Science, pseudoscience, and religion

Links to discussions of science, pseudoscience, and issues regarding science and faith...

Exposing pseudoscience and "bad" science

&

describing what science is and does

An editorial from the Kalamazoo Gazette March 12, 1998, illustrating a common misunderstanding of how science works (and a poor understanding of cosmology - which they criticize).
Here is my response to the Kalamazoo Gazette editorial, Viewpoint March 25, 1998.
The anti-vax hysteria movement: an example of how ignorance and "woo-ful" thinking can kill...If you're curious or confused about how evidence-based medical science differs from belief-based woo, become an avid reader of these three blogs: Respectful Insolence, Science Based Medicine, and A Photon in the Darkness. And don't even think about taking this doctors office magazine seriously. More credulous medical reporting in the TV news media.

The antidote for the "2012" nonsense, and several articles on how to arm oneself against BS.

Isaac Asimov's Relativity of Wrong (or how science progresses through the refinement of its model based on data).

Why We Need Science: "I saw it with my own eyes" Is Not Enough.
"There must be a reason," or how we support our own false beliefs.
Many more examples of "what's the harm?" in magical thinking.

The Alternative Science Respectability Checklist - written by an active researcher in theoretical physics, and a list of curricula to master in becoming a Good Theoretical Physicist.

Randomly moving water molecules in the gas phase condense at
sufficiently low temperature to form a snowflake. Zillions of these fall on
Kalamazoo, MI every winter. We understand that this growth of structure and beauty
are the result of the interaction of the electric fields within a system minimizing its potential energy.
Go here for the whole story (with scads of wonderfully beautiful pictures of snowflakes).
Gif animation of time-lapse images by Vicky Tanusheva and physicist Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht.
The interaction of force (and quantum) fields within a system minimizing free energy,
often accompanied by spontaneous phase transitions, produces the observed
structure and complexity within our universe, from atoms to clusters of galaxies.

Mystified by coincidences? Are they remarkable or random? This is another excellent essay. How well do you think you understand randomness?
Struck by the Full Moon, are you? Then have a careful look at this link, and this one which nicely explains how people (and sometimes even scientists) fool themselves. Here is a study by astronomers of 70 million American births over a twenty year period, in acrobat pdf format (1, 2, 3, 4). Here is another resource by the education people at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Here is another study, and yet another.

Physicist Alan Sokal's page concerning his prank pulled on postmodernism; his "paper" submitted to and accepted for publication in the journal Social Text; his revelation of the hoax and motivations for pulling it.
Speaking of which - can you tell the difference between this nonsense (see also Table of Contents; this is for real) and this nonsense (look at the disclaimer near the bottom of the page)? Poe's Law, anyone?
Here is a dictionary for those with wooly thinking, and another one of euphemisms and obfuscations.

A nice essay on understanding the "crank" phenomenon.
Fear of Albert Einstein
Cranks on the net...your guide to junk "science" as well as links to anti-crank sites
Donald Simanek's pages of pseudoscience (much satire and humor) Are you a quack? A humorous page from a physicist relating his encounters with crank science, and giving a good tutuorial as to how science is really done.
Defining "woo-woo".
Here is an article that illuminates the inanities of the anti-Einstein crackpots, and illustrates the common threads that weave the the pattern of anti-science/pseudoscience crankery, from creationism to UFOism to ... the list is almost endless.

A once-respected physicist has posted his own picture in the dictionary next to the word "crackpot" (it's a mystery of the human mind as to how this happens all too often).
This is an excellent essay on the mistakes in critical thinking that we are all susceptible to...James Randi, skeptic extraordinaire falls prey.

Read some of the editorials by astrophysicist and popular science author Lawrence Krauss

"...breathtaking inanity....": (Judge John E. Jones III, Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District, December 20, 2005)

The editor of Scientific American states the case well

John Rennie's (editor of Scientific American) 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Evolution Outreach Projects, from Swarthmore College

Talk.Origins: mainstream scientific responses to questions on biological evolution and cosmic, earth and human origins

An Index to Creationist Claims and their scientific responses (additional links below)

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent

Several essays concerning science, evolution, and Creationism
From the journal, Nature, January 2009 - 15 Evolutionary Gems: a succint briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle.
A superb journal (requires subscription - libraries often have them) for learning and teaching of evolutionary biology: Evolution: Education & Outreach.
Your Inner Fish - a wonderful set of illustrated webpages of evolution.
Evolution's Bottom Line - an article touting the the usefulness of successful scientific theories of nature
EvoWiki: web information resource for understanding the scientific theory of evolution, inspired by Wikipedia and Talk.Origins
Understanding Evolution: an evolution website for teachers K-12

A superb analogy illustrating the inanity that science finds itself defending against.

A collection of links to essays concerning the issues of science, evolution, Creationism: An excellent essay discussing the history of and fallacies behind the "Intelligent Design" movement; What's wrong with teaching intelligent design in the science classroom? and where's the science in ID?; Devolution: Why ID Isn't; Several links to essays refuting Michael Behe's "Irreducible Complexity" nonsense, and here is another.; Two reviews (1, 2) of Michael Behe's latest inability to see past his self-imposed "horizon", written by prominent biologists who remain engaged in research.; A critical review of Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution, from the NCSE; A critical review of a "paper" by Jonathan Wells.; A humorous review of a recent book by Dembski & Wells (although in my opinion it gives them too much credit in that these guys have never made a credible "calculation" or prediction of anything).; Ben Stein's sham of a documentary concerning evolutionary biology and ID(Expelled) is exposed here.

A site by a Christian geologist that reviews some of the bodies of evidence completely at odds with Creationism
A website at the confluence of evolutionary and medical sciences

And this group wants its ideas taught along with science and ID as well.; More sad satire here on the Creationist/ID movement to displace science education; The "reDiscovery Institute" (more parody and satire, but golly it's getting harder to tell); Hah! I knew it; this parody of anti-science phenomenon has a name: Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism (anti-science of any sort) that someone won't mistake for the real thing." From RationalWiki: Poe's Law makes the clear point that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane. Poe's Law also functions in its converse: real fundamentalism can easily be mistaken for a parody of fundamentalism.


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Links to discussions of science, pseudoscience, and issues regarding science and faith...

Exposing pseudoscience and "bad" science

&

describing what science is and does

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

Those who seek to reconcile the findings of science with personal faith without twisting science

And here are some other points of view regarding religion and science