Evidence of the Afterlife; I'm Skeptical - Introduction, Pt. 2

This is possibly the most important portion of the Introductory chapter.  Here, Jeffrey Long looks at the twelve most common aspects of a NDE, according to his research.  These are:

1.  Out-of-body experience (OBE):  Separation of consciousness from the physical body.
2.  Heightened senses.
3.  Intense and generally positive emotions or feelings.
4.  Passing into or through a tunnel.
5.  Encountering a mystical or bright light.
6.  Encountering other beings, either mystical beings or deceased relatives or friends.
7.  A sense of alteration of time or space.
8.  Life review.
9.  Encountering unworldly ("heavenly") realms.
10.  Encountering or learning special knowledge.
11.  Encountering a boundary or barrier.
12.  A return to the body, either voluntary or involuntary.

He goes into a bit of detail for each.

1.  Out-of-body experiences.  This is exactly as it sounds like.  I find that many, many people put stock in out-of-body experiences, so I might address this topic more closely on its own, in a brief post later.  Long claims that:

The NDERF survey asked 613 NDErs, "Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?" In response, 75.4 percent answered "Yes."

My first question is, why only 613?  Long is very happy with the fact that he has over 1300 stories from people who have submitted the online form, which does ask about out-of-body experiences.  If he has the results from 1300 people, why does he include less than half than number in his statistic?  More than one question in the online form addressed out-of-body experiences; yet he only includes the number for this one question.  Why?

2.  Heightened senses.  Long claims that 74.4 percent of respondents indicated that they had "More consciousness and alertness than normal."

3.  Intense and generally positive emotions or feelings.  Responding to, "Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness?", 76.2 percent claimed "Incredible peace or pleasantness."  Responding to, "Did you have a feeling of joy?", 52.5 claimed "Incredible joy."  He mentions that a few people's NDE are "frightening."  He refers the reader to an end note, which refers the reader to a portion of his website, which contains a small section about frightening NDEs.  All he states in the actual book is that frightening NDEs are "beyond the scope" of his book.

Encountering frightening moments during a NDE is not rare.  The NDERF survey asked “During your experience, did you consider the contents of your experience (NOT the possible life-threatening event that led up to the experience) to be:”, followed by the options of “Wonderful”, “Mixed”, or “Frightening.”  Of the 613 NDErs responding to this question with a NDE Scale score of seven or higher, 62.5% selected “Wonderful”, 33.8% “Mixed”, and only 3.8% “Frightening.”  The finding that about one in three NDEs selected “Mixed” is surprising.  It has not been widely appreciated that such a high percentage of NDEs have such an apparent mixed emotional component.

You'd think this would be important information, especially as he uses these twelve points to . . . well, you'll see.

4.  Passing into or through a tunnel.  33.8 percent of respondents report an experience of this nature.

5.  Encountering a mystical or brilliant light.  64.6 percent report such a thing.

6.  Encountering other beings, either mystical beings or deceased relatives or friends.  57.3 percent report encountering other beings during their NDE.

7.  A sense of alteration of time or space.  60.5 percent report this.

8.  Life review.  Only 22.2 percent report experiencing something like this.

9.  Encountering unworldly ("heavenly") realms.  52.2 percent of respondents had such an experience.

10.  Encountering or learning special knowledge.  When asked, "Did you have a sense of knowing special knowledge, universal order, and/or purpose?" 56 percent answered "Yes."  31.5 percent said that they seemed to understand everything "about the universe."  31.3 percent said that they seemed to understand everything "about myself or others."

11.  Encountering a boundary or border.  31 percent of respondents claim to have encountered some kind of boundary or limiting physical structure.

12.  A return to the body, either voluntary or involuntary.  The online form asked, "Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?"  58.5 percent answered, "Yes."

The main point I want to make about these is that a huge part of his argument is that NDEs are very, very consistent.  As we look at his argument in-depth in later chapters, keep these bits in mind . . . the most common elements of NDEs still only show up as inconsistently as above.  Many of them, like the out-of-body experience, are well-explained by modern neuroscience.  Keep in mind how inconsistent these elements are observed as we look at his arguments about how "consistent" NDEs are.

Random Poetry: Night Ghost

The clock

flashes 12:00

and I know

it's really 3:47 am.

The night did not wake me.

A sound

I picked out from other sounds of

the walls, the wind, the cars moving by

echoes in my head as if

on repeat.

I consider fear,

but roll over

and wait for the morning.

It was only my coat

Sliding from my bed as I kicked it.

I get email: homeopath

Today this email appeared in my inbox:

Respected Madam,

(I hope that you are the same person who did sleeping pill experiment)

The otherday, I watched the video of your experiment on homeopathic sleeping pills.

First of all, let me appreciate you for your interest in the evidence based medicine. As per the experiment done by you, the homeopathic sleeping pills can't induce sleep in a humanbeing. I fully agree with you. But, let me tell you the truth that, there are several patent preparations (combinations) marketed as homeopathic medicines. These are actually not homeopathic as per the principles of homoeopathy. The genuine homoeopathic medicines are totally different from these combinations and mixtures. Let me tell you the truth that, homoeopathy has suffered a lot from these non homoeopathic medicines.

A medicine becomes homoeopathic when it is selected on the basis of homoeopathic principles. Recently one scientist in India took a homoeopathic medicine and reported that the medicines could not produce any symptoms on him. This clearly proves that he was not susceptible to the medicine he had taken. If a group of people take the same homoeopathic medicine, only a small percentage of them will have the symptoms and others will not respond immediately. On the other hand, taking the same medicine repeatedly on regular interval can produce the symptoms in many, but here also a few will not be affected.

we can classify homoeopathy in to classical and modern homoeopathy. The classical homeopathy is the genuine one and the other is just an imitation of modern medicine, ie, suppresing the presenting complaints of the patient.

I am practicing homoeopathy since 8 years. Initially, my results were not satisfactory. But, after learning the real homoeopathy by joining BHMS (Bachelor of homoeopathic medicine and surgery), my results are excellent. Now I get different varieties of cases including the failed cases coming from the hands of modern medicine.

While going through your experiment, I feel that, instead of taking a "homoeopathic" patent preparation, you could have taken a genuine homoeopathic medicine for the experiment. The other option is (which will be the best and easy method for you), you notedown your own symptoms in detail and take a suitable homoeopathic medicine from a trained homoeopath or a group of homoeopaths. I am sure that this will prove the efficacy of homoeopathy.

After watching your video, many homoeopaths might have called you as skeptic or a critic funded by some allopathic drug manufacturing company. But, I am not in that category. I feel, if you experiment homoeopathy in a proper way, you will become the ambassador of this system; because most of the famous homoeopaths were once had critical attitude towards the same.

Eagerly waiting to get feedback from you.

Kind Regards.

Dr Muhammed Rafeeque, BHMS, PGNAHI.

Family Homoeopathic clinic

Kerala

India.

www.familyhomoeopathy.com

Borba Skin Skeptic

The other day I was at Walgreens with Flimsy when I passed the section of open-air refrigerated drinks and became puzzled as to why an employee would accidentally shelve shampoo or body wash alongside Mountain Dew and Arizona Tea.

Upon closer examination, I realized that the shampoo-like bottle that had caught my eye was not in fact shampoo, but some kind of drink. Obviously, this is exactly the kind of thing that the makers of Borba Skin Balance Water want to happen, and I will shamefully admit that I totally fell for their unusual packaging – square with a square cup on top, clean simplistic labeling, and a certain opaqueness to the plastic bottle as to almost make the inner contents glow. Whoever designed this packaging is clearly brilliant.

Borba Skin Balance Water, at $2.99 a bottle, hurts your wallet like many other bottled drinks. I grabbed the Guanabana Fruit – Firming bottle, which reads on the front "Designed to promote skin's natural Smoothness * Elasticity * Nourishment"

The side reads, "HEALTHY SKIN FROM WITHIN BORBA SKIN BALANCE WATER FIRMING contains a revolutionary cultivated bio-vitamin complex along with a scientifically designed blend of nutrients intended to promote the skin's natural support system, helping to nourish and tone the skin. BORBA SKIN BALANCE WATER is formulated to work with your body's chemistry to promote healthy skin. This on-the-go, skin-care infused beverage combines simplicity and nutrition with the goodness of water. It's water with benefits."

