OK, so I am going to be pedantic.  But I can't stand this idea that "blasphemy is a victimless crime".  The victims of blasphemy are not the gods who are insulted, but the believers who hear the supposed blasphemous statements. 

The real problem with blasphemy is that it is named as a crime not by the believers, but by self-appointed representatives of believers who want to shut people up.  Blasphemy is not a victimless crime, but labelled as a crime by those who should know better.

4. Not-so-fine-tuning

One of the many arguments against intelligent design in biology is the fact that there are so many examples of sub-optimal design.  The same counterargument can be given to some examples of fine-tuning.  Take the vacuum energy as an example: someone who wanted to design a universe where the probability of life arising somewhere is maximal should make sure to tune the vacuum energy to exactly zero, since this would make structure formation easier.  The fact that we seem to live in a universe where the vacuum energy allows for structure formation, but does not have the “best” value it could have makes it look rather like our universe is a result of blind naturalistic processes. 

Some of the arguments for fine tuning are decidedly strange.  They self-destruct.  One such argument is that the universe is so finely tuned for life that it just manages to arise.  In this universe, life is so rare, and requires an environment so fragile that if physics were just a little different, it would be impossible.  And yet, this fragility is supposed to reveal careful design. 

Consider someone struggling across a desert, barely able to walk, but managing to keep going.  She has a flask of water which contains just enough to keep her able to struggle on, through careful but painful rationing. She finally reaches a village, and the inhabitants welcome her in.  A few days later, sitting in a cafe, she tells the waiter her story. The waiter is not sympathetic: "How could you complain?", he says, "the desert was clearly fine-tuned for your existence.  You are here now, you had water enough to survive.  You did not succumb to heat stroke".

So much for fine tuning. But is life so fragile, so improbable? Is the universe really a desert, in which life struggles to exist?  In a recent New Scientist article the theist biologist Simon Conway Morris talks about life being "a spectacular tightrope walk on a gossamer thread between vast regions of crystalline immobility and chaotic flux".

Life can appear fragile to us. It seems like a fire, fuelled by the directed flows of entropy that are inevitable in a universe like ours, and it re-lights again and again from the embers remaining after each mass extinction. But that is the parochial view of an ape that numbers merely in the billions.  The bacteria, the archaea, the insects, the fungi hardly noticed the extinction.  The taller flames were put out for a while, but the soil and even the rocks beneath have been burning with life like a furnace.

Between order and chaos there is a boundary, but it isn't a tightrope, it's a solid bridge with the strong foundations of thermodynamics. The point is that there has to be a border, somewhere, and that is going to to be interesting - how could the interaction between static order and dynamic chaos be anything but?

That interaction may not occur often in our universe, but because gravity concentrates gas into fusing spheres that shine low entropy radiation onto orbiting balls of rock, it has happened at least once, and perhaps many, many other times as well.

Each organism may be improbable, one out of countless possibilities. Each may be transient and vulnerable, yet life may be inevitable, and not just in a universe like ours.  Wherever order and chaos interact, there is the possibility of replicating structures feeding off that interaction, leading to life.

There are books coming out on Twitter.  I can save anyone the bother.  This sums up a recent twitter experience (ignore a few posts from friends):

MinorCeleb1: My daughter is so funny
MinorCeleb2: I'm going to be funny
MinorCeleb2: I'm now funny
MinorCeleb2: I'm bringing the funny
MinorCeleb2: Look at my tweets
MinorCeleb2: And admire
MinorCeleb2: the funny
MinorCeleb2: Finished now
MinorCeleb2: Really
MinorCeleb2: Hello MinorCeleb1
MinorCeleb3: @MinorCeleb1 Aren't kids funny?
MinorCeleb2: I'm in a film, with MinorCeleb4
MinorCeleb4: I'm going to see the film I am in with MinorCeleb2.  MinorCeleb1 might be there too.
MajorCeleb1: [Written by agent] I did something.  See here [link]
MinorCeleb2: So, last night I met MinorCeleb4 and MinorCeleb1.  The Guardian reviewed our film [link]

Sorry, I can't carry on.  I think you get the idea.

