Searle said it first, but it applies here: it’s stuff like this that gives bullshit a bad name.

Now that's funny.

5. The online repository of Darwin's works at the University of Cambridge announced this week that they were making available a gigantic collection of Darwin's private papers, including "the first draft of his theory of evolution" and notes from the Beagle voyage. One little tidbit: apparently they sold tickets to lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Hmmmm. [rubs chin]
Via my brilliant brother, who works at HP and helps his wife run her cool small business.

6. There was a lot of cyberspace snickering when Answers Research Journal started up, and some of the articles there are pretty lame (the metaphysical piece would, I think, do poorly in a 200-level philosophy course at Calvin). But have a look at the new article on peer review; the authors are worth listening to, and their discussion of peer review from a Christian perspective is worth considering. I'm not crazy about the occasional proof-texting, and the authors frequently address the YEC community specifically. But here's the type of clear-headed wisdom you'll find in their paper:

By striving for excellence, we also love our neighbors. In our modern, western culture, many people view scientific pronouncements as authoritative. Christians who are also scientists therefore have an even higher duty to speak with excellence than the average Christian, simply because of the perceived authority that they possess. Errors made by Christians speaking in the name of science, no matter how well intentioned, can become “common wisdom” and thereby very difficult to correct. Even greater responsibility lies upon the scholar who professes ideas to the general public rather than just scholarly colleagues. In doing so, the scholar becomes a teacher, with all the attendant responsibilities (e.g., Matthew 5:19, 18:6; James 3:1). We therefore love our neighbors by striving to present the excellence of God in our written work and avoid the dangerous alternative of leading them into error.

I probably don't need to explain why that passage rang true. You might notice, by the way, the links take you to the New King James Version. What is it with the conservative/fundamentalist fondness for 400-year-old prose bearing the name of an English monarch?

Weekly sampler 14

Answers to Quiz 2. (Poor John Farrell.) Row 1: the deer tick on the right has a genome almost 8 times the size of the ladybird beetle's (C value of 2.48 vs. 0.33). I take it that the scholars of RTB would postulate that a deer tick is many times more "advanced" than is a ladybird beetle. Similarly, Hugh Ross would have to surmise that a grasshopper is 4 times as "advanced" as a bengal tiger (row 2; C value 2.71 vs. 12.66). Indeed, it would seem that this wonderful insect is far more "advanced" than every mammal ever examined. Row 3: let's see...which is more "advanced", a snail or a giraffe? Well, the snail, of course, though perhaps just by a hair (heh): 2.69 vs. 3.58.

We'll have one more of these quizzes, but next time the species will be chosen randomly. At least then the success rate of Hugh Ross' proposals has a chance of reaching 50%.

1. Back in the day, I learned about the cool Monty Hall puzzle on a Usenet newsgroup. I found the puzzle to be very interesting, in that those who understand probability fairly well are most prone to being tricked by the puzzle. Here's the problem.

You're playing Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall, and you are offered a choice among three doors. Behind one of the doors is a new Toyota Prius, yours to keep if you reveal it, and behind each of the other two doors is a goat (which, presumably, you don't want to take home). The game always proceeds as follows. You announce your choice of a door. Then Monty says, "Hmmm. Are you sure about that? Here, let me show you something that might change your mind." He then opens one of the two doors you did not choose, revealing a goat. Then he asks you: do you want to stay with your first choice, or would you like to change your mind? And the question is: do your odds of winning change (i.e., improve) if you change your mind, and choose the remaining door?

Now, if you've never encountered this famous puzzle, stop and think about it. I've put the rest of this section at the end of the post. Note, though, that there is no trickery here; Monty will always show you a goat (that's important) and the solution has nothing to do with semantics or other uninteresting chicanery. It's all about probability.

2. The evolution (and prevalence) of sex has long been considered one of the most perplexing phenomena in biology. Some of the most creatively-named hypotheses in all of science are hypotheses addressing the adaptive nature of sexual reproduction.

Image from PLOS Biology, photo by William F. Duffy.