"FIRMING – GUANABANA: the guanabana fruit, native to the Caribbean and South America, is known for its rich, aromatic flavor and nourishing benefits. Guanabana contains a healthful blend of nutrients, intended to promote more beautiful skin."

More text explains that it has "4 essential b-vitamins" that it is "infused with green tea and grape seed extract", that you can drink it daily to "enhance skin care from within", and that you can alternate it with the other flavors for "multiple skin care benefits".

On the other side, it says that it is calorie free, aspartame free, has no preservatives, 0 grams of carbs, is free of sodium, and has natural flavorings. A message from Scott-Vincent Borba reads, "There's more beauty within you. It lies in wait, on the other side of your skin. Borba Skin Balance Water activates your beauty while hydrating your body, bringing the natural attraction of your skin to the attention of the world. You're just a sip away from a more gorgeous you.

So, I'm skeptical that this drink could improve my skin and dude, what do you mean, "It's water with benefits?" It's as if the writer of this label were claiming water had no benefits unless it has vitamins in it. Unfortunately, the bottle only makes rather vague claims about what the contents are capable of doing. They don't mention any clinical proof, so I can't email them and ask for said proof. Darn! There is a great article in the NY Times about Borba – published back when Borba made specific claims about their elixirs. At one time, bottles of FIRMING claimed it was "scientifically proven to improve elasticity by an average of 24 percent." The NY Times article also cites some specific information on the independent studies, stating that they are available on the Borba website. I can't find them, though. If there were good research proving that this product made your skin prettier, it would be wise to promote it.


My opinion with skin supplements is the same as with any other supplement - as far as I am aware, your body likes to maintain homeostasis and so if you have an excess of a particular vitamin, you simply pee it out, just like if you have an excess of water. If you have too little of a vitamin, then you have a clinical deficiency. Most people don't have vitamin deficiencies, so most people won't really benefit from 500% of your daily value of Vitamin B-12. 


At least it tastes okay and comes in an amusing package, I guess.

Homeopathy: For insomnia

Okay! I've had like 2 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours as I finish this post. So, if there are any glaring grammatical errors, I can't see them because my eyes are kinda crossed. I'll trust my fellow bloggers to fix any obvious ones. :)


Continuing on my series of articles outlining a recently published two-part special issue of the journal Homeopathy on the efficacy of homeopathy, this post is on an article [1] testing the effectiveness of application of homeopathy to chronic primary insomnia. 


This research was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the primary purpose of which was to "evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic similimum in the treatment of chronic primary insomnia in terms of the patient's perception of the treatment, using a Sleep Diary (SD) and the Sleep Impairment Index (SII).

The Sleep Diary is defined in the study as a daily written record of the subject's sleep patterns, including sleep-wake times, time in bed, estimated period of sleep, quality of sleep, number of sleep interruptions, and daytime naps. The SII is a "7-item measurement tool that yields a quantitative index of sleep impairment." It relies on self-report of the subject's perception of "insomnia, its severity, level of distress and impairment of daytime functioning"

For the study, subjects were recruited and then asked to fill out a SII to provide a baseline measurement of the severity of insomnia symptoms. They were also instructed to record sleep data in the sleep diary for one week to provide a baseline measurement of other sleep variables. Their full homeopathic case history and physical examination were performed. For each subject, the homeopath was allowed to prescribe any homeopathic remedy that he or she felt would be beneficial to the subject. Potencies were not limited, rather the homeopath determined the most suitable remedy. The dosage took the form of

"three single-dose lactose powder satchet per consultation, one of which was dissolved sublinguially each night consecutively before going to sleep… each active powder sachet comprised 10 medicated lactose granules which were placed into the sachets containing lactose powder. The medicated granules were produced in accordance with Method 10 of the German Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. Lactose granules were triple-impregnated with centesimal potencies of the relevant remedy contained within 96% ethanol… Each placebo powder sachet comprised lactose powder and 10 lactose granules impregnated with 96% ethanol alone and were indistinguishable from the active sachets in appearance and taste"

Impressively, the researchers in this group put a great amount of forethought into the blinding and randomization process. The researcher and research supervisor would discuss each case and determine which homeopathic preparation was most appropriate, based on "repertorisation (RADAR version 9) of the totality of symptoms presented". Then, the prescription was dispensed by an independent dispenser according to the randomization list. So, the researchers and subjects did not know if the subjects were receiving homeopathic preparations or placebos. Participants were instructed to begin taking the medications a week after the initial consultation (presumably so that they could fill out their week-long sleep diary). After two weeks, they returned to the clinic, where they were reassessed. At this point, the homeopath could modify the treatment as needed, so long as treatment still fell within the principals of homeopathy. Again, subjects went to a dispenser for either the homeopathic preparation or a placebo.

The subject group consisted of an initial recruitment of 45 subjects. 12 did not meet the inclusion criteria. Thus, 16 were allocated to the treatment group while 17 were allocated to the placebo group. Of these subjects, 2 were lost to follow up from the treatment group (due to scheduling difficulties and compliance) and one was lost from the placebo group due to scheduling difficulties. This left a total of 14 subjects in the treatment group and 16 in the placebo group.

At the end of the study, researchers analyzed the SD in terms of total hours slept per week. For the SII, subjects graded their sleep symptoms in terms of a 4-point severity scale (none, mild, moderate, severe or very much). The authors stated that they analyzed this data "in the form of summary scores as well as per individual question".

So, let's talk about statistics a little. The researchers set the P-value at .05, meaning that the researchers would be 95% certain that the data they obtained from groups were significantly different from one another. This is important to note because, as Petter so eloquently pointed out, most published research results are wrong, and so a p-value of .05 might be acceptable for preliminary work but is absolutely unacceptable for conclusive work, especially clinical medical studies. The researchers state that the groups did not differ significantly in terms of their baseline measurements of hours per week slept or SII reports.

For the treatment group, the weekly hours slept was as such: Baseline: 35, week2: 45, week3: 43, and week4: 41.

For the placebo group, weekly mean scores for hours slept were: baseline: 34, week2: 32, week3: 35 an week4: 35.

For the SII measures, the treatment group was: baseline: 3.34 week2: 3.14, week3: 1.47.

For the placebo group the SII measure was: baseline: 3.53, week1: 3.41, week2: 3.35

A major problem with these numbers is that while it looks like the treatment group got more mean hours of sleep than the placebo group, the reader is offered no numbers for standard deviation. That means that I can't calculate effect size to see if these numbers have any clinical relevance. For those of you who aren't researchers or statisticians – this is a big deal. One might be able to show that there is a statistical difference between groups, but whether or not this difference is clinically relevant can spell the difference between useless statistical noise and an actual worthwhile treatment. On the surface, those numbers look impressive, but without a standard deviation, we have no way of knowing how distributed the data were – we have no way of knowing, for example, if one or two subjects seriously skewed the data.

Was there a significant difference in any of the other factors of the sleep diary? You'll recall that the SD measured at least six different factors of sleep, yet the authors only chose to report on the mean hours of sleep per week. Not per day, but per week. Why did they not report on the other items in the sleep diary? My guess is that they did not find that any of those factors were significantly different, or perhaps even found that some of those factors were significantly different, but showed that the placebo group had a more positive outcome. We do not know, because they do not say. Regardless, if researchers mention that they measured something, it is prudent that they report on the results. In my experience, journal reviewers frown on the practice of mentioning variables early in a paper and then not reporting on the outcomes of those variables.

Things are a little more complicated for the SII measure. The researchers report contradictory and vague results, stating:

1. The SII is a 7-item measurement tool.
   
2. There were "significant improvements in 6/11 questions after 1 week" for both groups
   
3. There were "significant improvements in 10/11 questions" in the treatment group and significant improvements in 4/11 questions in the placebo group for week 2.
   
4. "When comparisons were made between Baseline SII scores and those at Week 4 (trial entry and trial completion), significant improvements in all (11/11) questions within the verum group were observed. Within the placebo group no significant improvements were noted for any of the questions (0/11) over the same period.
   

It's interesting that a 7-item measurement tool has "11 questions" – what's the deal with that? How is it that there were improvements in the placebo group, but then there weren't? The researchers claim that there was a significant difference between treatment groups between baseline and each follow up consultation. This seems to jive with their numbers (3.34, 3.14, 1.47) but they say that while initial improvement occurred in the placebo group (moving from 3.53 to 3.41) there was "no difference between baseline and final SII scores".

