Recently I received a link to a YouTube video of famed atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins being allegedly stumped by a question by an interviewer. It went something like this:
Interviewer: Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?
Dawkins: …………
[Here’s a link to the YouTube video that is making the rounds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoXzF9zDy_k]
Those who have been circulating the video trumpet the incident as a triumph for creationism. It proves, they claim, that Dawkins can’t answer a fundamental criticism of evolution and thus the theory is as flimsy and pointless as a pair of Lady Gaga’s underwear.
Most everyone has made up his or her mind regarding evolution vs. creation, so I’m not going to offer up my humble opinion on that combustible issue. That would be like whizzing on a forest fire – it’s not going to accomplish anything except maybe pissing a few folks off (pardon my pun). However, what is worthwhile is examining whether or not the video is a point well made or a well-made deceit. To make that determination, we’re going to have to ask a few questions.
• How do you know Dawkins was actually ‘stumped’? Is it possible that there are other explanations for his pause other than lack of an answer?
• How do you know the moment in question wasn’t taken out of context or that the video wasn’t manipulated in some way?
• How do you know you’ve seen enough of the video to make a fair judgment of Dawkins’ response?
• How do you know his answer did or didn’t address the question posed? How much do you actually understand about the theory of evolution and how it works? What sources have you read?
And perhaps the most important question of all:
• Have you bothered to hear Dawkins’ side of the story? There are always two sides to a story. One or both may be lies; there may be no way to determine for sure. But there are always two sides. Is it right to think you understand a situation before you’ve heard both?
For example, what if your jealous coworker (you know the one) accused you of stealing office supplies, and he showed everyone a picture of you holding a stapler and a pack of Post-It notes? The picture alone doesn’t really prove anything, right? But what if everyone just believed your jealous coworker and didn’t bother to ask you about it? Not terribly fair of them, is it? And they won’t get the whole truth (or even part of it) without hearing what you have to say, will they?
Until you have addressed these questions, the Dawkins video constitutes a Swiss cheese argument, one that’s smelly and full of holes. It contains only those pieces of the story that make the creationists’ case and is conveniently missing those that weaken or even contradict it. It’s a little tactic called leaving out inconvenient truths and cherry picking your facts. While it is an effective way to sound convincing without having to deal with all those pesky facts and rational arguments, it’s no way to get at the truth.
To get at truth, you’ve got to find and confront all the facts, not just the ones you like. Worse, you have to have the man-spheres to question and test your own assumptions and biases and see if the facts support what you believe. In short, you have to be fair, open-minded and thorough. I admit, it’s not a fun or easy process (it gives me hives), but if truth is what you’re after, then it’s what you must do (rash or no rash).
So the next time some enticing video floats your way, especially if it’s something that you already agree with, ask yourself a few questions before you accept its claim as valid and sound. Ask
Where did it come from?
Who is circulating it?
Is it complete or a chunk taken out of context?
Does it present both sides?
Do you fully understand the issue at hand?
This’ll get you started on the path to truth.
“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”
- Samuel Johnson
p.s.
Here’s a link to Dawkins’ side of the story.
http://www.skeptics.com.au/publications/articles/the-information-challenge/
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
A Few Friendly Questions for H1N1 Conspiracy Theorists
I’m sick. I’ve got a fever, chills, body aches, headache, and fatigue. In short, I feel like crap. Am I mentioning this to get sympathy? You bet. There is nothing good about being sick except for that “ahhh, poor baby” you get from friends, family, and even occasionally strangers. So, yeah, I’ll take the sympathy where I can get it.
But that’s actually not the main reason I’m mentioning that I’m sick. When you have flu symptoms these days, the first thing people ask you is “H1N1?” And boy, does that topic stir up a lot of ugly stuff. It’s packed with as much fear, conspiracy, misunderstanding, and convoluted reasoning as a Dan Brown novel (and not in a good way).
I won’t address all of the ugly stuff in this blog entry. I don’t want to waste all that precious fodder in one essay. So I’ll tackle my favorite H1N1 issue:
The H1N1 vaccine is a conspiracy to do something heinous, such as make us all sick or put us all into camps.
Now, I’ll admit right off, I’m not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. Not only do I think they’re overly complicated (I get bored after drawing two or three connections), I find them to be a little judgmental. They frequently have that condescending tone that teenagers affect when their parents don’t get the latest pop culture reference. You know, that “OMG, what non-loser doesn’t know that piece of obviousness?” tone. I don’t appreciate getting that tone from anyone, not even if that anyone has the credentials of Einstein and the following of Jesus.
That said, I do try to give these claims as fair a shake as I can, ‘cause as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
So over the past month or so, I’ve read through some of the more choice H1N1 fears. As I’ve done so, some questions keep popping into my head.
