Einstein on Religion and Science

Any Scientific minded person who considers himself as a religious or an atheist, should read thses wonderful articles of Albert Einstein. These are, in a sense, an eye-opener to me, that how beautifully one could express how religion and science can be reconciled. There are four master-pieces, all of them are worth reading at a stretch. I know there will be many religious people claiming that Einstein was a ‘deeply religious’, but what I found here, that he defined the religion in totally a different way to build himself as ‘deeply religious’. Let’s go through a few excellent quotes.

On how the religion has come :

“With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation … This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear …”

Problems in the above definition of religion and his own view :

“Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. … I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. … The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. “

On morality :

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”

In praise of religion (article 1 and 2):

“The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”

Defining a religious person and religion (Article 3) :

“a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. … Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.”

In support of Science :

“For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.”

This is exactly where he sounds like an absolute Atheist :

“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? … The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. “

How religions with ‘personal God’ will play around Science :

“To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. “

A request to religious leaders to modify their approach to religion :

“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.”

Again restricting religion in the domain of idealism and attitude :

“As regards religion, on the other hand, one is generally agreed that it deals with goals and evaluations and, in general, with the emotional foundation of human thinking and acting, as far as these are not predetermined by the inalterable hereditary disposition of the human species. Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.”

On in-community brotherly love :

“For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. “

Overall, I feel the articles are really great. The gist is - Science and Religion are friends is they stay in their own ground. Science should not try to guide what is worthy and what is worthless, what we should do and what we should not. At the same time, Religion should not try to describe how the nature works, neither should it insist anything to be ‘created’ by God as a person. He condemned the idea of ‘religion of fear’, that is, the idea to tell people to be good only because some Omnipotent God will punish them otherwise after death. Overall, these come under one of the best read articles of my life time - they sound very strong.

Links once more.

Phantoms in the Brain

"Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is." - Bhagavad Gita.

Have you ever heard of Bill Marshal, an ex-Air Force Pilot, who met a stroke and lost some of his brain functionality? Since then, his capability of dealing with numbers was lost. He could explain you the fighter planes and share his experience of flying with them. But once you ask him about what is the value of one hundred minus three, he fails to answer. Not only that he can’t deal with numbers at all.

Did you hear the story of Mirabelle Kumar, a cheerful young lady, who was born without her hands? But she used to feel the existence of her hands from her childhood. Philip Martinez, who lost his arm in a motorcycle accident in San-Diego freeway, feels pain in his non-existing elbow and fingers.

One might not even heard of Diane Fletcher, a lady who survived an accident from carbon-monoxide fumes, could not recognize or count any object - largest letters on an eye-chart or number of fingers shown. Literally, she was a blind - would have failed all standard tests of blindness. But, she could pick up things or walk or even place a letter in the letter box with dexterity - without any help or even without touching the slit of the letter box.

A more interesting case was that of Ingrid, a Swiss woman, who suffered a brain damage to lose the visibility of continuity of motion. She could perfectly read books or cook in the kitchen but if she looked at a person running, she could only have seen a succession of static snapshots of the continuous motion.

The history of James Thurber sounds more common to us. He lost one of his eyes at the age of six, and later lost the vision of the other eye in a gradual process. At the time he became blind, he claimed that he could see a fantastic world full of surrealistic images. He could see bridges rise lazily into air, like balloons. He used his 'vision' creatively and drew a lot of whimsical cartoons and pictures, those became very popular.

There is a story of one-hand clapping also. Mrs. Dodds, who was paralyzed on her left side of the body after a stroke, knew that it was working very well. When she was asked to clap, she just made clapping movement with her right hand and was confident of her action.

Last, but not the least, the amazing story of Arthur, the son of a diplomat from Venezuela, who met a near-fatal accident and went to coma. Once he's back from coma, he could recall all the past and seemed to be normal with respect to outward appearances. But he had one credible delusion about his parents - that they were imposters, posing as his parents - and nothing could convince him. He even recognized the facial similarity with his 'actual' parents, but never agreed that they are his parents - even he conjured up some imaginary reasons as justification as why would they pose as his parent.

