Science vs. scientism

This excellent post is why I read Bob Carroll more than P.Z. Myers. To my skeptical friends — if you're not following the Skeptic's Dictionary, you're missing a lot.

Color Congress skeptical on Bruce Ivins

FBI overlooks the obvious — Ivins would have been the perfect person to frame if someone else in his lab actually is the guilty party.

Almost riffing on “Skeptic’s Dictionary” author Bob Carroll, plenty of Members of Congress are skeptical about the
FBI official line on Bruee Ivins as the “lone anthrax gunman.”

“My conclusion at this point is that it’s very much an open matter,” Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate committee, said

No doubt he once again trotted out his Warren Commission credentials, but, snark aside, if Specter wants to be a bulldog on legal lines of reasoning, he can.

The NYT story is full of tidbits, such as noting that as late as April 2007, Ivins was officially NOT an FBI “target.”d

Also, after its history of screwups on this case, plus Richard Jewell, the Unabomber, et al, did the Men In Black think Congress would give their claims a blank check? Apparently so, per Rep. Rush Holt:

“I think they’re probably surprised by the level of skepticism.”

Here’s the main deal the Eff-Bee-Eye apparently hasn’t even had come across its collective radar screen.

The same variety of circumstantial evidence it says point to Ivins as the culprit also point to something else.

Ivins would have been the perfect person to frame if someone else in his lab actually is the guilty party.

Did the Bureau ever check to see who might have a grudge aginst Ivins, and stuff like that? How thoroughly they interview his coworrkers, many of whom think the square nuts (Google it) folks are full of crap:

“Despite the F.B.I.’s scientific and circumstantial evidence, I and many of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues don’t believe he did it and don’t believe the spore preparations were made at Detrick,” said Dr. Gerry Andrews, a microbiologist who worked at the Army laboratory for nine years and was Dr. Ivins’s boss for part of that time.

Read the full story for the complete flavor of the incredulousness leve.

A pro skeptic on Bruce Ivins and the FBI

(To give you a break from PalinWatch, and on an important subject, to boot.)

First, we still haven’t gotten that “full release of information” from the Eff-Bee-Eye yet, have we?

Survey says: No.

Well, Bob Carroll, creator of Skeptic’s Dictionary, available in continually improving website as well as book form, is doing his best to fill the void.

Here’s his skeptical take on past FBI ineptitude most directly relevant to the Ivins case, or harassment.

First, he notes both polygraphs and criminal profilings so beloved of the Mormons on call (the Hooverites strongly recruit Utah) are pseudoscientific.

Next, let’s not forget lab screwups on DNA, bullet forensics and more.

How long did it take to find Unabomber Ted Kaczynski? Or, how quick to judgment was the FBI on Wen Ho Lee or Richard Jewell? Or Steven Hatfill, for that matter?

Hyperlinks for all of the above, as well as Carroll’s critique of the MSM for not continuing to pull on the thread and get that “full release of information,” are at the link.

You CAN prove the nonexistence of God

And, the proof is simple and elegant.

So much so that I can’t believe atheists even more philosophically versed than I readily sign off on the “you can’t prove the nonexistence of God” argument.

Per formal symbolic logic, the attempt to prove the nonexistence of anything is the equivalent of dividing by zero, basically.

But Bob Carroll, creator of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, goes back to classical times and the good old modus tollens.

To begin any such proof, we must begin with clarifying our terms. What do we mean by “God”? If you mean “eternal, all-powerful, all-good, invisible being who created the universe out of nothing but an act of will” then I would proceed thusly:

Premise 1. If God exists, then innocents should not suffer the horrendous torments of famines, floods, hurricanes, etc.

Premise 2. Innocents do suffer the horrendous torments etc.

Therefore, God does not exist.

All well and good. It gets directly at the problem of evil, and can be extended, with the proper subpremises/subwarrants, in the face of people who will quote the Yahweh of Job and Romans, or the kismet of Islam, etc, and say that “God’s ways are above human ways.”

(Those subpremises all hinge on the psychological suffering of a God who either can’t or won’t make his ways explicable to/understandable by human ways.)

Back to Carroll, who talks more about the argument in general and primarily about the first premise:

The above proof (by modus tollens) is valid. The second premise is indisputable. You and others will probably quibble over the first premise. Perhaps you will claim that God must have good reasons for allowing innocents to suffer so terribly, even if we don't understand them. Perhaps, but that seems to beg the question. It hardly seems an adequate justification for believing in God. In any case, whatever objection you bring up to my proof will hinge on your extending the meaning of “God” to include qualities that will seem contradictory to me.

Either that, or by “lowering your expectations” to a faith in a god who is either far less than omnipotent or else far less than omnibenevolent.