The Science Minister's brainfart

Only in Ireland, or perhaps, in the buckle of the US bible belt, would a science minister launch a book on why evolution is wrong.

(Here comes the science part - no, it isn't.)

Specious nonsense doesn't begin to account for the superstitious claptrap contained in this tome by some godbotherer called John May.

What's even more nonsensical is that the Minister for Science is launching it.

Kebabs Lenihan has always been the Tweedledumber to Brian's Tweedledum. But now this walking political liability is not only demonstrating uselessness at his job (which one expects from the current cabinet) but downright moronism of the lowest order.

He should have been sacked a long time ago during the GAMA scandal, when he racially slurred migrant workers. He should be sacked now for this brainfart.

But it's testimony to both the void of talent in Fianna Fail and the utter lack of anything resembling ethics or integrity that this oxygen thief will continue in government, wasting more of our time and money spouting crap about 'de knowledge economy' even as he promotes retrograde anti-science falsehoods.

We are the galactic spear-chuckers

Remember these images?

These are one of the few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes left on Earth. They were spotted by planes who scour the Amazon to find where such tribes may be living, primarily with the intention of ensuring that they are left alone.

On first perusal, given the many horrible precedents that exist, especially in the Americas, for what happens when uncontacted tribes meet the modern world, that seems like a sensible policy.

Live and let live and all that.

For this tribe, as for similar tribes in the Andaman Islands, New Guinea and a few other pockets, life is an eternal Stone Age, with no inkling or conception of the huge and developed modern civilisations that surround them, threatening to engulf them.

I wonder about whether stranding people in pre-history is a good thing or not. Equally, this lot didn't seem to be very welcoming to outsiders.

But I also wonder if perhaps the entire human race are in fact the neolithic spear chuckers of the universe.

One of the great questions raised by astronomy and the vastnesses of the known universe it has uncovered for us is that of alien life. With so many opportunities for life to develop elsewhere in the universe, it is frankly unthinkable that this planet would be the sole example of a life-bearing planet.

So, in that case, if the universe teems with life, why hasn't it contacted us? There are a few possible answers: the lifeforms aren't conscious; they are way too far away to get in touch; the universe is huge and we're far out from the galactic centre and perhaps they haven't found us yet despite our radio waves and Voyager.

For leading physicist Stephen Hawking, there's no doubt life is out there. And in a new documentary, he explains why he thinks it might not be benevolent towards us.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans," he explains.

Which brings me back to my moral conundrum.

We no longer enforce contact with civilisation upon Stone Age tribes because all our previous experience of doing so indicates that it is damaging, in terms of health, well-being, population size, and a number of other measures, to the indigenous peoples involved.

Without any example of a successful encounter between civilisation and such a tribe, we must assume that the reason why life in the universe has not contacted us is not actually because they fear us, but possibly because they fear what impact they would have on us.

Perhaps Earth is little more than a couple of straw huts, galactically speaking. Perhaps our solar system is nothing more than an empty corner of rainforest where no one goes.

In galactic terms, perhaps we are the spear chuckers.

The cult of AGW

It's been the coldest winter since 1963 here in Ireland, apparently.

And we're not unique. Most of the planet has been experiencing exceptionally cold weather this winter.

This goes quite a long way towards explaining why you don't hear the words 'global warming' being bandied about so much any more.

These days, the buzz words are 'climate change'. I'd be inclined to refer to climate changing by its old-fashioned title, 'weather'.

But plenty of the true believers in the cult of anthropogenic global warming are still keen to claim that armageddon is imminent, and it's all your fault and mine for, well, existing basically.

Global warming, yesterday.

On BBC Radio 4 today, they were covering the British parliament's grilling of the lying scientists who conspired to fabricate data, cover up the truth and twist the results of research.

They then turned to some invited 'expert' to respond. I didn't catch his name. I wish I had because he should be added to the list of lying scumbags banking research grants for peddling this tosh.

