Teleology And Coconuts

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/15/2771822.htm

Two scientists at the Melbourne Museum have recorded the first case of tool use in an invertebrate animal.

The veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selects, stacks, transports and assembles coconut shells as portable armour.

Many octopuses use available objects such as shells and rocks for shelter, but that is not considered tool use.

Dr Mark Norman says what makes these animals so special is the the planned future use of the coconut shells.

"It comes at a cost, carrying these shells in this awkward way and it's a fantastic example of complex behaviours in what we consider the lower life forms," he said.

"I think these sorts of behaviours are everywhere in nature. There's really complex behaviours that we write off because we think we're the clever ones."

He and colleague Dr Julian Finn spent more than 500 hours diving in remote waters off Indonesia to observe and film the animals.

They watched the octopuses dig out coconut shells from the ocean floor and empty the shells of mud using jets of water.

Dr Finn says it is not unusual for octopuses to live inside coconuts but it is how the veined octopus uses the shells that is unique.

"It gathers them together, it stacks them like bowls, covers its whole body over bowls, lifts them up and then trundles along on its arm tips until a predator comes or there's a threat," he said.

Like bricks being designed for smashing windows (or is it the other way around?), it seems that the octopus has finally caught on to the grand design of the coconut. Sticks are designed for poking out eyes and hills are designed for rolling down, now it seems that the octopus has finally cracked the teleological purpose that has eluded humanity until now. Coconut shells are for armour.

Like a wasp protecting its store of caterpillars with a pebble, it can't just be an accident that the coconut shell can be used to protect an octopus. And selection simply cannot account for it, for where are the shells of Brazil nuts and peanuts that show the intermediate stages? No such a perfect fit can only be befitting of a grand designer who made coconuts for the purpose of armour for his likeness. Therefore God exists and that God is Cthulhu!

Arguing A Historical Jesus

As mentioned before, my lessons in Christianity among other things were largely centred around Jesus being a historical fact. A man called Jesus lived and the gospels are a historical and corroborative account of his life. The argument then follows that since the narratives are true, then it follows that the miracles are true. Thus Christ really was born of a virgin, walk on water, heal the sick, raise the dead, and in turn conquered death himself.

So in hindsight it comes at no surprise that people quibble over whether Jesus was real or not. Of course if the story were entirely made up, then that would be the easiest way to defeat Christianity. But like those positing that the fossil record is fake to dismiss evolution, such a view doesn't appear to reflect the reality of the situation. Now I take the view that the question of a historical Jesus is a meaningless one, it's asking the wrong question.


A hooded mystery
Growing up in an English-derived culture, the myth of Robin Hood should be familiar to us. This 12th century outlaw who stood up against tyranny while the noble king was off fighting for God and country (mainly God) would have been the perfect analogy. Except that this seems to be false, the myth didn't start there but was altered in the 16th century to be that tale. It's a good thing I decided to check out the Robin Hood story before launching into a very complex and false analogy which would have been based on the tale I've heard in the 20th century.

But no matter, the myth may have been altered through time but it doesn't take away from the point I wanted to make - that is the distinction between a historical figure and a legend. So lets take the Robin Hood character and ask, what does it mean for Robin Hood to be a historical figure? i.e. what can be said about the man himself that sufficiently ties the mythic narrative to the exploits of a real person?

It seems that on some accounts, it would be preferable to say that if there was someone called Robin Hood who was an outlaw, then that's sufficient to cast him as a historical figure. The real Robin Hood didn't live in the forest with his merry men, wear green, seduce the lovely maid Marion, or rally against the forces of tyranny.

The problem I see with this view is now that while the myth may be coupled with actual events, the actual events don't reflect the narrative of the myth. It's all well and good to say that there was a historical Robin Hood, but he's not at all what we expect Robin Hood to be. To highlight this further, maybe it needs to be a little more absurd. Santa Claus will do. Now there are plenty of historical stories of men giving gifts on Christmas from many different countries. Yet do we talk about the bearded figure who really should be worried that his workshop will be in danger of sinking next summer?

