I'll be speaking at 11:15am in Auditorium Building 6 at the Des Moines Area Community College, in Des Moines, IA, on Why People Believe Weird Things (and I'll sneak in some God question materials from the new book). If you would like to attend contact Mary Lonsdale at 515/964-6376 for further details, directions, etc.

Regarding the Pope's statement confusion of whether he said evolution is more than a theory, or that there is more than one theory, please see this clarification from the editor himself:

Dear Dr Shermer,
Your question about the meaning of the Pope's 1996 address on evolution was referred to me by George Weigel. In the rush to get the papal message published, there was an oversight in the English L'Osservatore Romano's translation of the French text. After consultation with the Secretariat of State, it was determined that the French "une" should be understood as the indefinite article, not the number one. The sense, then, is that evolution is more than a hypothesis. If you reread the sentence with this understanding, the meaning of the paragraph as a whole is clear and consistent.

I hope this information is helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Msgr. Robert J. Dempsey
Editor, English edition, L'Osservatore Romano

Some of you agreed with my analysis of Marilyn Vos Savant's comments on having faith in science, but more did not. For example:

"With all due respect, I think you're the one who's got it wrong. Marlin was saying that, unless you follow and understand the reasoning that leads scientists to the conclusion that the Big Bang theory is true, you are just as much believing by faith as any Christian. If you haven't seen, or cannot understand, the evidence, then you are precisely "believing in" and having "faith" in a scientific theory, or at least the scientists who made it, despite lack of evidence (that you can understand)."

Let me further clarify my earlier statement. We do not have "faith" in science, we have "confidence" based on results. However, what about all those beliefs in science we hold the vast majority of which we personally have never tested? Isn't that faith? No. It is still confidence that SOMEONE is checking the scientists, and even that someone is checking the checkers. Yes plenty of errors, mistakes, and sometimes even fraud slips through the peer-review cracks, but the system works often enough, and in visible, tangibl e ways, that we have all developed a healthy confidence in science and scientists that we can believe certain claims not because of blind faith, but because of confidence in the system itself. I don't understand superstring theory. Not one bit. But I have confidence that the theory will stand or fall based on its internal consistency, on empirical evidence, on experimental tests, and, yes, even on mathematical beauty and fit. I have confidence because the people who are checking the string theorists are the same people I have seen operate with great success in other areas. So I can extrapolate the confidence developed in an area I know something about to other areas I know nothing about.

But the deeper problem here is one of language. "Faith," "confidence," etc. These are just words, and scientists are not only communicating in words, but in mathematics, especially mathematical probabilities. I think a good clarification of this, and the other point that should be made, comes from physicist Eric Carlson, who points out that in science we deal in fuzzy shades of probabilities and statistical confidence intervals, and that while the Big Bang is a robust theory, it is not as robust as, say, the theory of evolution. Here are Eric's good comments:

"If I may beg to differ, as perhaps more of an expert than you, I would say that the Big Bang theory is not as strongly supported as Evolution. If someone came to me and said, "evolution is wrong!" I would say, "don't waste my time," if someone said, "the Big Bang is wrong!" I would listen until I had determined they were crazy or ignorant before I dismissed them.

I agree that Ms. vos Savant is vastly distorting things, and would be happy to write a letter to that effect, if you think it would do any good. But I think it is a mistake to put the Big Bang theory on the same pedestal as evolution.

I can think of five or six proofs that the Universe began 10-20 billion years ago, rather than, say, a trillion years ago. The Big Bang theory is healthier than ever, by the way; I think my confidence in it has grown over the past decade or two. In contrast, I can think of a dozen or two proofs of evolution, and this is not my area of expertise.

Perhaps odds would be the way to state it. I would happily give million to one odds on evolution. I would give thousand to one odds on the Big Bang, though it would make me nervous to do so. I would give billion to one odds against the creationist story." --Eric Carlson, Physics Department, Wake Forest University

By contrast I thought you might like to hear from one dissenting voice, Todd Matthews Kelso at toddmatthewskelso@netzero.net, who feels that more skepticism is needed when it comes to the Big Bang:

"The big bang theory, originally proposed by the Jesuit priest, Georges Lamaitre, is creationist nonsense and is no more worthy of credence than stories about the Easter Bunny. There is no evidence that supports it. The only evidence that is ever cited for it is:
1) the redshift of the light from distant galaxies,
2) the ratio of the amounts of hydrogen and helium isotopes,
3) the cosmic microwave background radiation and
4) the existence of more bright radio sources further away than there are nearby.

Of these, the 2nd is bogus, since the proportions of the isotopes are used to gauge the supposed process of the big bang rather than being something that has a natural explanation in terms of that theory.

It is not as if the only way that the universe could be 75% hydrogen and 24% helium is if the universe exploded from a singularity 13 billion years ago

The other three pieces of "evidence for the big bang," like the colored eggs that appear in April, have a reasonable explanation. There is no warrant for believing any such nonsense as that space is curved, that space expands, that space has a finite total volume or that time goes back only a few billion years.

Your speaking of "decades of testing and research" in support of the big bang theory is errant nonsense. No tests of such a hypothesis are possible and none have been conducted. There is also no research programme for this theory other than to muck around with the equations of general relativity theory and quantum mechanics and try to figure out some way to reconcile these two disparate and incompatible theories with each other. This is all head-in-the-clouds research, not laboratory-in-the-real-world research. There would be nothing wrong with that except that neither of the two theories involved makes any sense.

If you wish to earn your stripes as a skeptic, you need to be skeptical not only about ancient myths but modern ones as well."

The Campus Freethought & Young Freethinkers Alliance have just launched a campaign entitled SOS: Save our Science - Save our Schools. The campaign is a direct response to the recent wave of creationism across the US and in other parts of the world. It was launched in KS last weekend with a demonstration on state line, a weekend of great speakers on the subject like Molleen Matsumura from the National Center for Science Education (www.ncse.org) and a panel debate between 2 evolutionists, 2 intelligent design theorists and a compatibilist. The campaign also involves a petition that will be circulated mainly via the net and all gathered sigs will be sent to the appropriate outlets (education boards, departments, state legislatures, etc...) on Darwin Day (Feb 12) The campaign will continue on long afterwards with collected sigs being sent each and every Feb. 12. Please help by signing at www.campusfreethought.org/sos
--Amanda Chesworth

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side. - Steven Wright