Parasite Rex

In my on-going quest to learn more and more about the many paths that modern science has taken us down, I've tried to read important or otherwise interesting works regardless of how long ago they were published. Much of my interest has been in areas of evolution (as the title of this blog would indicate). Within the past few years I've read books from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) to Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene (1976) and E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature (1978) right up to Dawkins The Ancestor's Tale (2004). I've tried to approach, without prejudice, books that were written prior to the most current material on a subject. This has worked really well for me, and I've read gem after priceless gem.

Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (2000) by New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer is just such a gem. It reminded me, yet again, that I should never limit my reading to books hot off the presses. Every chapter is full of fascinating examples of the parasites of our planet, the various life-cycles that each of them go through, the evolutionary relationships between them and similar parasites and the how they changed in the evolving world of their hosts. By books end, you will be impressed not only with their diversity, but with how dependent ecosystems are on their survival as well as receiving a new awareness of our own parasitism of our planet. And it brings up the fascinating question: do parasites actually drive natural selection?

Additional great reading I have come across from Zimmer include An Intimate Guide to Human Origins (2005), Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea (2001) and he writes some excellent short science articles at his popular blog "The Loom".

Another Look at AIDS and HIV

About 15 months ago I offered some thoughts on the controversy of AIDS. At that time I knew very little about the subject and, being interested, started digging into the science. There was then, and remains now, a minority viewpoint that the idea that HIV causes AIDS is untrue.

After hearing a lot from both sides, I concluded that I still didn’t know much and will, provisionally, accept the consensus viewpoint unless someone can come up with the scientific evidence that will turn the consensus around (I'm not a scientist, but I think this is the way science is supposed to work). It still hasn’t happened and I personally doubt that it will. There is too much evidence for the standard AIDS paradigm.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t good questions that still have not been adequately answered, but I believe they will be in good time. Some of the new facts may weaken some of the notions that are currently held but, again, I don’t think it will be so dramatic as to completely upset the applecart. It will be more corrective than a total replacement of theory.

Here’s a good example along these lines. The depth of the tragedy is, happily, not as bad as the proponents of the standard model would have led us to believe. Good science includes good statistical science.

Get With The Al Gore Rythym

It makes sense. We need Al Gore as the next President of the United States.

Let's review:

He won the election in 2000, but due to the Supreme Court decision George Bush was seated in the White House.

Gore has been right all along about the necessity of us being good stewards of the environment. What was once laughed off as a Goofy Gore sideshow has now been accepted, even by the Bush administration, as being a problem (even if they still claim the problem wasn't due to human abuse of the planet).

He was right on Sept 23, 2002, way ahead of his time, in saying that a war on the sovereign state of Iraq was a bad idea, that it wasn't justified on the reasons set forth by the administration and that it was a diversion from the real war on the terrorists.

And he is right currently, as he points out in his new book The Assault on Reason, that we are slipping quickly away from the democratic principles that our Founders had in mind when they set up the country with it's separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

He is right in his cogently outlined reasons for impeaching Bush (even though he never actually calls for impeachment in the book). It's time to have an intelligent statesman running the country and, as former President Jimmy Carter says, we have no better than Al Gore. Furthermore, he deserves the opportunity of completing the Presidency that was taken from him 7 years ago.

I called for the impeachment of Bush here in this blog after the warrantless invasion of our privacy by secretly and illegally collecting our phone records was revealed. I wish that was the only good reason for impeachment and that our country was not in such a disastrous state. But we know a lot more now than we did then. The reasons for impeachment are summed up quite well here and a devastating indictment was recently issued by Keith Olbermann on the MSNBC show Countdown and can be seen in this video. I sincerely hope that the Demos in congress have the spine to do what needs to be done. But even if they don't, the Bush era is crawling to a close and we need to look to the future and a return to true leadership, both within our own borders and in the world at large (where Bush has managed to turn a wealth of goodwill into the poverty of distrust).

Al Gore is the best potential candidate for the job and yet he isn't even running for office - YET. You can do something to voice your concerns and desires right here. I hope you'll take a few moments and do so. Even if you think you dislike Gore, your reasons are probably much weaker than you think. Does he bother you because he "talks like an intellectual"? Good! We need a really intelligent President. Swallow your personal disdain and do what's right for the country.

Miracles Debunked

I can disprove the existence of miracles. Of course, you have to be open minded! I'm not asking much. Just be as open minded as you are towards the possibility that miracles do happen.

For the sake of definition, what is a miracle? If a child loses their pet, prays to god for it's safe return and a day later it shows up at the back door, did we witness a miracle? Some would say, yes, in a way. Others might need a bit more. How about if you were about to lose your family home to the bank, prayed for a miracle, and hit the lottery jack-pot that night? That would convince a lot more folks. How about if a doctor has declared that a child suffering from cancer is a hopeless case, will be dead within 2 months, yet after prayer there is absolutely no sign of a tumor ever having been there? I think even a mildly religious person would be likely to see signs of a miracle here.

If any of these examples fit your definition of a miracle then I probably can't disprove miracles to you. I will, however, suggest that there is a much surer definition of a miracle. It would be something that you pray for that absolutely can not happen in the natural world, yet it does happens. I have a couple of good examples, but there are many such. 1) A young soldier loses a limb in a battle and the limb is destroyed. Intercessory prayer commences and one day he awakes to find his or her arm back on their body, intact. 2) A child dies from after a doctor concluded that this would be the outcome of the disease. The child is prepared for burial and, several days after the death, rises during the funeral, fully alive. Now, in this second example, it is very important not to bring in to the equation any "death" that was followed within a day by a "rising from the dead". This can happen in the natural world. Physicians and medical examiners make mistakes. But if a body has been laying in a death state for a few days and prepared for burial, then we know that the person is indeed dead. Should they "rise" at this time, it would truly be a miracle.

