In an ongoing series of blogs designed to slice through the credulous nonsense of new age mythology and antiquated religious concepts, I present here some of the surprisingly large number of papers dealing with what neuroscience has to say about so-called “out-of-body experience” (OBE). Along with heautoscopy (the hallucination of seeing one’s own body at a distance, which can occur with schizophrenia) and the strong feeling of a presence, OBEs comprise what is known as autoscopia.

I first started this series with a look at duality and why it is utter nonsense. Commenter leo1500 didn’t like my use of Phineas Gage as an example of brain damage refuting mind-brain dualism. Too bad. Phineas Gage is representative of thousands of people with frontal lobe damage induced permanent (it’s not as if temporary helps the dualist maintain the delusion…) personality change that have been studied.

Nor is this the only type of brain damage example I could have used. Hippocampal damage can permanently end a person’s ability to form new memories. Brain damage can also cause prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. Such people do not have any vision problems at all – they are as able to navigate in a complex environment as anyone. How does dualism explain these observations? In short, it doesn’t. But the computational theory of mind does -the circutry involved in processing new memories and facial information is disrupted.

In the second set of blogs I tackled contra-causal free will and why it is pure illusion. The experimental study of volition has produced some truly surprising results. I just want to add one more tidbit before moving on, and that is I most certainly hope that contra-causal free will is an illusion.

Think about it – our ability to get along with others in society is dependent on our ability to read the intentions of others. If we truly had contra-causal free will, our actions would be random and unpredictable. Imagine even driving to work in the morning unable to predict what the others around you are going to do. It would be utter chaos, far worse than it already is!

Dualists like out-of-body experiences because they superficially support their view. But I’ve got a question for dualists: if the brain is just a transceiver for sensory information, how does a disembodied mind see without eyes? Fortunately, we have a very good idea how autoscopia really happens. As one journal article stated,

Although OBEs are superficially consistent with universal dualistic and supernatural intuitions about the nature of the soul and its relation to the body, recent research increasingly offers plausible alternative naturalistic explanations of the relevant phenomenology.

Electrostimulation of the vestibular motor cortex produces experiences identical to OBEs. Yet the subject’s consciousness hasn’t gone anywhere, since they are fully conscious on the operating table. Dualists completely ignore this evidence.

Direct stimulation of the brain is not the only source of autoscopy. OBEs often happen during a state of sleep known as sleep paralysis (SP). We all go through it on our way to REM sleep, and if one tries to move during SP he/she will find that they are unable to do so. We usually don’t notice because motion is the last thing we want when we are trying to get a good night’s rest.

When we envision ourselves in the world, we typically have a third-person view of ourselves, not a first-person view. This is critical to understanding autoscopia. The difference between our imagination and what we might perceive as our mind leaving our bodies is very similar to what happens in our illusion of volition. Brain regions producing our feeling of intent in imagining ourselves are missing with autoscopic experiences. It is this information which tells us that we are simply imagining ourselves from a third-person perspective that is missing that produces the free-floating illusion.

And this is what truly bothers me about people who believe (and here I use the word in the pejoritive) in things like OBEs: they accept people’s self-reported free-floating sensations at face value without any skepticism whatsoever. It’s credulous thinking at its worst when critical thinking is required, and it simply begs the question.

In a manner similar to the field of evo/devo, where mutated regulatory genes tell us far more about the gene than does the unmutated version, brain damage tells us a great deal about how individual regions of the brain function. While I find that brain injury is a tragedy for those who suffer them and to their families and friends, sufferers are of immense scientific value in understanding the mind. Autoscopic phenomena (of which OBEs are amongst), under-studied to be sure, are no exception.

The various autoscopic phenomena and regions of the brain affected.

Autoscopic hallucination is the experience of seeing a double of one’s elf without the experience of leaving one’s own body. OBEs are autoscopic hallucinations with the added sensation of disembodiment. Heautoscopy lies between these two. Sufferers see a double of themselves in extrapersonal space, but are unable to determine whether they are disembodied or not. Thus, we see that OBEs lie within a spectrum of what are known as autoscopic phenomena produced by (but not limited to) localized brain injury. Each of these phenomena display different patterns of associated hallucinations and deficits, but they are clearly related. The type of phenomenon displayed is strongly dependent on the strength and type of vestibular dysfunction (disruption of balance information provided by our inner ear) produced by the brain injury. Brain damage is not the only source of vestibular dysfunction, and all of us have experienced transient forms – rapid motion of the head producing vertigo is a transient form of vestibular dysfunction. I can think of a number of other causes, including transient ischemic attacks (essentially reversible strokes), migraine (which are also known to produce hallucinations involving ‘auras’) and (no surprise here) recovery from cardiac arrest.

Currently, autoscopic phenomena are being modeled as a multi-sensory disintegration in body and self processing. That is, there is a conflict between tactil (sense of touch), proprioceptive (sense of where our body is in space), kinesthetic (sense of motion) and visual information which produces errors in assessing what and where the self is. Additionally, OBEs are associated with conflicted vestibular and visual information.

I wonder if there is also an element of a disruption of being an active agent initiating thinking about the self. Whenever we think of ourselves in the environment, we typically take a third-person perspective. We know it is a third-person perspective because we have initiated imagining ourselves this way. But remove this knowledge and what you are left with is actually seeing yourself from outside your body with the rationalization that your self is in the extrapersonal space. This is similar to the need for knowledge of initiating an action to enable our sense of volition as a conscious agent. I have not seen this in the literature and it may be an interesting line of inquiry.

