Laplace's Demon and the Bad Guy

Today's subject was choice. At the outset, it seems obvious that people have choice. We talked about, essentially, sentience and the importance of choosing to choose - metacognition. A lot of people pointed out that going through life on autopilot is fairly common in this day and age. We all do it at certain points, whether it's because we don't feel the need to, we haven't the concentration, or we have other things on our minds.

The conversation took another bend as it became necessary to define our terms. Free will and metacognition are different things. Yes, we do not always make specific choices, that's true, but whether or not our ability to make decisions is an illusory facet of our lives, is something that we got into a lot more.

A few people were really uncomfortable with the idea of causal determinism: the idea that every cause is an effect and, in turn, another cause. Some of us felt that that was a sort of damning prognosis on life and an abnegation of responsibility. After all, if all of your decisions are the product of genetics, circumstance, and biology no one can really blame anyone for anything else, right?

Susan pointed out that understanding that a person does things because of a confluence of forces helps us to empathize with them, rather than believe them to label them.

This segued into a talk about the criminal justice system, and something that most of us - it seemed - could agree on: the idea of punishing criminals, rather than trying to figure out ways to prevent them from committing crimes or getting the to understand why wrong is wrong, etc. is not terribly beneficial. This is one of the things that Harris talks about specifically in this (long) video:

Some of us did feel that it might be impossible to get people to understand their own moral deficiencies. Psychopaths, for instance, may have neurological make up that does not allow them to be taught moral lessons - see Jon Ronson's The Pyschopath Test.

James and Suzy helped articulate a few of our linguistic problems a bit better. James pointed out that if we believe that everything in the universe is material and must follow material rules, then it must all be predictable. If we do not accept that everything in the universe must be material, then things may not be as predictable.  The if clause here is the key: if we accept that. Our group was a bit divided on this point.

Suzy eloquently pointed out that we are talking about the difference between whether or not human beings are complex robots or there is, to borrow a phrase, a ghost in the shell, so to speak.

Laplace's Demon is a thought experiment - untestable because of practicality and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - pointing out that if - like James said - everything is physical and follows the same rules, and we could isolate every piece of matter in the universe and determine its velocity, we would be able to figure out everything that ever had happened and ever would happen. It's one way of talking about causal determinism (perhaps a better name than scientific determinism). It's also a character in a comic that I've been drawing. :D

Again, it was brought up (Lyn, I believe, pointed it out) that this is only true if we believe that everything in the universe is material.

Randy pointed out that to attempt to make changes in a world of causal determinism might be paradoxical - how does one influence a closed chain of causality when one is in said chain? Technically, it wouldn't be possible. The choices that we make would be our experience of that illusion. But even if choice is illusory, it isn't as cynical as it sounds. What we see as our choices are actually a confluence of neurological variables, shaped by biology and circumstance, it doesn't change the feeling of choosing. It would be important to make the best choices that we can because that would be part of the causal chain.

At a few points in the discussion, we talked about different religions' obsession with free will because without people being able to be judged good or evil based on their actions, punitive or rewarding afterlives make no sense... then again, Calvinists just sort of go there anyway.

My point in bringing this up is as a segue into our next topic:

SATAN!

The idea of evil creates a lot of problems, even in a non-religious world. It's much easier to chunk that which we think of as "bad" by ascribing it to a sentient evil being. A lot of religions have some manner of anti-god. Soooooooo... Let's discuss!

Created in Man's Image

Notes from Anne:

April 16, 2017

Our topic today was “God Created in Man’s Image?”

Sean gave us some guidance to start the discussion: “What is it with Western (and some Eastern) religions and women? Obviously, the founders were male, so it stands to cynical reason that they would set things up to treat women, often, as second-class believers. Does this say something about us as a species?”

Most religious apologists point to the restrictions their faith places on women, such as modest dress (which can run the gamut from not wearing booty shorts all the way to full burqas), sexual purity or restrictions on the roles women can fill within society, as a way to protect women and actually reflect honor and respect for women. Judging from the expressions of the group, most of us disagree with this assessment. So the question is, is this a case of religion influencing culture, or culture influencing religion?

Charles pointed out that in ancient religions with both male and female gods, the male god is always the creator, though female gods are often nearly as powerful. The misogyny began with the Sumerians and was transferred into the Jewish and Muslim cultures from the creation myths which make up most of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. This seems odd, given the fact that women are the child bearers. The group agreed that this could be, in large part, due to men being physically stronger and perhaps because of men’s role in building and invention (although there are many examples of women scientists and creators, even in ancient cultures).