There is no doubt that in the above listed scenarios, people have prayed and prayed mightily, with all of their faith in god, for him to deliver just exactly such a miracle. There is no reason for a faithful person not to in such a situation. There is nothing in the holy scriptures that would indicate that god does not perform these sorts of miracles. To the contrary, there are examples of folks being "raised from the dead" in the bible, provided as proof of miracles. There is no time limit on gods powers, one assumes, and he could surely just as easily raise someone from the dead a week after death as a day after. The bible encourages believers to pray for whatever is in their heart and that god can provide it. Should we assume there are no grieving parents who continue to pray with all their strength for the return of a lost child, even a week later? And certainly soldiers who have had an amputation prayed to be restored.

Why is there not a single case of "miracle" that can live up to this standard? Simply because there is no such thing as a miracle. All other "miracles" were simply coincidences that were possible in the natural world. This should be sufficient to prove to anyone that there is no such thing as a miracle. Unless, of course, someone can provide evidence of this type of miracle ever having happened. If this interests you, please check out this short video called "The Best Optical Illusion in the World" and visit the website for Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

Angry Atheists

There has been a lot going on in literature these past 9 months or so in regards to god. If you've been living on the Galapagos, She's under attack! Sam Harris (Letter To A Christian Nation), Daniel Dennett (Breaking The Spell), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and, most recently, Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) have all kind of piled on the poor 80% of American adult public that professes some sort of religious affiliation. It's kind of a tough position to be in. On the one hand they DO have the numbers on their side, on the other they have not one iota of evidence for what they believe. Of course, the meanies don't have any evidence AGAINST them, but that's hardly the point. It's really not up to anyone to disprove their cherished beliefs. It's up to THEM to prove it. And they can't.

Unfortunately for fundamentalists (those who believe in the literal truth of every word, as being the word of god, of whatever particular faith you hail from) there is plenty of evidence that this particular way of believing is false. And this is where the problem arises because the vast majority of believers claim that their holy books are indeed the literal word of their god. So instead of accepting indisputable facts, which completely contradict this "infallible word", they hang on the book - blindly.

This causes some rather interesting cases of cognitive dissonance. For instance, they have (mostly) come to grips with facts of nature such as "the world is not flat, it's spherical", "the earth is not the center of the solar system (let alone the universe)", "the sun came into existence before there was any light in our solar system, before there was a Planet Earth and before any plants could possibly have existed". They accept these scientific facts despite the Holy Bible indicating (from the mind of god) that none of these facts are true. They fully profess to believe the moral truth of the 10 Commandments, while totally rejecting the explicitly clear punishments, ordered by their god, for breaking any of the commandments. (Not many folks believe in capital punishment for adultry (Leviticus 20:10), dishonoring parents (Exodus 21:17), or failing to keep the sabbath holy (Exodus 31:15). These are not a handful of odd examples. They are typical of biblical texts. If you haven't read any of the bible recently, pick one up and read some Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Personally, I'm not particularly angry at believers. I'm actually amused with them for the most part. Many are otherwise quite intelligent people who completely check their intellectual garb at cloak room when they enter the cathedral of belief. I'm quick to admit that most believers I know are decent people and I imagine they think their faith helps them. The only thing that makes me angry is that when we give respect to faith, we give cover to those who take it a step further and, having no cognitive dissonance, simply assert that all of their holy words are indeed from god, including all of the more harmful parts of the dogma. Please go to this and if you only watch one clip watch "Part 2".

While there is no reasonable hope for an end of faith, there is much hope that a more enlightened populous will reject those who claim to know anything mystical as an absolute. So my suggestion is to simply snicker at anyone who makes any reference to a personal god. While I like a lot of these folks as individuals, they deserve mild ridicule for the superstitions and public mockery (at least of the brighter ones) is probably the best way of effecting some level of change. Polls have certainly shown a rise in the percentage of people who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic over the past 50 years. At some point this will either rise sharply or our country will become second-class in areas of science, medicine and technology.

So if you read all of this and happen to think that god loves you, listens to your prayers, does miracles and will give you a place to stay after you die, all I can do is this.

Richard Dawkins On O'Reilly Factor

Tonight (April 23, 8 & 11 PM, EDT) Richard will be on with O'Reilly. I'll try to include a link here to the video after it has aired. Richard will be hard-pressed to get though to O'Reilly, but it's a highly watched show and will give viewers who have never seen him a chance to hear the straight story for a change.

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Here's the video link (posted April 24)

Boriqua Jesus

Hallelujah! Jesus has returned - as a Puerto Rican! Who knew? What's next? The return of Buddha as a Canadian? I checked the Vegas odds, and it was 2500 to 1 against Puerto Rico. Israel was 5-2, which is where I would have put my money.

The Real Jesus Fish

And here's the story.

Surviving The Singularity

If you have not seen this short video, it's highly recommended.

Hangin' Out at the Wedge

Do any of you have a problem with an undocumented gay Mexican biologist, earning a living here doing stem-cell research while moonlighting as an atheist high school evolution teacher who mocks Intelligent Design, married to his life-mate and then protesting U.S. policies by refusing to say the words "under God" in the Pledge and then burning the flag?

I don't.