3. Why think that the parameters are fine-tuned?

First, let us look at stars.  Life on Earth depends on low-entropy energy supplied by the Sun.   The Sun supplies not just energy, but order, because the energy comes from a single direction in the sky, and within a limited spectrum.  This huge amount of order can fuel the appearance of complexity in all kinds of ways.  One of these ways is life.   For complex organisms to arise, the energy provided by the Sun must be stable on evolutionary timescales.  The Sun is a so-called main sequence star, a star in long-term equilibrium in which gravitational collapse is balanced by internal pressure due to heat.  This heat energy is produced by the fusing of hydrogen to helium in its core.  This balance also determines the temperature at the core of the star, and this temperature must be high enough to ignite hydrogen fusion.  Matter in the star is highly ionized, as electrons are stripped off by the high-energy collisions between atoms.  Ionized matter blocks the transmission of light, and so the photons produced in the fusion reactions in the core cannot travel freely out to the surface, and it takes typically millions of years for a photon to travel from the core to the outside. The rate at which photons escape from the star determines how much energy it radiates per second.  An upper limit on the total amount of energy the star can radiate during its lifetime is given by its mass.   Putting all these factors together, one finds that the lifetime of a main sequence star is determined by
a handful of constants, among which we find a dimensionless measure of the strength of electromagnetic forces, and the dimensionless strength of gravity.

For the measured values of the physical constants the lifetime of a star turns out to be typically a few billion years.  This is probably necessary to allow enough time for complex life to evolve on an orbiting planet.  It turns out that if we, for example, reduce the fine structure constant (a measure of the strength of electromagnetism) by a factor of three, the lifetime goes down by a factor of nine which probably gives to little time for complex life to evolve.  

A universe without structures would probably not contain complex life.  The standard scenario for formation of galaxies and stars in the universe is that the matter density in the universe in its earliest stages was higher in some places than in others, and that these small irregularities grew by gravitational collapse to become the structures we see around us today.  The physics of this process is fairly simple: a region where the density is higher than in the regions surrounding it will attract matter, grow denser, and eventually collapse to a gravitationally bound object.  Working against this collapse is the pressure in the region and the expansion of the universe, which dilute the matter.  If the expansion rate of the universe is too high, collapse is prevented. 

The expansion rate of the universe at any time is determined by the initial conditions of the Big Bang and by the density of mass and energy.  Quite recent observations indicate that the expansion rate has been increasing for the last few billions of years.  The simplest explanation is that there is a small residual “quantum mechanical vacuum energy”:  because of the uncertainty principle particles are appearing and disappearing all the time throughout space.  These “virtual” particles aren't just theoretical – they can be detected in the laboratory.  It may be that the effects of these particles in empty space may not be precisely zero.  Even a minute uncanceled effect could add up over the vast distances within our universe to become of cosmic significance.  Indeed, to explain the observations, the vacuum energy must contribute around 70 percent of the total energy density of the universe today. 

Structure formation becomes difficult when this vacuum energy dominates the expansion.  Matter is diluted faster than it can collapse, so if the chunks are not already large enough to be bound by their own gravitational field by the time vacuum energy starts to dominate, they will stop growing.  If the vacuum energy had been slightly larger, we would probably not have been here.

The life-times of main-sequence stars and structure formation are just two examples of how the universe would have been inhospitable to creatures like us if the constants of nature had been different.

We will all die, and in the far distant future of the universe, all species we know will be extinct.  The reality shown to us by science can seem futile.

But even so. Theism paints a far, far worse picture of reality.

Life is brief. We don't get to make our own meaning. It is imposed on us by a celestial judge. Life is one big test, every minute of it. Our every thought is under the microscope. And then we die. Let's deal with heaven, as the other side of things is a bit nasty.