All these and much more are the topics of the book I am going through - Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, an eminent neuroscientist. He explains all these cases in depth without using much of jargons in Neuroscience. He starts with an assumption of our brain as a set of black boxes and then gradually goes onto describe each one's functionality and how they interact with each other and the limbs. More importantly, other than the above mentioned and many more case studies, he devises a few simple experiments those let us understand his point of view properly. In one of his later chapters, he explains the relationship between our brain and the image of God from the angle of Neuroscience as well as Evolutionary Psychology. In his concluding chapter, he deals with the apparent philosophical question - what is a self and what is consciousness - and how these are closely linked with our brain.

The book I would recommend for the readers who like to explore new fields and want to know about a vaguely understood area of science - neuroscience. As a deeply scientific-minded reader, I enjoyed the book from beginning to the end. It gives me the feel that how correct Newton was when he said :"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Blogs on Scientific Philosophy

A few interesting posts I have come across over wordpress thanks to wordpress tag surfer. The first one discusses how the knowledge was developed in ancient civilizations and wherefrom it started to go dark. The blogger discussed about early socirty, mythology-religion development, trade and economy and also how the religion evolved. He did not forget to mention a few wise men of ancient greece (his writing is Europe oriented).

The next one tries to explain the relationship between stress and development. The blogger diagramatically described how the fear is related to stress-development gap. And he also examplified in support of his hypotheses, with modern day issues and reactions.

The last one talks about the critical thinking - to explain how we accumulate knowledge. I have pointed out the similarity of his writing with Dawkins' letter that I have already discussed and translated too.

Happy blogging, keep it up.

Can Smokers be Wiped out by Natural Selection?

One interesting thought!! Can Natural Selection wipe out the smokers from the Earth after years of evolution? The study results point to a similar direction.

First of all, the smoking habit has to be a genetic characteristic (inherited property in other words) to be qualified to take part in evolution. Scientists, in fact, claim to have discovered the gene linked to smoking habit. The study by Dr Hidetoshi Nakamura of Keio University in Japan looked at a particular gene known to have an effect on how people process nicotine. In the human body, nicotine is mainly metabolized by the gene CYP2A6.If people are not very good at processing nicotine, then they are less likely to be interested in smoking and less likely to continue if they do start. In another study by Dr Robert Walton, of Oxford's clinical pharmacology department, variations of a gene known as the dopamine D2 receptor gene, or DRD2, reveals whether individuals are genetically programmed to be addicted to nicotine. One in three people is born with the gene.

Now let's see how the smoking habit can make us disadvantageous to reproduce. British researchers published a study claiming that a life of cigarette smoking will be, on average, 10 years shorter than a life without it. They also claimed that consistent cigarette smoking doubles mortality rates in both middle age and old age. More interestingly, Men who smoke cigarettes may experience a significant decline in their capacity to father a child, a research by a reproductive medicine specialist from the University at Buffalo indicates. Like other cells in the body, human sperm carry a receptor for nicotine, which means they recognize and respond to nicotine. The results could mean that heavy smoking overloads the nicotine receptor in human sperm and in the testes, leading to a decline in fertilizing potential. Not only that, the same study claims, smoking men also should be aware that smoking can damage their sperm DNA, passing on faulty DNA to their baby.

To sum up, smokers are likely to have less life-span with less probability to father (or mother) a child. If we bring together all theree studies, the platform for differential reproduction rate to wipe out a genetic variety seems to be in effect. Isn't those enough to stop spreading the genes for smoking? To answer in brief : No, as memes are there to manipulate.

This is where importance of memes comes to picture. Let's take an example of Indian women. They generally don't smoke because in Indian societies, smoking by women is almost prohibited. So, they carry the 'smoking gene' to pass it to the next generation as successfully as other women would have done. The smoking gene doesn't stop spreading because of the meme present in Indian societies to prevent women from smoking. The strong Indian social structure defies the Natural Selection on smokers. In a nature versus nurture debate, in this case, nurture seems to have won - and the habit of smoking will last longer in protective societies. To wipe the habit out, we require the introduction of a new stronger meme to stop smoking itself. The meme is: "Smoking is injurious to health" - and we need a strong awareness campaign.