In Polynesia and parts of Africa, misogyny did not exist before the influence of outside cultures. Lyn brought up the difference between domineering and partnership cultures, which could also be linked to differences between patrilineal and matrilineal societies.

We have made some progress in recent years, but in Muslim countries and some others, things for women are still very bad, with honor killings and female genital mutilations still happening with sickening regularity. Both of these things are filtering into the United States as well with the influx of immigrants from other parts of the world. Several people shared personal stories of sexist treatment they have experienced, although we all agree that the men in our group are great examples of men who fully support women's rights.

We discussed why women support misogyny, for example, women who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and conservative Christian women who support traditional roles for women or who argue that women have equal rights or even superior rights, within the framework of Biblical teaching. Although there are many reasons for this, Lyn summed it up by saying that most have “drunk the Kool-Aid.” This extends to LGBTQ rights, with either Bob or Joe (sorry, I didn't catch who) pointing out that children are more likely to be assaulted by a Republican congressman than a trans person.

In other religions, culture also seems to play a big part in the treatment of women. In some Native American cultures, elder women elect tribal leaders. Shinto, the majority religion of Japan, is a nature-based religion, and from what we could discover, treated women as equals until the introduction of a particularly misogynistic Buddhist sect from China into Japanese society, although within Buddhism, treatment of women is a mixed bag, with some groups supporting equality and some not so much. Hinduism strictly regiments society into castes and not surprisingly, women have fewer rights. Cyrus pointed out that Baha’i  is quite egalitarian towards women.

We ended with a question from Charles: If the god of the Hebrew Bible had been a woman, would societies based on that tradition be different? The consensus seemed to be that in order for the god of the Hebrews to be a female, early Jewish society would have had to be significantly different, not the other way around.

Announcements: The Science March is next weekend, on April 22^nd. We are not sure what plans have been made for Greensboro and Raleigh to participate. Also, ReasonCon is next weekend, beginning on Friday, the 21^st with dinner and a concert, continuing through Saturday, the 22^nd with discussions starting at 9 am and ending with a party Saturday night. Joe is planning to go and will report on this to the group. He wasn’t sure if tickets are still available, but the website is www.reasonnc.com

Thank you for allowing me to facilitate today.

The Newish Testament

Today:

This morning we talked about beauty. While there are some obvious evolutionary benefits to sexual attraction/attractiveness (reproduction), our ability and proclivity to get aesthetic pleasure out of seeing colors and patterns is not as easily explained. Our conversation almost immediately went to the strange treatment of beauty in the Bible. There are some parts of the Song of Solomon that are clearly about beauty - even sexual - that seem to be in direct contradiction to some of the less *ahem* progressive parts of the old Testament. We talked about how our brains, which not only seek patterns, but love to be rewarded for being right, can and will find beauty and patterns everywhere. Much like the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart hears musical notes in the seemingly dissonant screaming of a woman. Still, we do see beauty in design, in symmetry, and in real or imagined patterns - the Fibonacci sequence, lowercase music, and the near symmetry of faces.

The absence, or perhaps opposite of beauty, is something that we can see for any number of different biological reasons. We're repulsed by the smell of the corpse flower for the exact reason that carrion beetles, etc. are attracted to it. Even still, personal preferences are as diverse as people. Someone out there probably loves that smell. Then, there is the common phenomenon of finding thing so ugly that they are beautiful - the adjective "campy" is a close approximation. Even though our interests are diverse, there tend to be commonalities. Most people find nature to be beautiful. The concept has even been monetized with things like trees in office parks, etc.

Context can be as important as content in terms of aesthetics. Someone who is used to being terrified may find beauty in what a lot of others would simply see as boredom. Conversely, we are excited by things that out of context could be completely terrifying. We talked about cultural influences on views of beauty - the fluctuating aesthetics of weight and how that is often influenced by the standing power structure. Things like heroin chic, foot binding, and breast feeding have been used as ways of manipulating the population. Beauty, like nearly everything else can be manipulated by patriarchy to make a buck and to reinforce the entrenched status quo. As Chris said, "who benefits?"

Randy asked if anyone had looked into brain imaging and beauty - the answer is, yes.

We talked about happiness and the appearance of beauty, erotica vs. pornography, and linguistic concepts of beauty. The Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, while subject to some debate, shows a lot of recursive logic that could explain some elements of cultural concepts of beauty. Is anything considered universally beautiful? Flowers perhaps? Sunsets? Again, our conversation turned to the rare vs. the mundane. Again, even what most people consider mundane could be beautiful to someone who has survived a concentration camp or something similarly horrific.