We live for say, 80 years. 1000 years later we are in heaven, in some kind of drugged-up happy state worshipping god. 10,000 years later, the same. 1,000,000 years later the same. 100,000,000 years later, the same. Life has changed on Earth, and so have the continents. But in heaven, it's just one happy drug party. 3 billion years in the future, the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. The heavens change, but not Heaven. 100 billion years, and most of the stars have gone out. Civilizations cluster around black holes to farm their energy. Heaven is still a permanent High. Trillions of Trillions of years, and perhaps the universe is more full of intelligent life than ever, as black holes provide vast energy. In Heaven we are still praising God, and he shows no sign of getting bored of it. 10^120 years, and the last black holes have evaporated. There is still potential for change, and so there might still be life, but with each thought lasting a billion years. God is getting a bit bored, so a promotes a couple of angels to become Seraphim. But on with the bliss and praising! Uncountable trillions of years, and a random fluctuation creates a point of inflation and a new big bang. But even this time is infinitely small compared with the endless bliss and praising the Lord that is our fate, our initial 80 years of life seeming of utter insignificance.

If there has ever been an idea that renders life utterly meaningless it is theism.

Affirmative action is a difficult matter. I used to be very much against the idea; I pictured things as the majority of people having certain rights and access to opportunities, and minorities needing to catch up.  But then it was pointed out to me that that if the majority have rights and opportunities that the minority didn't, this was much an accident-of-birth shift from fairness as was the lack of opportunities of the minority.  This isn't really for individuals - anyone who happens to be a white male in, say, the UK, has at least some automatic advantages that someone who happens to be a black male doesn't because even though racism is hugely less than it used to be, the effects of racism take generations to pass (if parents were refused opportunities, this impacts on their children).

Some affirmative action can, if it works, help to shake things up not just by allowing underprivileged minorities to have equalised effective opportunities, but also by encouraging visibility of members of those minorities in situations where they have not been visible before.

Of course, it doesn't always work, and there can be resentment.  That is a serious concern. But, what I am trying to shake up is ideas of absolutes.  The idea that there has to automatically be the same approach for everyone, the same standard.  Having a consistent standard is only fair if you are already at a situation of equality.  Of course, complete fairness may not be the final concern, as it may not always be practical - you might just have to do your best.

But when I see rigid guidelines for what has to be the situation in a secular state, such as that requests by people and groups for treatment based on their religion should be ignored, this worries me. this seems a very simplistic strategy that does not reflect the messiness of life.

Here is a hypothetical situation.  There are some immigrants from some oppressive regime overseas.  They have suffered terribly, let's say.  We recognise that their attitude towards women is far from perfect.  They need housing and medicine.  Their culture insists that women are segregated.  Do we not provide necessary housing and medicine (urgently needed) unless they accept lack of segregation?  Do we prioritise conforming with our culture over the provision of basic needs (assuming they are dumb enough to refuse if we say no)?

What I am trying to point out is that these are not simple questions.  We should not be turning to a big book of the constitution and saying "line 5 on page 10 says no".  We have to put humanity over principle.   This is why I dislike unconditional statements that affirmative action is "nonsense". In this life, realistically, everything should be conditional, because life is so extremely complicated.

2. What exactly does it mean to be fine-tuned?

If we grant that it makes sense to talk about the constants of nature as being tunable, we should ask how many we have to play with when constructing hypothetical universes.  It is important to note that discussions of fine-tuning must be phrased in terms of dimensionless parameters; numbers which are  ratios and don't depend on the system of measurement.  Otherwise a parameter can be made to look fine-tuned simply by changing the units.   The speed of light is pretty close to 300 million metres per second, to within a few parts per thousand.  That may seem a significant, but that significance is lost if measured in miles per hour: about 670 million, a far more arbitrary looking number.  The important fact about the electron mass is not that its value is 9.11x10^-31 kilos, but that it is approximately 1/1836 of the proton mass.   In a paper published in 2006, Tegmark, Aguirre, Rees and Wilczek (http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511774) list 31 dimensionless parameters that determine the structure of the Universe.  Of these, 20 determine the properties of the Standard Model of particle physics (our current best understanding of the smallest components of the physical world such as the electron and proton), while 11 determine the large-scale properties of the Universe.  This list of parameters reflects our current knowledge.  A large majority of physicists think that the Standard Model is not the final word, and are looking for a more fundamental model with fewer free parameters, which would reveal deeper relationships.  The Standard Model includes the discovery that two of the four forces of physics – electromagnetism and the weak force - are different aspects of a single “electroweak” interaction.  Further efforts to unify things, the “Grand Unified Theories”, are attempts at writing down a unified theory of the strong and electroweak interactions, and provide relations between the strengths of the two forces and relations between particle masses.  Although none of the proposed GUTs have been successful so far, the consensus is that it must be possible to find a working GUT. 