Reference : Meme and it's activities (my old post)

Darwin, DNA, Evolution, Meme, Genetics, Science

To Change the Species - Just Change the Genome!!

The news appeared in most of the leading newspapers that scientists have successfully transplanted the entire genome of one species of bacteria to another. This is carried out by the institute lead by J. Craig Ventor, a prominent participant in the human genome sequencing.

The researchers worked with Mycoplasma mycoides (a microbe that infects goats) because it has one of the smallest genetic blueprints of any known self-replicating organism and lacks cell walls, making it easier to insert new DNA. They isolated its entire genetic code - one chromosome that forms a circle-stripping it of all its proteins, and then added genes to make a host organism blue (to make it easy to pick out in a Petri dish) as well as resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline. The scientists added close relative Mycoplasma capricolum (another goat pathogen) to a solution containing M. mycoides' genetic material and gently mixed it for a minute. After three hours of incubation, the resulting microbes were exposed to the antibiotic tetracycline.

The Evolution and Natural Selection are played once more in the labs as the variants having favorable mutations (artificially imposed) survived and the rest perished. After three days, large colonies of blue, antibiotic-resistant microbes had formed. Roughly one in 150,000 of the M. capricolum microbes had absorbed the new DNA and transferred it to daughter cells. The daughter cells displayed no trace of their original DNA while taking on the entire form and function of the original bacterium.

The ultimate goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming.

Scientists remain unable to create synthetic life in the lab. "If we're trying to understand the origins of life and cellular life, it would be ideal to have all the chemical components in a soup to spontaneously go together and form a cell", Venter says, "We're a long way from that."

References :
1. Sciam
2. NYT

DNA, Evolution, Genetics, Origin of Life, Science

Pushing the Limits of Speciesism

I heard about a lot of hybrids, but never of one involving humans, except in fiction stories. Now, those stories are becoming truth, may be sooner than I expected. Britain has dismissed the plan to outlaw an effort to create a human-animal embryo. Under the new guidelines, Scientists are allowed to create three different kinds of embryos. The Gurdian notes :

"The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a chimeric embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo. The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed."

The scientists will be allowed to grow such an embryo for only two weeks - to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It also restricts the creation of "true hybrid" embryos, which would involve fertilizing a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa. It would also be illegal to put them inside human womb (don't know about the animal one). This kind of embryos would be the major source in the stem cell research.

The moral brigade is already started shouting against it. I got a few letters on the internet those describe it as 'Frankenstein science'. However, they might not know that Chinese have already created such an embryo for a similar purpose. Other experiments are proceeding quietly in research facilities around the world. At the Mayo Clinic, scientists created pigs with human blood. Stanford University in California is considering attempting to create mice with 'human' brains.

The new regulations came as a U turn over Britain's last decision to outlaw it. Many scientists like Dawkins put huge efforts behind it - to set morality free from religion. Dawkins said once that a human embryo is 'biologically nothing different from an Amoeba', yet we shout against its use in stem cell research as it is 'would-be-human'.

However these researches will definitely push to revisit our ancient way to describe a 'human-centric' morality. As Darwinian Evolution said and Genetics later verified, we are very closely related cousins. These experiments are taking that view a bit further. A rat with a human brain might possibly be able to suffer similar emotional pain to that of a human being. So, a 'human-centric' morality can be called an example of 'speciesism'. In this video, Dawkins talks in favor of animal rights and against speciesism.

"Today we live in a specisist world. We are automatically, without thinking, without question assume that there's one law for Homo sapiens and one law for the rest of the animal kingdom. That is speciesism. Now of course, if you object the speciesism, you are in a sense letting yourself wide open to reductio ad absurdum when people will ask - where will you stop? Should you care for cabbages because there is an evolutionary continuum between us and cabbages if you go sufficiently back? You'd be starved to death, if you are that insistent upon rejecting specisism. My answer to that is that we should not be any kind of '-ist' of that kind. We have rather a continuum as a sliding scale from Gorillas and Chimpanzees being very close to us and cabbages being very long way away. And there is no way why we should erect a wall at any particular fence. There are some animals who suffer, can think, can reason, can suffer emotions which deserve and must have a greater moral consideration from us than other animal."