Enter the bdelloid rotifers, animals whose "scandalous" claim to fame is that they don't have sex. For centuries, it seems that the evidence that these microscopic animals are asexual amounted to the fact that no one had ever seen a male. A very nice recent review in Nature News explains how biologists have established that the bdelloids are actually asexual, and how these animals – alone among all others – pull it off. If you want more, PLOS Biology has an interesting review of how one famous theory of sexual evolution recently held up under duress.

3. Brain doping?! So, how many scientists are taking cognitive enhancers in order to outperform their competitors? And should federal granting agencies ban this practice, perhaps to motivate Major League Baseball to follow suit? (Beware of leftover April Fools jokes.) Some of my colleagues apparently do indulge in this practice. Some, I daresay, really should start.

4. I don't have much to say about Expelled, and I don't intend to spend any of my childrens' inheritance on it. (In fact, if you are contemplating such a foolish move, consider redirecting your expenditure in some more constructive direction.) But Chris Heard at Higgaion has posted a very important piece on Why Ken Miller isn't in Expelled. Check it out, and if you decide to waste synaptic activity on this issue, tune in to the NCSE's Expelled Exposed site.

5. According to Siris, philosophy is enduring a zombie invasion. David Chalmers must be pleased. I know I am.

6. Okay, back to Let's Make a Deal. The answer is: yes, you should change your guess to the other door. Your probability of winning is 2/3 if you do that.

When I first encountered the puzzle, I had a response that is typical among people who know a little about probability. I figured that Monty's little stunt with the goat is irrelevant; it couldn't change my chance of winning any more than any other silly behavior on his part. My chance of winning is 1/3, period. And of course I was partially correct. My chance of winning is indeed still 1/3 if I make my choice and just stick with it. But I was wrong in assuming that Monty's action is irrelevant. On the contrary, his goat-revealing gesture is determined by my choice. And it changes the situation entirely.

There are many ways to explain this, but here's my favorite. On average, 1/3 of the time I choose the car at the outset. In those situations, Monty gets to choose between the 2 goats, and I lose if I change my choice to the remaining goat. But 2/3 of the time I choose one of the goats at the outset. Monty is forced to reveal the sole remaining goat to me, and that means the car is behind the remaining door. So, I have a 2/3 chance of winning by randomly picking a door and then watching Monty show me the location of the car.

Why mention this on the blog? Well, for one, it's interesting. But also, this week the Monty Hall puzzle surfaced in a scientific context. Psychologists are debating the extent to which the Monty Hall phenomenon has affected the outcomes of numerous experiments examining so-called cognitive dissonance. Read about it at John Tierney's blog at the New York Times, and don't miss your chance to play the Monty Hall game yourself, especially if (like many others) you are unconvinced by my explanation.

Mutations, selection, and bacteria

Several weeks ago, a commenter (Donald) asked an interesting question about natural selection and genetic variation, and I promised to address it because I want the issue to be a theme on QoD in the coming months. Here's Donald:

The link below is to a NYT blog where it says that E coli studies have found that there are 100,000 harmful mutations for each single beneficial one. I'm no population geneticist, but this kind of thing does make you wonder how selection could work with that much noise to overcome.

That aside, I have read a little of Ronald Fisher and I recall his mathematical argument that for mutations of very small effect, there was a 50 percent chance that the net effect would be beneficial. This is in "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection". The mutations with large effects, on the other hand, are almost certainly going to be deleterious.

So are these studies only detecting mutations with large effects, or was Fisher wrong?

The blog article that Donald is citing is at The Wild Side by Olivia Judson, and the figure of 100,000 deleterious mutants for every helpful one is widely referenced.

Donald raises two questions, which I'll rephrase somewhat.

1. How can natural selection lead to adaptation when there is so much interference from harmful mutations?

I think there are at least three misconceptions that are acting together to create this common misunderstanding. First, that widely-cited ratio of harmful to helpful mutations is apparently an overestimate, off by three orders of magnitude, or a factor of 1000. The study that reported this dramatic correction in our understanding of bacterial mutations was published in Science last August, and represents a wonderful case study of the difference between real scientific thinking and the thinking of most design advocates. (Subject of an upcoming post.)