One of the most popular attempts to unify the forces of physics is String Theory, which describes all the particles as different vibration patterns of a single object of undefined and perhaps undefinable nature: the String.  This is an interesting but controversial idea which has gained wide publicity in the popular science media, with its requirement that the universe in reality has 11 dimensions, one of time and 10 of space.  In the early days of string theory, the theory was thought to have only one free parameter, the string tension.  The mainstream opinion today, however, seems to be that there is a lot of freedom involved in the way that the theory deals with the fact that we see only 3 dimensions of space at large scales, not 10, so it is probably prudent to assume that the fundamental laws of physics will still contain a number of (at least seemingly) adjustable parameters even if string theory should turn out to be correct.

Most of the cosmological parameters are not truly fundamental either.  Astronomical observations of gravitational interactions strongly suggest that the vast majority of matter in the universe is invisible (and is called “Dark Matter” because of this).  Dark matter is probably some kind of heavy, weakly interacting relic particle produced in the early universe (known affectionately as a WIMP: Weakly Interacting Massive Particle), and its contribution to the density of the universe is in that case calculable from particle physics models.  Such a particle is probably of the same nature as the well-known components of matter that we already know about – electrons, quarks, neutrinos, but they don't interact with known particles in any significant way apart from gravity. The initial  amplitude and shape of the density fluctuations that later became stars and galaxies should also be calculable once we find a theory of particle physics beyond the Standard Model. 

Another assumption in most fine-tuning calculations is that all values of the fundamental parameters are equally likely.  The basis for this assumption is our ignorance of physics at high energies.  We cannot exclude that the correct probability distributions for some of the free parameters may be more complex, showing that some values are more likely than others.

To summarize, it is likely that the true number of fundamental constants that can vary is smaller than the 31 parameters Tegmark et al. consider. That all values of those that can vary are equally likely is just a guess.  Until we have better theories of physics beyond the Standard Model and a working theory of quantum gravity, we don’t really know to what extent fine-tuning is an issue.   

I'm starting a series of posts on the subject of the supposed “Fine Tuning” of the universe. Co-written with my friend Oystein Elgaroy, this is a broad and hopefully accessible discussion of an exciting and widely mentioned topic.

The Fine-Tuning Argument

Steve Zara and Øystein Elgarøy

1. Introduction

As Carly Simon would say, this song ain’t about you. (Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, 13th March 2009)

Assuming that the constants of Nature - values which determine the structure and nature of the universe - can vary, and assuming that slight variations of them would have disastrous consequences for the existence of complex life, it is tempting to conclude that the universe is fine-tuned for our existence. This is the conclusion of the fine-tuning argument, summarized as follows by the apologist William Lane Craig (“Reasonable Faith (3rd edition)”):

   1. The constants of nature are fine-tuned for the emergence of complex life.
   2. The fine-tuning is due to physical necessity, chance, or design.
   3. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
   4. Therefore, it is due to design.

If this argument is sound, it follows that there exists a Fine Tuner of some sort. This Fine-Tuner does not, of course, have to be anything like the Trinitarian God of Christianity, but surprisingly often this unwarranted leap is made. We aim to show in this article that the argument is fundamentally unsound. There is not only no need for a designer, but the idea of our universe being designed for life, let alone humans, makes no sense, either scientifically or logically.

Several numerical constants appear in the laws of physics. To take one example, Newton’s law of gravity states that the gravitational force between any two particles is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The constant of proportionality is not determined by the theory, but has to be measured in experiments. Newton’s law of gravity is just an approximation to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but the same constant appears in his theory and plays the same role in determining the strength of the gravitational force.

Electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force (involved in radioactive decay) and the strong nuclear force (holds the atomic nucleus and its components together) all have strengths determined by constants that have to be measured. The masses of most elementary particles are not predicted by current theories, and some of the fundamental parameters that describe our universe, like the current expansion rate, are also numbers we cannot predict, but have to measure.

If we assume that the constants describing the strength of gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and the large-scale structure of the universe could have been different, and calculate the properties of hypothetical universes where these numbers are allowed to vary from their values in ours, it has been claimed that we more often than not end up with universes where no life is possible. Stars would burn up their nuclear fuel before life could evolve on an orbiting planet, or the universe would contain so little hydrogen that stars could not form at all. Carbon and water, ingredients believed to be crucial for the origin and evolution of life, would never form.

The fine-tuning argument is a cousin of the argument from design in the biological realm. “Sophisticated” theists may no longer argue that the complexity of organic life points to a designer, but a large number of them appeal to the apparent fine-tuning of the laws of nature as an argument that a supernatural mind created the universe. Nothing in the argument warrants the leap to a “supernatural” mind. Just like the old design argument, the fine-tuning argument is an argument from analogy, so even if it is sound we are only allowed to conclude that a mind created the universe. One might suspect that the immediate introduction of a supernatural mind is made in an attempt to avoid the obvious question of who designed the Designer, or who tuned the Fine Tuner. So, even if it is sound, the fine-tuning argument proves rather less than the theist may want to establish. But the argument as it stands is not sound, and in the following we will exhibit some of its many weak points.

In this article we will look at fine tuning from many perspectives.  We will consider what fine tuning implies in terms of physics (2. What exactly does it mean to be fine-tuned?); what might lead us to believe that the universe is in some sense tuned for life (3. Why think that the parameters are fine-tuned?); even if there may appear to be tuning, is it optimal (4. Not-so-fine-tuning); is any apparent evidence for fine tuning what it seems (5. Has fine-tuning been established?); if the universe is tuned, that tuning is also for events that wipe out life (6. Fine-tuned for disaster?); how rare are apparently fine-tuned worlds like the Earth, and does life even need such worlds (7. The Rare Earth hypothesis); the relationship between fine tuning and probability (8. Fine tuning and probability); how multiverse ideas relate to the fine tuning argument (9. Fine tuning and the multiverse).

I was driving back home from South London last week and I was listening to "Last Word", an obituary programme on BBC Radio 4.  There was a discussion of the life of the journalist and author Keith Waterhouse.  I have to admit I haven't read much of his work.  In fact, to be honest, I have read none.  But he was a very respected writer.  Anyway, I listened to a description of his career.  he wrote regularly for Punch, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily Mail.  The Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail.  I was driving carefully through pleasant country roads just West of Redhill, but even so, my attention was a little distracted by that.  The Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail.  The Daily Mirror is a real leftie paper, supportive of the Labour party, and the working class.

And the Daily Mail.  What to say about the Daily Mail.  It is the devil's toilet paper.  It is dullard right-wing bias pretending to be respectable.  As the wonderful science journalist Ben Goldacre says, it seems obsessed with dividing the world into things that cause cancer or cure it.  It is very popular because it spreads fear with a patronising smile.  If it could publish a story titled "thinking causes risk of breast cancer in women" it surely would.  Today's top story on their website is: "Attorney General Baroness Scotland's housekeeper is an illegal immigrant".  Perfect.

I am trying to understand the way the mind of someone who would happily write for the Daily Mail after working for the Daily Mirror might work.  Even more difficult might be to understand the mind of someone who could, at the same time, write for both papers.  How do they sleep at night?  How could they, while sitting at their desk in the Daily Mirror, contemplate at some future time, in some other place, looking at the bile-filled faces of Lynda Lee-Potter and Simon Heffer, with their hatred of single mothers and the decline in tie-wearing?
 
For someone like Waterhouse, was journalism about values, or was it just making stuff up for money?

A friend suggested I write more controversial blog posts to keep people interested.  This should be controversial.

Read more...