In other words, there seems to be an equivocation brought in between real people and the "historical" narratives as we understand them today. A real Santa doesn't mean flying reindeer, a real Robin Hood doesn't entail the merry men, and a real Jesus doesn't entail driving out the money lenders from the temple. Thus why I think it asks the wrong question whether Jesus was a historical figure. How does the legend match the historical actuality of events?


The problem of miracles

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. - David Hume

The above quote highlights the problem that comes with positing the miraculous. This isn't a categorical denial that miracles (in the sense of a violation of natural law) could happen, but rather at the nature of believing in such things.

So with the narrative being littered with miracles, how confident can one be that the gospels are a reliable source? Now I know some who posit that the miraculous is what shows Jesus to be what he truly is, that the implausibility actually adds to the possibility that Jesus is the real deal. So lets take that to be true for one moment. Lets say that all the miracles of the New Testament did indeed happen. So the gospel narratives are in-fact historical eyewitness accounts. How can we satisfy the problem of miracles as stated by Hume above?

This to me is where the problem lies. We weren't there to witness the events, and even if we were we wouldn't be able to safely say that what we witnessed was a violation of natural law or merely an illusion. After all we have plenty of experience with illusionists but no experiences with the violation of natural law. What we are relying on is the interpretation of individuals to what they think they saw independent of the events that actually transpired. In other words, we can see Uri Geller bending spoons but seeing the bending of spoons doesn't follow that a violation of natural law (or indeed an unknown natural phenomenon) actually took place.

So even being the most generous we could be to the accuracy of the narrative, we could not in all conscience accept the narrative to be true. We just couldn't be able to distinguish between an interpretation of events, dismiss all other possibilities that such events happened naturally, account for lying or trickery, reinterpretation, exaggeration, the fallibility of memory, etc. So while it could indeed have happened as stated, we have no good basis to believe that it happened that way.


A house of cards
Back to the question of whether the narrative matches with the actuality of events. Hopefully by now I've established the problems associated with taking the biblical Jesus as a historical Jesus. As much as it would be an easy dismissal of the concept, whether Nazarene existed in the 1st century CE or not doesn't matter so much. Neither does whether the gospels between themselves can put a consistent picture of what happened in the tomb. These are trivial points that really don't to my mind capture the issue.

Pointing to the addition of Mark 16:9-20 or the modification on Josephus' work in the 4th century to make Jesus a more historical figure really only serve to cast doubt on the untenable assumption of historical acuity of the gospel writers themselves. It doesn't satisfy the problem of anecdotal eyewitness evidence, even if those witnesses were second hand seeming a good rebuttal or that witnesses 2 and 3 plagiarised from witness 1.

At what point would a historical charismatic cult leader qualify as the man behind the legend? Does the exclusion of actual miracles still make the biblical Jesus a historical one? What if the events that took place in John involving the money lenders never happened? Or that the words attributed to him are really a collective of profundities proclaimed by a variety of holy men? If parts of the Jesus story were written to fulfil Old Testament prophecies, does it still count as being a historical Jesus?

This is why I find the question of a historical Jesus quite irrelevant. Whether there really was a man or not doesn't factor into why I don't believe. Even if there was a man behind the myth, it doesn't necessitate miracles or prescribed events. Putting a place, time, and even person onto the myth means that there is still the myth to contend with.

To me it comes down to if someone wants to believe, it's a matter of faith. If one has faith that the particular narrative is true, then no matter what inconsistencies, additions, impossibilities, etc. there's going to be no way to shake someone out of that.

Of Scepticism And Denialism

What is it about climate change that makes people think they are experts in it? I guess it doesn't matter too much, chalk one more up for Dunning-Kruger. Perhaps it's the politicising of the issue. It matters to us, so we're going to be McExperts while the few trained in the relevant sciences battle it out in academia. I'd love to be able to rip apart the claims made in "climategate" but I don't know how to address it correctly. Rather what I want to talk about is the tone of scepticism. Does the evidence warrant the conclusion?