Say what? The scores were 3.53, 3.41 and 3.35. There is clearly a greater difference between baseline (3.52) and week 2 (3.41) and week 4 (3.35), but they say this is non-significant. Why? Also, why is it that they took baseline SD measures and then 3 follow-up SD measures, but only took 2 follow-up SII measures? From my perspective, the data in this study is starting to unravel. Once again, they only give the mean and not the standard deviation, so I am unable to calculate effect size.

The researchers also have a table of the specific homeopathic preparations they used, and to what frequency they were prescribed. They do not say to what potency the preparations are given, just that 23 were given at 30CH, 63 given at 200CH, 38 given at 1M, and 5 given at 10M. They are: Lachesis muta (8), Nux vomica (7), Medorrhinum (5), Sepia officinalis (5), Lycoposium clavatum (4), Carcinosin (4), Sulphur (3), Natrum muriaticum (3), Calcarea carnonica (2), Coffea cruda (2), Ignatia amara (2), Silica terra (2), Mercurius solubilis (1), Arsenicum album (1), Cannabis indica (1), Calcarea arsinicosum (1), Kalium carbonicum (1), Tuberculinum (1), Thuja occidentalis (1) and placebo (5).

Yes, they prescribe placebos intentionally. Apparently this was given as the "second prescription only; only if the first prescriptions was considered to be still acting." I'll let you guys make of this what you will.

One of the more fascinating results of this study is that the placebo group does not mirror the placebo effects of typical drug trials for insomnia. Why is it that the results of the placebo group are so negligible? In this study, the placebo treatment resulted in no significant increase in the duration of sleep and only tiny improvements in the SII scores. Quite, frankly, this is surprising and does not agree with other research on the placebo effect of treatments for insomnia. A strong positive placebo (and nocebo, for that matter) effect has been established in the treatment of primary insomnia [2] As such, I am skeptical that the verum treatment has been adequately compared to a placebo treatment.

I also take issue with the author's statement that homeopathy is a viable treatment for insomnia, given the small size of treatment groups and respective probable lack of power. Of course, since the researchers did not specify the standard deviation, I can't calculate power either. I think the correct conclusion of this study is that given the small sample size, this study is a pilot study that can be said to have determined that further study on the effects effect of homeopathy on the treatment of chronic primary insomnia may be warranted. I think that it would also be valuable to explore the surprising lack of placebo effect in the placebo group, as this is contrary to established literature.

1. Naude DF, Couchman IMS, Maharaj A. Chronic primary insomnia: Efficacy of homeopathic simillimum. Homeopathy 2009:99, 63-68
   
2. Perlis ML, McCall WV, Jungquist CR, Pigeon WR, Matteson SE. Placebo effects in primary insomnia. Sleep Medicine Reviews 2005:9;381-389

Bomb dowser inventor arrested

Remember the recent blurb on our blog concerning a British company that sells bomb detection devices to developing countries that are nothing more than fancy-looking dowsing rods?

Well, the head-honcho of said company has been arrested on suspicion of fraud. Apparently he was questioned after someone complained that he misrepresented the devices.

Someone? Skeptics have been complaining about this tragic piece of quackery for years. Thankfully, someone finally listened.

Of course, the company owner is complaining that his device is being criticized not because it doesn't work, but because of it's appearance:

"We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."

Oh! Flashing lights will totally convince us…

Jim McCormick (the owner of the company and inventor of the device) is evil, plain and simple. There is no evidence that the device works, and so giving people in developing countries an ineffective bomb-sniffing device puts them at risks that cannot be understated.

Weekend video: Divination with pendulum

An interesting "how-to" video on divination with a pendulum.

Weekend video: dowsing

This is a very interesting and quick video showing a double blind trial of dowsing for water.

DOWSING FOR BOMBS.

I just stumbled across this appalling news about a British company selling millions of dollars of bomb-detection devices to Iraqi security forces.  What's so wrong with this, you ask?  That device is the ADE 651, basically, a fancy injection-molded dowsing rod:

These things were sold for, I shit you not, $16,500 to $60,000 each.  Disgusted yet?

Highlights include:

-American military advisors have desperately tried to convince Iraqi security forces not to rely on them.

-James Randi has offered the company that produces and sells them, ATSC (UK) Ltd., his standard million-dollar challenge.  The company has refused to attempt the request.

-The devices have no battery, solar cells, or any other power storage.  The user is supposed to walk in place for a few moments to "charge" the device.

-Surprise, surprise, no research has ever shown such devices to be more reliable than chance.

-The manufacturer itself states that it's only customers are developing countries; neither military or police force in any industrialized nation purchases it's products.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.  This is literally a case where we can be remarkably certain that people have died because of a combination of pseudoscience and corporations so unregulated that they can get away with such blatant fraud.

3H1P: Do I ever succumb to superstition?

Welcome to my first entry in Ziztur’s “3H1P” project. To quote her own description,

3H1P is a blogging project wherein three heathens (Ziztur, Flimsy and Petter) and one pastor (Keith) answer questions posed by readers of the blog and discuss various issues related to religion, philosophy, science, etc. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered by 3H1P, ask it in the comment box. We promise we'll probably get to it.

Some time back, EdW wrote:

I would love to hear about whether The 3 Heathens (which sounds like the best/worst Disney feature ever) find themselves succumbing to superstition in their lives. Personally, I have an assortment of "lucky" objects that I carry -- and I love to make bargains with the Universe, or my car. "I promise I'll get you premium gas next time if you just don't die on the way to the airport".

I guess the question would apply to P.Keith as well -- do you ever find yourself doing things that you consider superstitious and silly?

I think it's important on both sides to acknowledge that we all are perfectly capable of believing absurd things, and sometimes that's okay. My lucky objects are great conversation starters.

-EdW

I also seem to recall a question in some blog comment—though as I cannot find it, it may be that I misremember—asking whether we heathens ever doubt the correctness of our atheism. Whether the question was asked or not, I think it’s a good question that works well as a subquestion to the above. As is my wont, I will take these talking points and, rather than provide a succinct answer, extrapolate and wax philosophical about it.

---

I can’t think of instances when I succumb to superstition, for the simple reason that if I am aware of it, I refuse to allow myself to do so. That does not, of course, mean that I don’t succumb, only that if I do, I do so when I’m unaware of the fact…and I expect that this does happen. After all, we are all human; we are all subject to the same cognitive biases, type I (false positive) errors, pareidolia, rampant teleology, confusing correlation with causation, and all the rest. On top of that, in our daily lives we have to deal with the cognitive limitations of being individual people and dealing with sample-of-one events rather than having the leisure to evaluate everything as a proper scientific experiment.

On top of this, there is the interesting idea I have heard bandied about that truly understanding an idea requires a thought process virtually identical to actually believing it—temporarily suspending disbelief. I do not know whether this is literally true or not, and for my purposes this is irrelevant. In my own, subjective experience, it certainly appears that truly understanding an idea requires adopting a point of view from which the positive arguments make sense. It is true that when I read some of the more well-written arguments for some fantastic thing or other, be it Christianity or naturopathy or ESP, there is a part of my brain that goes “Huh” and has to be reined in once I sit back and apply critical thinking.

(On an aside, this means that there are plenty of things I simply cannot understand, but dismiss nonetheless. I do not think this unjustified. If a belief clearly leads to particular predictions that do not hold, or relies on flawed assumptions, I can safely dismiss the whole edifice even if I do not know what it is like to mentally inhabit it. I cannot imagine what it is like to live in a universe where 2+2=5, but I don’t need to; I know it is untrue nonetheless.)

So on any given day, I—hard-nosed skeptic extraordinaire—may very briefly belief in Christianity, Islam, telepathy, and who knows what. I may wish I didn’t, but such is the case: Especially with Christianity; after all I grew up Christian, if not very hardcore, and I was at least ten years old by the time I realised that the painful “crisis of faith” I had suffered, complete with prayers for “a sign”, was really the anguish of cognitive dissonance as I strove to believe in something unbelievable.

Perhaps you, gentle reader, have also experienced the phenomenon of agreeing with a writer or a speaker so long as you are reading, or listening, to his or her words—only to emerge from the spell and start questioning? My tendency to do this is probably why I prefer reading to listening when it comes to (purported) fact, as I find it easier to pause and critically analyse something when I’m reading it than if I’m swept along by the pace of the spoken word (this is why I read blogs but do not listen to podcasts).