He hummed and hawed about his lying colleagues getting busted, then went on to insist that, of course, none of this should impact at all on the need to reduce carbon emissions, the pressing need for carbon taxes, and so on and so forth.

Amazingly, the presenter didn't call him on any of this crap. But that's the nature of religious faith. One cannot question under any circumstances.

Yes, oil is running out and we need to be smarter about how we use it (ban SUVs for a start), and we need to find replacement sources of energy.

But that is no reason to seek to tax the developed world to the point of penury. There's a perfectly simple and indisputable reason for our cold weather. It's called the solar minimum.

When the sun flares up with nuclear force on its surface, it sends waves of additional heat and light our way. These flares are called sunspots, and they occur in cycles. We're at the bottom of the cycle currently, so there are virtually no sunspots and as a result, much less heat for us.

When there were plenty of sunspots a few years back, the world was exceptionally warm, and that's when this global warming crap began getting propagated.

So, since we know their scientific underpinning for AGW (man-made global warming/cooling/change/whatever you're having yourself) is not only junk science but deliberate lies, the only remaining question is why is the cult still propagating this?

Well, what is the result of a carbon tax? It's a penalty on the developed world for being developed. It's a glass ceiling on the prospects of the developing world to continue improving the lives of those living there. In short, it's a charter for reversing development.

In other words, it's more back-to-hobbiton fantasies from the Gaia-brigade, who'd like nothing more than to see mankind reduced to a few hundred thousand people living in an imaginary vegan wonderland without machinery, transport, or anything that might interrupt their fantasy idyll.

It's a cult, and it's time to stop pandering to them. They're more dangerous than any other bunch of crazy faith-based loonies right now, including the Roman Catholic paedo-clerics, the Islamo-fascist suicide bombers or the Judaic imperialists.

These people want to end the world as we know it. In proposing one spoof Armageddon, they hope to bring about a real one.

They need to be stopped. This nonsense has gone too far and for far too long already.

It's time we repudiated their ever-changing anti-human, anti-development lies and stopped letting them take us for sheep that will believe any old rubbish, and happily pay to be returned to the middle ages.

I'm no scientist

But I know a good bit of science.

It's the universe's way of punishing me, I think, for all those semi-smug, semi-idiotic moments when I thought in school: I don't need to pay attention to this - I'm going to be an ARTIST.

Hey, we were all arseholes at 15, you know?

Anyway, I know a good bit of science. I don't know when I last read fiction, or even fact that wasn't science-related. I do it for work, I do it for fun too. Right now I'm reading one book about zero-fields and another about medicine, for example. They're the books by my bed.

I've come to realise that this stuff, inexpertly presented to the public, is actually all that we can be assured of in relation to our existence on this planet. Everything else, and I mean everything else, is supposition at best.

That includes art, soul, music, passion, emotions - all the good stuff, in a way. But while those things continue not to be measurable, they continue to be perplexing.

We can be sure about light in a way that we can't about love, for example. But that won't stop most people anguishing about love at some point in their lives, of course, and nor is it any succour to be aware of the fact that you can in recompense understand what photons do, even as your better half pursues pastures new.

So science is no succour, but it's all we've got. And surprisingly, we have more than most people think.

One question is how did the general public become so divorced from the currency of scientific thought to the point today where almost nobody now knows, for example, that we do not see, but imagine, since our optic nerve conveys light information received on the eyeball as information which it sends to the brain where it is recreated?

Is it the media's fault? When Einstein came up with E=MC2 it was quickly popularised, yet today it's still the best known theorem. What happened to the media so that it dumbed down below science?

Or did science become so difficult that it transcended simple translation into concepts that the public can understand? In the West at least, we have a better-educated general public than ever in history. So why the assumption that they can't understand science?

Is it because of the fact that they generally don't, even on the rare occasions in which it is presented to them?

For example, a great nuclear reactor in the sky showers us from close range with radiation, light, heat, solar energy and a number of other things too. It is many, many times larger than this planet, and it provides all of our energy sources. We call it the Sun.

