Are all neurosurgeons crazy?

Reposted from http://recursed.blogspot.com

I'm beginning to think so, what with Ben Carson claiming that the pyramids were used to store grain, not to bury rulers and that he had a violent past.

So it's not really a surprise to see that walking Dunning-Kruger effect-man, Michael Egnor, claiming that humans can't be apes because "Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking" and "Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not".

I'm really curious to know how Dr. Egnor knows with certainty that nonhuman animals cannot think abstractly. I guess he is just egnoring all the research that suggests just the opposite. It's not like this is hidden stuff; Egnor could read, for example, the books of Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal.
Maybe not all neurosurgeons are this batshit loony. After all, another thing that Carson and Egnor have in common is that they are both creationists. Maybe that's the real problem. Maybe you have to be immersed in jeebus-juice to believe, like Egnor does, that "Human rationality is different because it is immaterial." I guess our thinking powers are just magic; all that neurocircuitry is just there for show.

Footnotes:
1. Egypt’s pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain and were not, as archaeologists believe, tombs for pharaohs, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson, a neuroscientist, has said.
2. Michael Egnor is a neurosurgeon and creationist. He writes articles for the Discovery Institute (also known as Dishonesty Institute).

Harassment and dissemination of pornography in a scientific conference?

I just became aware of an astronomy conference organized at Uppsala whose topic is Cool Stars. The home page looks pretty nice

but once we click on "about" we find a page that has two parts. The first part describes the subject of the conference.  But the second part,  which is more lengthy, is very strange.

• ABOUT COOL STARS

Cool Stars gathers approximately 400 international experts on brown dwarfs, low-mass stars (from the pre-main-sequence through the asymptotic giant branch), solar physics, circumstellar environments, extrasolar planets, and astrobiology....

•  CODE OF CONDUCT

Cool Stars 19 is dedicated to a harassment-free workshop experience for everyone regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of workshop participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate in any workshop venue, including talks, poster sessions, and organized social activities. Workshop participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the workshop without refund at the discretion of the workshop organizers.  Click here to read our full anti-harassment policy.

What? Is this a conference in astronomy or on harassment/gender/sexual issues? Are they expecting participants to harass and be harassed? Are they expecting participants who insult others? Participants going around using sexual language? Sexual imagery? (Really? Are they expecting dissemination of pornographic material?) Something very very fishy is going on, otherwise why, on the front page of the conference, spend more space to talk about possible offenses rather than the topic per se.

But the situation becomes even worse. If we click on the anti-harassment policy we find a 3 page document that is clearly prepared in anticipation of a lot of trouble. Here are some excerpts.

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:      Verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion      Sexual images in public spaces      Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following      Harassing photography or recording      Sustained disruption of talks or other events      Inappropriate physical contact      Unwelcome sexual attention      Advocating for, or encourage, any of the above behavior.

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Exhibitors should not use sexualized images, activities, or other material. Booth staff, including volunteers, should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes or otherwise create a sexualized environment.

If someone makes you or anyone else feel unsafe or unwelcome, please report it as soon as possible.

You can file an anonymous report using this form: http://goo.gl/forms/03OCO6CGMq  

You can make a personal report by:  Calling or messaging this number: (TBA). This phone number will be continuously monitored for the duration of the event. Contacting a staff member identified by colored LOC badges and workshop t-shirts labeled STAFF or LOC.

This report is clearly prepared with the mindset that there will be lots of trouble. Conference people are probably going to harass and be harassed, exhibit sexual imagery, insult, etc. What KIND of conference is this, I wonder? Filing anonymous reports is something that was done during some dark times, like the McCarthyist era, or during Hitler's reign, among others. I'm really surprised that some people are encouraging this. Of course, if there is, indeed, a problem, then actions should be taken.

But I wonder: Is there a problem? If yes, again I ask: what KIND of conference is this? Why do they expect so much trouble?

I'm closing this posting with a screenshot showing the format of the anonymous report:

In summary, there are three alternatives:

1. Either this is a practical joke.
2. Or this is a conference where lots of trouble (harassment, sexual abuse, pornography) is expected.
3. Or this is just a normal conference and these pages were created amidst paranoia. 

Options 1 and 3 seem unlikely because they both (especially 3) convey extreme irrationality and we're in a university so we don't expect this. So option 2 seems to be the more likely one.

Or is it not?

The weakest point of any religion

Religion is a term which does not have a very good definition. Attempts for it can be found in the literature. For example, the father of sociology, the philosopher Emil Durkheim, defines religion as

a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into a single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

My fellow blogger Sabio spends quite a bit of blogging energy to elucidate this point. I am not a scholar of religion, neither a philosopher, and certainly not one who would devote time to come up with definitions of religion. (I don't have much time to waste.) Nevertheless, I think I know what religion is when I encounter it.