The situation
It's important to remember what is being alleged here. That tens of thousands of scientists are colluding together in order to cook up a non-existing threat. They are subverting the general peer review process, falsifying data, and worst of all working together to lie to the public in regard to the consequences of the current lifestyle we live. Or at the very least trying to serve their own careers by getting funding.

To allege a conspiracy is a pretty big deal, especially one involving so many people. It would mean that tens of thousands of people would all have to collaborate to keep the secret. Not telling their friends or family for one, and given the public nature of this controversy would have to be lying to the public, politicians, industry groups and even to friends and family. That's a lot of people needing to keep their story straight.

But maybe there's something a little more obvious, maybe the people perpetrating the "conspiracy" are doing so unwillingly, they might all be ideologues who have reasoned to themselves that something that ain't true is - and it's something that fits with a radical political agenda that supposedly these tens of thousands of scientists all share.

It's not fair to treat it like a religion given that the people involved are the ones who have the relevant expertise to address the claims. That is to say there would be thousands of people equipped with the ability to see that the data doesn't line up. That there would be many who could see that it's fake. So there should be many with the relevant expertise who could uncover this conspiracy at any time.

This is to try and paint what the emails need to demonstrate - that they need to be significant enough to match the extraordinary nature of the narrative. It's not being alleged that the amount attributed to human activity might not be as much as before where the scientific process will correct it, but of mass fraud to hide that there's no human-induced climate change.


The smoking gun?
Now these emails are meant to be sufficient enough to demonstrate the ramifications of what's being argued. In all honesty, do these emails meet, exceed or even tend towards to the notion that there is mass fraud being perpetrated on a grand scale?

One reason I would argue against this is the nature of the scientific enterprise. It really is cut-throat and people make a name for themselves not by going with the tide but against it. They may be ridiculed and scorned by the scientific community, but ultimately if the data fits then fortune and fame beckon. It's by no means perfect, but the system has proved to work time and time again. Not to give complete trust to the process, but to recognise that on a whole the scientific endeavour has a good track record.

So the question to ask would be does the contents of the email make a sufficient case for widespread fraud? This isn't just finding damning sentences with no regard to context, but taking context into account and the significance of what is said, is there reason to suspect the entire enterprise is fraud? If someone for example said that they have doubts over AGW, is this dissenter being silenced? That is to say that such a person hasn't made such a view public through the peer review research.

This is not to try to be facetious, rather to put in perspective the level to which the evidence needs to be in order to justify the logical implications of what is being proposed. I confess, as soon as the word conspiracy is brought up, I tune out. Conspiracies beyond a few people are just so implausible. But I could be mistaken, I haven't read the emails nor do I have an intimate knowledge of the reasons for climate change beyond the basics. I await the results of the investigation. But what gets me is the denialism masquerading as scepticism, the denialists are pretending that their the sceptics and over what?


Cult of denial
I use the word cult as hyperbole, though I feel that there's something truthful in the characterisation. I say this not to offend but to explain the difference between being sceptical and labelling yourself a "sceptic". And we should be sceptical of climate change, we should be sceptical of everything. But to my mind a sceptic is one who follows the evidence where it leads them as opposed to taking an ideological position. Unfortunately my dealings with "sceptics" and seeing "sceptic" pundits in the media is that they aren't sceptical, they have an ideological position which they are adhering to.

Again I can't fault people for being ideological, they are human. What I am calling out is when the ideology is so blatant that it clouds the assessment on the issue. Now I hear you say, there are plenty of ideologues who support climate change. I agree, but it is a red herring. The question is how closely does the conjecture of ideologues match the evidence?

A couple of notes for concern is with the "sceptics" is how easily they'll tap onto anything that means climate change isn't real. I remember seeing the head of GM on The Daily Show / Colbert Report (can't remember which one) talking about a survey of scientists who doubt man-made climate change. I've also heard this brought up by a few "sceptics". But it's a poor survey. Creationists use a similar tactic to deny evolution.