1) Who are these conspiracy theorists and the experts they quote, and why should I believe them? Why should I believe they have my best interests at heart, that they are on the up and up, that they aren’t in this for something? Don’t they have something to gain by my believing them? And what about credentials? How do they know what they know? They often quote 'researchers' and 'studies' but where are the specific references that I can use to check these 'researchers' and 'studies' out myself?
2) Why would the government (or corporations) want to confine us or make us sick? Cause they're just downright evil? What do they stand to gain? Power? Control? Wouldn’t they have just as much to gain if we were all healthy, out and about, earning money and spending it and paying our taxes? Greedy corporate wolves and power hungry politicians wouldn't go to all that trouble for nothing, would they? Motive matters. What would theirs be?
3) Let's say the government (and/or corporations) are out to grab more power. Why choose a difficult, high-profile, certain-to-get-people-all-worked-up tactic? Certainly, there are simpler, more surreptitious ways to control us, ways that we wouldn't even notice or might even welcome. Why not choose something like that? Or why do anything at all? One could easily argue that our apathy does a fine job of surrendering control to the powers that be. And that stuff's way cheap.
It’s super easy (and actually kinda fun!) to come up with horror stories about government or corporate conspiracies. And the H1N1 scare lends itself beautifully to them. But just because something is easy to believe doesn’t make it true. Believe me, I wish it did. It’s super easy to believe I’m going to be Johnny Depp’s lover one day, but we all know that ain’t gonna happen in this (or any, says my husband) lifetime.
So when an H1N1 viral conspiracy video shows up on your Facebook page, ask my questions. See what answers you come up with. What do you have to lose?
But that’s actually not the main reason I’m mentioning that I’m sick. When you have flu symptoms these days, the first thing people ask you is “H1N1?” And boy, does that topic stir up a lot of ugly stuff. It’s packed with as much fear, conspiracy, misunderstanding, and convoluted reasoning as a Dan Brown novel (and not in a good way).
I won’t address all of the ugly stuff in this blog entry. I don’t want to waste all that precious fodder in one essay. So I’ll tackle my favorite H1N1 issue:
The H1N1 vaccine is a conspiracy to do something heinous, such as make us all sick or put us all into camps.
Now, I’ll admit right off, I’m not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. Not only do I think they’re overly complicated (I get bored after drawing two or three connections), I find them to be a little judgmental. They frequently have that condescending tone that teenagers affect when their parents don’t get the latest pop culture reference. You know, that “OMG, what non-loser doesn’t know that piece of obviousness?” tone. I don’t appreciate getting that tone from anyone, not even if that anyone has the credentials of Einstein and the following of Jesus.
That said, I do try to give these claims as fair a shake as I can, ‘cause as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
So over the past month or so, I’ve read through some of the more choice H1N1 fears. As I’ve done so, some questions keep popping into my head.
1) Who are these conspiracy theorists and the experts they quote, and why should I believe them? Why should I believe they have my best interests at heart, that they are on the up and up, that they aren’t in this for something? Don’t they have something to gain by my believing them? And what about credentials? How do they know what they know? They often quote 'researchers' and 'studies' but where are the specific references that I can use to check these 'researchers' and 'studies' out myself?
2) Why would the government (or corporations) want to confine us or make us sick? Cause they're just downright evil? What do they stand to gain? Power? Control? Wouldn’t they have just as much to gain if we were all healthy, out and about, earning money and spending it and paying our taxes? Greedy corporate wolves and power hungry politicians wouldn't go to all that trouble for nothing, would they? Motive matters. What would theirs be?
3) Let's say the government (and/or corporations) are out to grab more power. Why choose a difficult, high-profile, certain-to-get-people-all-worked-up tactic? Certainly, there are simpler, more surreptitious ways to control us, ways that we wouldn't even notice or might even welcome. Why not choose something like that? Or why do anything at all? One could easily argue that our apathy does a fine job of surrendering control to the powers that be. And that stuff's way cheap.
It’s super easy (and actually kinda fun!) to come up with horror stories about government or corporate conspiracies. And the H1N1 scare lends itself beautifully to them. But just because something is easy to believe doesn’t make it true. Believe me, I wish it did. It’s super easy to believe I’m going to be Johnny Depp’s lover one day, but we all know that ain’t gonna happen in this (or any, says my husband) lifetime.
So when an H1N1 viral conspiracy video shows up on your Facebook page, ask my questions. See what answers you come up with. What do you have to lose?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Hi, I'd like you to meet my blog.
Hi. Welcome to yet another blog. Yeah, I know. Like we need another one of those clogging the internet with passionate pontifications on a wide array of subjects of often dubious worth. But here it is, my humble attempt to help a few searching souls help themselves.
And how exactly do I plan to accomplish this nifty little feat?