Yet the vast majority of people genuinely believe that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of change in our planet's weather system, even though we have plenty of evidence that the planet has experienced big weather changes in the past.

But even scientists are buying into that one (literally, in many cases, since their research funding so commonly requires them to posit a 'global warming' or 'climate change' thesis to gain grant aid.)

So what about something self-evident, like evolution?

How come a huge proportion of people in the richest country on Earth are able to coherently believe that evolution is wrong and that an imaginary daddy in the sky planted evidence of a vast pre-human history on the planet in order to test the limits of our imagination, or faith, since the two terms are effectively interchangeable?

In short, how come Americans with all their resources, freedom and affluence, believe in 'intelligent design' (itself one of the least appropriate monikers for an idea ever, since there is nothing 'intelligent' about the ideology)?

I wish more people knew more science. That's about the only thing I agree with the government about, actually.

Science has taught me how to tell truth from lies. For example, we have the Greens in government pushing through a 'carbon tax' on carbon-based fuels in this week's budget.

On the surface, to the unscientific layman, this seems like a painful but legitimate response to combating climate change. But even let us assume that climate change is indeed being caused by us burning carbon fuels, science still tells me that this move is nonsense. Why?

Because firstly, there is no alternative. We don't have wind or solar energy feeding the grid yet. We don't have alternatives for driving our cars or heating our homes. Therefore, science tells me that this cannot stop people using fossil fuels. It will only charge them more for them. Therefore, it's a government revenue raiser.

But science also tells me that whether climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels or not, oil is definitely running out. It's a finite resource, and while we may still find quite a bit more, we really have to quickly learn how to use it a lot more sensibly, because we're definitely running out.

And while penalising people for utilising a finite resource could be a disincentive, that can only work when they can avoid the punishment by switching to alternatives.

So a carbon tax is the worst of all worlds - a punitive law designed to raise revenue with no positive benefit to society. It's today's version of the window tax introduced by an English king in the Middle Ages.

If more people knew more science, there'd be a lot more anger about that budget, I reckon. When people cease staring into their wallets and lamenting, they could usefully look at the small print hidden in the budget and see just how bankrupt of ideas this government has become.

None of this is real

While watching the Vinnie Browne show, I took refuge in reading this academic study which concludes, on the basis of an overview assessment of modern scientific discoveries, that none of this is real.

You're not real, I'm not real, Vinnie Browne isn't real, the recession isn't real. In fact, the world, and the entire universe, are not real.

Instead, apparently we are living in a virtual reality projection.

This theory apparently resolves all of the major insoluble issues facing science currently, such as the Big Bang and the universe's possession of a maximum speed, as well as the many bizarre things occuring on a quantum level, such as the existence of quantum equivalence and the uncertainty principle.

That doesn't mean The Matrix, by the way. There is no ur-reality in which we slumber while we dream this one. As the paper states, unlike the virtual realities we have created, like The Sims, we are unable to see the reality through the guiding interface, because we're entirely contained within it.

I dunno if that helps anyone worrying about the global downturn or suffering from depression to know that their concerns aren't real, though.

So, how do you all feel about being virtual?

Battlestar Galactica as modern theology

With the recent end of long-running sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, many of the nerds were unhappy with the apparent theological conclusion to the space opera.

Moans of 'God did it! What a cop out!' seem to me to expose the huge gulf in understanding between those of a sci-fi (or scientific) bent and those of a more religious one.

One of the things I greatly appreciated about this fine TV show was its many attempts to incorporate difficult contemporary debates into its story arc.

It questioned the nature of democracy and its tendency towards demagoguery. It examined the legitimacy or otherwise of terrorist insurgency when under occupation. These were brave, maybe even dangerous discussions to hold in Dubya's America.

And by bringing them to the TV-consuming sheeple, one might even say that the producers and scriptwriters of BSG were serving a vital purpose in providing a platform for such essential debates in the US at that time.