Second, the existence of harmful mutations doesn't necessarily "interfere" with adaptation. Many deleterious mutations will just kill the organism, and that's that. Natural selection does that all the time, and it doesn't get in the way of life in general, so there's no special reason to worry that it will get in the way of adaptation.

But most importantly, I think Donald is a little confused about the material on which natural selection acts, and understandably so. (This error is the centerpiece of Michael Behe's ludicrous recent book The Edge of Evolution.) The mistake seems subtle, but it's gigantic, and I think it arises in part from a semantic shortcut that is often used when explaining selection and adaptation. To see the problem, consider these two alternative descriptions of the process of adaptation.

• Adaptive evolution occurs when natural selection favors certain mutations which are beneficial as opposed to harmful. When new challenges arise, new adaptations arise as new beneficial mutations are generated and selection favors these mutations.
• Adaptive evolution occurs when natural selection favors previously-existing genetic combinations that are more fit than others. When new challenges arise, new adaptations arise as selection favors individuals whose genetic endowments are best suited to the new challenges.

The first description probably sounds more familiar to you than the second one does, but they're quite different, and the second description is far more accurate than the first. The distinction between these two scenarios lies in the implication of the first scenario that new mutations must arise "on demand" or "just in time." Michael Behe's whole silly book is based on calculations that assume that new mutations must be generated, simultaneously, after the introduction of the new challenge. (His main example is the adaptation of the malaria parasite in the face of drugs intended for its destruction.) Those who promulgate this error (intentionally or not) tend to emphasize natural selection acting on mutations, and consequently it's easy to picture a species "mutating around" a challenge or obstacle. (Behe, for example, uses such language repeatedly.)

But that's a mistaken view of the process, and the way to avoid the trap is to picture selection acting on variation, specifically on variation that is always present in any population of organisms. (Populations without significant genetic variation, when confronted with serious challenges, are more likely to illustrate extinction than evolution.) Such variation is continuously generated and therefore continuously present. This is the lesson from studies of the effects of human selection on domesticated species of all kinds: when selection is applied, such populations typically reveal a remarkable propensity for rapid and dramatic change, because they harbor vast resources in the form of genetic diversity. If you carefully attend to this distinction, you will understand Darwinian evolution far better than any ID advocate.

2. Are most large-effect mutations harmful, and many small-effect mutations beneficial, as predicted by Fisher?

Well, first of all, kudos to Donald for reading Fisher. I've been browsing The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, and it's demanding (but comprehensible). Michael Behe either hasn't read it, or didn't understand it, and in either case is therefore unqualified to write on evolutionary genetics.

Fisher was certainly right that large-effect mutations are almost never beneficial, but it is largely unknown whether very small-effect mutations are frequently beneficial, as he postulated. Theoretical and experimental work in this field has recently accelerated, and the current model is that effects of beneficial mutations are exponentially distributed, such that beneficial mutations are far more likely to be of very small effect than of large effect. This was Allen Orr's proposal, and it has been borne out in some very recent experimental analyses. The most recent, and significant, was the Science paper I mentioned above, in which the authors found that beneficial mutations in bacteria are far more common than previously estimated, but have relatively small effects (individually). Here's an excerpt from their last paragraph:

...our estimate of [the beneficial mutation rate] implies that 1 in 150 newly arising mutations is beneficial and that 1 in 10 fitness-affecting mutations increases the fitness of the individual carrying it. Hence, an enterobacterium has an enormous potential for adaptation and may help explain how antibiotic resistance and virulence evolve so quickly.

That's enough for now. Start with papers by Allen Orr when reading on the genetics of adaption; his historical overview in Nature Reviews Genetics in 2005 is particularly helpful.

Diagnosed...at last.

I thought it was the coffee, or maybe the Scottish buttheadedness. But no: it's a real live syndrome. Note that this newly-described malady, SIWOTI syndrome, sounds a bit like 'snotty' or 'so what-ee', so please be careful not to offend sufferers by mispronouncing the name, or by oversimplifying the affliction with crude cartoons. Via Pharyngula, a silly little blog written by one of the syndrome's most severely-affected victims.