Laughter, agreed upon by some evolutionary biologists to be a coping mechanism, has some pretty dark aspects to it. The tortured artist is a trope, but is it that people who have had terrible events in their lives feel more acutely?

Next time:

I mentioned this last time, but I forgot to say anything today - Kia and I will be out of town for the next meeting. Additionally, we'll be returning the day before the meeting after that. So, I don't know if I'll be at that one either. Could I call on someone to coordinate the next meeting (April 9th) and possibly the one on April 16th?

I was thinking that next time our topic could be the New Testament. Is it as friendly as its believers seem to think? Why don't they seem to follow it? How or why do you think it transitions from the gospel accounts to the fever dream-esque imagery of Revelation?

Narcissus Should Have Had Some Swimming Lessons

The Precambrian Rabbit:

(Last time)

Apparently, JBS Haldane, an outspoken proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution, was once accused of religious zealotry in his dedication. He was told that he was unwilling to accept counter-evidence. The stories - there are multiple accounts - say that he replied, "fossilized rabbits in the Precambrian." The more I'm reading about the story, the more it seems to be... scientific folklore? The accounts range, but for our purposes, it doesn't matter. Essentially, as skeptics and free-thinkers, it's important for us to be willing to admit counter-evidence to avoid belief-fossilization. So the question was put: what is your Precambrian rabbit when it comes to religion? Is there something that could make you a believer?

And so the conversation was launched... We talked about problems of verification and direct, observable, divine intervention. Hallucination might explain any appearance of angels or apocalyptic beasts. We eventually stumbled upon the conundrum of whether or not a deity could even be trusted. Surely, any deity powerful enough to come across as a god could easily just be sufficiently more advanced than the human species. James brought up Ardra from Star Trek: the Next Generation. It would be very feasible for an alien to trick humanity in its present state into believing of its divinity. Arthur C. Clark's Third Law was referenced regularly throughout the conversation. Magic isn't always magic.

Cyrus pointed out that the appearance of a deity is entirely different than a system of belief. After all, when it comes right down to it, the possibility becomes far less mystical when we think of the fact that there are essentially three possibilities for the abiogenesis as it were: it was moved; it moved of its own natural force; a third unknown possibility. None of these possibilities jump to religion. As Charles pointed out, the belief in something that isn't explicable, immediately, by science doesn't mean that a person has adopted a belief structure - that's a very large jump.

This eventually brought us to a round robin conversation about our personal experiences that could make us question hard science - I won't go into what people said because some of the conversation ranged from somewhat to deeply personal. Not only was I asked specifically to keep some of these secret, I don't think that I could do some of these justice. I don't know if I remembered to mention this, but as far as helmets go, it's pretty compelling. As time went on, the conversation got lighter - referencing the God of Gaps, 42, and the Game of Roy.

Next Sunday:

On the 2nd of April, I was thinking that we could talk about something that touches intellect, evolution, philosophy, and possibility a person's raison d'être: let's talk about beauty. Why did our species develop it? Beyond sexual appeal - why do we find colors and patterns and various aesthetics so pleasing? Why are religious people so obsessed with using it as a reason for belief? Evolutionary aesthetics? Where do you find beauty? What do you think the reason for this is? Is there a reason?

Why Do They Keep Using Chromosomes In Advertising?

Because sex cells.

BAM.

Synopsis:

This week's discussion started off discussing the difference between Lamarckism (sorry, I believe I called it "Lamarckianism") and epigenetics -  This segued into whether or not positive experiences could potentially produce epigenetic changes. If traumatic events can change DNA coding, could positive events reverse the effects? I postulated that because so much of our evolutionary development is predicated on survival, it might stand to reason that trauma is more of a galvanizing force. This split the group a bit as it was pointed out there are plenty of people who have nurturing, caring families, and that could influence genetics. There are a great many ways that "nurture" can affect us while appearing to be our "nature". The article that I sent out about twin studies talks about this in detail. Francie pointed out that development can even be affected by prenatal events - right down things like where a fetus is in the womb.

After a while, our conversation turned to a more concise definition of epigentics - which Jayne provided us: how genetics are expressed (as in, whether they are or aren't depending on the potential for traumatic experiences blocking them.) Just as our brains produce chemicals when we are experiencing pleasure, they could potentially leave chemical signatures in our DNA. We talked a bit about the temperaments of children even before they are able to consciously manifest said personalities. Much like Darwin's finches, children's personalities can change within a generation.

