Wired on science at the recent political conventions

Wired has recently published two articles on science at the two recent US political conventions.

In the first article, there is an analysis, presented in easy-to-follow chart form, of how often various scientific and medical terms were mentioned in speeches. The result? Roughly even. You probably won't be surprised to note that Democratic speakers were more likely to mention "climate" and "climate change," or that Republican speakers were more likely to mention "energy" and "oil." Three Republican speakers used scientific terms that Democrats didn't mention at all.

The article says that the purpose of the conventions is not to talk about science, but points out that, in many cases, solutions, or at least partial solutions, to our problems are often found by applying the findings of science. The author was disappointed that more attention wasn't given to funding science, and talking about scientific priorities.

In the second article, the writer takes Hillary Clinton to task for saying "I believe in science." Why? Because, the author says, science is not a belief system. It is a way of finding things out. Clinton was using shorthand for something like "I believe that climate change is occurring, and that humans can do things to slow this down, or stop it, while my opponent claims that the climate is not changing." But that shorthand could be, and is, taken wrongly, and this leads to attempts to use scientific findings in ways that they should not be.

After a discussion of the mainstream position of scientists on climate change, and a rather sympathetic discussion of why some people might doubt the scientific findings on that subject, the article says:
To reinforce the idea of science as something you can believe or not believe, to force Americans into “pro-science” and “anti-science” camps, robs science of its power. It changes the practice of science from a method for understanding into a dangerous political weapon.

Unfortunately, both parties seem to use dangerous political weapons, and most of them have little to do with scientific findings.

Thanks for reading.

Washington Post columnist on the question of whether God began the universe

It’s not often that you can read a column, on the editorial page of a newspaper, about scientific evidence for God's activity in creation. But Michael Gerson, of the Washington Post (his column is syndicated, and our local daily newspaper, the Greenville News, prints some of his columns) has done just that. 

Gerson points out that there are a number of physical constants and properties that are “just right” -- The Goldilocks effect -- if they weren’t what they are, or very close to that, life, perhaps even atoms, would be impossible. This could be an amazing coincidence, but that seems to be a serious stretch.

Does this absolutely prove that there is a God? No. See the verse at the top of this web page. It takes faith to believe that the universe was planned by a Divine Creator, and people without such faith are not likely to be convinced. If one doesn't believe in God at all, one isn't going to believe that He had anything to do with the way things began. One alternative explanation for our existence is that there are many universes -- so-called multiverses. We are in one of these universes where the conditions are right for life. There may be an infinite variety of universes where life, even matter, would not be possible. There’s no proof of that, and not even any evidence for it. (It’s hard for me to imagine how we could get such evidence!)

For more information on the Goldilocks effect, see here. There is a Wikipedia article on the Anthropic Principle, which exists in more than one form, but is about how conditions in the universe are compatible with our existence. Here’s my evaluation of the position of Richard Dawkins, the most prominent atheistic scientist of our time, on the question.

Gerson quotes Max Tegmark, a scientist who believes that there are multiverses: “To me, an unexplained coincidence can be a telltale sign of a gap in our scientific understanding. Dismissing it by saying, ‘We got lucky — now stop looking for an explanation!’ is not only unsatisfactory, but also tantamount to ignoring a potentially crucial clue.”

Indeed. Thanks for reading.