---

Ironically, one of the best responses to this temporary vacillating comes from C.S. Lewis and his Mere Christianity—I generally disliked it, but I found this part inspiring:

Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then—and a good many people do not see still—was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

In this sense—and only in this specific sense—it is with faith in my convictions of the rational approach to the universe that I meet these momentary weaknesses. Faith-1 is bad; faith-2 is a good thing, and we need it to counter the non-rational vacillations of our primate brains.

---

To draw on a concrete example, I went for my flu shots back in the fall. (I was lucky enough to get both the seasonal and H1N1 shot, even though I did not qualify as a member of any of the H1N1 priority groups at the time: The clinic had prepared too many doses that morning, and the doctor offered them to non-qualifying patients rather than having to throw them out at the end of the day.) I read a lot about vaccination, and about anti-vaccination shenanigans. I am among those who regard vaccinations as the second greatest medical invention or discovery of all time (right behind the medical importance of hygiene). I consider the anti-vaccination movement dangerously misguided at best, and am happy to refer you here to ponder its consequences.

And yet, actually walking into the clinic to get those shots was not psychologically trivial. In part this is no doubt because I’m not a big fan of needles, but I also had a small encyclopedia of anti-vaccination claims floating in my mind, accompanied by fears ranging from the ludicrous—think squalene, aluminium adjuvants, antifreeze, mercury causing autism—to the disproportionate, such as the (in fact extremely minute) risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a very rare side effect of flu vaccination. I would be lying if I said that I went in without any hesitation.

But I know better than to just listen to my fears. I have faith-2 in the safety of vaccines, in the fact that while there are a few tiny risks, the odds that it will save my life from disease (and protect people around me whom I might otherwise infect) are vastly greater than those risks; and some of the risks aren’t real at all. So I went in, got my shots, took a low-key day of reading, coffee, and puttering around with my computer as I suffered the common side effect of mild ache and fever the next day, and went back to life as usual the day after that. (I did not contract Guillain-Barré syndrome, I did not become autistic, and in general suffered no side effects.)

This is not the only example I could give. I try to apply the same sort of critical thinking whenever I am faced with a choice and feel a gut instinct that does not seem well supported by evidence. It happens that my response to a difficult choice is to look up statistics and do my best to mathematically assess statistical probabilities rather than attempt to tackle emotionally laden issues head-on. (Did you know, for instance, that some 20% of the population carries HSV-2, the virus that causes ‘genital’ herpes, but 80% of them don’t know it? This means that about 17% of everyone who is not aware of carrying HSV-2 actually does, and if you have protected sex with a person of unknown HSV-2 status, you run—very approximately—a 0.42% annual risk of contracting the virus if you are male, twice that if female. HSV-2 is not tested for in standard STI screening panels.)

I’m told I’m uncommonly rational about such things—which I take as a great compliment, even if it’s a bit disturbing to think that most people do not try their best to rationally evaluate risks and probabilities. To me, it seems irresponsible not to try. Of course, I’m sure that I often fall short—but as I said in the beginning, I don’t allow myself to fall short when I’m aware of the problem.

The disturbing question is, how often do I face a hard choice and go with my gut reaction without first questioning it? I don’t know.

---

My model for dealing with gut feelings is, of course, Carl Sagan. As he memorably recounted in The Demon-Haunted World,

I’m frequently asked, Do you believe there’s extraterrestrial intelligence? I give the standard arguments—there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use the word billions, and so on. Then I say it would be asonishing to me if there weren’t extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it.

Often, I’m asked next, What do you really think?

I say, I just told you what I really think.

Yes, but what’s your gut feeling?

But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thiniing with anything besides my brain, tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

Dowsing and skating

On Sunday, a small group of people from the St. Louis Atheist group went ice skating at a local ice rink at Forest Park in St. Louis.

As per usual, conversation ranged from arranging us in descending order based on the number of times we fell on our asses, to whether or not one should come out as an atheist during a time in which one is receiving prayers from everyone due to a planned hospital visit.

One of the things we talked about briefly is dowsing.

I have this idea to hold a Skeptical Society of St. Louis workshop in which each member gets to make their own pair of dowsing rods. During this workshop each skeptic can learn just how much truth there is to the claim that when a dowser is holding a pair of dowsing rods, he or she has "no control" over the direction they turn. I think I'll have people make their choice of dowsing equipment: either a pair of dowsing rods or a pendulum, and then we will perform all sorts of dowsing experiments in and around the building.

There are a lot of ways to dowse for things, but there are three devices that are most popular. You can either use a forked stick, two rods bent at 90 degree angles, or a pendulum. Dowsers claim that dowsing can be used to find all sorts of things, including water running underground, playing cards, or immaterial future events.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has had several dowsers try out for the million dollar challenge, and none of them have made it through the preliminary trials. The Wikipedia article also cites several references to studies done on dowsing.

My theory and the theory of most skeptics is that dowsing relies on confirmation bias and the ideomotor effect. You'll note that all dowsing devices are always held in the hands. We never see dowsers asking psychic questions while the rods are mounted 5 feet away on a stand, away from any human touch.



(yes, I know the video covers up my sidebar. There isn't anything I can do about this)

D.J. Grothe becomes president of the JREF!

The James Randi Educational Foundation has announced that my good friend D.J. Grothe has become the new president of the foundation!

In a press release, the JREF announced today that current president Phil Plait will be leaving to pursue an opportunity in television, and so the JREF has elected D.J. based on his fantastic career promoting skepticism and scientific understanding. I am confident that D.J. will build upon the greatness of the JREF to make it ever more amazing.

Don't worry St. Louis skeptics - D.J. is not leaving us behind. You can have him Mr. Randi, but you're going to have to share.

Weird Religious Claims: The Shroud of Turin

Italian scientist and researcher Luigi Garlaschelli has figured out one possible method by which the oft-debated Shroud of Turin could have been created.

Most people (even a large number of Christians), of course, dismissed the Shroud as a forgery after the 1988 carbon-dating experiments (which were replicated by several research laboratories) that dated the Shroud at between1260 and 1390 AD.  In addition, the Bible clearly states in John 20, 6-7:

Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

These verses make it clear that Jesus was buried in multiple pieces of cloth, one of which specifically wrapping his head being a separate piece of cloth than the one used to wrap his body.  The Shroud of Turin, of course, is one large piece, supposedly depicting Jesus' entire body and head.

Regardless of these obvious facts, there has been one line of attack open to those who dearly wish to use the Shroud as a proof of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.  Some Christians have continued to question how the image could have been forged, given that science was unable to identify any specific pigment in the cloth.

Garlaschelli has reproduced an identical effect by rubbing pigment over a three-dimensional object (actually, the pigment was rubbed over a male volunteer), artificially aging the pigment in an oven, and then washing the cloth thoroughly to remove any superficial traces of the dye.  This process produces an effect identical to the Shroud, and could have been performed easily by a medieval forger.

I've also heard it suggested that such an effect could have been created by painting an image, such as a man's face and body, on a large pane of glass with varying thicknesses of mostly opaque pigment, and then leaving the cloth to bleach in the sun with the pane of glass on top of it.  Sounds like a bizarre theory, but looks quite possible if you examine the actual Shroud image, instead of the contrast-enhanced image that gets thrown around:

A few Christian groups and individuals have already come out to criticize Garlaschelli and his work.  So far, they've been uniformly absurd, such as this writer from a Catholic news site.  He claims that, basically, just because the Shroud could have been forged, doesn't mean it was!  Just because it could have been created by simple natural methods in 1300 AD, it could still easily have been created by the power of Jesus instead!

I know that many, many Christians, perhaps even a majority, don't care about the Shroud of Turin one way or the other.  Even the official decree of the Catholic Church, as much as it loves it's bits of history, has never called the Shroud authentic.

Urban Health Fair, Pt.3

This is part 3 of my blog series on a visit I made to the Urban Health Fair in St. Louis. Here are parts one and two.

After Michael, Micheal's son (I'll call Mike's son Indigo from now on) and I got a book about Indigo Children, the three of us wandered over to a booth featuring a chiropractic organization. They were offering "free scans" using a surface EMG scanner.