Quiz 2 on genome size. How's it going so far?

Quiz 2. (Directions, and rationale, can be found in a previous post.) Ready?

Which organism has the larger genome?
	This one?	Or this one?
1
2
3

Which of these organisms displays the greatest "degree of advancement"? Which would require the most "information" to build and maintain? What predictions would design theorists such as William Dembski and Hugh Ross offer us in this exercise?

Think, people. If the proposals of these thinkers made any sense at all (at least with respect to non-coding DNA), it would be pretty straightforward to determine which of these organisms would have the largest genome, and which would have the smallest. But if you want to do well on this quiz, you don't want to peek at Hugh Ross' paper. You're better off throwing darts. Blindfolded.

Weekly sampler 13

First, answers to the quiz in last week's sampler. Row 1: the genome of the funnel-web spider on the left is more than 3 times as big as that of the bald eagle (C value of 5.36 vs. 1.43). Row 2: The monarch butterfly's genome is less than 1/8 the size of the alligator's (0.29 vs. 2.49). Row 3: The duck-billed platypus has a significantly smaller genome than that of the octopus (3.06 vs. 5.15). So how'd the "degree of advancement" criterion work out? You do the math. More quizzes to come.

1. As a Reformed Christian (and former Catholic), I typically feel that Catholics are kindred spirits when it comes to science and the arts, and those of us who embrace the Creeds and common descent are prone to pointing to various papal endorsements of evolutionary science. This makes it all the more alarming to see Catholics falling for the ID line. Enter John Farrell with a sharp piece this week, following up on a nice analysis by DarwinCatholic.

2. David Sloan Wilson is the big name (that I know) behind an interesting site at Binghamton University on the topic of "Evolutionary Religious Studies." The program is Templeton-funded, and as near as I can tell is focused on outreach and dissemination but is not a degree program. I'll poke around some more, and will be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about it.

3. Thursday on Pharyngula, PZ Myers posted an article with a sadly typical description of some evangelical idiocy, then voiced a challenge I've heard from him before:

But I would think the concerted and largely successful effort in our culture to equate Christianity with the idiocy of belief in a 6000 year old world or a god who meddles in trivialities or denying the facts of a natural world would piss you off. Unless it's true, that is, that you don't mind having your religious beliefs associated with flaming anti-scientific lunacy.

Maybe you should try squawking a little louder.

I responded in the comments and would be interested in feedback here.

4. Olivia Judson has a superb piece on mutations and randomness at The Wild Side.


5. This week sees a nice edition (#102) of Tangled Bank at Further Thoughts.

6. Like I need another reason to cook up an insane road trip to NYC? As reported in the NY Times.

7. And speaking of the newspaper of record, check out this interesting piece by a couple of neuroscientists, attempting to explain why I can eat salad and ride my bike, but can't resist playing Text Twist when I have three (or is it four) papers to write. The comments are enlightening too; it's like sitting in on a contentious platform session at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting.

Probability, miracles, and baseball

It's Opening Day, and it mustn't pass without mention here at QoD, especially since probability, randomness and the supernatural are such central topics around here.

Manny connects, game 2 in Japan. Image from Boston Globe online.

I've already confessed that Stephen Jay Gould is one of my favorite authors, and some of his essays I mark for repeat visits. ("The Most Unkindest Cut of All", in Dinosaur in a Haystack, is worth a trip to the library right now.) Gould was an avid baseball fan, and though he was happy to be a minion of the Evil Empire, his reflections on the National Pastime were always memorable.

Well, Gould's favorite ballplayer was Joe DiMaggio, who holds one of the most extraordinary records in all of sports. Gould wrote about this record in a 1988 book review, reprinted as an essay in Bully for Brontosaurus.

