New public blogsite

*UPDATE* I'm going to have to leave the new site private for a few weeks as I go through and ensure that I didn't miss anything in making it anonymous. I expect to do little to no posting in the interim. You can bookmark the new page though for the future and subscribe to its RSS feed.

Theists and IQ

I've made it clear before that I don't think atheists are simply smarter than theists, or that theism is indicative of a low IQ.

I was joking around last week with the head football coach at my school (one of the two people at my school I've dialogued with on atheism) when I said, "I wouldn't mind if my wife left me for Tim Tebow," and he replied, "But then your kid would be raised a theist!" Completely unfazed, I replied, "Oh no, because my son would still have my genes and therefore a very high IQ and thus would never buy into that nonsense." I said it as a joke, but I know some people would take it seriously, although I know he didn't.

When some people ask me if I could ever believe in God again, I try to use Santa as an analogy. Not that I'm saying that I think god-belief is comparable to Santa-belief, but rather that when we learn about Santa's nonexistence through our own experience (seeing mom and dad buying toys or putting them together on Christmas morning) we are so completely deconverted from the belief that we would have to see comparable positive evidence to outweigh the negative evidence we've witnessed. In other words, I might believe in Santa again if he lands on my roof with his magic reindeer and flies off into the night in front of me. Ditto with God.

My experiences with witnessing human suffering are on the scale that I just simply cannot believe in any sort of powerful benevolent Being. If the problem of evil has some satisfactory solution (I don't think it does) then perhaps I could reconsider it, but I think all that would do is clear the logical obstacle that I think exists to prevent god-belief. In order to actually give me a reason to believe (rather than the capacity to do so) I think would actually require a burning bush or something just as dramatic in my own life.

Don't hold your breath waiting...God's propensity for all that miraculous stuff just so happened to go out of style around the time that technology started developing to record it.

It's great to be a Florida Gator

Two years ago and one day I last said this: It's great to be a Florida Gator!!!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

"...it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great..."

Just in case you're abysmally ignorant, the Gators (we) just won the national championship against the Sooners in an awesome fight.

On the BCS

The Hokies victory yesterday meant both of my teams may win their BCS bowls. Also, a note of analysis from the game showed me just how important defense is up against a good passing offense. Basically after losing Murray I think OU has a weake run option left, despite contrary assertions. After watching Cin give up 4 interceptions, I really think the Gators' D will win the game because Bradford hasn't been passing against such speedy defenders. The caveat is of course that Bradford's accuracy is much higher than Pike's and his wide outs are probably a lot better too. I also think that the OU defense won't contain our offense, and so we may have a pretty high score.

My prediction: Gators 45 - 27

The Place of Science in Federal Government

I am subscribed to Seed Magazine, and I read the interview with Bush's point man on science, National Science Advisor John Marburger, the other day with little surprise as he tried to boast of his president's accomplishments:

Seed: What do you regard as your greatest accomplishment?

JM: In a job like this, the most important accomplishment is to make sure that this vast machinery of science continues to move forward and produce the kind of results that have made America strong and great and an exciting place to be a scientist. And I believe that history will show that under this administration, science and technology have thrived as well as they could, given the constraints that we work under. Those constraints are very great. Not least of which is having a very unpopular president, very difficult foreign policy, wars, and unpopular policies of various kinds. Those notwithstanding, I'm satisfied that I've done everything that I could to make science work for the nation. I think that future presidents will find it difficult to compile a record as long as this one. In retrospect, it will be seen that this was a tough act to follow.

He went on in this vein, talking about how much of US GDP Bush invested and how that would be a "tough act to follow." The problem is this little thing called fact. From the NRC report in 2007*, quote, "In 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available), U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development. Federal funding of research in the physical sciences, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, was 45 percent less in FY 2004 than in FY 1976." Tough act to follow?

In part because of Republicans' views on trade and laissez-faire capitalism, science jobs and technology jobs are being exported like never before. From the same report, "The United States is today a net importer of high-technology products. Its trade balance in high-technology manufactured goods shifted from plus $54 billion in 1990 to negative $50 billion in 2001."

Also, the tendency for US students to go into science and technology fields is getting worse and worse, "In South Korea, 38 percent of all undergraduates receive their degrees in natural science or engineering. In France, the figure is 47 percent, in China, 50 percent, and in Singapore, 67 percent. In the United States, the corresponding figure is 15 percent."

I think that the Obama administration faces budget challenges (Bush squandered a surplus and left Obama a $1 TRILLION deficit his first year), but sees things exactly the way the NAS report does:

"Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation’s children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did. We owe our current prosperity, security, and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments in education, research, and innovation policies to ensure that the American people continue to benefit from the remarkable opportunities provided by the rapid development of the global economy and its not inconsiderable underpinning in science and technology."

We'll wait and see. In the meanwhile, picking Holdren to replace Marburger was a very, very good decision.

One of the tough decisions that our president will have to make is shifting the billions and billions of dollars spent on weapons-technology programs and weapons R&D to creating jobs dealing with improving green technology and combatting climate change. People will say he's "soft" until they realize that our greatest threat is not China challenging us on a battlefield but the gaping hole in our economy that has partly resulted from our energy and technology policies, as well as fair versus free trade agreements.

* National Research Council, 2007, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.