The three of us decided that we should all get scanned. While we were waiting, Michael turned to me and said, "Aww look honey, our son is going to get his first chiropractic scan!" which gave us the perfect excuse to whip out our cameras and photograph the momentous occasion.

An EMC surface scanner is a tool used in chiropractic practices as a diagnostic tool. According to this chiropractic website:

"The Surface EMG scanner is a tool that helps [a licensed chiropractor] gain additional inforamtion (sic) about your condition. Your muscles are controlled by nerves. The Surface EMG measures how well the motor nerves are working by readying (sic) the amount of current found in the muscles. Subluxations disturb the function of the nerve causing an abnormal amount of electrical current flowing to your muscles (indicated by colours and /or abnormal patterns). This advanced tool also looks at muscle balance and thermal differences."

After reviewing 2,500+ resources, the American Academy of Neurology concluded that these devices are not an acceptable tool for measuring or diagnosis any neuromuscular disease or for diagnosing low back pain. [1] Basically, surface EMC superficially measures electrical activity an area of muscle territory. Moving a muscle at all, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, will be recorded as electrical activity. Surface EMG cannot differentiate which muscle is the origin of a signal. It does not measure "abnormal current flowing to your muscles caused by subluxations". Chiropractors have yet to show that subluxations are even real or that they cause ailments.


I work in a biomechanics lab where we frequently use EMG to record muscle activity. This involves placing electrodes on the skin at a muscle's origin and at the muscle belly, then we have people move around (typically they walk back and forth across the room). This is admittedly a highly imprecise science, and we have a large fudge factor in our results, knowing that EMG readings vary greatly due to electrode placement and even from day to day with the same placement. If a person is sitting quietly, we get tiny readings – or none, if the muscle is completely still. When they move around, we get much larger readings.

The scanning device was used on the back of our necks – essentially, it measured the muscle activity in our necks as we sat in a chair. Since people use their neck muscles to hold their head aloft, there will always be electrical activity in the neck, assuming the person is sitting up. There will also be lots of electrical activity if you're a young fidgety child.

After the three of us were scanned, we sat and waited for our results. We were first shown an image like the one pictured, that showed "normal nerve function", and then shown "our nerve function". The results made it clear that we were supposed to believe the surface EMC measured the specific nerve function of the cervical nerves from C1-C7. Surface EMG is entirely incapable of producing results this precise – and does not measure nerve conduction. As you can image, our little bars and graphs (which were only on the neck, as this is where we were scanned) showed that we were "maladjusted". In particular, Indigo's readings were much higher than ours. Painstakingly, the chiropractor walked us through our problem, talking inordinately slowly, to make sure we understood the gravity of our results:

"See this picture here? Notice how all of the lines and bars are equal, level, short and green. This is what you should look like if you are properly adjusted." We nodded. "Now, look at your results here. You will notice some differences. What do you see that is different?"

I sighed. "Some of the lines are red and very long, here at C3 on the right and here at C5 on the left. Also, there are some longer yellow lines here."

"Yes! That means that your nerves are not balanced, which could be due to a subluxation. In particular, the red lines are very bad. C1-C3 is often associated with problems in the ears, eyes, throat, and nose. It can cause things like recurring colds and allergies. Do you have a problem with colds or allergies?"

No.

Next, the chiropractor turned to Indigo's results, which showed high levels of activity particularly at C7. The Chiropractor told us that this could lead to problems with Indigo's eyes. As Michael put it, "I guess I forgot from my anatomy classes that the optic nerve goes from the eyes to the spine and then down to C7 then turns around and goes up to the brain." For the record, the ocular, auditory and gustatory systems are innervated by cranial nerves. That is, they are all located in your skull. They do not loop down to the cervical spinal cord and then back up to your eyes, nose and ears. There is no way that a "subluxation" can affect these systems – this is a basic fact of anatomy.

The chiropractor told us that children usually have higher readings because they are very active and young and thus have a high level of muscle and nerve activity. I told him that this made sense, because someone had told us he was an "indigo child". The chiropractor nodded knowingly and said something like, "Yes, I know all about indigo children, I have plenty of experience with them"

As Michael and Indigo ran off to play in the children's area, the chiropractor stopped me and let me know that people who visited them today at the health fair would be eligible for a discounted first visit to the office – something like $40 instead of the typical $120. She asked if I wanted to sign up to take advantage of the special deal. I told her I'd have to think about it, and then I walked off. Too bad they didn't scan my dog too.

I really have a problem with chiropractors treating little children. Their vertebra have not fully developed into bone yet and consist of a much larger portion of cartilage than that of the adult spine. The fact that chiropractors used to believe that polio was best treated by manipulation should be enough to send mothers and fathers running (away, that is). This would not be anything to balk at, except for the fact that many chiropractors are still against vaccines and germ theory.

1. Pullman SL, Goodin, DS, Marquinez AI, Tabbal S, Rubin R. Report of the Therpeutics and Technology Assessment Subsomittee of the American Academy of Neurology. Neurology 2000;55:171-177. Online here.
   

Urban Health Fair, Pt.2

This is part 2 of my series on an Urban Health fair that I visited a few weekends ago. The first part can be found here.

After Michael and I were given advice on how to supplement our dog with Glucosamine and fish oil capsules, we headed over to another booth. To be honest, I don't really recall what this booth was showcasing exactly, except that it had a stack of fliers held hostage by a large, smooth rock, which prevented them from blowing away in the gentle breeze. This rock was immediately taken from the table by Michael's son – who was pretty much grabbing everything in sight.

Michael's son is blonde (in contrast to my brown hair and Michael's red hair), so Michael and I exchanged amused looks when a lady behind the table at the booth told us, "Oh, your son is so obviously an indigo child. Congratulations!" I said, "really?" She went on to tell us that if we really wanted to understand our son, we should learn to interpret his dreams – his dreams would be a window into his soul and understanding them will enable us to better harness his indigo traits.

Of course, we played along. I hugged Michael's son and told him, "You hear that kid? You're an indigo!"

I actually wrote a post on indigo children way back in the near-dawn of this blog, which can be found here.

Indigo children are what some new age individuals and organizations believe is the next step in the evolution of our species. Indigo children are supposed to be more creative and intuitive than non-indigo children, and many people believe they possess enhanced capability of paranormal powers such as telepathy or psychic abilities. Some of the traits of indigo children, as described by Olena Gill (An author of books about inidgo children, who is a self-proclaimed metaphysician, life coach and indigo, are:

They:

• Are highly intuitive – can be telepathic and show extrasensory capabilities.

• Will often say seemingly 'profound' statements and have a strong interest in God – they often seem wise beyond their years.

• Are very sensitive to the environment, (can include food & additives), energy fields, electrical currents, as well as emotional sensitivity to what is happening around them.

• Are strong willed – have a determination about them, often 'warrior-like' in their personality.

• Will often 'call them as they see them' and won't hold back from doing so.

• Can have a fiery temper and demeanor – rarely wavers from the one-track mind.

• Can often be confused with having a defiant attitude – will often do the exact opposite of what they are told to do.

• Have a strong need to help others, individually or globally.

• Are often introverted and a loner.

• Like to work alone most of the time or in groups where is there is mutual cooperation and respect.

• Are seemingly antisocial until they meet up with others like them.

• Are very technologically oriented – usually are whizzes at computers or other gadgetry.

• Deal often with depression, insomnia, or bodily issues such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and in extreme cases – energetic mania or freneticness.

• Can be misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD.

Amusingly enough, even though I think the indigo movement is silly, in nearly all of the online "tests" for indigo traits, I score positively – what does that mean? If only there were some decent scientific studied on the phenomenon, but alas, there are… zero. Perhaps if there were decent evidence of psychic abilities, I might be inclined to believe that indigos were "evolving", but… There isn't.

Some of the "indigo" traits are vague enough that they can be said to be traits of any child, especially by a parent who already believes that indigo children are a real phenomenon. For example: being strong willed, "calling as they see them", having a fiery temper, being defiant (or "confused" for defiance), wanting to help, yet being introverted and antisocial and liking to work alone unless with their "kind", being interested in technology and experiencing depression. These are all things that children experience as they are growing from babies into adults.