I wrote in a previous blog entry how I was cautious about a petition that requested an apology for the treatment of the great mathematician and scientist Alan Turning.  He was persecuted because of his homosexuality.  I won't repeat the full argument here, but I thought that an apology for Turing had some awkward implications - that he deserved an apology because of his achievements, and not because he was a gay man treated badly.

Anyway, Gordon Brown has written a response to the petition:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571
"2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown"

This goes beyond the petition.  It recognises Turing as a victim of homophobia, and also mentions the millions who have suffered.

I think it is an excellent response.

The National Centre for Science Education is an organisation set up to defend the teaching of education in public schools in the USA.  It has attracted a lot of attention because of its involvement in legal issues about science teaching, and controversies about the way that its material implies that the compatibility of science and religion should be actively promoted.  The consensus seems to be that the NCSE is doing good work, but with some debate over its approach.

I am going to propose a different point of view.  What the NCSE is doing is a waste of resources, and may even be actively problematic for the teaching of science and reason.  I have come to this conclusion after reading an excellent post by Russell Blackford about the rather astonishing alliance between the NCSE and the Catholic Church.  What is the point of concentrating on the specific issue of evolution when you are sharing a platform with an organisation that is fundamentally anti-science?  That may be a harsh statement to make, but I believe it is justified.  The Catholic Church doesn't just deal with supposed historical supernaturalism.  It is actively promoting people to sainthood based on reports of recent miracles; it insists that some humans are walking around right now with magic powers. The Church also interferes in matters of science, campaigning against stem cell research, and producing misleading propaganda about the effectiveness of condoms.  The doctrine of the Catholic Church limits the use of reason, claiming that science and reason can only go so far, with revealed spiritual wisdom being more powerful.  What the Catholic Church is after is tamed science and reason, kept within limits, willing to lie down and roll over when the Vatican says so.  That is not the way that science should be taught, and to ally with such an organisation makes a worrying political statement about education.

The other reason I wonder what the point of the NCSE is is because have what seems to be an odd confession to make.  I was never taught evolution at school.  Not directly.  It was pointed out that some organisms were simpler and "more primitive" than others, and the fact of evolution was so obvious that it didn't need to be a subject in its own right.  What I was taught was a scientific way to think, and how to investigate based on reasoning and experimentation.  This meant that evolution, when I found out about it, was an obvious concept, and not something I needed specifically justified.

Why choose a specific battleground between science and religion and struggle furiously (showing little progress) to win that territory while conceding ground to religion on other matters of reason?  Does there even have to be a fight in that area?  What does it achieve?  Perhaps this is picking an unnecessary fight that Creationists want.

A series to fuel the imagination:

The Future is Wild

Mankind has gone from the Earth, leaving an impoverished planet.  The mammals are reduced in variety; all whales and dolphins extinct.  Global warming is over.  Life continues to evolve.  So what might appear?

5 Million years in the future, the final ice age is in progress.  Unfamiliar descendents of common mammals battle for existence on the ice sheets.  In the grasslands and deserts elsewhere advanced monkeys are preyed on by packs of killer birds.  Subterranean descendants of the grouse build nests like ants.  Other birds have taken the place of whales and dolphins.

In 100 million years tortoises bigger than dinosaurs roam vast swamps.  Amphibious cephalopods raise their young in groups.  Algae are the reef-producers, replacing the long extinct corals.  The last mammal species is farmed by spiders.

In 200 million years after a mass extinction crustacean larvae have replaced almost all the fish.  The remaining fish have taken to the air, filling the niche left by birds.  The crustaceans are fed on by vast intelligent squid which in turn are hunted by packs of communicating sharks.  In the huge wet forests filled with tree-sized lichens elephantine land-squid thrive on fruit.  And, in the trees, swinging from branch to branch, a large-brained tree squid teaches its young how to play, and the first signs of "Squid sapiens" can be seen.

Enjoy:
Videos

In an otherwise admirable article on the current failings of Western liberal feminism (well worth a read:http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2041/full) the journalist and author Nick Cohen includes the following:

There are dozens of arguments against the bad idea of cultural relativism, but "women in Iran and in Saudi don't like being stoned to death" can serve for them all.