He continued to make a case for other animals to be treated with minimal morality or to stretch the morality of our perception:

"What I am saying is that it's a matter of a merest accident that the intermediates happened to be extinct. That's the only thing that enables us to erect this great fence around Homo sapiens to say that there are humans in one side and the whole of the rest of the animal kingdom on the other side. It's very hard to make a purely scientific case for conserving any particular species. ... The only case I can make is the emotional case, and what's wrong with that? We are emotional beings. I feel emotional about it. I want to save gorillas, to save rhinos; I want to save these magnificent creatures which are built up over millions of years of evolution before they go forever. It's an irrevocable thing and that is an emotional argument."

I wonder what position the religious people would take on this since it cannot be called a 'human'. Will it have a soul? I'm pretty sure that liberalist and extremist religious people will fight once more. Let's wait and find out what their stance would be.

Reference : Dawkins write up on Speciesism. The list of books on speciesism at Amazon.

A Letter to a Daughter

In his interview, Dawkins said about child-indoctrination and why he considers it as a child-abuse. He also mentioned that a true education of children should include teaching of all kinds of religion, including atheism. Also, they should be encouraged to have a critical view on religion, if they wish to. However, he did not actually mention how that kind of education will look like. In his letter to his 10 year old daughter Juliet, I can see a glimpse of that scientific education.

Dawkins classified belief into 'good' and 'bad' categories. He tries to answer the critical question on why anybody should 'believe' in science. He explains what is evidence and how carefully science gather it. He then cited three other popular reasons for belief - "tradition," "authority," and "revelation." He presented examples for all these and explained how they might drift one away from truth. He didn't only talk about religion, but also about language and other traditions. In the end he separates out the knowledge of "revelation", "tradition" and "authority" from the knowledge out of evidences and guided her to choose knowledge-resources carefully.

I cannot but quote a few lines from his letter. A wonderful similarity between detectives and the scientists are the way the find out evidences. Dawkins says :

"Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder."

He even classified 'love' based on evidence and without evidence. He said :

"There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them."

And of course on child-indoctrination :

"It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. ... Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong."

Of course his most valuable guidance to her daughter comes with :

"And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say."

I am trying to translate it in Bengali. In case I am done, I will update this blog to have that link too. Till then read the finest English letter from Richard Dawkins - the smartest intellectual.

Genetics to Biotechnology

It was always a challenging task for human beings to produce the ‘human-hormones’ outside a human body. The reward was well known. A disease caused by the lack of this particular hormone can be cured easily by injecting that artificially produced hormone.

Let’s take the case of Insulin. A patient of Diabetes requires regular injection of Insulin since their body fails to produce it naturally. Until 70’s, the major source of Insulin was domestic mammals like cow and pig. Due to close evolutionary relationship with human beings, this Insulin was almost similar to human insulin in structure. Hence, these sources used to work for most of the cases. However, there were side effects of this method – like skin rashes.

The advent of a couple of technological breakthrough changed the entire scenario. First, the DNA was discovered. Then it was established that the amino acid sequence in DNA strands are actually replicated in ribosome to produce different proteins. In other words, the DNA code on the chromosome works as a template to the protein produced in the cell. The other milestone was the discovery of Recombinant DNA – a form of DNA that is achieved by combination, insertion and deletion of more than one DNA strands.

Bacteria have a second set of DNA molecules other than those in their Chromosome. This is called a plasmid. The successful strategy by a company named Genentech to produce Insulin uses these plasmids efficiently. Genentech researchers produced artificial genes for each of the two protein chains that comprise the insulin molecule. The plasmid is then inserted into the bacteria named E. Coli. The bacteria multiply and at the same time produced either of the two protein-chains, in presence of lactose. At the end, the bacteria are killed and the Insulin chains are separated. The protein-chains are then merged to produce Insulin.