The other traits – having ESP and being "sensitive to environment" are traits that are commonly misinterpreted due to cognitive bias and errors. Testing has shown again and again that psychic abilities, telepathy and ESP are indistinguishable from pure chance occurrences, except for in the all-too common instances in which outright trickery and deception are involved. Testing has also shown that "energy field" sensitivity is bunk – people who believe they are electrosensitive cannot distinguish between the presence or absence of electrical fields when properly blinded to them. Obviously, some people do have food allergies and sensitivities, but this is much rarer than people believe. The rest can be chalked up to wishful thinking – if you believe your child is psychic, you're much more likely to count the "hits", when a child says something that can be interpreted as "psychic" or "intuitive" while ignoring the misses.

A label like "ADD" or "defiant" might mean for a parent that your child is imperfect, damaged or somehow less than his peers. By labeling him an "indigo", a parent can turn this around, labeling him as evolved above his peers.

I think the whole movement is silly and possesses no scientific or rational basis. Everyone wants their children to be special, and parents should obviously nurture the natural gifts that children have – but one should not nurture and encourage defiance. Some indigo parents go so far as to essentially let their children parent themselves, saying things like, "I don't teach him, he teaches me. He leads me. He tells me what he needs".

As we walked away from the booth and grabbed some lemonade, the woman who told me my "son" was an indigo approached us and handed me a book – HOW to RAISE an INDIGO CHILD: 10 Keys to Cultivating a Child's Natural Brilliance by Barbara Condron – it was a gift! I thanked her, genuinely grateful that she wanted to gift me with a book on how to raise a kid – even if the kid isn't mine and I don't see any evidence that "indigo children" are a real phenomenon. I love getting books, even if they are on subjects that I disagree with.

Next up – nerve conduction tests and the wacky anatomy knowledge of chiropractors!

Organic continues to be bullshit

We've got evidence that organic food is not more nutritious and doesn't taste any different than nonorganic food. But nutrition and taste are not the only reasons people support buying organic goods. Organic is said to be a sustainable form of agriculture. It puts less potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment. It reduces fuel costs through less importation of food. It supports independent farmers rather than huge corporations. Taste and nutrition be damned, organic is like recycling: people feel good doing their part to help the environment.

There are emerging issues in the Organic industry which may spell death for another of these particular pro-organic arguments; that organic foods reduces fuel costs though less importation of food and supports independent farmers rather than huge corporations.

Increasingly, large corporations are getting wind of the fact that consumers are willing to pay a price premium for organic foods. Organic foods were once confined to a scant few independently-owned shops or farmer's markets in urban areas and college towns. Less than a decade ago, organic foods were in such low demand that dedicated organic farmers often sold their organic produce into conventional markets. Now, organic foods are in such high demand that there are shortages of supplies for farming.

Now, large corporations such as General Mills, Kelloggs and Dean Foods are gaining access to the organic markets by purchasing and taking over successful organic companies. Organic foods can be found in any supermarket and on the shelves of consumer giants such as Wal-mart.

To meet supply needs and increase profit margins, the large food corporations are turning to overseas markets for organic foods. Nearly half of the organic farmers and handlers with USDA organic certification are from countries other than the US (16,000 in the US and 11,000 elsewhere spread among 100 different countries) and this is especially true for vegetables and soybeans.

It seems as though corporatization of organic foods may spell death for organic foods offering a sure-fire way to support the local economy and reduce food transportation costs.

Chick Tracts: Where's Rabbi Waxman?

Here's another hilarious Jack Chick gospel tract!  Jewish Rabbi Samuel Waxman is shown a list of scriptures that *prove* that the Jewish messiah has already come, in the form of Jesus Christ.  Rabbi Waxman, of course, is terrified of being disowned by his people if he accepts these scriptures, and tries to put them from his mind.  He soon dies, and instead of being accepted by Yahweh, he . . . dun dun dun . . .goes to hell (surprise, surprise).  There's even a little bit of dialogue when the Rabbi asked God whether all of his good works will count for anything, and God berates him for being so presumptuous as to think that the Almighty would care how we mortals behave.

I decided to hit this one because I've never met a Christian who denied that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy; the assertion of fulfilled prophecy is practically universal among all varieties of Christian.  If I were a Christian, I would think that genuine fulfilled prophecy would be one of the few objective measures by which one could verify the Bible as both accurate and divinely inspired.  Many Christians have claimed that there are as many as 300 fulfilled prophecies in the Old Testament.  This tract lists 27, though presumably Jack Chick wouldn't call it a complete list.  Let's take a look at some of them.

Isaiah 9:6-7:

For to us a child is born,
       to us a son is given,
       and the government will be on his shoulders.
       And he will be called
       Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
       Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
       there will be no end.
       He will reign on David's throne
       and over his kingdom,
       establishing and upholding it
       with justice and righteousness
       from that time on and forever.
       The zeal of the LORD Almighty
       will accomplish this.

First off, this passage doesn't specifically mention Jesus Christ at all.  Get used to this, it's a common theme.  Secondly, these verses clearly describe the "messiah" as being a king or other ruler of government.  Jesus never ruled as part of a government.  He never "reigned on David's throne," because he was never a king at all, in the governmental sense.  The verses also state that this government will have no end, and that the messiah-king will reign forever.  Again, the Bible itself claims that Jesus does not reside on earth now, and that he hasn't ever since soon after his resurrection.  The only way a follower of Jesus could claim that he fulfilled this verse is to claim that Jesus is a "spiritual" king, and is reigning over the "spiritual government" of God's people to this day.  These are completely unverifiable claims, and are clearly not what the verses are talking about.  If these verses are prophecy, they are failed prophecy (or, at the very least, prophecy yet to be fulfilled).

Micah 5:2:

"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
       though you are small among the clans of Judah,
       out of you will come for me
       one who will be ruler over Israel,
       whose origins are from of old,
       from ancient times."

 This verse is commonly cited as prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.  This verse simply doesn't say this.  This verse discusses a clan of Judah, and elsewhere in the Bible, this clan is specified as being the famous line of Davidic kings.  Especially if we read Micah 4, it's clear that this "prophecy" simply refers to a king rising from the Davidic line to restore Israel after it's destruction by Babylon.

Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

A couple of problems here - first, any skeptic who has looked at this verse before already knows that the word used here is not the Hebrew word for "virgin."  The word actually used is "almah," which actually translates correctly as "young woman."  If the author wanted to convey a virgin giving birth, the only correct word to use would have been "bethulah," if I remember correctly.  And, of course, this verse claims that the child messiah's given name would be Immanuel, not Jesus.  Um . . . this seems very obvious to me . . .

Zechariah 12:10:

"And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

Chick's little description of this prophecy describes it like this:  "Pierced through hands, feet, and side."  Obviously, this verse doesn't mention anything as specific as the body part that was pierced, or the circumstances of the piercing.  This verse is in the past tense, describing something that has already happened, and the surrounding verses make the context clear; God was lamenting how wounded he was by Israel's refusal to obey him.  Also, isn't it obvious that virtually everyone is "pierced" by something at some point in their life?  Especially considering this time period and culture?  A prophecy of someone being "pierced" is just downright pathetic.

Psalm 34:20:

He protects all his bones,
       not one of them will be broken.

Trying to base prophecy on some small bit of a huge heap of metaphorical poetry is truly sad.  Depressingly, this happens constantly with supposed Biblical prophecy.  Let's look at the surrounding verses for context:

16 the face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
       to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
       he delivers them from all their troubles.
18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
       and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
19 A righteous man may have many troubles,
       but the LORD delivers him from them all;
20 he protects all his bones,
       not one of them will be broken.
21 Evil will slay the wicked;
       the foes of the righteous will be condemned.
22 The LORD redeems his servants;
       no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

It's painfully obvious that these verses are describing how Yahweh will take good care of those who trust him, and destroy evildoers.   If verse twenty is a prophecy, verse nineteen is a failed prophecy, as God obviously didn't "deliver" Jesus from crucifixion.

Every one of these prophecies (the ones I mention above, and all the others on the list) suffer from one pervasive, seemingly obvious problem - we have no way of verifying that the gospel accounts are accurate in these details, and they almost always have the possibility of being self-fulfilled.  One such prophecy, for example, seems to state that the messiah will ride into his kingdom on a donkey, while the gospels claim that Jesus once rode into a city on a donkey.  We have not one, but two simple, naturalistic explanations for this:  Firstly, the "Jesus Legend" that was developing in 1st Century Israel was known to people who were obviously familiar with the Old Testament.  This kind of claim, that Jesus once rode into a city on a donkey, would be extremely easy to drop into a Jesus story, eventually making it's way into a gospel.  Alternatively, perhaps there was a historical Jesus, and he actually did ride into a city on a donkey!  Even if we somehow verified this, there's no reason that Jesus or his followers couldn't have gotten the donkey simply because they were familiar with the Old Testament, and this Old Testament verse about a donkey.