Thus, it is more than possible that OBEs are purely a product of the brain, just as the mind is. Anything affecting the temporoparietal junction can induce an OBE. There is in fact a portion of the population which is susceptible to changes in the metabolic rate in this region, which could indeed induce OBEs. Such people include those suffering from anxiety, depression or depersonalization and body dysmorphhic disorders. These conditions can increase the metabolism in this and other brain regions as measured by PET. Such metabolic disturbances can easily be a cause for OBEs. In addition, electrostimulation of the vestibular motor cortex produces experiences identical to OBEs. Yet the subject’s consciousness hasn’t gone anywhere, since they are fully conscious on the operating table. OBEs often happen during a state of sleep known as sleep paralysis (SP). We all go through it on our way to REM sleep, and if one tries to move during SP he/she will find that they are unable to do so. We usually don’t notice because motion is the last thing we want when we are trying to get a good night’s rest. Dualists completely ignore such evidence.

The face-value acceptance of OBEs as really being OBEs is credulous at best, particularly when good explanations for their occurance already exist and no evidence exists for OBEs actually being real. Indeed, we have model subjects for which we can study autoscopic phenomena directly. There is no need to invoke any spiritual nonsense in order to explain them. So why do people continue to buy nonsense books on OBEs and the like in the New Age section of bookstores? Because they want to believe it. I’ve got one thing to say to such people: grow up.

References

Blanke O and Mohr C. Out-of-body experience, heautoscopy, and autoscopic hallucination of neurological origin.

Implications for neurocognitive mechanisms of corporeal awareness and self consciousness. Brain Res Rev 50:184-99 (2005)

Cheyne JA, Girard TA. The body unbound: vestibular-motor hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. Cortex 45:201-15 (2009)

Lopez C, Halje P and Blanke O. Body ownership and embodiment: vestibular and multisensory mechanisms. Clin Neurophysiol 38:149-61 (2008)

Mohr C and Blanke O. The demystification of autoscopic phenomena: experimental propositions. Curr Psych Reports 7:189-95 (2005)

Solenski NJ. Transient ischemic attacks: Part I. Diagnosis and evaluation. Am Fam Physician 69:1665-74 (2004)

Szirmai A. Vestibular disorders in patients with migraine. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 254 Suppl 1:S55-7 (1997)

Well, I don’t like talking about Bill Donohue, but he does provide amusement when his can-do-no-wrong view of Catholicism is threatened, whether the threat is perceived or real. And it’s never real. His view is that the Church is above reproach and that any criticism, no matter how apt, is an act of oppression. Bullshit, Bill.

Speaking of Bill Donohue and bullshit (the two go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and jelly…. Mmmmmm….), I am shocked that there is no obituary for Bill after the airing of the latest episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, which took the Church head on and pulled no punches. Unfortunately for Bill, there’s nothing in it which can’t be backed up.

Here’s Bill’s latest press release (which the rest of the world will – correctly – ignore):

MASS MAILING OF PENN & TELLER SHOW

August 31, 2009

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest developments regarding the Catholic League response to Penn & Teller’s incredible episode on Showtime last Thursday:

I was happy to finger CBS this morning on “Fox and Friends” as the ultimate culprit: Penn & Teller’s Nazi-like assault on Catholicism that took place on August 27 will go down in history as one of the most vile, obscene programs ever aired in any nation. That CBS, which owns Showtime, allows this to go on is positively unbelievable.

We are now getting copies made for a mass mailing later this week. We will send a copy of this episode to 414 bishops, and to hundreds of influential Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, Muslim and Mormon religious leaders across the United States. We will also send a copy to hundreds of activists and members of the media. Then we will feature what Penn & Teller have done in the next edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal; that will reach a huge audience. Moreover, I am already scheduled to do several radio shows on what happened.

We want everyone to know about what CBS considers fair game. There is no way to undo the damage already done, but CBS/Showtime can still drop Penn & Teller. The ball is in their court.

Contact CBS rep Nancy Tellem at nancy.tellem@tvc.cbs.com

‘Nazi-like assault on Catholicism’? You mean, they cremated Catholics? No? There’s not a single thing of substance in this release. Instead of meeting the arguments head on, Bill whines, exclaims, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” and tries their tried-and-true tactic (at least tried-and-true in the sense of utter failure) to apply pressure to get Penn and Teller removed from Showtime. Right, Bill. We don’t care. Does Bill think that the network didn’t know they were going to get heat over this? They LOVE it! Speaking of Nazis….

The problem is there are a lot of Catholics that agree with the criticisms raised in that episode of Bullshit. They even included Jon O’Brien, head of a Catholic organization which (to their credit) is openly critical of Bill Donohue: Catholics For Choice. The show included former Catholics involved in legal battles with the Church over cases of sexual abuse, criticized it’s stance on homosexuality and it’s attacks on those that exercise their right to free speech by openly criticizing its policies (comedian Sabina Guzzanti faced prosecution for “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Benedict XVI), brought up the despicable (and formerly secret) document which instructed bishops to threaten victims of sexual abuse with excommunication for divulging such crimes (Crimen sollicitationis) and spoke to a former Vatican press secretary who gave a great analysis on why the Church acted so vilely to protect its image in light of the massive and undeniable cover-up of sexual abuse that has been going on for decades, not to mention the lies about the effectiveness of condoms in the fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa. What’s funny about the Guzzanti incident is that once the Church realized it had no case, and that it was in fact they who were violating her right to free speech, the came out and forgave her. Excuse me? They’ve got it backwards- she should be in the position of forgiving them!