In 1941, as I gestated in my mother's womb, Joe DiMaggio got at least one hit in each of fifty-six successive games. Most records are only incrementally superior to runners-up; Roger Maris hit sixty-one homers in 1961, but Babe Ruth hit sixty in 1927 and fifty-nine in 1921, while Hank Greenberg (1938) and Jimmy Foxx (1932) both hit fifty-eight. But DiMaggio's fifty-six-game hitting streak is ridiculously and almost unreachably far from all challengers (Wee Willie Keeler and Peter Rose, both with forty-four, come second). Among sabremetricians — a contentious lot not known for agreement about anything — we find virtual consensus that DiMaggio's fifty-six–game hitting streak is the greatest accomplishment in the history of baseball, if not all modern sport.

So how should we understand this almost unbelievable feat? Gould claims that the streak is "both the greatest factual achievement in the history of baseball and a principal icon of American mythology." A great achievement because, unlike hitting a lot of home runs, or even hitting for a high average, the streak requires "unfailing consistency every day":

...a streak must be absolutely exceptionless; you are not allowed a single day of subpar play, or even bad luck. You bat only four or five times in an average game. Sometimes two or three of these efforts yield walks, and you get only one or two shots at a hit. Moreover, as tension mounts and notice increases, your life becomes unbearable. Reporters dog your every step; fans are even more intrusive than usual (one stole DiMaggio's favorite bat right in the middle of his streak). You cannot make a single mistake.

Okay, so that's why it's a great achievement; but what about the whole 'mythology' thing? Gould goes on to demonstrate the silliness of believing that DiMaggio's achievement was "better" than other (much shorter) streaks, that DiMaggio's streak was longer because of his greatness. Gould claims that we make this mistake because we just aren't wired to understand randomness and 'clumping' in random patterns.

We believe that long streaks and slumps must have direct causes internal to the sequence itself, and we have no feel for the frequency and length of sequences in random data. Thus, while we understand that DiMaggio's hitting streak was the longest ever, we don't appreciate its truly special character because we view all the others as equally patterned by cause, only a little shorter. We distinguish DiMaggio's feat merely by quantity along a continuum of courage; we should, instead, view his fifty-six-game hitting streak as a unique assault upon the otherwise unblemished record of Dame Probability.

Now, it seems to me that Gould is saying that DiMaggio's streak was well-nigh miraculous, meaning that it is so improbable that it really shouldn't have happened. Consider his (now bittersweet) coda:

DiMaggio's hitting streak is the finest of legitimate legends because it embodies the essence of the battle that truly defines our lives. DiMaggio activated the greatest and most unattainable dream of all humanity, the hope and chimera of all sages and shamans: he cheated death, at least for a while.

That's romantic stuff. And just as we're wiping the tears from our eyes, a couple of smart-ass mathematicians walk up and say, "Pull it together, dreamboat."

Yesterday's New York Times, presumably in celebration of Opening Day in the doomed House That Ruth Built, included a fascinating reexamination of the streak, in true Gouldian fashion. Meaning that the authors ran the kind of thought experiment that Gould made famous – they "replayed the tape," not of evolution but of baseball, and examined the likely outcomes. They re-created virtual baseball worlds, using the actual statistics from the history of baseball. Specifically, they created "parallel baseball universes" – 10,000 of them – and looked to see how improbable a super-streak really is.

And the answer is: not very improbable at all. Here's their punch line:

More than half the time, or in 5,295 baseball universes, the record for the longest hitting streak exceeded 53 games. Two-thirds of the time, the best streak was between 50 and 64 games.

In other words, streaks of 56 games or longer are not at all an unusual occurrence. Forty-two percent of the simulated baseball histories have a streak of DiMaggio’s length or longer. You shouldn’t be too surprised that someone, at some time in the history of the game, accomplished what DiMaggio did.

If you find this outcome disappointing, or if you feel I've robbed baseball of one of its supernatural episodes, take heart: the authors did uncover some eerie facts. First, 1941 was an exceedingly unlikely year for such a streak to occur. The vast majority of virtual streaks occurred in the decades before 1940. And there's this:

And Joe DiMaggio is nowhere near the likeliest player to hold the record for longest hitting streak in baseball history. He is No. 56 on the list. (Fifty-six? Cue “The Twilight Zone” music.)