Every such Biblical prophecy I've ever heard ends the same:  Naturalistic explanations are just overwhelmingly probable compared to a claimed deity causing genuine prophecy to be fulfilled.  If anyone has heard of any better ones than these, let me know.  I'd like to take a look at them!

How do you justify your beliefs? Part 2 of 2

In part 1, I divided religious people into fundamentalists and moderates, and noted that fundamentalists have a fairly consistent epistemic basis for their world view: Our Holy Book speaks complete truth, and in areas where it is silent, we must fall back on fallible human science. It is not untroubled, as there are some contradictions in every scripture I’m aware of, but as a basic principle, it is sound. Moderates, who accept such scriptures as “mostly true” or serving as sources of useful truths, but do not accept their complete inerrancy, are in a trickier situation, because in saying that the scripture is less than perfectly true, they have implicitly conceded that its claims are subject to external validation and that the scripture itself is not an authorative source.

God of the gaps

To recapitulate the end of the last post, if the Bible is subject to independent verification, none of its claims that isn’t supported by independent evidence can be taken for granted, and there’s no longer any reason to believe in any of it. Even those who like to see their god in every gap where science has yet to shed light—to claim that he interacts with the world by manipulating quantum uncertainties, for instance, as certain apologists do—have no justification for stretching this (already very flimsy) argument to a specific theistic deity. We can all see how lame an argument it really is: “According to quantum physics, we mere humans can’t tell exactly where that electron is at any given moment; therefore, it may be that God is moving it; therefore, Jesus died for your sins.” Some hand-waving modern theologians claim this; skeptics don’t take them seriously, and neither do fundamentalists, and nor should they.

The God-of-the-gaps argument is, of course, very weak to begin with. By saying that “God acts where science has yet to explore”, your god will shrink into smaller and smaller gaps as science advances—but this is really incidental. More to the point, your god becomes an unfalsifiable claim, and unfalsifiable claims are inherently worthless.

If it isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t true

Strong words: Let me back them up at least a little. It is of course common knowledge that science places great value on falsifiability: We won’t accept a hypothesis, let alone graduate it to the coveted status of scientific theory, unless you can use it to generate falsifiable predictions—in essence saying, “This hypothesis is what I believe; if I’m right, we can run an experiment/look through a telescope/check under a rock and find X; whereas if I’m wrong, we’ll find Y instead.”

But if we think about this for a moment, it’s important not just to science, but to epistemology. If something is not falsifiable—if there’s no hypothetical observation you could possibly make that would lead you to decide that a belief is false—then what you are saying is, in fact, that you can think of no difference between a universe where it is true, and a universe where it is not. What does it even mean to say that something is true, if a universe with or without it are indistinguishable? It certainly doesn’t mean “true” in the sense that I am accustomed to using the word!

Errors in the Bible

Now we get back to these nagging little nitpicking things: Did Judas hang himself, or burst asunder in a field? Does Yahweh, or does he not, plan for some people to be damned? Did he, or did he not, ever change his mind? I agreed earlier that these are incidental things that don’t alter the central message of the Bible, and I wasn’t playing games with you: I believe this is true. It does, however, cast aspersions on biblical inerrancy—in fact, they disprove it. No matter how minor the errors or contradictions may be, if the Bible has any, it’s not an inerrant document, and even if you argue that they are all minor (with which I would not agree), the basis of presumed inerrancy that made it a sound epistemic basis has collapsed. Either you can accept everything the Bible says as fact, or you cannot; since you cannot (without severe cognitive dissonance), you can’t use it as the basis of your epistemology.

If the Bible was wrong about how Judas died, if it disagrees in parts on what such-and-such person said, how can you be absolutely sure that it’s correct on some other matter of what someone said? (Even small errors can change meaning, and it doesn’t get better in translation, let alone multiple translations.) If you can’t be sure whether Yahweh ever changed his mind, or whether some people are predestined for Hell, how can you be sure that Yeshua was his son, that man was created before woman, that…well, anything? Once you admit that the Bible is at all less than perfect, you’re down to saying “Whatever the Bible says is probably true…only some things aren’t, and here are some samples”, there’s no reason to hold any individual claim as necessarily true without independent verification—and so it goes.

Question for the readers

I am genuinely curious, if any of the religious among ye have had the patience, time, and energy to read this far: What is the basis of your epistemology, and how would you falsify your belief? In other words, why do you believe as you do, and what would it take for you to change your mind?

To be fair, I will give a sample of an answer for my own beliefs. I’m tempted to specify what I would need to falsify beliefs in, say, universal gravitation, or the non-existence of fairies, but I’ll play nice and address issues that religionists are in fact likely to disagree with me upon.

For instance, to convince me that my position as an atheist is wrong, a god might show up and blaze writing in burning meteorites across the night sky: “Hey, atheists, I exist!” Or you might find, written in the human genome, encoded in, say, ASCII and English, or Unicode and ancient Hebrew, a message like “This human made by Yahweh, father of Yeshua; all rights reserved”. Or faith healers might develop the ability to actually perform miracles that can’t be explained away—restore lost limbs under laboratory conditions with skeptical magicians like James Randi or Penn and Teller present. There are lots of ways.

On the subject of evolution by natural selection, the famous fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian is a good idea. We needn’t go so far, though. The cdesign proponentsist idea of irreducible complexity is not actually a bad one. (As we should expect, they didn’t come up with it but took it from Darwin: Chapter VI of Origin, the famous absurd in the highest degree passage.) If any purportedly evolved structure could be shown to be impossible to produce by gradual evolution, evolutionary theory as we know it certainly could not be true. It’s not an inherently silly idea; it’s just that all of the instances fall flat, and all the evidence is for evolution, so it’s sufficiently unlikely that a solid instance ever be found that I’m comfortable in accepting evolution as a fact. But certainly I can conceive of a difference between a world where evolution is true and one where it is not.

How about you? What do you believe—if differently from me? What is your epistemological justification? And, most importantly, how would you know if you were wrong?

How do you justify your beliefs? Part 1 of 2

As regular readers will have noticed, I have been on a bit of an epistemology spree lately—thinking about thinking, why I believe what I believe, and what logical justification I have for doing so. Now, I’d like to muse out loud on the same topic as applied to religious belief—thus, of course, leaving the subject of what I believe.

To recap what I do believe as a starting point, however: I am a naturalist; I am an empiricist (though not in a philosophically naïve way of assuming that our senses directly report the truth); I believe that the scientific method is the best way of finding truth.

Obviously, religious people as a group believe otherwise, to one degree or another. Many people insist that religious belief is not incompatible with a scientific worldview, but nobody seriously insists that a scientific worldview leads to religion—that there’s real, empirical evidence of Yahweh or Allah or Zeus.

It will be useful for my discursive purposes to divide religionists into two camps, based on their reactions to areas where scientific findings conflict with established religious beliefs. One camp will privelege to science, cede the point, and basically insist that their religion provides truth where science has nothing to say. The other camp will give precedence to their religious beliefs and assert that where there is conflict, the science must be wrong, come hell or high water. The first comprises religious moderates; the second, religious fundamentalists; in particular, I will be talking about fundamentalists of an Abrahamic kind, who believe in the literal truth of the Torah (are there fundamentalist Jews?), Bible, or Qur’an.

Fundamentalists

The fundamentalist camp, for all their various faults, actually has a simple and superficially coherent basis for their epistemology. “Our creed,” they say, “is the Truth; on matters where it will not speak, fallible human science is the best we can do, but knowing that it’s fallible, the Eternal Truth will always trump it.”

And so far as it goes, this seems coherent: The epistemic principle is clear, in any case. It does run into some problems when the creed turns out to contain contradictions. The Christian Bible, for instance, contradicts itself on how many sons Abraham had, whether God wants some people to go to Hell, whether blood sacrifices wash away sin, how Judas died, and a few hundred more… But it has been argued, and at first glance it looks fair, that these are fairly incidental and inessential to the central message.