All of what was in that show can backed up with documentation, and many who are critical of the episode ignore this. How does Bill respond? Like the whiny little idiot he is. I have not one shred of respect for him. Never did.

Shut up, Bill, until you can respond to criticism in a reasoned manner rather than with the infantile emotionalisms you always use. I urge everyone who watched the show to reply to the email address in the press release and congratulate them for their fine programming!

Great job, Penn & Teller!

Something I’ve been wanting to tackle for a long time is Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism which he presented to a Christian lay audience in an article published online in Christianity Today. Here’s a spoiler: it’s awful. According to Plantinga,

As I see it, this is a whopping error: evolution and naturalism are not merely uneasy bedfellows; they are more like belligerent combatants. One can’t rationally accept both evolution and naturalism; one can’t rationally be an evolutionary naturalist. The problem, as several thinkers (C. S. Lewis, for example) have seen, is that naturalism, or evolutionary naturalism, seems to lead to a deep and pervasive skepticism. It leads to the conclusion that our cognitive or belief-producing faculties—memory, perception, logical insight, etc.—are unreliable and cannot be trusted to produce a preponderance of true beliefs over false.

I have no problem with skepticism. I think everybody should be a skeptic. For those who don’t, I’m offering up the Brooklyn Bridge… Cheap!

Nor do I have a problem with anything in that last long sentence. Our memory is quite fallible. So is our ‘logical insight’, since it is based on heuristic and not rigorous logic. It just happens to work most of the time, and for the times it doesn’t it typically doesn’t matter. For instance, our natural instinct when out in the dark we hear a rustling in the bushes our impulse is to take flight. But whether the rustling in the bushes is a real danger (the tiger that Plantinga likes to use) or a prankster is not considered by our subconscious. With the former, our chance of survival increases because we don’t go over to the bush to check the source of the disturbance. With the latter, we feel foolish. In both cases, our lives continue.

And this is one of the problems with Plantinga’s argument, one I have not seen elsewhere. He seems to confuse impulses such as the fight-or-flight one in the example above, with beliefs born of our cognitive faculties. The former is not based on belief, but is a simple response to sensory input. It’s dark, therefor we are on our guard already (‘primed’, as behavioral psychologists would say). Our eyes are evolved for moving around in daylight, so our sensory input is limited making us uneasy. So anything that startles us is going to produce that fight-or-flight response. No belief is necessary at all, since it is hardwired into our brains. Another related point where Plantinga is apparently confused is that it is not beliefs that evolve. It is our cognitive ability to generate beliefs that evolved. Beliefs such as ‘fire is hot’ are learned beliefs. Similarly, naturalism and evolution were not born from evolutionary processes, but from observation and experiment.

Plantinga has some other strange beliefs about beliefs. He writes,

So consider any particular belief on the part of one of those creatures: what is the probability that it is true? Well, what we know is that the belief in question was produced by adaptive neurophysiology, neurophysiology that produces adaptive behavior. But as we’ve seen, that gives us no reason to think the belief true (and none to think it false). We must suppose, therefore, that the belief in question is about as likely to be false as to be true; the probability of any particular belief’s being true is in the neighborhood of 1/2. But then it is massively unlikely that the cognitive faculties of these creatures produce the preponderance of true beliefs over false required by reliability. If I have 1,000 independent beliefs, for example, and the probability of any particular belief’s being true is 1/2, then the probability that 3/4 or more of these beliefs are true (certainly a modest enough requirement for reliability) will be less than 10(to the power -58). And even if I am running a modest epistemic establishment of only 100 beliefs, the probability that 3/4 of them are true, given that the probability of any one’s being true is 1/2, is very low, something like .000001. So the chances that these creatures’ true beliefs substantially outnumber their false beliefs (even in a particular area) are small. The conclusion to be drawn is that it is exceedingly unlikely that their cognitive faculties are reliable.

PZ Myers has also focused in on this passage and for the same reason that I was originally struck dumbfounded. Plantinga claims that any particular belief “is about as likely to be false as to be true”. I’ve seen this coin flip false analogy all over the place. With a coin, we know there are two distinct possibilities when flipped (ignoring the third one, the possibility of the coin landing on edge). There is nothing to distinguish between the two possibilities- not because we have no knowledge of the truth value of each of the two possibilities as with the random beliefs Plantinga is describing, but because we do know everything about the system and still have no way to predict the outcome. (We could, of course, increase our odds to near certainty using physics once the coin is tossed.) For any belief in the absence of supporting evidence as Plantinga describes above, I would give odds (if I had to- assigning probabilities demands that we actually know something about the truth of the belief in the first place) for any given belief not 1/2, but more towards 0. Indeed, I would place the probability at 0 till I have some reason to discard the null hypothesis (i.e., that the belief is false) in favor of the claim.

We know many beliefs are whacky: homeopathy, UFO sightings, faith healing, astrology, psychics- the list of demonstrably false beliefs is depressingly endless. If Plantinga had ever read either Bruce Hood’s SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable or Gary Marcus’ Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind he would never have come up with this nonsense. False beliefs are the norm!