Now, do you suppose the Discovery Institute fellows have read any of this stuff? For their sakes, I hope they like baseball. Their team, unlike their challenge to evolutionary theory, has a reasonable likelihood of success.

Weekly sampler 12

Shall we play a game? Recall Hugh Ross' fictional tale about the "team of physicists" that remade molecular genetics. Ross claimed, falsely, that:

They noticed that the quantity of "junk" in a species' genome was proportional to that species' degree of advancement.

The biological truth is the opposite: amount of DNA, "junk" or otherwise, is so uncorrelated with other aspects of biology that the situation was termed a paradox when it was first uncovered. Well...let's see the paradox in living color. In the next few Weekly samplers, I'll present you with some organisms (all animals) and we'll see how well you can guess their relative amounts of DNA (per genome) based on their "degree of advancement." Good luck! (Hint: use a quarter; it's easier to catch, and easier to find on the floor if you drop it.)

Which organism has the larger genome?
	This one?	Or this one?
1
2
3

Answers are here. Explanation can be found on the superb blog of one of the world's leading experts on genome size.

1. This story is 6 years old, but I never heard it till this week. A 52-year-old woman gets DNA testing to determine whether she can serve as an organ donor for her son. The tests reveal that she is apparently not the mother of two of her children. But...she is the mother of all of her children. How can this be?

She's a tetragametic chimera, meaning simply that her body is composed of cells descended from two genetically distinct embryos which evidently fused very early in development. Her ovaries are descended from one of those embryos, but her blood descends from the other. The result: she conceived children with gametes derived from one embryo, but her blood (which was used for the genetic tests) comes from the genetically-distinct other. Each of her cells has just one "parent", but as a whole she is derived from two distinct embryos, each of which arose from two distinct sperm/egg pairs; thus she, as a whole, is derived from four gametes instead of the typical two. Wild! And lots of fun for certain friends of mine who (like me) enjoy reflecting on human personhood and personal identity.

2. The newest issue of The Economist has an interesting piece on a large new European scientific collaboration.

“Explaining Religion”, as the project is known, is the largest-ever scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business.

Bring it on!

3. This View of Life is a nice-looking site that aims to be "a beginner's guide to a science-based understanding of evolution." I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone who's checked it out. (Via the ASA listserv.)

4. Read Ryan Gregory on the much-abused concept of Just-So Stories.

5. Earlier this week, I heard an interesting story on MarketPlace about "video games that are good for you." I think I'll ditch Text Twist and try this instead. The games "reduce stress and boost self-confidence." Do they have any that add time to the day?

6. At the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a site called BioInteractive is crawling with "free resources for science teachers & students." Lectures, animations, "virtual labs." It's a mixed bag, but very much worth a stroll. (Via Panda's Thumb.)

In high praise of Howard Van Till

Howard Van Till is one of my heroes. It's been a month and a half since his address to the Grand Dialogue, and I still think about it, even though the ideas were all familiar to me. I think this is due partly to the fact that the excellent talk displayed Howard's disarming warmth and generosity, and partly to the fact that he was already one of my heroes. Here I'll discuss some of the main points of the talk, and in the process I hope you'll discover why I hold Howard Van Till in such high esteem.

Howard is professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Calvin College, where I teach and work. The publication of his 1986 book The Fourth Day – and the ensuing controversy at the college and especially in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) – had an enormous impact on both. Some commentators suggest that the disputes over evolution that were spawned by the book are largely responsible for the existence of an entire denomination, the United Reformed Church, which represents one of the major secessions from the CRC in the last two decades of the 20th century. The book actually did not tackle biological evolution so much as it described cosmic evolution, the ancient universe, and the tragedy of "scientific creationism." It contains immense wisdom on the nature of science, and many of my colleagues still give it pride of place on their bookshelves.

The controversy exacted a toll, though, and I know just enough of the story to know that it is a sordid and disgraceful tale. I suspect that Howard is hundreds of times more gracious than I would be. And some of his recent public remarks give me the impression that the scandalous (if not blasphemous) behavior of our community led Howard to move away from traditional Reformed Christianity. Howard's theological pilgrimage is not my subject here, but this aspect of Howard's journey is something of a backdrop for my own life as a Reformed Christian scientist, if only because I couldn't do what I do at Calvin if it weren't for Howard and his contemporaries.