Unless we look further and find a problem, this worldview seems basically sensible, if you once accept the basic premises—and indeed, it seems largely a matter of premises at this point: The fundamentalist begins with the premise that the Bible is revealed truth; the skeptic, such as I, begins without it. At worst, then, I could accuse the fundamentalist of not looking further (epistemically speaking, anyway).

Religious moderates

Let’s turn aside for a moment and consider the religious moderate, who does not grand automatic primacy to religious claims. We found that the fundamentalist has a fairly coherent basis for his belief system—this, alas, does not seem to be as true for the moderate.

The Christian moderate, for instance, starts from a viewpoint that the Bible contains revealed truth, but must acknowledge that as centuries have passed, scientific progress has been made and much that was once believed to be literally true must be discarded as untrue (or at best metaphorical or allegoric), and much that was once seen as just and right is now considered unjust and wrong.

The need for scriptural inerrancy

I will be the first to applaud the moderate for using reason and moral judgement to figure out what’s true and what’s right rather than blindly accepting some written word or Word on the matter. However, this completely invalidates the Bible as a sole source of truth. —And a religious scripture has a need to stand on its own as a source of truth, because it has nothing to back it up.

We skeptics don’t need authorative sources, indeed we do not hold any source as sacred: We know that the very authority of the most respected source relies precisely on the ability of others to verify that it is correct. We laud Darwin, for instance, as being intelligent and right about an astonishing number of things (however wrong on many details) because other people have come after him, figured out ways to hypothetically disprove him, and found that none of these ways turn out to work. We think that On the Origin of Species is a good book not because it was written by Darwin, but because a century and a half of research, palæontology, experiments, and other books all back up its main thesis.

This is not the case, and indeed cannot be the case, for ‘revealed’ knowledge: The whole point (and definition) of a revelation, in this sense, is that it doesn’t come from something you could have found out by investigating the world. This means that a book of revealed truth is without corroborating evidence, and the most that can be hoped for is a lack of contradicting data. As such, a certain sense of absoluteness hangs about any such scripture. The Bible tells the truth, or it does not tell the truth.

What does it mean, after all, to say that the Bible tells us some things that are true (“there is a god”, “that god is Yahweh of the Hebrews”, “Yahweh had an only begotten son named Yeshua”, “Yeshua was executed to excuse us for the errors of our distant ancestors”), and other things (“the Earth was created in a week”, “it was morally justified to murder babies in the interest of invasion”) are not true? It means that the Bible cannot be taken at face value: If you allow empirical evidence to falsify the Bible, you admit that it’s not inerrant, and any one of its facts may be inaccurate; as such, it’s no longer epistemologically cogent to accept any of its facts without independent verification.

Once you reach this conclusion, the whole enterprise falls apart. If the Bible is subject to independent verification, none of its claims that isn’t supported by independent evidence can be taken for granted, and there’s no longer any reason to believe in any of it. Even those who like to see their god in every gap where science has yet to shed light—to claim that he interacts with the world by manipulating quantum uncertainties, for instance, as certain apologists do—have no justification for stretching this (already very flimsy) argument to a specific theistic deity. We can all see how lame an argument it really is: “According to quantum physics, we mere humans can’t tell exactly where that electron is at any given moment; therefore, it may be that God is moving it; therefore, Jesus died for your sins.” Some hand-waving modern theologians claim this; skeptics don’t take them seriously, and neither do fundamentalists, and nor should they.

This is continued in part 2.

College attendance and religiosity

Recently I read here that a study [1] had been conducted which looks at the trends between the study of certain subjects in college and religious observance. The study concluded that very religious high school students are more likely than less religious high school students to attend college.

This may surprise the skeptical world. I’ve heard many times that people with high levels of religiosity tend to be less educated and less intelligent whereas people with low religiosity tend to be more educated and more intelligent. Typically people cite an article published in nature as evidence for this phenomenon [2], if they cite an article at all. So why is this study saying that people who are more religious are more likely to attend college?

The authors first rightfully point out that there is a pressure in the United States toward being religious, yet despite this pressure (especially from families), religiosity is remaining more or less steady and even swinging downward as the years go by. One common culprit blamed on this is college, given that college tends to be the first time people are separated from their families for an extended period of time.

The goal of the study was to look at how contents of college curriculum affect student values and to distinguish these effects from patterns of selection based on already-held values. The study hypothesizes that college students are confronted (in varying degrees) to three streams of thought in college that have certain negative attitudes toward religion, and that these streams of thought may have an effect on religiosity. Those streams of thought are:

Science – consisting of a commitment to truth, the scientific method and open-mindedness toward evidence. Natural science fields have a strong scientist content.

Developmentalism – consisting of a commitment to freedom and progress. Economics and business have a strong developmentalist content.

Postmodernism – consisting of a commitment to relativism of truth and morality and the idea that truth and morality are determined by those who are most powerful. The humanities and social sciences have a strong postmodernist content.

The article delves much deeper into exactly what these three streams of thought are and how they come into conflict with religiosity (in a refreshingly impartial manner), but for the purposes of this article I will leave them simply defined.  If on accepts that different majors are tied to different streams of thought, it is possible to test whether any of these three streams of thought contribute to reduced religiosity by looking at initial choices of major and changes of major over time in concordance with any changes in religiosity. They specifically examined the changes in religiosity from high school and into college, using a sample size of literally thousands of students in Michigan from high school and through college.

Here are some of their findings:

-compared to business majors, social sciences and humanities have a statistically significant negative effect on both attendance of religious services and the rating of the importance of religion.
-education majors were more religious than other majors and their religiosity increased over time.
-religiosity increases over time for business majors
-religious attendance decreased for students who are undecided about college major.
-religious attendance decreased for respondents who did not go to college.
-students in science and engineering have less trust in god than people who have not gone to college or business majors (as measured by asking the respondents, “if we just leave things to god, they will turn out for the best [disagree, mostly disagree, neither agree nor disagree, mostly agree, agree]”).

-students who were social science, humanities or engineering tended to think religious organizations should have less of an effect on society, whereas subjects who had not gone to college thought religious organizations should have more influence on society.

The study was fairly well-designed, so I was quite surprised to find that students who were more religious were more likely to attend college, given that it seems to contradict other studies (such as the one reported on in Michael Shermer’s How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God [3]) which indicate that atheism increases with education level.  Religiosity was rated on a 1-4 scale (“how often to you attend religious services? [1=never, 2=rarely 3=once or twice a month 4=about once a week or more]”), and each point on the scale corresponded with a 14% increases in the likelihood of going to college. A change in the rated importance of religion by one point amounted to an 8% increase in the likelihood of going to college.

I think that a weakness in the study lies in the fact that they did not take into account the different denominations of college attendees, and rather used “religious attendance” and “importance of religion” as their measures of religiosity. As such, the study ignored the positive or negative impacts of particular denominations or religious schools of thought, especially Sectarianism (the belief that religious rewards will be given exclusively to the adherents of a particular faith) and fundamentalism (finding value in sacred texts, especially the belief in the inerrancy of biblical texts).  Studies have shown that sectarianism and fundamentalism in particular has a negative impact on educational attainment [4], and especially the educational attainment of women [5]. Sectarian and fundamentalist individuals are also more likely to choose a religious college.

One other interesting thing to note is that the reported amount of time people spend at religious services does not seem to correlate with actual religious service attendance – studies show the actual number is about half of what people report – suggesting that many people overestimate (or lie about?) how often they attend [6]. The best this study can say with regard to religious service attendance is that the people who likely overestimate how often they attend are more likely to go to college.

1. Kimball MS, Mitchell CM, Thornton AD, Young-Demarco LC. Empirics on the Origins of Preferences: The Case of College Major and religiosity. NBER (2009) Working Paper No. 15182

2. Larson EJ, Witham L. Leading scientists still reject god. Nature 1998:394;313

3. Shermer, M. How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. New York: William H Freeman. 1999:76–79. ISBN 071673561X.

4. Sherkat DE. Religion and higher education: the good, the bad, and the ugly. 2007: Online at http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Sherkat.pdf

5. Sherkat, DE, Darnell A. The Effect of Parents' Fundamentalism on Children's
Educational Attainment: Examining Differences by Gender and Children's Fundamentalism Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1999:38;23-35.

6. Hadaway CK, Marler L, Chaves M. what the polls don’t show: a closer look at U.S. church attendance. American Sociological Review 1993:58;741-752