What differentiates what we can be pretty confident are false beliefs from those that we can be confident that they are true? Evidence, of course! And this is what Plantinga bizarrely ignores. I mean, seriously! How could he have missed this? Was it purposeful obfuscation? Or just selective blindness to this issue? As I implied above, it is impossible to attach an confidence to a given belief if there is no evidence in support.

PZ Myers noted the same problem: a belief is only as good as the supporting evidence. He writes:

In Plantinga’s world, if we queried the inhabitants with some simple question, such as, “Is fire hot?”, 50% would say no, and 50% would say yes. This world must be populated entirely with philosophers of Plantinga’s ilk, because I think that in reality they would have used experience and their senses to winnow out bad ideas, like that fire is cold, and you’d actually find nearly 100% giving the same, correct answer. Plantinga does not seem to believe in empiricism, either.

And that is the wooden stake through the heart of Plantinga’s EAAN. Plantinga completely ignores epistemology. Why do we value some beliefs more than others? Evidence, my friends- evidence. And in my experience, those beliefs supported by empirical evidence have by far the greatest truthiness about them. The ’scientific method’, as far as has been demonstrated, is not only the best way to verify beliefs, but is the only way. I would even go farther and say that naturalism nor evolution are more than just belief. They are conclusions drawn from many lines of evidence. If you think otherwise, Dara O’Briain has a sack waiting for you.

According to Plantinga,

If evolutionary naturalism is true, then the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is also very low. And that means that one who accepts evolutionary naturalism has a defeater for the belief that her cognitive faculties are reliable: a reason for giving up that belief, for rejecting it, for no longer holding it.

First, that we can not trust conclusions born of our cognitive faculties does not negate them! Indeed, I would say random beliefs are completely untrustworthy. There have to be reasons to hold beliefs based on evidence and reason. Second, if evolutionary processes shaped an intellect which could not reason properly or at least a facsimile thereof, it would be maladaptive and weeded out quickly. Thus, his assertion ‘the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is also very low’ just does not pass muster and I suggest it is based on his coin flip false analogy. Plantinga seems to think that our cognitive faculties always produce true beliefs. Of course, Plantinga needs this to be so not just in order to present his argument, but to maintain his own belief in his god. But the assertion is simply ridiculous in light of all the strange beliefs flying around. Including his.

Evolution shaped our brains and hence our intellect to model our surroundings. Plantinga does not dispute this, just that we can not trust our interpretation of the model. But we can verify it. We can test it. As children we generated a belief that ‘fire is hot’ from interacting with the world. We avoid getting too close to the flames because our experience tells us that it can burn us and not because of some maladaptive false belief.

Plantinga believes that the major objection to his argument is exactly this. He writes in response,

But of course we can’t just assume that they are in the same cognitive situation we think we are in. For example, we assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable. We can’t sensibly assume that about this population; after all, the whole point of the argument is to show that if evolutionary naturalism is true, then very likely we and our cognitive faculties are not reliable. So reflect once more on what we know about these creatures. They live in a world in which evolutionary naturalism is true. Therefore, since they have survived and reproduced, their behavior has been adaptive. This means that the neurophysiology that caused or produced that behavior has also been adaptive: it has enabled them to survive and reproduce. But what about their beliefs? These beliefs have been produced or caused by that adaptive neurophysiology; fair enough. But that gives us no reason for supposing those beliefs true. So far as adaptiveness of their behavior goes, it doesn’t matter whether those beliefs are true or false.

But, as I have written above, there is nothing here which necessitates that beliefs are false. This is a requirement for defeating naturalism. Thus, the argument is equivocal. You can’t show they are true, you can’t show they are false. At least you can’t in any way which is presented in the article. It is what is not in the article and discussed above which we should all use in guiding our beliefs: evidence! At best, if I thought his argument had merit, it would only undermine naturalism. But, to put it euphemistically, he’s simply and demonstrably WRONG!

Plantinga claims that Christians don’t have any of these ‘problems’. He writes,

Clearly this doubt arises for naturalists or atheists, but not for those who believe in God. That is because if God has created us in his image, then even if he fashioned us by some evolutionary means, he would presumably want us to resemble him in being able to know; but then most of what we believe might be true even if our minds have developed from those of the lower animals.

I suppose they don’t, if one ignores the sticky problems of demonstrating that any god exists, how said god(s) went about ‘creating us in his image’, yada, yada, yada. And how does he know his belief that god “would presumably want us to resemble him in being able to know”? What if his god really just wanted a really big Barbie set to play with? This is just presupposition based on wishful thinking and isn’t philosophy at all.

He concludes,

The obvious conclusion, so it seems to me, is that evolutionary naturalism can’t sensibly be accepted. The high priests of evolutionary naturalism loudly proclaim that Christian and even theistic belief is bankrupt and foolish. The fact, however, is that the shoe is on the other foot. It is evolutionary naturalism, not Christian belief, that can’t rationally be accepted.

Well, Alvin, let me tell you. Your self-congratulatory back-slapping is premature. I don’t think either naturalism or evolution is in any threat over this. As PZ Myers wrote,

He’s reduced to a bogus either/or distinction. Either we are organic machines that evolved and our brains are therefore collections of random beliefs, or — and this is a leap I find unbelievable — Jesus gave us reliable minds. Seriously. That’s what his argument reduces to.