I’m not going to do it by offering a weekly rant on what’s wrong with the world and what we all ought to do to fix it. That would require a lot of writing on my part and a lot of reading on yours, and do any of us have that much spare time on our hands? I mean, I’ve got so much Facebooking to do I don’t even have time to Tweet.
I’m also not going to help folks help themselves by providing useful how-to essays on such topics as “How-to make purses out of discarded potato chip bags,” or “How-to win the lottery in three easy steps.” While such discussions would undoubtedly be helpful, I just don’t know how-to do very many things, at least not very many practical things, so in the end, I wouldn’t actually be helping anyone to do anything, not even myself to help others help themselves. And that’s just not very helpful.
So, what does that leave, you ask? It leaves this.
I’m going to teach you how to fish. Figuratively, not literally, of course, because I’ve never actually touched a pole – fishing, pole that is – and I don’t plan to. Not that I have anything against fishing. I just don’t…okay, so I’ve got something against fishing, but that’s beside the point.
The point is most blogs give you fish in the form of useful or useless opinion and/or facts. No matter how hearty or exquisitely prepared those fact-fish are, they will only feed you for a day – they’ll help you for that one particular issue, but not for anything else.
For example, you can read a blog that provides thorough and well-researched facts on vaccinations. But how is that going to help you get a handle on stem cell research or more importantly, on whether Tom Cruise actually is gay. And how can you be sure that the blog you’ve read got their facts straight? You can’t, unless you know how to fish, and by ‘fish’ I mean, ‘think.’ And by ‘think’ I mean ‘ask questions.’ And by ‘questions’ I mean ‘question,’ singular. Here’s the question.
I’m going to get you to always ask, “How do you know?”
This question has the power to make us smarter, to make us more savvy and less prone to getting swindled. But we don’t ask it often enough. That’s what we are going to do here. We are going to take the issues of the day, everyday concerns, advertising claims, conspiracy theories, you name it, and we are going to pose that question to them. Furthermore, we are going to figure out how to get the answer, or at least how to recognize a good one. Thus equipped, we’ll be able to negotiate the treacherous waters of media mayhem through which we must daily sail and beach ourselves on the shores of truth.
And as an added bonus, you can probably also use the question to drive your opinionated loved ones crazy. Wouldn’t that alone make this worth the read?
So stay tuned, my friends. I promise to keep my posts brief, funny, and to the point. Well, at least brief. And weekly. I hope. Wish me luck.
See you next Thursday.
And how exactly do I plan to accomplish this nifty little feat?
I’m not going to do it by offering a weekly rant on what’s wrong with the world and what we all ought to do to fix it. That would require a lot of writing on my part and a lot of reading on yours, and do any of us have that much spare time on our hands? I mean, I’ve got so much Facebooking to do I don’t even have time to Tweet.
I’m also not going to help folks help themselves by providing useful how-to essays on such topics as “How-to make purses out of discarded potato chip bags,” or “How-to win the lottery in three easy steps.” While such discussions would undoubtedly be helpful, I just don’t know how-to do very many things, at least not very many practical things, so in the end, I wouldn’t actually be helping anyone to do anything, not even myself to help others help themselves. And that’s just not very helpful.
So, what does that leave, you ask? It leaves this.
I’m going to teach you how to fish. Figuratively, not literally, of course, because I’ve never actually touched a pole – fishing, pole that is – and I don’t plan to. Not that I have anything against fishing. I just don’t…okay, so I’ve got something against fishing, but that’s beside the point.
The point is most blogs give you fish in the form of useful or useless opinion and/or facts. No matter how hearty or exquisitely prepared those fact-fish are, they will only feed you for a day – they’ll help you for that one particular issue, but not for anything else.
For example, you can read a blog that provides thorough and well-researched facts on vaccinations. But how is that going to help you get a handle on stem cell research or more importantly, on whether Tom Cruise actually is gay. And how can you be sure that the blog you’ve read got their facts straight? You can’t, unless you know how to fish, and by ‘fish’ I mean, ‘think.’ And by ‘think’ I mean ‘ask questions.’ And by ‘questions’ I mean ‘question,’ singular. Here’s the question.
I’m going to get you to always ask, “How do you know?”
This question has the power to make us smarter, to make us more savvy and less prone to getting swindled. But we don’t ask it often enough. That’s what we are going to do here. We are going to take the issues of the day, everyday concerns, advertising claims, conspiracy theories, you name it, and we are going to pose that question to them. Furthermore, we are going to figure out how to get the answer, or at least how to recognize a good one. Thus equipped, we’ll be able to negotiate the treacherous waters of media mayhem through which we must daily sail and beach ourselves on the shores of truth.
And as an added bonus, you can probably also use the question to drive your opinionated loved ones crazy. Wouldn’t that alone make this worth the read?
So stay tuned, my friends. I promise to keep my posts brief, funny, and to the point. Well, at least brief. And weekly. I hope. Wish me luck.
See you next Thursday.
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