The fact is that the person who discovered Recombinant DNA – Herbert Boyer, started Genentech. He was funded by a venture capitalist, Bob Swanson. They formed the World’s first Biotechnology firm, with a capital of close to $1000. However, when they were ready to launch their product, Eli Lilly was the market leader in Insulin business with 85% market share. Genentech avoided the collision and signed contract with Lilly to market their product. In September 1980, Genentech went public. The share price shoot up from $35 to $89 within hours of trading and both of them became instant millionaires.

The same concept of Recombinant DNA is used even today in Biotechnology, to produce artificial proteins, and getting used in every sphere of Life. A chapter of the book DNA : The Secret of Life by James Watson, is dedicated to various biotechnological efforts. The most interesting one is described like this :

So-called dragline silk, which forms the radiating spokes of a spider web, is an extraordinarily tough fiber. By weight, it is five times as strong as steel. … the silk-protein producing genes have been isolated and can be inserted into other organisms, which can thus serve as spider-silk factories. This very line of research is funded by Pentagon … soldiers may one day be clad in protective suits of spider-silk body armor.

Something that started with innovations ended up making money once more. With the advent of Biotechnology, the prime focus of research in Genetics took a new turn to include commerce in the agenda. For human society, the research that started with Watson-Crick Double Helix model slowly begins to produce fruits in direct application.

Reference:

1. DNA The Secret of Life by James Watson : Chapter Five titled as – DNA, Dollars and Drugs: Biotechnology
2. Biotechnology describes the Insulin production process.
3. Wikipedia
4. Protein Synthesis described.
5. History of Insulin.

Writing in Bengali

For the first time I am writing in Bengali on the topics I cover in my blog. It's a great experience to write in mother tongue. The article, already published in the mukto-mona site, is again on the interview of Richard Dawkins. I was always skeptic about my Bengali writing skill, but ultimately somehow managed to produce something. One of the questions was eventually dropped from the translation since I was unable to get a fitting Bengali translation for 'compartmentalize'. I am really thankful to my wife for helping me out in crtical translations - she again proved that Bangladeshi Bengalis have superior control over Bengali. Thanks to Avijit Roy of Mukto-Mona for publishing my article. And of course thanks a lot to the Bengali word processing software, Bornosoft. It's really interesting to know that this excellent word editor (download the free version) has been developed by someone who is a doctor by profession!!

Coming back to my writing, I am planning to write up an article on Daniel Dennett's view of Atheism. Also, I am eager to write about DNA stuff I am reading from the books of James Watson. I would also write on brain and consciousness inspired by a book from V. S. Ramachandran. This time, I have to write in Bengali too. May be it will add a few extra hours of work in my weekend, but the pleasure I derive from the writing is priceless.

For next couple of months, I am going to stay at Shanghai, China. During the visit, I am planning to concentrate on China specific topics, especially on Chinese culture. I am already a little bit worried about the Chinese food and work-culture. Yet, nothing is wrong if I hope for the best !!

Bornosoft, Bengali software, Bengali editor.

The Evolution FAQ

I was planning to write about Evolution FAQ for long. It's boring to fight against all apostates of Evolution visiting their own blogs. Rather, if I can prepare a platform at my own blog to fight those, I get a better opportunity pounce on them. By the way, let me first acknowledge that this particular piece is going to be mostly be compiled from various sources in Internet.

The evolution is best described as :
1. is a fact,
2. is also a number of theories,
3. is Science,
4. is also scientific,
5. is naturalistic and purely mechanistic,
6. is falsifiable,
7. is testable,
8. is predictive,
9. has been observed;
9a. in the field
9b. in the laboratory,
10. has occurred in the past,
11. is still occurring,
12. will continue to occur in the future.