A bit glib, perhaps, but it captures the essence of the argument, and it is a terrible argument, a sad footnote in the career of someone who has significantly contributed to the field of philosophy.

And for those who would like to get into the nitty-gritty philosophy, Stephen Law has a great refutation online here, which was published in the journal Religious Studies.

I want to say this at the get-go before I am accused of being prejudiced and bigoted: I do not think that only atheists can do science. I do not think that only atheists can determine science policy. In searching for someone to head the NIH, such a policy would reduce the field considerably and exclude many excellent candidates that we would be justified in predicting they would do a fantastic job.

Francis Collins is not one of them. Yes, he has shown his ability to administer very large scientific projects. Yes, he has demonstrated his ability to do good science. But these are not the only requirements for heading the National Institutes of Health, the largest funding agency for biomedical research in the US. Something less well known is that it also funds research outside the US if certain conditions are met.

Collins has a history of evangelizing and seeing God in the results of his research. But anyone can see God anywhere if they look hard enough and want to see him there. But pareidolia fundamentally lacks cause and effect determination, whether it’s Jesus in a piece of toast or thinking DNA is the language of God. He’s even written a book on his beliefs, The Language of God. I am in total agreement with Sam Harris when he writes

In fact, to read The Language of God is to witness nothing less than an intellectual suicide. It is, however, a suicide that has gone almost entirely unacknowledged: The body yielded to the rope; the neck snapped; the breath subsided; and the corpse dangles in ghastly discomposure even now—and yet, polite people everywhere continue to celebrate the great man’s health.

If it weren’t for the fact that Collins was putting forward his ideas in the context of a mainstream religion, his career would already be over. Substitute for the Abrahamic god Collins believes in with some other one that isn’t accepted by the majority of Americans and he would already be in obscurity.

I’ve already given two requirements for being the head of an organization which has a lot of power in regards to what research gets funded, both of which he excels at: scientific track record and scientific research program administration. But there is one requirement he fails utterly: separation of personal beliefs from science.

Some people point to the fact that there is nothing about religion in his peer-reviewed scientific publications. This is as true as it is irrelevant. If he had ever put in some reference to God signing his name in DNA anywhere in his journal submissions, that same peer review would have rejected their publication out-of-hand. And (this is for those who think science is out to remove God) not because it mentions ‘God’, either. Any statement like that without demonstrating causation experimentally is always a red flag whether it contains the word ‘God’ or not. And that’s exactly how it should be. Thus, his scientific publication record can only be used as a metric for his ability to perform the requisite work for publishing scientific research results. It can not give us any insight into how he would direct research program funding.

Francis Collins knows this and would never submit a paper with any such statement in it, regardless of the fact that he believes what he wrote in The Language of God. But his personal beliefs are relevant to his approval as head of the NIH. Matt Dillahunty from the Non-Prophets defended the selection of Collins in a recent podcast, but I think he is fundamentally wrong. Sorry, Matt. I usually agree with you, but not this time.

Dillahunty makes a grave error by asking the question of where in his publications he injects his religious beliefs. But the question, as I’ve shown, isn’t relevant because it can’t answer any question related to his beliefs and how they might affect his research goals. Peer review filters that out.

Nor is Dillahunty’s argument that we should not reject Collins for the position because of his personal beliefs really relevant, either. Even if I didn’t already know it was illegal to do so, I would never block the hiring of someone just because of their personal beliefs. It wouldn’t even occur to me to care. So, here Matt and I agree. The problem is that Collins has a track record of being a shameless evangelizer and using his position to further those ends. If I were considering hiring someone and found out that they did this would indeed be just grounds for removing them from consideration.

Collins has often been touted as living evidence of Stephen J. Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), that Science and Religion are compatible. But NOMA is garbage. Science and Religion overlap constantly and represent two utterly incompatible views. In Sam Harris’ article he presents the content from a number of slides shown at a UC Berkeley lecture he gave in 2008:

Slide 1: Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.

Slide 2: God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.

Slide 3: After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced “house” (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the Moral Law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.

Slide 4: We humans use our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.

Slide 5: If the Moral Law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?

The above slides show Collins’ errant disbelief that evolution can be a source for moral and ethical behavior (the evidence for which Sam Harris gives a short overview of in his editorial). They are also strong evidence that Collins does not adhere to NOMA in the least. His ability to mix unverifiable and unfalsifiable (and therefor to this positivist, nonsensical) religious statements with verifiable and testable science is remarkable, something impossible if NOMA were actually a valid concept. What it is evidence of is a person’s ability (in this case, a remarkable ability) to hold to incompatible ideas simultaneously. This is exactly what PZ Myers meant in his blog Pharyngula when he wrote

The situation is this: the White House has picked for high office a well-known scientist with a good track record in management who wears clown shoes. Worse, this scientist likes to stroll about with his clown shoes going squeak-squeak-squeak, pointing them out to everyone, and bragging about how red and shiny and gosh-darned big his shoes are, and tut-tutting at the apparent lack of fine fashion sense exhibited by his peers who wear rather less flamboyant footwear.

Thus, it is clear that Collins sees no issue with using his position as the head of the Human Genome Project to promote his theology. There is no reason to think he will not continue to do so as head of the NIH. More to the point, we are allowed to submit this track record evangelization for consideration of Collins’ suitability. As he would be in a position to directly affect research directions, his beliefs are relevant, especially when he himself makes them so public.

