I've been meaning to post this interesting presentation by Dan Dennet which I got reminded of after reading the debates and news that followed the recent bombing in the Maldives.

Daniel Dennett is a very prominent philosopher with research centering on the very interesting areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. If you study anything to do with cognition, be it philosophy or psychology or (like me) artificial intelligence, then you are sure to have come across his papers and ideas.

This presentation comes from TED Talks (2002) and is titled "Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes". Many of you will disagree with it outright but the concepts he presents are, to me atleast, pretty powerful and food for thought in light of the bombing and the events that keep unfolding since. Check it out below...

I was rummaging through the locally revered magazine called "Dharuma" for a friend when a series of articles written by a Dr. Mauroof Hussain titled "Evolution Theory: Mulhidhunge Bahana" (translated into english as "Evolution Theory: Atheists' Excuse") caught my eye. This was interesting because Dharuma magazine has supposedly caught a particular following of readers with its team of "high profile" writers, religious teachers and allegedly educational content.

Anyway, as someone who reads dhivehi magazines only rarely, I would have had no idea what sort of arguments the article might contain were it no for the title that clearly sets the stage - this was going to be creationist ramblings. Nonetheless, I bit my tongue and read through it, reading some bits twice just to make sure I read it correctly. The article surely had a load of surprises in store and by the time I was finished reading it I was beyond speechless - the author had managed to write complete, thorough, mindless, fallacious bullshit from the very start till the very end. I encourage you all to read this "brilliant" piece, it would teach you a thing or two about making a case without really making a case, how to obfuscate, how to commit a dozen logical fallacies and still have it all fit for publishing in a magazine. If this were an intentional hoax then it surely would make Sokal blush.

The article starts off with "arguments" (attempting) to associate evolution with every sort of demonic, evil manifestation imaginable - especially to the ultra-conservative Islamic mind. Materialism, Marxism, communism, racism and atheism are served for starters as well as a claim from the outset that the theory really is devil's incarnate and no less than his greatest creation ever! The author then drops names of scientists/thinkers/inventors no less luminous than da Vinci, Galileo, Newton and Einstein themselves as having expressed belief in the existence of Allah. Many of you should know how outrageous a claim this is - I, and probably much of the rest of the world, would challenge the author to explain and show supporting evidence. First of all, philosophically speaking, it doesn't matter what who-and-who believed as it has absolutely no bearing on the truth values of those beliefs in question. However, the biggest problem with this claim regarding the belief of those scientists is the sheer dishonesty of this claim :- da Vinci, Galileo and Newton were all Christians (infact Newtons is well known to have been an extremely religious Bible believer) and Einstein was a deist/agnost. The Einstein quote "science without religion is lame and religion without science is BLIND" when read in the full context of his essay makes clear, very well, what he means by religion and what he means by a God or more precisely what he discredits as being false Gods and religions. The quote appears in his essay "Science and Religion" and is a must (short!) read for anyone who is remotely interested in Einsteins views on the relationship between science and religion - I really recommend reading it.

Anyway, the author finally finds space for dispensing something about the theory itself. Anyone with even a mild knowledge of proper evolutionary theory and its workings would just stare at the garbage inked cheerfully by the doctor. It must be said that the author fails miserably at defining what evolution theory entails. Unlike what's said in the article, evolution theory does NOT include postulations on how life arose - evolution stands independent of abiogenesis and "origin of life" theories. The article also states that evolution theory claims white supremacy but again there is no such thing inherent in evolution theory. Rather, it has to be acknowledged that Darwin indeed held racist views (very much in accordance with the then contemporary views) and did denigrate Africans. However, it would be a logical fallacy to discredit evolution theory on this basis since, again as I mentioned above, a particular person's individual views are irrelevant to the truth evaluation of a claim. I hope I can skip giving analogies to make it clearer as to why this is a such an easy argument to make and why its fallacious...

The article continues on with a hogwash of standard Creationist and/or Intelligent Design objections with arguments such as irreducible complexity, apparent design, purported perfection of creation and (current) holes in the fossil record. I'm too sleepy right now to iterate them all here but I'm sure anyone curious to know the other side of these arguments (and their answers) can find them bundled up in short neat sections at the "Objections to evolution" page on Wikipedia. Stand assured that the explanations you may read may lead to the elucidation of the false assertions made by the author, who seems to hint that humans walked and lived safely among bands of animals upto 60ft tall, 60lb heavy ferocious carnivorous animals we call dinosaurs and had been around unchanged since the Jurassic years.