Further, we can also note that evolution:

13. is not atheistic (nor Communistic, Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, etc.),
14. is not evil,
15. is not mandated by law to be taught in US public schools,
16. is not a cosmological theory (i.e., "it don't do origins"),
17. is not a religion nor Religion,
18. is not determined by popular opinion (as can be said of any science),
19. is not a socio-political program or paradigm,
20. is not dependent on the supernatural,
21. does not claim that "Man came from apes",
22. is not progress,
23. has not, will not and cannot be proven (as can be said of any science),
24. Is not random nor relies on 'blind chance',
25. does not violate the second law of thermodynamics,
26. Does not deny (a) God(s), and finally,
27. Falsifying evolution does not prove Creation.

Sounds interesting? Continue reading ... By the way, my pick of the quote would be :

The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Th us there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. The probability that evolution is the correct explanation of life as we know it may approach 99.9999...9% but it will never be 100%.

However I would like to pick up a few more so called technical questions to answer. The pick of the questions are :
1) What is the application of Evolution, or, in other words, can evolution predict anything?

A very good application can be the creation of hybrid species. These species are been created matching the environment they are going to live, so that they can maximize production. This is derived from the fact that nature does select. If everything were created, we would not be able to create new species.
Many predictions made by theory of evolution are proven true. Darwin predicted the existence of 'unit of heredity' that was proved to be gene. And, the genetic similarities the species share among them, are the living evidences of evolution. More recently, the same theory explains the existence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, who've mutated to resist antibiotic (e.g. penicilin), and 'selected' to become the majority and can resume attacks.

2) If humans are from monkeys then how does monkeys still exist?

Human beings did not evolved from monkeys. They share a common ancestor with monkeys. And a new species generally comes out of the other only if they are geographically isolated. So one can safely assume, that there were at least two groups of apes/hominoids, one evolved to become humans, the other became monkeys.

3) Even if we accept natural selection, what's the proof that it leads to speciation?

I should refer to the speciation events observed in the past in front of modern human eyes.

That's it from my side. I know I could have written a lot more than this, but somehow, I'm satisfied with this. If anybody else suggests me about any common misconception, I am ready to clarify him.
Further reference :
1) FAQ 1 A good technical one.
2) FAQ 2 brief but to the point.

Videos on Evolution

The Discovery channel on Evolution of life on Earth is amazing and entertaining. Here's the list of of the links -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12. The program is named as "Walking With Monsters". In fact the entire set uploaded by TruthTheory should be watched.

An knowledgable description of the process is found in Dawkins' video -
The evolution of the eye. The full video is available in part 1 and part 2, titled The Blind watchmaker. Another video, comparatively less attractive, was the Nice guys finish first.

The wonderful story of Human evolution is at 5 parts -
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. The series is named as "Human Life - Evolution To Self-Evolution". It also lists the proofs gathered with respect to human evolution.

Evolution, Science, Dawkins, Darwin.

Towards a science-aware society

Of late I have been writing on the ill-effect of religion to resist the science and the scientific study of nature. After writing on the Memetics of the religions, I decided to look further deep to understand why exactly science is obstructed – is the religion the root cause or human nature itself blocks the development. I discovered that the intuitiveness, a virtue of a human being, is considered to be the worst enemy of science education. In other words, human beings are programmed to oppose science instinctively. The best explanation comes in favor of it by analyzing the natural learning process of a human being.

Prior to exposure to organized study of science, children use their intuition to judge and gather knowledge about the world they see – both physical and social knowledge. The examples social knowledge can include the identification of parents and close relatives. The physical domain experiences include the observational fact that objects fall in the ground or it hurts more if dropped from higher places.

The problem with teaching children the science is not what student is lacks, but what the student has already assumed to be the truth as per physical domain experience. As an example, once a child ‘knows’ that objects fall, it’s difficult to convince him that the Earth is spherical in shape, because they perceive that people should ‘fall’ out of the bottom half of the sphere. Also, a flat world fits their observation that they can see, sometimes, in a dilemma, they pick up a false idea of a flat livable flat place on top of a spherical Earth.