Howard's talk was entitled "IS THE COSMOS ALL THERE IS? The quest for answers to big cosmological questions." There are plans to post video at the Grand Dialogue site, but in the meantime you can download the extensive outline that Howard provided from my personal website.

Here are Howard's main questions, with comments that don't already appear on the outline, and then some comments on the question & answer period that followed the lecture.

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

Howard says this is a "hard question," and I guess we have to agree with him there. This was one of my favorite sections of the lecture, so here it is approximately verbatim, in quasi-dramatic form.

Religion. Because God made something.
Howard. Sorry, that's the answer to a different question. You still have to explain why there's a god vs. no god.
Religion. But it's impossible for God not to exist. He necessarily exists.
Howard. Sorry, that's just too easy. Not all assertions are true, even if offered by brilliant philosophers or theologians.
(Steve. Touché.)
P.W. Atkins & Co. It just happened. From nothing.
Howard. Sorry, that doesn't work either.

I'll just interject here that one reason I look up to Howard Van Till is that he seems to share my discomfort with being identified with a "side."

Howard. What about: "we don't actually know." What we have here is a profound mystery that should inspire profound awe and humility.

At that point, Howard referred to a folk singer named Iris DeMent, and quoted this lyric:

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
when the whole thing's done
but no one knows for certain
and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be

The song is "Let the Mystery Be" from the Infamous Angel album.

2. What is the universe like?

Howard identified this as an "easier" question, but he tackled one not-so-easy question when addressing the nature of the universe.

As you can read on the outline, Howard described the universe as "big and old, nearly empty and mostly cold," but emphasized the fact that the universe has "a formational history that is readable by natural sciences," including a formational history of life on earth. Then he outlined what he calls the "Right Stuff Universe Principle" (RSUP), which posits that the universe ("amazingly") has the Right Stuff (resources, potentialities, and capabilities) to actualize everything we see, naturally. (Call it "fine tuning" if you want; same thing as near as I can tell.)

As you might guess, 'naturally' means 'without the need for supernatural filling-in', and 'supernatural action' means specifically coercive divine action; I learned that this latter phrase is the language of process theology. Howard's summary: "The principle is a statement about the adequacy of natural causes to accomplish all the formational histories in question."

If you've read Howard on "robust formational economy" then much of the preceding should sound pretty familiar. But then Howard addressed this question, which I find tiresomely familiar: how did science come to adopt the assumption of the "adequacy of natural causes to accomplish all the formational histories in question"? Quoting Howard:

Some religious critics object to science unfairly excluding supernatural causation. Sorry…that’s a serious and mischievous misrepresentation of the history of science’s consideration of assumptions. [...] The “hybrid” approaches were discontinued because they were inadequate to explain formational histories. The “right stuff” principle was adopted because it worked.

The ellipses indicate parts I didn't write down, but I think it's clear what Howard is getting at. And I think he's completely right. Can you see why this man is one of my role models? The RSUP, in Howard's eyes, is more than just "fine tuning," more than just "getting a bunch of numbers right." It is a truly astounding fact of the natural world. And it raises an obvious and difficult question.

3. How can something as remarkable as the RSUP be true?

Howard proposed several possible answers, found on the outline, including three religious answers worth expanding here (roughly quoting Howard in all cases):

• In the spirit of St. Augustine, assert that the cosmos is a creation, a manifestation of the Creator's creativity and generosity. God was both able and willing to give it that rich a being. Howard: this is the solution I used to recommend, and still recommend to those embracing “traditional Christian theism.”
• In the spirit of process theology, postulate that the very natures of God, the world and the God/world relationship are such that supernatural intervention is excluded and so the RSUP has to be true.
• In the spirit of the ID movement, cancel the question. Deny that the universe has the Right Stuff.

I'm waiting for someone to explain process theology to me. I did buy a brand new book at the conference, which contains lots of process theology (or so I'm told). I'm interested, but my commitment to "traditional Christian theism" is non-negotiable, so I guess I'll just browse.