What if he deems certain areas of research unproductive because they are not compatible with his personal beliefs? For someone with a demonstrably strong belief and an equally demonstrated inability to separate these beliefs from his science, this is a real possibility. I put it to you that his beliefs have influenced his own research directions. Remember, he considers DNA the language of God and so this is what made the Human Genome Project worthwhile to him. It is conceivable that other medically valuable research programs may get short shrift because they don’t meet that personal value judgement.

In the end, True Believers(TM) will praise the squeaking of Collins’ shoes, hailing the cacophony as rivaling Mozart’s Requiem. They point out that the religious beliefs of previous candidates for the directorship of the NIH were not considered, and it is only because Collins is so vocal in espousing his beliefs. Well, duh! The negative effects of Collins on the credibility of Science by conflating his beliefs with some scientific facts completely goes completely unnoticed after the euphoria of confirmation bias kicks in.

Maybe I’m being hasty. Maybe not. Maybe he would be the best NIH director ever. But that’s irrelevant to making the choice for director of the NIH. But, you now what? We don’t have a crystal ball, and the choice has to be made on the history of the candidate. It would help a great deal if Collins would publicly state he will back off on using his position to promote religion. It would likely be illegal to do so anyway, and doing so would prompt a Church-and-State challenge. Even with such an assurance I would still keep my eye on his directives. My trust is limited when I have good reason to limit that trust. Craig Venter, who also headed a parallel program to sequence the human genome, is equally qualified without the controversy and baggage Collins happily carries with him. I don’t know what Venter’s religious beliefs are, and I don’t care one jot. His shoes don’t squeak.

I would be remiss as a fine upstanding atheist if I did not give an example of what kind of inverted thinking Collins’ brand of religion promotes in himself. Harris quotes from The Language of God:

If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove his existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason. (Collins, 2006, p.165)

This is the most unscientific statement I have ever seen from a scientist. I would expect Ray Comfort to spout such nonsense, but Collins? My! This is a smoke-and-mirrors argument placing the burden of proof not on the claimant (where it indeed must be placed), but on those maintaining the null hypothesis. Assume something exists even if you can’t verify its existence. Shame on Collins! And believers wonder why those of us skeptical of religion don’t read apologetics books. We get nauseous from idiotic nonsense such as this. Why would we read whole books containing this tripe? There isn’t enough Gravol in the world to stop the queasiness. Good thing we have people out there with strong stomachs that can get through this sophistic garbage.

As Harris points out in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, this is a silly argument, one we see all the time

I suspect that this will not be the last time a member of our species will be obliged to make the following point (but one can always hope): disbelief in the God of Abraham does not require that one search the entire cosmos and find Him absent; it only requires that one consider the evidence put forward by believers to be insufficient. Presumably Francis Collins does not believe in Zeus. I trust he considers this skeptical attitude to be fully justified. Might this be because there are no good reasons to believe in Zeus? And what would he say to a person who claimed that disbelief is Zeus is a form of “blind faith” or that of all possible worldviews it is the “least rational”?

How on earth did Collins ever get where he is with this kind of ‘logic’?

But I’m sure I will still be called prejudiced and bigoted. To those people I say, “Sod off.”

I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Now why the heck didn’t I think of that?”

In this the third part of a look at what science has to say on the concept of free will, we will delve into the relationship between volition and consciousness. And it gets weird. I won’t even rag on William ‘Lame’ Craig this time, though it is always tempting. One thing I should say before continuing is what version of free will I am rejecting: the traditional contra-causal free will which is a consequence of discredited dualistic notions. Tom Clark puts it this way:

If you imagine a situation in which you are behaving and you make a particular choice, many people suppose that given that situation exactly as it transpired you could have chosen something other than what you did. But a science-based naturalism looking at the situation as it arises will see the choice as a function of the exact conditions that were present at the time. So if you play that scenario there is no reason to think that anything else would have happened. Many people think, in supposing that they have contra-causal free will, that had they been in that situation even with the same desires, the same exact circumstances inside and outside themselves, they could have chosen or done something other than what they did. And this is what [naturalists] are denying. This is what I think a thorough science-based naturalism challenges is this idea of a causally-autonomous,  metaphysically-autonomous self that somehow gets to cause things but is itself not fully caused¹.

There are some types of free will that are compatible with determinism and we will get to those later. True contra-causal free will just has too many issues associated with it to be a viable concept. One I have alluded to before, that we would be paralyzed into inaction if a large part of our everyday actions weren’t calculated at a subconscious level. There are just too many choices at every moment. ‘Walking across the street’ is a high-level intention, but each individual step requires a decision to place the foot calculated from terrain, balance, etc. If you have to think about it, you will simply fall over. Second is that contra-causal free will means that people would be far less predictable than they are, which is not a good thing.

Continuing from part deux, the experience of making a voluntary action is subjective and very different from an equivalent reflex action. If we answer Wittgenstein’s question “What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”² we have a way to measure the effect of volition on brain function. In investigating the answer to Wittgenstein’s question, a recent study has some telling results³. Seven patients undergoing brain surgery had their parietal and premotor cortex electrostimulated. When the parietal lobe was stimulated, the subjects experienced a strong drive to move a contralateral extremity. When the premotor cortex was stimulated, motion of a contralateral extremity or mouth resulted. But along with movement with premotor cortex stimulation came a total denial from the subject that the limb had moved! What this shows is that sensation of movement is subjective and comes not from the movement itself (via feedback from muscles, for instance), but from the generation of intent and predicted consequences within the brain itself.