Science is an evidence based enterprise that aspires to explain the world - it is not biased towards nor is hostile to any particular religion. It does not care whether its findings and theories conform to a particular preconceived framework for understanding and interpreting nature - for its goal is to build, refine and distil the best explanation of the universe and everything in it. Arguments such as the gaps in the fossil record mentioned in the article do nothing more than state a half-truth. There is no explanatory power in the creationist argument since all it does is say "God did it". Most amusingly, these particular people seem to be incapable of perceiving a God powerful enough to create a beautiful process as evolution to power the biological processes in the world just as the physical processes (or laws) govern motion, flight etc. It must be said that there are Muslims, Christians and Jews all of whom are pious and steadfast in their beliefs yet see no conflict with science and evolution - their interpretation and understanding allow for a God who creates magnificent mechanisms to drive the world without constant meddling by God himself...

After reading the article(s) in question, I was agitated enough to say something (thus the blog post!) about these sort of mindless crap being granted the authority to be published and spread without the freedom for countering arguments. I wish I am able to articulate better in Dhivehi so that I could myself write an article to respond to these sort of advocates of mysticism. I hope atleast some of you would think twice after reading articles in Dharuma and ignore the pseudoscience it packages to be passed off as modern science. It is always a delight to realize the true essences of science, the power of the scientific method and start re-learning and replacing strict ancient mysticism for a better, brighter life of knowledge and understanding. May God grant all those who aspire for such understanding the means and the will to do so.

Note (05/July/2007): My support for evolution theory does not imply anything more than just that and my criticisms of the article in question do not constitute of an attempt to support religious disbelief as some assume. I am compelled take issue with these sort of articles and ideas because it (in my view) presents bad science, incorrect information and is heavily tainted with the particular interpretation of holy books by its authors which they want to pass off as the ultimate truth. Any of you who bother to do further read up on its claims will find the extents to which most of its facts and arguments have been misquotes, misinformation and misappropriations - my post highlights a few of the more blatant ones. Such dishonesty seems to be indicative of an attempt to discredit a scientific theory that is well respected and accepted as the cornerstone in many areas of research. My goal in criticizing the Dharuma article certainly did not constitute of an attack on religion or religious belief but rather is an honest attempt to promote good science and critical thought.

It never fails to annoy me when the self-righteous (religious) folk attribute misfortunes and disasters on people’s behaviour. It is something these folk do, without fail, each and every time that chance happens to wreak some trouble.

They were quick at it when the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed, injured, destroyed and disrupted the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. According to these enlightened folk who take it upon themselves to deliver this holy message, the tsunami was no accidental natural disaster – it was a divine punishment delivering a mighty blow to all those who sinned! Apparently, the Indonesians got it because they had gotten too barbaric, the Sri Lankans and Indians deserved what they got because they were polytheistic infidels and well, Maldives got it because people were shooting up heroin and being a tad bit too shag-friendly…

These claims fall under a type of logical fallacies known as a non sequitur. Humanity has subscribed to such crazy cause-effect relations since the dawn of time. Almost always, a deity sprung up to handle the task of managing and delivering some “punishment” when the people committed some random “sin”. The Aztecs, for example, believed in a god called Tlaloc who was responsible for floods and droughts. The Aztecs appeased Tlaloc by sacrificing children. Any modern person would see the utter lack of a relationship between child sacrifice and the occurrence of floods and droughts. Similarly, any sane person would (or rather should!) realize that there is absolutely no causal link between mundane human actions and droughts, floods or whatever the choice of natural disaster or misfortune one may imagine up. The physical universe isn’t dependant on human (im)moral behaviour anymore than it is dependent on the whims and wishes of individual humans.

What is sad, or rather disturbing, is that these claims still run amok whenever disaster strikes – like the wave-flooding in the islands that Maldives is facing right now. The self appointed messiahs have the arrogance and the audacity to tell the suffering that it is all directly because of their bad behaviour: divine retribution (especially?) for those who are wavering on their true path. I tell you, the sheer depravity of preying on people’s misfortunes is just downright appalling…

Note: This post was inspired by the article titled “Gudhrathee haadhisaathakaa kurimathilaan jeheynee eemantherikamaaeku“ (local copy here) found on Adhaalathu Party’s website.