Howard dismissed the "Cosmic Casino Hypothesis" (the RSUP is the result of dumb luck) as "not very helpful" and he seemed cool to the multiverse. I suspect he favors this last option, quoting as best I can:

And then there's agnosticism, or humility. We'll just say that we don’t really know. Let the mystery be.

4. Does the universe need a creator, and if so what does a creator do?

In this part of the talk, the main idea I found notable was the question of whether there has always been a universe. If I got Howard right here, he said:

I was taught that the answer is clearly “no.” But I’m inclined to disagree now.

I'm not sure what he meant on that one.

5. How would anyone know what a creator is like?

Howard introduced this final section by noting that this question was likely to be the most "disturbing and thought-provoking" of the lecture, stating with disarming good humor but unapologetic bluntness that "I want you to go home with new questions." His focus was on scientific explanations for religious belief, and the outline provides significant detail.

And it was interesting, and it was thought-provoking, but it was hardly disturbing to me, probably because I don't understand why explaining something – whether it's religious belief or photosynthesis or genetic recombination or zits – reduces its religious significance, its majesty, or even its mystery. I've heard about Pascal Boyer's work, and Justin Barrett's, and it's cool stuff, and I just don't get all freaked out about it. Explanation is no alternative to belief.

Howard emphasized the idea (after Justin Barrett) that belief in the supernatural could have emerged through the action of our so-called hyperactive agency detection device (HADD), which is basically the high-sensitivity aspect of our consciousness that jumps at the sound of a twig snapping in the forest. After exploring these interesting ideas, Howard concluded that "having religious beliefs is as natural as natural can be." Then he closed with comments that I jotted down as follows:

But then…how can this brain be trusted to give us true answers [to the big questions above]? One suggestion that is worth testing: perhaps we should deal with these intuitive beliefs the same way we would deal with a ‘snap’ sound in the jungle. We should begin with our intuition, but then turn the question over to our slower, more rational evaluation and see if it holds up. (I place a very high value on rational, as many are quick to point out...) Run the belief through some basic tests, and dare to honor the score. Don’t believe something because it's “emotionally reassuring” or because “tribal orthodoxy” holds it to be true.

"Dare to honor the score." That's a dramatic challenge, and I think Christians should be unafraid to accept it. We have nothing to fear from a sober examination of God's world.

Aftermath and concluding comments

After the lecture, there were responses from two local physicists, including my friend and colleague Deb Haarsma, then there were questions from the audience.

Watching Howard handle questions was, for me, impressive and humbling, and it was this experience that caused me to conclude that Howard was not just a hero but a true role model. Somehow, he's able to combine generous openness with blunt (even fierce) criticism. Some examples:

• In his response to a rambling comment from an audience member, Howard concluded: "I don't know as much as I used to." The audience answered with its biggest applause of the day.
• His response in full to a sickeningly self-indulgent sermon riddled with Christianese platitudes and proof texts: "You've given your testimony and we should just leave it at that."
• One perceptive questioner wondered whether the evolutionary explanation of belief (HADD) would cast the same doubt on scientific understanding as it would on religious belief. Howard identified this as "a classic question and a good one," and agreed that both science and religion "deserve equal criticism." But then this: "When I look at how traditional beliefs are handled in religion vs. science, I think science is doing a superior job with respect to examining its 'traditional beliefs'."

That last comment is the kind of fearless confession that makes me admire Howard so much. It's just not fashionable, especially among Christians, to say that science is better at self-criticism and error correction than is Christianity. But it's true, and maybe someday I'll learn, from Howard, how to be brutally frank without being brutal.

One last thing. I don't know whether Howard Van Till self-identifies as a Christian. And I don't intend to walk away from my faith (or, more specifically, from what I believe to be revelation) under the influence of scientific explanation. But when the subject is science and explanation, I agree with Howard a lot more often that I do with most of the Christians I know, and he has a passion for truthtelling that would completely transform the so-called faith-science dialogue, if even a few more people followed his lead.