Another similarity I see to the creationist movement is to label those who support Anthropogenic Global Warming as a religious cult. Similar to the creationists use of Darwin. It's something I see come up all the time, labelling anyone who believes in human-induced climate change as basically faith-based. Again, this isn't an issue of peoples beliefs but a scientific position. Is the science flawed? Is it wrong? The beliefs of the supporters shouldn't matter. It seems the logical steps followed equate to the faith of people (not everyone knows everything) with the article in question being a faith. It does not follow and "sceptics" do themselves a disservice by such a blatant error of thinking.


To get back to the emails, do the emails really implicate the entire scientific discipline of science? As put above, this is not quote mining to find the most damning comment, but taking the emails in context and using them to not misrepresent those in action. This to me is where the big question over the whole "controversy" lies. Does the evidence point to AGW being a conspiracy? Does it undermine the data presented by the IPCC and destroy what is the scientific consensus? I'm sceptical of the "sceptics" on this one. This is a dead give-away that many involved are showing their ideology, that they are looking for anything that might put a hole in what they don't want to be true.

It's quite sad that so many who are accusing others of being ideologues are showing themselves to be just what they are accusing others of. And for what? This is what I really can't grasp. The ferocity of those trying to deny human-induced climate change doesn't match with any particular ideology, yet there are indeed denialists.

Someone who is seeking the truth should be looking for good evidence to support their position, and they should be willing to change their minds if the evidence dictates. Seizing on bad evidence as proof is only serving to openly demonstrate pre-existing conclusions. It all might be a conspiracy, this might seriously impact on the IPCC position and the general scientific consensus surrounding climate change. I don't know, I have my doubts because that would mean conspiracy. But it may be the case. But right now, acting with certainty that this destroys all notions of AGW is not being sceptical in the least. It's finding something that fits the narrative of an implausible story, and that's one for the conspiracy theorists.

An Inversion Of Reason To Point Out The Obvious

I've got to say I enjoy listening or reading Dan Dennett. Currently I'm pushing myself through Consciousness Explained and I've got to say it feels like he's lead me through the rabbit hole and suddenly a few pages of I've found myself in a strange reality where I have no idea what's gone on. Right or wrong, he really makes it sound so simple as if all it takes is an inversion of reasoning followed to its logical conclusion.

So looking on his university website, I came across a recent paper of his titled: "Darwin's Strange Inversion Of Reasoning". A very interesting paper seeking how Darwin's evolutionary thinking flipped the way we think about agency and structure. A watch without a watchmaker? Structure without agency? Natural selection provides the answer.

And so the argument from design dies another death. To me looking at it in the year 2009, it might now appear obvious. "Well of course it has to be that way" I can say comfortably without having to come up with the idea myself. Well the idea is out now. And no matter how many watches or houses or any other human-designed object, it just doesn't apply to animals. Why?

Think of the relationship between a watch and a watchmaker. The watchmaker puts a number of intricate and complex parts together to perform purpose. In other words, if I want a watch I need one manufactured for me. What if I wanted a puppy though? To get a puppy I go to a puppy-maker; i.e. a bitch that has given birth.

But how could this be? An intelligent agent didn't design and build me a puppy for the purpose of going for walks and throwing a ball to. Agency is involved, but it's by no means intelligent; and certainly not intelligent in the way that a human creating a robopuppy would be. If left to its own devices, the puppy would grow into a dog and then serve to start the cycle all over again. The purpose of a puppy is to make more puppies perhaps?

This argument runs into an ad infinitum, that there must be an infinite sequence of puppies going back. Yet the science shows that both the earth and the universe itself are finite. So there can't be an infinite sequence. So there was created the first dog by a magical being? Design might not have died just yet.

Life is mutable, changing over time. Dogs for example were domesticated some 15,000 years ago, and all forms of dog come from that original domesticated pack of wolves. It seems that my puppy-maker didn't always make puppies of the form I see now. Over 100 breeds and they all come from the same stock a few thousand generations ago.