I am talking in rather vague terms because "religion" is not just a system which calls itself a religion. Example of these systems are Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism (all of which have the common feature of being monotheistic). It is also a system which resembles what one traditionally would call a religion. For example, the North Korean Juche is a religion. When people blindly obey someone else's orders and have reached a point where questioning them is inconceivable, then this is religion.

One can argue, based on what almost all religions proclaim, that the main requirement of every religion is the concept of belief. Now, the word itself can have many meanings. Religious belief, however, can be characterized rather precisely. After all, all religions require belief. They require faith. Have faith and you shall be saved! Have faith in god. Tony Blair established his Blair Faith Foundation in order to teach how religion influenced his politics.

Religion requires belief. Religion requires faith.

Belief is a complex concept. It is a word that can have many meanings. But religious belief has a very important feature making it uniquely distinguishable.
Religious belief about a concept X is an increasing function of the amount of evidence against X.
That is, the more we learn about the ridiculousness about X (say X=miracles), the stronger the religious belief about X is.

But belief is the weakest point of any religion. What religious people cannot get is that any time one is asked to believe without asking, without investigating, then they are possibly being tricked into something untrue. I grew up understanding that the concept of belief is terrible. I can, of course, temporarily accept something in order to go on, but I have to question it at some point.

People believe for various reasons. One is that belief is easy. It is much easier to convince yourself to believe rather than to understand, for example. Because believing takes little work. But understanding often takes a lot of hard work. Any rational person can obviously see the flaw of the (religious) belief concept.

When I teach I ask my students not to believe me. This is tough. Students have been conditioned on the idea to believe their teacher. Again, this is because it makes life easy. A student is tuned to believe that a continuous function, which takes value 1 at the beginning of an interval and 2 at the end, must take any value in between. Sure, the teacher says so. But a proof is needed. Belief is the easy thing. Proof is, typically, the hardest.

In the recent years, a number of so-called apologists (mostly of the Christian kind, but there are Muslim too) have  sprung. See, e.g., here and here and here. There are many examples of that kind. These are people who appear to be intellectual and are typically holders of advanced degrees, awards, have done serious work on some (non-religious) subject but, at some point, go crazy and start arguing that (their particular version of) religion is explained via logic, science, empirical observation. And they have lots of supporters. Sure, people are thirsty to believe; to believe that their religion is explainable because this is what these famous, important, outstanding public "intellectuals" advocate. They become the heroes of the unthinking masses. Despite all their attempts to "scientifically prove" that belief is not the main characteristic of religion, they fail, and fail badly. Religious belief remains religious belief and none of these pseudo-intellectuals have provided a gram of evidence against it.

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” [John, 20:29]

God will test believers to make sure they believe and are afraid. If they fail a second test they will suffer a painful punishment: 
O you who have believed, Allah will surely test you through something of the game that your hands and spears [can] reach, that Allah may make evident those who fear Him unseen. And whoever transgresses after that - for him is a painful punishment. [Quran, Sura 5:94]

A glimpse at the irrationality of the ex-archbishop of Greece

In the pre-blog era, I used to maintain a number of interesting facts, related to lack of logic and rationality, on my university web pages. That was a time when blogs were not so wide-spread and when I, erroneously thought, that every academic, in a scientific field, was rational. (I was mistaken. Irrationality and lack of logic exists in universities, even amongst science people.) I will transfer some of them to this blog.

The ex-archbishop of Greece, His Beatitude, Christodoulos, was known for often maintaining stupid things. Below is one of them, captured by a video. The background of the story is this: at the time (2004), he had written a book titled "Proselyte Greeks: The transition from antiquity to Christianity". In it, he maintained that the transition to Christianity was a smooth one. The irrationality of his arguments was captured in the video clip below, in which he states:

"...The [early] Christians respected the faith and religion of their ancestors and sanctified their temples which were dedicated to idolatric deites, they sanctified them by using them as Churches or by using their materials in order to build Christian Churches."

Here is a short bio of him:

His Beatitude the Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, Christodoulos Paraskevaides, was born in Xanthi in 1939. He completed his studies in the Law School (1962) and the School of Theology (1967). While a student (1961) he was ordained deacon and priest (1965). He served as a preacher, senior spiritual father (Church of Assumption [sic] of Virgin Mary) and as a Secretary of the Holy Synod. He obtained a doctorate in Theology, has degrees in French and English, and also speaks German and Italian. He is the author of many scientific [sic] and constructive books. He became Bishop of Demetrias (1974) and was Archbishop of Athens and all Greece (1998-2008).

And an amusing fact from his life:

Greece had a seven-year military dictatorship (the `junta', 1967-1974). Human rights violations were, of course, a commonplace back then, occurring on a daily basis. Christodoulos was a priest during that period. Nevertheless, he stated he was completely unaware of anything going wrong then. He had no idea of human rights abuses because `he was busy studying'. Despite his being busy studying and not being aware of any abuses, he used to accompany the dictators in public, as the following images show.