This use of language is a stumbling block in his argument.  A small one, for sure, but it is there. 

What is this awful term "Cultural Relativism", that should be so despised?  Not what it seems.  Cultural Relativism is the understanding that how people act and think strongly depends on their personal cultural history.  But isn't that obvious? In fact, isn't this precisely what we are trying to face up to when we see others with the nature of their irrational beliefs dependent on accident of birth and geography?

Let's progress even further into supposedly dangerous territory by considering "moral relativism".  But again, there is nothing controversial here either.  Moral Relativism is nothing more than the acknowledgement that much of our moral sense comes from our upbringing, and so from culture.

So why are so many authors like Cohen so hostile to the idea of "relativism"?  What is happening?  How has language become so corrupted?  I believe it is through a kind of fear.  If  we acknowledge that people's thoughts and behaviour are deeply connected to their culture, then we may be absolving them of responsibility for their actions.  We may have to just accept that women's status relative to men is dependent on accident of birth, and there is no way to justify any particular position.  This is a faulty reasoning.  We can't directly derive ethical positions from factual statements about the world.  Just because genital mutilation is widespread in some cultures does not mean we have to concede that it is a reasonable way to treat young women.

What Cohen and other are really complaining about is Moral Equivalence - that it is improper to suggest that one moral framework should be considered superior to any other.  Moral equivalence is indeed objectionable, however there are well-established philosphical and ethical approaches to establishing a common moral framework based on what are hopefully very widely shared values of respect and fairness.  There is no need to accept equivalence.

It may be a lost battle to reclaim the use of relativism as a description of a rational understanding and acceptance of the influence of culture.  This would be a shame, as we desperately need such understanding.

 I can show why with a few examples.

First, the burqa/niqab issue.  There are many who wish to ban clothing which hides the face of women in order to send a message to an oppressive culture.  There are many other reasons for wanting a ban, but this is one of them.  The problem is that without an understanding of cultural relativism, we can have no idea how any message that would be sent by a ban would actually be interpreted by those within the target culture.  All we are doing is acting like an Englishman overseas:  shouting loudly and slowly and hoping that we are understood.

Second, the attempts by many to try and encourage creationists to accept the teaching of evolution in schools by insisting that religion and science are compatible.  These attempts are futile, because the culture of creationists is such that they just aren't interested in accepting science.  Religion that is compatible with science (and especially evolution) is simply immoral to them.

Finally, even the normally lucid Christopher Hitchens falls into this trap with his statement that "all religions hate the birth canal", and mentions that the Buddha was supposedly born from his mother's side.  He's wrong about this.  There are very strange and nutty stories about the birth of the Buddha, for sure, but he shows no understanding of the very different nature of Buddhism.  He looks at all religions while wearing the cultural blinkers of Christianity, at least when he says this.

So, let's keep cultural relativism, and even the sane versions of moral relativism.  They are nothing to be afraid of.  They are simply a recognition of facts about people in the world in which we and they live.   They help us see how others think, and so help with understanding and communication, which are quite distinct from acceptance and approval.

I do wonder if we aren't sometimes dealing with the "It's only a theory" (as in "you can't prove Evolution.  It's just a theory") issue the wrong way. Instead of trying to talk up the meaning of the word "theory" and imply some equivalence to the certainty of mathematical theorems, we should agree that scientific ideas are always tentative and their validity can be temporary, no matter how long they have been been around for.

When, as often happens, it is stated that faith in science is equivalent to religious faith, the response can be that science's lack of requirement of faith is evident because it "only" comes up with theories, and it does not claim, like religion, to provide final truths.

Unlike religion, science is honest about the fact that we are on a journey of exploration, and willing to admit that that we can, sometimes, get lost and may need to retrace our steps, no matter how far we have gone down a certain path.

Our belief in Evolution by Natural Selection could be removed at any time by the discovery of a fossil rabbit in the Cambrian. Theists may point to such fragility of ideas as a weakness of science, but we embrace this principle as science's greatest strength - we always go where the evidence leads, no matter what the consequences.

Evolution is "just a theory" because science is an honest search for truth.