So my greyhound-maker and my poodle-maker at one stage in their history made neither poodles nor greyhounds. If we follow this back, at another point it no longer made dogs. Or mammals. Or tetrapods. Or vertebrates. Or animals. Follow it back far enough and it becomes parent and eventually there's the starting point of life.


And there you have it. Back some 3.5 billion years to a pre-biotic state. The evolutionary process builds life and by the nature of the process it builds life that is adept at surviving in its environment. To posit a watchmaker is not only unnecessary, it requires a break in the process - and as David Hume would have PHILO argue, to do so on no basis of experience is speculative.

Darwin's strange inversion of reasoning allows us to reconcile the observations of how the natural world works, at the same time as explaining why there was a mismatch between such observation and our intuition to attribute structure to agency. Dawkins isn't exaggerating when he said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Being Dragged Kicking And Screaming Towards Equality

The Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church warns the election of a second openly gay bishop in the US means a split in the worldwide Anglican Communion is inevitable.

The Los Angeles Episcopalian church elected 55-year-old lesbian Reverend Mary Douglas Glasspool as assistant bishop on the weekend, the first lesbian elected to the role.

Despite the appointment, she still needs a majority of the National Episcopal Church to formally approve the position.

The election of Gene Robinson five years ago as the first gay bishop in the US caused deep rifts in the Anglican Church.

The world head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, says the election raises very serious questions for Anglican Communion as a whole.

"The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole," he said in a statement.

"The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees.

"That decision will have very important implications."

The Sydney diocese has been vocal in its opposition to the election of gay and lesbian clergy, and Bishop of South Sydney Robert Forsythe says the latest appointment is disappointing.

"I understand that homosexual people are real people who need loving commitment to Christ and helping to live faithful lives," he said.

"But to endorse this as a leader of the church sends in my view entirely the wrong message and is inconsistent with discipleship to Christ.


Split 'inevitable'

The worldwide Anglican Communion had agreed to a freeze on the election of gay clergy to stem a possible major rift within the church, and Bishop Forsythe says a split now seems inevitable.

"The Anglican Communion as a united body is now history, and now we are seeing a complete restructuring of relationships," he said.

"I think that is what the event is showing. Communion as a united body is now history.

"I am not saying this one event changes everything. It just continues to cement the trajectory towards a restructuring of the Anglican Communion in the world.

"I think it (a split) was inevitable before this frankly, but yes, I think it is inevitable now."


'Series of bluffs'

Dr Muriel Porter, an Anglican laywoman and commentator, says she welcomes the election of Mary Glasspool, and says the majority of people within the Anglican church will not have a problem with a lesbian bishop.

"We've had threats of splits going back now over 20 years. I think it is a series of bluffs," she said.

"If the church had to split - and I hope and pray it won't - [but] if it had to split over an issue of principle, in some ways it might be better than us living constantly with our nerves jangling, with the threat of split and the threat of all these terrible things constantly hanging over the church's head.

"We might actually be able to get on with things.

"So I am actually not fazed or frightened. I am actually proud of the Americans for standing by the principle of inclusion both for women and gay people."

Can this notion now that religion and morality go hand in hand die now? It's pathetic that bigotry and persecution are tolerated when they come in the form of religion. It's especially pathetic that at the same time we recognise that there is bigotry in the church, we still look to the church as a bastion for morality. There's a disconnect there, that we can recognise the value call being wrong but because it interferes with the dogma... oh lord, all hell will break loose.

Maybe all seething Anglican churches can put up on their message boards next week "God hates fags". Though this is unfair, this is the 21st century and we have a new enlightened church. "God doesn't hate fags, he just doesn't think them teaching the dogma is appropriate given Romans 1:32"

Really, do those who believe in God think he has nothing more important on his agenda than a female bishop that might have kissed a girl and liked it? It's quite simply absurd, this really should be a non-issue. Religion has shown that in the 21st century that as a whole it is playing catch-up to the moral standards of the age. Dragged kicking and screaming into a state of tolerance.