Cognitive processes underlying the conscious experience of volition (reference 6).

It is the conscious intention to make an action that seems to cause the action itself, giving rise to the illusion that we have free will. But no dualist explanation for volition can possibly withstand scrutiny, especially since mind-brain dualism has long been discredited by ugly facts. Both conscious intention and action seem to both be a result of brain activity. Other explanations for this sensation have been put forward. It has been proposed that the mind (a product of the brain, remember) assumes a causal path from conscious intention to the action in order to rationalize the correlation between the two, particularly since both driven by neuronal preparation⁴. Another possible explanation for our sense of free will is that conscious intention is not a real mental state at all, but a rationalization retrospectively inserted into the consciousness stream that we intended to take the action⁵. In other words, we are duped into thinking that we intended to cause an action when we are being informed of the action after-the-fact. Psychoses can produce experiences of intention which are associated with unusual causal explanations of connections between events. For instance, one sign of schizophrenia is the attribution of themselves as causing events which are beyond their control⁷.

Remember Libet’s experiment⁸ outlined in Part One? While the ‘urge to move’ occurred roughly 200 ms prior to hand movement, readiness potentials were observed about 1 sec before the motion.  The brain is preparing to move long before the experience of intent. In addition to this, events occurring post-action can contribute to the experience of intent. But the results from experiments such as the one in reference 3 and similar work seem to disprove the retrospective hypothesis, since stimulation of certain brain regions can produce an urge to move in the absence of actual movement. But I’m unconvinced that the evidence rules out a retrospective explanation for our experience of intent as there may be more than one way to produce it.

Other experiments have shown that the later phase of the readiness potential in the brain region contralateral to the body part being moved (remembering that the brain is cross-wired)  is required, rather than a general preparedness to move. Such experiments involved giving subjects a choice of which hand to move in a modified Libet experiment. I mentioned one such experiment in Part One where it could be predicted from fMRI measurements which hand would be moved up to 8 seconds beforehand⁹ and could represent detectable patterns in an earlier stage of the causal chain generating actions and our perception of intent and agency (see figure).

One of the big fears of those subscribing to contra-causal free will is the belief that it is essential to a moral grounding. If our actions are determined, these people think, then we can not assign blame to anything that we do. But this is because such people have an overly strict view of determinism. As Tom Clark writes¹⁰:

Fortunately, there is a long-standing philosophical view of human freedom, known as compatibilism….. Although not yet widely disseminated in lay culture, this view holds that we are free to the extent our actions flow from our character-based motives and desires, not from coercion or duress. Such freedom is compatible with our being fully caused creatures, in that it is a freedom from external or internal constraints (e.g., from chains and psychoses), not the patently implausible ultimate freedom to choose our selves or actions ex nihilo. Suppose we had such freedom: on what basis would we choose?

He continues-

On a compatibilist view, what justifies moral judgments is that those acting freely as described above are potentially sensitive to such judgments: as rational agents they can be cognizant of, and have the capacity to conform to, our moral codes as expressed in law and social expectations. This view of morality—the instrumental shaping of behavior—needs no freely willing, intrinsically deserving agent that could have done otherwise in the exact situation in which a given behavior arose. Moral agents, instead, are simply that rather broad class of persons who can anticipate the rewards and sanctions carried by moral evaluation (e.g., praise, credit, blame, punishment); it makes pragmatic sense to hold moral agents responsible to such standards, since doing so helps modify their behavior. On the other hand, those with serious mental illness or those forced at gunpoint (or similarly threatened) to act contrary to their characters are not held responsible.

No ultimate authority is necessary to behave morally. For those who think fear that immorality is a result of the non-existence of a supernatural being endowing us with free will, Clark has this to say-

Naturalism also undermines the “abuse excuse”: true, persons are caused in every respect, but there are still adequate justifications (deterrence, incapacitation, and personal reform) for incarcerating wrongdoers, if not for capital punishment and “hard time” in prison…. Since moral mechanisms have a clear social function that science can help us to understand and improve, no longer will morality have to seek shelter from science. We may not be free in the exceptional, ultimate sense we once supposed, but we are more than compensated by the pragmatic benefits that flow from recognizing our complete inclusion in the causal order.

It’s clear from these discussions that our understanding of volition is in its early stages, but I think it is just as clear that contra-causal free will is a myth. We act on our wants and desires so that we feel that we are exercising free will, but our wants and desires are determined so that our actions are predictable. Imagine the chaos in the world if you could not make such predictions of others’ behavior.

So much for contra-causal free will.

References:

1. Clark T. Scientific naturalism and the illusion of free will. Point of Inquiry podcast (http://cdn4.libsyn.com/pointofinquiry/POI_2009_06_12_Tom_Clark.mp3?nvb=20090730193409&nva=20090731194409&t=0dcb77e614c754f0aee13). Retrieved July 30, 2009.
2. Wittgenstein L. In Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell. (1953)
3. Desmurget M, Reilly KT, Richard N, Szathmari A, Mottolese C, Sirigu A. “Movement intention after parietal cortex stimulation in humans.” Science 324:811-13 (2009)
4. Wegner DM. The Illusion of Concscious Will. MIT Press. (2003)
5. Dennett D, Kinsbourne M. Time and the observer. Behav Brain Sci 15:183-247 (1992)
6. Haggard P. Human Volition: towards a neuroscience of will. Nat Neurosci Rev 9:934-46 (2008)
7. Haggard P, Martin F, Taylor-Clarke M, Jeannerod M, Franck N. Awareness of action in schizophrenia. Neuroreport 14:1081-5 (2003)
8. Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, Pearl DK. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106:623-42 (1983)
9. Soon CS, Brass M, Heinze HJ, Haynes JD. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neurosci 11:543-45 (2008)
10. Clark T. Applied ethics: Science and Freedom. Free Inquiry magazine 22 (2002)

Help me get Brother Sam to Calgary!