This led to the point that change is demonstrably generational - particularly with things like lead poisoning. Steve brought up a study about lead, demonstrating this. Kia brought up similar points in Slow Death by Rubber Duck. Eventually, this brought Francie to a deeper realizing that adoption could cause a recursive cycle of stress hormones for several generations. This segued into The Psychopath Test (and, tangentially, So You Have Been Publicly Shamed) and whether or not we could be looking at a preponderance of psychopaths in the coming years. We batted around the possibility of this.

Eventually, we broke into neuroscience and its (lack of) funding. This brought up the fact that genetic tech - from CRISPR to the growing of organs from our own cells - is basically a slave to funding. This makes it problematic because it allows the interests of the wealthy to control any and all conversations about the direction of the advancements. There is still a lot that we don't know, even about the sequenced human genome. 

Another problem with the ability to select genetics is that it would probably pare down diversity, which is a big bonus to resisting things like the blight that is killing off the cavendish banana. Artificial selection has occurred - even in humans - going back to the Spartans. We also talked about government projects that test and potentially influence genetics. We discussed the MK Ultra experiments. After a while, we talked about the ethics of testing prisoners and whether or not that could yield results that could be parsed. This became an argument about ethics. While it was pointed out that the whole idea was to find an ethical testing method. A few other group members pointed out that because of the inherently disadvantaged position of prisoners there couldn't be any ethical way to test them. The discussion of the prison system came back to the societal expectation that pervades our "justice" system in saying that those who have done wrong deserve punishment - rehabilitation is incidental.

This came to a short discussion of pedophilia and the fact that the damning nature of even a prognosis can mean societal shame over something that a person may merely have been born with a neurological proclivity toward. Because our society has placed this in such a realm of taboo that those who admit to it may experience more shame and penalty than if they were to not seek help at all - thereby exacerbating the problem. There was a fantastic bit on NPR about this... which I cannot find... so instead, there is this.

We decided at the end of this discussion that it might be better to come back to these scientific topics in a while - we've been on them for a while.

Next Week:

Firstly, I really liked Scott's idea today: IS there anything that could make you become religious? I would assume that I was hallucinating if I saw Jesus coming down from heaven in the style of the book of Revelation. So what could make me join the ranks of the believers? Have I shored up science in my own mind to the extent that it has become a religion? How do you all feel?

Also, we're going to have our final locker/bench assembly this Saturday. If you've worked on the assembly, you should come to get a picture with the lockers. We're going to try to get a write up in the News and Record. Have a great week!

Ann also wanted to ask if anyone had interest in the TED talk in Greensboro: http://tedxgreensboro.com/

Also: 

Sorry, Francie! 

She sent me this, and I forgot all about it.

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/deep-dives/gene-environment-interaction/

Religious Freedom, Choice, and Children

Hey everyone!

Our topic for Sunday, the 26th, 11 am, will be religious freedom, choice, and children. We've talked about a lot about various religious mandates wherein followers are supposed breed as much as possible. The Quiverfull Christians and god's supposed first commandment to Adam and Eve exemplify this ironically evolutionary measure of success.
My question is this: if people have the freedom to choose what religion to follow and what to teach their children, where does indoctrination become abuse?
I don't know how many people in our group would say that religion should be flatly outlawed, but I doubt many of us would say that Gay Conversion Therapy is something to which parents should be allowed to subject their children. I may or may not make it to the Secular Sunday this weekend, but I thought that this would be a good topic no matter what.
Maybe, someone could take notes for this!
Let me know if you want to organize and/or take notes for this week!

Sex, Lies, Property, and SHAME!

I got a suggestion from one of our members, and I think it's a really, really good one. We've talked about evolution and brushed on the idea of sexual selection, but my Jehovah's Witness upbringing is bristling at one syllable of one word in this sentence. Any guess which one it is?

SEX.

It would be a great topic, if we can get people talking about it, to discuss the taboos, religious control, and the use of guilt to control people. Religions and their attendant belief structures are replete with crazy injunctions and shameful controls of people. The insane preoccupation with gender divides and the obsession with controlling women populate so many religious texts - WHY?

Kia is going to be grinning ear to ear for this one because she knows how uncomfortable my upbringing has made topics like this for me. Obviously, I urge all members to be cautious of everyone's feelings (except mine - I'll be fine. Just, uh, might blush a lot.)  But it should be a really good discussion!

Hope to see you there!