But the element that intrigued me the most was how BSG, of all recent dramas, gave serious airtime to relative theologies.

The human contingent of the colonies were clearly depicted as polytheist, worshipping a Greco-Romanesque pantheon known as the 'Lords of Kobol.' They believed their Gods appeared, like the Roman and Greek pantheons, to be amoral, flawed and constantly interceding in their lives.

But in many ways, the classical names masked a more Eastern polytheism. From the Gayatri Mantra that was the show's theme music, it is clear that Hindu elements played a part too.

Seers, visions, prophecies all fulfilled important roles in the human theology, implying a much more Hindu vision of polytheism than the names Ares, Apollo and so on might indicate.

On the other side of the war, the Cylons were depicted as rigid monotheists, believing in a one true God. Their Abrahamic theology is particularly focused on predestination and fate, indicating a Calvinist or Jansenist vision of progression that is at odds with the concept of free will - which makes sense in the context of software for a brain.

Others have discerned elements of Mormonism in the show, while some have even posited the thought that the a la carte approach to belief systems presented in BSG could be a template for the future of religious faith in America.

And in its depiction of how women gathered around Gaius Baltar, the programme showed clearly how guru cults are formed, which is the point of origin for all religions we know today, be it an Abraham cult, a Jesus cult, or a Krishna, Buddha or Mohammed cult.

The ending of the series, however, resolved itself in a concept of human history as cyclical, requiring enlightenment of those involved in order to break a cycle of suffering, illusion and destruction.

This, in a nutshell, is the core belief of Buddhism. But even that Buddhist finale was undercut by a vision of angels on the streets of Manhattan, speculating about the amoral, Manichean nature of a solitary godhead.

The result is that the series offered a melange of theological positions, and gave each its own space to be considered in conjunction and in opposition to others.

It's rare these days to see such serious considerations of theology outside of factual documentaries featuring Michael Wood or the like. I for one welcome it.

I hope that one day someone qualified will produce some good academic research that teases out all of the relative theologies and their relationships with science and technology in this superlative TV show.

Some people have made initial attempts, and I suppose this post is mine.

In the meantime, perhaps it will have provoked pause for thought among its many viewers, who may not have been exposed, or taken seriously, other theological positions before. It's possible that the viewers may also take the same a la carte approach to religious beliefs as the authors of the show did while writing it.

I don't see that as anything other than positive. Exposing oneself to alternative beliefs is a creative and productive process, one that destroys sectarian interests and broadens the mind and one's conception of the universe.

And for the nerds who moaned about the presence of God in a fiction, I think they've missed the point and been blinded by their own blinkered attachment to the concept that science is atheistic.

It need not be, as recent research indicates.

I'm an atheist, but I loved the spirituality and relative theologies present in BSG. I hope the debates it raised will run in its viewers' minds long after the show is consigned to late-night satellite station re-runs.

PS: I claim 'Geek of the Week' for learning off the Gayatri Mantra as set to the music of the BSG soundtrack. Maybe that's enlightened of me, or maybe it's just sad. I dunno. But I do find it very soothing.

The Department of stupid scientific research

There's always plenty of fresh product from the Department of stupid scientific research.

So widespread are studies into the bleeding obvious or the mind-bogglingly stupid that barely a week goes by without someone rolling their eyes in print at the latest research proving birds don't have bird-brains, or how teaspoons in the office go missing.

I don't really want to add to the plethora of print and posts sneering at scientific stupidity, as I think a lot of scientific research actually is useful and because I don't need to sneer at a scientific study in order to make myself feel smart.

But I did want to point out one small flaw, as I perceive it, in relation to this otherwise apparently useful piece of research into the effects of breast-feeding on the intelligence of newborn children.

If you're going to do a large study into the health of young children, don't do it in the most irradiated country on Earth, please? The results may not be replicated in countries without a major nuclear accident irradiating the nation in the past generation.