Banner
    Which religion should I follow?
    By Becky Jungbauer | October 26th 2009 08:39 AM | 4 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
    About Becky

    A scientist and journalist by training, I enjoy all things science, especially science-related humor. My column title is a throwback to Jane

    ...

    View Becky's Profile
    In a religious quandary? Don't know which traditional/cult/New Age group to join? Fear not, the Holy Taco has worked it out for you. Simply follow the flow chart to your transcendental bliss:


    The only problem: I don't see the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the chart.

    Comments

    rholley
    This chart is in error in at least one respect.  There is at present a "turf war" going on between Lebanon and Israel over the "ownership" of Hummus.  See:

    Lebanon attempts to affirm ownership of hummus with 4,500lb dish

    Robert H. Olley Quondam Physics Department University of Reading England
    Becky Jungbauer
    Ah, my most sincere apologies. I shall inform Holy Taco of said error.

    That article is hilarious. Just because you make the biggest of something, that means it's yours? And last time I was in a Jewish deli, which was last weekend, there wasn't any hummus, but I was at a Greek/Mediterranean place for dinner last night enjoying kebabs and I definitely had hummus. Need more proof? One of the earliest verifiable descriptions of hummus comes from 18th-century Damascus, which is the capital of Syria, not Israel. And the word hummus comes from the Arabic word for "chickpea," and it can't be kosher to mash together chicks and peas. Nor to eat peas that come from chicks. So there you go.
    Your chart of selection rules reminded me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Gödel showed the theorem to his friend Einstein and asked for an opinion. Einstein read it and said it was interesting, but it seemed to lack something.

    The taco selection chart appears to have left out a large section of the population including a big part of the scientific community. The followers of Heisenberg are not represented there.

    The Heisenberg camp has drawn in about half of the scientific community. The question relates to how scientific opinions are formed, and more directly to how experiments are designed to test a hypothesis.
    I really wonder how anyone would design an experiment in strictly scientific terms to make an impartial test of religion.

    A lot of arguments have been offered to me in the past 20 years, disguised as scientific data. I find all of them totally inadequate to answer a question about religion. My objections are based on the design of experiments, sample size, and testing methods.

    Experimental science has an unwritten standard of 95% probability of truth for claiming a scientific discovery, and the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Rules change when health, safety, or environmental protection is affected by the outcome. Then the standard is 99.5%, with the burden of proof being placed on the persons who are resisting the claim.

    Religion has never born the burden of scientific proof, and never intended to bear it. In every case the claim is made of health, safety, and environmental quality, placing the burden on the opponents under the 99.5% rule.

    If you think this is unfair, you may be right. For sure a lot of science is done this way where the question is not about religion, and the researcher places the burden of proof on someone else.

    The next time you see a claim about environmental protection , it would be good to remember how the rules are written and who has the burden of proof. ==> A Hint <== The person who is claiming a problem is not expected to prove it.

    I remember reading a research report form the early days of ozone depletion. There were 4 experiments plus one control experiment. Now you know before reading the rest of this paragraph, that there will not be enough data to reject a hypothesis at the 99.5% level. So no matter what the experimental data is, the result will be an environmental problem of epic proportions, many research grants, life time careers, the destruction of one group of industries and creation of another, and the replacement of old products with new expensive ones that don't work as well and are dangerous to use without specialized training. The new products can explode if used wrong.

    A few weeks later I was listening to a shortwave radio broadcast from Radio Australia, in which the commentator said the radio station had measured propagation data over the South Pole since the 1920's that showed there had been 3 previous episodes of ozone depletion. They were thought to be related to the weather cycles on Earth. Eighty years of continuous measurements are not enough data to satisfy the 99.5% rule.

    From the 4 experiments there was ozone depletion at a faster rate than in the control experiment. Unfortunately the control experiment had opposite results to what occurs in the atmosphere., but the conclusion was already established by the sample size. So the experiments were just a formality.

    A claim was made that a catalyst had changed the equilibrium of a chemical reaction, in violation of a well established law of chemistry.

    Now there is enough data, even at the 99.5% level to show that ozone depletion occurs at higher rates in the dark when the wind picks up more salt than usual from the sea, and the chloride part of the salt gets into the Antarctic zone. There is not enough data to reverse the decisions that were made, or recover the cost of all the changes that were done.

    When science starts to tell me about religion, I remember the ozone depletion, and wonder who is bearing the burden of proof, and who is going to pay the cost of it.

    When you ask what religion to follow, I would like to know what experiments will be done and how large is the sample size.

    In your selection chart a person who is rich but not insane, indifferent to bacon, and undecided about reincarnation will be looking for a second page.

    rholley
    This comment flagged up rather late in the evening over here, which leaves me somewhat myriapodally challenged:
    The Centipede was happy quite,
    Until the Toad in fun
    Said, ‘Pray, which leg comes after which?’
    This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
    She fell exhausted in a ditch
    Not knowing how to run.
    Now as the Rolling Stones sang:
    I've told you once and I've told you twice
    But you don't listen to my advice ...
    so this is the third time I've posted this little poem on Scientific Blogging.
    Robert H. Olley Quondam Physics Department University of Reading England

    Add a comment

    The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
    • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <sub> <a> <em> <strong> <center> <cite><TH><ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <blockquote> <strike> <object> <param> <embed> <del> <pre> <b> <i> <table> <tbody> <div> <tr> <td> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr> <iframe><u><font>
    • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
    CAPTCHA
    If you register, you will never be bothered to prove you are human again. And you get a real editor toolbar to use instead of this HTML thing that wards off spam bots.