(Note: this is the infamous article printed in The Guardian (Saturday April 19 2008) on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines.)
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Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

Beware the spinal tap

This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

I can confidently label these treatments as bogus [changed to "utter nonsense" in the scrubbed version] because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week – if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
________________________________________________________
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

via Pharyngula

The blogosphere is not a place for the faint of heart. If you have something you feel you need to say, don’t expect everyone to agree with you. Indeed, expect a bit of backlash. Take for instance crsptch. He left a couple of comments on a blog, both were pretty banal. The first was

Your blog is shamelessly boring.

That’s it. The second wasn’t any better. From what he had to say (which was nothing) I have a good deal of pity for him. I mean, I can imagine the acne-faced kid typing away in his grandmother’s trailer and all…

See, that’s how you insult someone, crsptch. Innnuendo, wit. Even a ‘yo momma’ putdown would be far superior.

He’s blocked now, but not because of the weak attempt at insult. Nor do I take such action lightly. He’s blocked because he had nothing to contribute, positive or negative. I saw any further communication from him was going to be futile.

But I didn’t delete his comments.

Take this entry from The Christian Worldview’s blog entitled “Atheist Lies and Christian Truth”. With a title like that, how can I not read it? If I’m lying I would certainly like to know how I’m doing it without realizing it. I was shaken to my core that atheism wasn’t even mentioned- such blatant false advertising!

The whole blog was nothing more than an exercise in sophistry, but that’s not what pissed me off. What pisses me off is the author’s disingenuous response- delete the comment. I’m not writing this blog to complain. I’m writing to make sure my comment is heard. And there’s nothing nasty about it at all:

With a title like that, I just can’t help but play fundie whack-a-mole.

“Christianity and the story of Jesus is the truth and as a result have grown to be the only true international religion.”

Apart from Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.

“What else but the truth could have started 2000 years ago in a small town in Israel and grown worldwide to be accepted by more than a billion people”

A superstitious belief system. That’s what else it could be.

“There is an abundance of scientific evidence proving the existence of Jesus and the truth of the Holy Bible both in archeology and with historical facts that are ignored and under reported by the worldwide media.”

There is no scientific evidence for Jesus at all. If I’m wrong, refute it by listing this evidence. What evidence we have comes from textual criticism of the gospels and one small mention in Josephus and one in Tacitus (if the latter one isn’t a later forgery). Personally, I’m willing to accept that a historical Jesus existed, though it is far from certain. However, the Jesus of the bible is out.

I’m unsure how archeology can help your case. For instance, archeology refutes the exodus myth outright. The Massacre of the Innocents has no extrabiblical source, something rather unexpected if it did happen. The only census around the time of Jesus happened a good ten years after the death of Harod the Great. That’s one heck of a long pregnancy for Mary.

And just because places existed lends no credence to the stories just because they were said to take place there. For example, we can be fairly certain that Atlanta exists and that the Civil War happened. But this does not mean that Gone With the Wind was a biography of Scarlett O’Hara.

The gospels were written decades after Jesus’ supposed crucifixion and were based on stories kept alive through oral tradition. Not exactly a good way to maintain fidelity. Only John, the latest of the gospels written some 65 years after Jesus, claims Jesus’ divinity. Mark, Matthew and Luke never seem to think it important to mention that.

I’m always amazed by the statement that there are mounds of evidence for a biblical Jesus and the truth of the stories contained within the bible, yet the claimants seem incapable of listing said evidence.

“Tolerance of anything and everything except Christians is the governmental authoritarian order of the day and the western world governments are certainly doing their part. The Christian worldview, which clearly defines where we come from and our place in it with God at the center, is being replaced with tolerance for all and hatred for anything or anyone who is different.”

Pot calling kettle black. Secularism, upon which the US was founded, treats everyone equally and fairly. Fundamentalist Christians like you hate that. They see being unable to force their brand of belief on everyone else as an infringement on their rights.

I’ve got news for you. Not everyone believes what you do. Imagine that. But for some reason you are upset by that. Unlike you, I will defend your right to speak this nonsense. But don’t equate that with respecting what you’re saying, because I don’t.

The US is arguably the most religious of all western nations. It also has the dubious distinction of leading in a number of other categories as well, having the highest rates of nonviolent and non-lethal violent crime, homicide, adolescent suicide, teen pregnancy and teen STD transmission. But I’m sure your solution would be ‘more religion’ rather than doing something real to tackle these problems.

Is there anything egregious in what I said? I can back up every word, even if he can’t for his.

It’s his blog. He can do what he wants. But this is mine, and I can call out anyone who I see is intellectually dishonest and post the response that was deleted so people can see what an opposing view looks like. I don’t write a word that I can’t back up and when I’m wrong and can be shown to be wrong I thank that person. Fundies are incapable of that.