There (supposedly) are "beings" other than humans and the rest of the indexed animalia, who possess consciousness just like humans yet are made of fire (the sorts with stoichiometric combustion!), have the ability to be visible or invisible at will, can freely shape-shift (can alter size, form and colour on whim), travel around to any distance without any sort of technology (instantaneous teleportation?) and are capable of unaided interstellar travel as well. These beings (supposedly) surround us in our everyday life and manifest themselves only occasionally - usually to annoy someone on a dark road, put on a show for some night-time seafarers or take over the body of some helpless human for a (silly) revenge attack. They do not like being disturbed while they sleep in their homes – which amusingly turn out to be some leaf or a flower. They are also known to be particularly voyeuristic and often resort to harassing nude humans in bathrooms and toilets.

They are very territorial and apparently prefer to keep themselves away from any place lit (by light visible to the human eye). Thus, the human industrial revolution and widespread availability of electricity has made these being much less social and their appearances are now usually reserved for petty annoyances to humans. However, we really know they still exist because we can see meteors chasing them now and then. The meteors chase them at speeds of 30,000 miles per hour without a moment’s lapse, somehow disallowing these otherwise super-duper beings to stage an escape using one of their otherwise present super powers.

Communicating with these beings is quite hard and usually requires a person specialized in such to do so. Invocations from any one of the millennia old popular literature help initiate the communication while fire and water are often used as assisting tools. Even then, the presence of these beings can never be observed directly and any communication has to be channelled through a human medium (who effortlessly performs the miraculously hard job of vocalising their thoughts into human understandable speech and vice versa). These beings are hard to deal with, hard to make friends with and apparently can't be reasoned with. Interestingly, however, the notion of good and bad is present among them as well, although their evil mofos are so trigger happy that we have to be (only) particularly careful with mundane activities as spitting or throwing things into the dark.

These beings are known by many names - genies, jinns, ghosts etc - but we all share an unspoken understanding of exactly what these "beings" are. We are unable to see them, hear them or feel them - utterly unable to do so even with the most modern advanced tools and techniques. Yet the reality of their presence and existence is not something that just cannot be denied... no sir, not at all... just like the unicorns, the leprechauns, sasquach, loch ness monster, bigfoot, fairies, rannamaari and avattehin!

The TED Talks from the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is among my favourite online edutainment destinations and this month has seen them update the site with yet another collection of thought-provoking and informative talks from various top scientists and thinkers of today. I thought I'd give it a little exposure and drop in a mention of 3 random talks that I took a liking to...

Bonobo
I just watched a recently added talk titled "Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man" by Susan Savage-Rumbaugh. The talk is on Dr Susan's work on Bonobo apes - one of the closest hominid primates to humans. I've kept up an interest in Bonobos ever since I learnt of them (not too long ago!) and they've continued to fascinate me. They are quite similar to us in that they share more than 98% of DNA, they are tail-less and walk upright/bipedally. They've demonstrated the ability to understand when talked to, communicate via writing and fashion tools. They display altruistic behaviour, are compassionate and kind, care for their offspring pretty much the same as humans and live peacefully. Infact, their motto literally seems to be "Make Love, Not War". They are also understood to possess some of the fundamental ingredients to an intelligent society - culture and concepts of equality of individuals. Interestingly enough, unlike how human cultures have mostly been thus far, the bonobo culture is matriarchal!
- Check out the talk by Dr. Susan

Skepticism
I adore the Skeptics magazine published by the Skeptics Society. Its founder, Dr. Michael Shermer, gave a very engaging talk titled "Why people believe strange things". There's an abundance of supernatural claims and pseudo-science that litters our societies and his talk goes through some of the common claims - dowsing, creationism, UFOs, crop circles, so-called miracles and the rest of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. He encourages critical, rational thought and scientific scrutiny.
- Check out the talk by Dr. Shermer

Chemical Scum
Prof. David Deutsch, whom I had mentioned about in a previous post, delivers a rough painting of the cosmos and where we stand respective to it in a light talk titled "What is our place in the cosmos?". He draws on the contents of the universe and bodies within it, the distances between objects and the ability of the scientific method to explain and model the vast and complex universe. The brain, he says, has the tools needed for solving almost any problem: knowledge, creativity and reason. A very inspiring speech!
- Check out the talk by Prof. Deutsch

Enjoy