Michael McCloskey, a professor of Cognitive Science in John Hopkins University, conducted a survey among adult American students to find out how scientific they are. He took the domain of objects in motion, something that people both read theories and observe a lot of times in their day to day life. He presented diagrams to depict a physical condition and asked the students how the motion of the object would be in those conditions. He asked how a ball should continue after coming out of curved tube, what trajectory a ball should fall when dropped from a moving aero plane or from the roof and many more of these. The result was strikingly different from what was expected, people went by ‘common perception’ or what we see in life. Most of them told that the ball from the aero plane will fall straight, or come out of a curved tube in a curved motion. Interestingly, when asked about the motion of water out of a curved hose-pipe, they mentioned it to be straight, since it comes into their direct space of observation.

McCloskey concluded that everyone (children or adults) builds a naïve theory in their brain out of the observations they make. These theories are often wrong and also carry casual explanations along with them. These naive theories are dominant in ancient scripts and continue to be the base of pseudo-science. A sustainable knowledge of science needs to overcome these barriers of naïve theories within a human being.

To overcome this resistance, the establishment of trustworthy source is necessary. Children, when unable to verify most of the claims, try to verify the sources of the claim. To a child, parents and the closer relatives are the most trustworthy source. So, in case science teacher in school teaches them about evolution and parents back home opposes that, then, they are bound to take the parents’ one. Not only that, they grow idea about books and newspaper those are trustworthy. They tend to believe ideas from an adult who is confident and who can map their theories to real life. Most notable point here is the trustworthiness they gather, carries to their adulthood. And it holds true for religious, political and moral beliefs also. The idea to overcome science resistance is to inject science at every level of information source, so that people understand them as trustworthy, even if it conflicts the naïve theories in mind.

In India, the presence of naïve theories in the form of superstitions is very potent. One example I can pick up, is related to “Snakes eating milk and banana”. These theories are present from religious background and get verified by the children from their trustworthy adults. I used to believe that snakes really eat them as society elders talked about them. I came to the correct knowledge only after a science campaign run on television. The naïve theories (example: firm land should be kept idle for a certain period of time to retain land-fertility) present among farmers are also the result of their intuitions, and campaigners find them difficult to replace with modern science (following crop-rotation).

The discussion above points out that we need more prominent scientists to come up at the stage, at public debates or at television programs to articulate and defend science as a unique process of acquiring knowledge. The society today, if it is superstitious and religious like that of India, is a result of egoistic apathy of the scientists, who ignore their social responsibility to convey their message to common people. More research and more innovations might bring more money to them, but ultimately, in a democracy, people rules. So, a social awareness of the science is the only way people can become scientific, or at least can consider science as a trustworthy source of information.

Science, Cognitive Science, Atheism, Evolution, Society, India

Pseudo-Science and the Religion

The changes in life that Science has brought about are really outstanding. If one considers how a similar human life used to be a century ago and compares it with that of today, one cannot deny the positive role of establishing truth by logical reasoning discarding the faith. At the same time, the rapid advancement of science has left millions with virtually no knowledge in science, where they tend to believe science as 'just another faith' and not based on pure reasoning. Moreover, common men, who even have some knowledge of science, don't always use their scientific acumen to reason everything around them. These gaps in popular understanding of science are hugely manipulated by neo-priests and 'religious' scientists.

The dangerous trend in these section of people spreads like a virus. A learned person, having a degree in science, is powered enough with scientific jargons to provide excuse for what actually is inspired by his faith. The 'excuse' used to 'justify' faith or a superstition, are all categorized as 'pseudo-science'. These 'excuses' spreads among the have-nots of science like virus. One of the classic examples could be what Sujai mentioned in his article on Vaastu. People follow Vaastu purely based on faith, having some excuses derived from scientific ground. And, as virus spreads, Vaastu is also becoming more and more popular.

What inspires pseudo-scientific excuses from the people who know science? It is simple - ego matters - it's another case of self-denial. They want to defend their faith and also their knowledge in science. It's really difficult to pursue a 'pure scientific life' in India, since most of the population is still deeply religious. At the same time, widespread effort of educationists has opened the window of scientific education in India. Hence, a generation is created who are taught science at school and faith at home. Unable to reconcile both, people fall victims to pseudo-science.

