Our Modern Worldview and Morality is Shaped by Science
To begin with, the findings of science imply that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the genesis of the world, life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged...
notes Tenets of the Satanic Temple
There are seven fundamental tenets.
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own.
Beliefs should conform to ...
1 Why Science and Religion are Irreconcilable
To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged from preb...
1 Steven Pinker's critique of why "non-overlapping magesteria" doesn't work.
Scientific Truth Must Come Out of Controversy
Scientific truth, like puristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong, but in opposition, with some third, eclectically minded, middle-of-the-road nonentity seizing the prize while the great fight for it, running off with it, and sticking it into a textbook for sophomores written ... notesThere is the ideal of scientific facts taught without passion and the reality of impassioned conflict within scientific exploration.
Notes from the "Defending Science Online" session
No direct quote for this meme. notesSummaries of important points and comments made by the speakers and audience for this session:
Chris Mooney
· How do we correct misinformation?
· “How I Started Worrying and Learned to Doubt the Blog”
· Internet is second only to TVF as source of information about Science and Technology
· Brendan Nyhan – people did not change their minds when presented with corrections that challenge their ideological point of view
· Cultural Cognition of Scientific Facts (Kahan et al): conservative libertarians were more likely to accept an article on reducing pollution when it included headline about nuclear power.
· “What Happened on Delibaration Day” Case _____
· Correcting George Will: “no global warming for more than a decade” bloggers tar and feathered him, Washington Post recognized the outrage and WMO wrote letter correcting him, but Will did not apologize or correct himself.
· Message First, Facts Second
Joshua Rosenau
· Blogs can’t correct Texas Textbooks.
· School Board science standards 1998 review “strengths and weaknesses” but they only wanted to review weaknesses of evolution.
· Texas Freedom Network, texasteachers.org, Teach them Science, NCSE
· Reach people with documentaries about Kansas, and convince them to speak at meetings.
· Audience Research: talk about medical advances from evolution, compatibility of faith and evolution
· Start Online, Move Offline.
· Make it hard to be dismissed: state why your opinion matters (member of the community, scientific background)
· If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a big enough coalition. – Bernice Johnson Reagon
Val Jones
· Science Based Medicine blog.
· 80% of Americans go online for health information, but only 20% consider the source.
· Case Study of Two Patients going to two different online sources for health information.
· True story: colon cancer survivor who found oncologist online, breast cancer who tried alternative medicines and died in six months
· Getbetterhealth.com
Comments:
· November 1963: Malcom X Black Revolution
· Margaret Sangers: planned parenthood
· Meam Goldman: talked about birth control when it was illegal
· George Will is into Toaster oven science, not real science. (look up article where George Will says he loves science)
· Van: academic centers need to set up social media centers. Shout down crazy people.
· Create peer-to-peer references that people can link to in response to people being wrong in comments sections.
· Van: Health Blogger Code of Ethics
· Astrology News: Astrologers said It’s true, but it doesn’t change any of the results. There’s a reason it doesn’t change any of the results.
· Mooney: quick heuristics to determine whether to engage someone, politely say, “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Notes from the Experiments with the Imagination Conferenc...
Didn't take any direct quotes. notesA summary of points from this conference session about portraying scientists in fiction and getting science facts right:
- Hollywood blockbusters carry so much weight, need to get more science into this medium
- Scientists need to be telling their own stories. There are only about 120 books about scientists.
- What does it mean for a story to accurately portay science? Getting scientific facts right? Or scientists reacting in a way scientists should react? Believes stories are about people, making them more important than the facts.
- Star Trek: Starhip Mine: “terrorists steal MacGuffin juice from the warp core” Barrion sweep on the enterprise, but barrions are in all atoms. LOL Cats as up and down quarks. Maybe the Barrions in ST were exotic sub-space barrions. We can use the episode to teach proper science.
- 2012 had a ridiculous premise, but the scientists were awesome.
- Michael Crighton: Climate Change book was silly, Andromeda Strain was silly
- Jennifer: Percival’s Planet, example of good science story about the discovery of Pluto
- Science presented without scientific process is just magic.
- "Tron Legacy" was awful, but for me Tron, had Unix commands, mentioned genetic algorithms, I got much more enjoyment out of the film than the average viewer. Would including something about the game of life or evolving programs through natural selection make the film more interesting? The screenwriters were obviously familiar with the concepts, why did they shy away from giving the film more depth?