Let me take a few more examples. Among Indian Hindus, not having beef is based purely on faith, still pseudo-scientists come up with their version against eating beef - pointing to social value of cow or promoting violence against animals by cow-slaughter as excuses. However, none of them will take beef even in abroad, where cow doesn't have any social value. They'll even refuse if the meat of a cow that's not slaughtered but dead in an accident. Similar arguments are cited by the Vegetarian people as well. Muslims (Jews too), by their faith don't take pork, but often cites excuses that pig carries a lots of worms(tapeworm - Taenia solium). Even though it is scientifically proved that pork boiled above 100C for a minute (which is mostly done in all Indian preparations) is free from worms and parasites, it's hard to find any pseudo-scientist having boiled pork. To frustrate these pseudo-scientists, we can take a look at meat consumption statistics in USA. The major sources of meat are - beef, chicken and pork - confirming that these neither harm your economy, nor your health. Similar pseudo-science exists to defend the specific way of slaughter also.

To conclude, let me reaffirm that the purpose of my article is not to criticize faith, but to criticize the people who can't keep faith and science separate. A country, where 95% people are science-illiterate and superstitious, this practice can spread like virus and replace the original aim of science to educate people based on pure reason and logic. A war against the superstitions should include an agenda to fight against pseudo-science also. A better society is a society free of superstitions, let's uproot them before the grow more.

India Science Religion

The Life outside Earth

I think that by now everyone has added a new name in the General Knowledge memory - Gliese 581 c. It's not only the name of a newly discovered planet having an environment similar to that of Earth, but also is synonymous to an ongoing threat to remove Humans and their beloved Earth from the center of life-creation.

It was long believed in ancient and medieval ages that the earth and human beings are special creation of God. Galileo and his follower Charles Darwin has broken into that house of faith with a powerful set of observations. While Galileo removed Earth from the center of the Universe, Darwin put humankind back to the nature, just another species evolved in a complex natural process.

Coming back to possibilities of life outside the Earth, one can divide the approach in two different steps. The first would be to search the Earth-like planets, in the 'Habitable zone', the next could be the search for life on the planet. Only when the step one is confirmed, people generally look into the step two.

While the existence of 'intelligent life' in our Solar system is almost (Science really cannot disprove anything) impossible, the search for the preliminary form of life is still on. The best bet on this topic is possibly Europa, the 'moon' of Jupiter. It has a hypothesized ocean beneath its icy surface, which is supposed to contain life. It also has Oxygen in its atmosphere. The same kind of life might be present in Ganymede and Callisto. Jupiter and Saturn could have been a destination of Ammonia based life as hypothesized by Carl Sagan. Besides, NASA reported strong evidence of getting life in Mars.

The extra-solar planets are still open to all kinds of life possibilities. That is why the discovery is such an important milestone in Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. However, these planets are detected via some indirect method, hence the confidence attached to the properties of the planet discovered is considered low.

On 24th this month, Scientists at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile claimed they had found the first Earth-like planet. The planet orbits within the habitable zone of Gliese 581, a red dwarf star which is a scant 20.5 light years from Earth. If oxygen or methane (tell-tale biological gases) are found in Gliese 581c's atmosphere, this would be good circumstantial evidence for life. Dr Malcolm Fridlund, a European Space Agency scientist, said the discovery of Gliese 581c was "an important step" on the road to finding life. Interestingly, Gliese 581c is so close to the Earth that if its putative inhabitants only had our level of technology, they could - just about - pick up some of our radio signals, such as the most powerful military transmitters.

One could remember the famous Franc Dreck equation to find out how difficult it could be to find an evidence of life on the Earth. It is not only extremely difficult, it costs a lot also. Due to lack of funding, a lot of projects could not take off in recent years. However, the importance of such a project can never be undermined. It would help us to identify how the life grows, or possibly what the life actually is. May be, also to create new form of life.

Astronomy,Science