How do you read Popular Science

My one point here is about the reading of popular science by lay people.  Most of us know next to nothing about ,say,  the field of genetics. So we read our latest pop-sci book, pretty much ignorantly.  What is our reference point as we read?  How do we discern what to take on board and what to ditch?  How are we influenced by what may be guess-work but wrapped in gripping brilliant journalism?

So.....here am I, knowing next to nothing about genes. The title grabs me and I start to read with no reference point of a reasonable knowledge about genetics.  But, no worries, I read on.  You know, as most would read the page-turner, The Da Vinci Code, for example.  Sure I have my views.  Sure I'm not on offer as a candidate for getting brainwashed.  But I get a kick out of reading modern journalism. Yes, yes,  I'm aware I am adopting new opinions here and there.  Oooooops  - I hear that I've  missed a prominent review on my book, but this is leisure reading, not research.  Neither do my friends really know too much about genetics.  Even so, the content leaves a big or small mark on my thinking about life.  I may even throw in a line or two  about genetics and racism in conversation next time.

Ahh, I say, but don't forget,  the book is written by a science writer and he has based his thesis arguing about...and I go on to paraphrase what I think I remember...."economic success can, at least in part, be attributed to racial differences with a genetic foundation." 

I am really getting into the book and I may happen to feel a bit uneasy - but hey! - I'm not the scientist around here.  And this guy knows what he is writing about.

To add to the muddle I'm getting into  - I haven't spotted in the media that 150 SCIENTISTS  in the field of genetics are incensed and they have now signed a letter criticising Mr Wade for his latest book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, published in the US by Penguin Press.

My one point for this blog is a caution of reading popular science as a lay person who cannot discern between true science and guess-work - without a solid life philosophy.   

It's common knowledge that all scientists are not in agreement. 

What is your reference point when you read popular science as a lay person?  Is it your accumulated opinions up to now, common sense, personal preferences?

Personally. as a Christian I'm profoundly thankful that God, in His grace, reveals Himself to all peoples in His Word.  I believe He has given the human race enough knowledge of Himself, of our origins, of ourselves, to have peace with Him through Jesus and also how to live our earthly lives. 
My Christian reference point is that God loved the whole world so much He sent His Son and that spiritual life is offered to all to receive God's forgiveness by faith in Jesus.  Racism?  That's a word and a reality I grew up with in South Africa. I'm convinced with my whole heart that there are only 2 groups of people of  all skin colours: 

1. those in the kingdom of darkness 
2. and those who have been transferred to the kingdom of light.

If you are interested in the Independent article,  please click here.

A Quote from The Independent UK

A quote from The Independent (UK)
They claim that Mr Wade, a former science editor on the New York Time, has “misappropriated” research from their field to support his arguments about inheritable differences among human societies – epitomised in a biological basis for race.
“Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in IQ test results, political institutions and economic development,” the letter says.“We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not. We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures,” it says.In his book, Mr Wade attacks the “longstanding orthodoxy” among social scientists that human races are a social construct with little or no basis in biology and genetics, along with the idea that human evolution effectively stopped long ago in the distant past.
He states that the latest research on the human genome establishes beyond doubt that there is indeed a biological basis for race, and that the human population can be broadly divided into three main racial types: sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians and East Asians.
In addition to obvious physical differences – notably skin colour – natural selection on the main continents has resulted in marked differences in some aspects of brain function, which has in turn influenced the kind of economic success enjoyed by some countries, and missed out by others.Britain, and specifically the English, pioneered the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century because since the Middle Ages the rich had more surviving children than the poor and this meant that the values of the upper middle classes – nonviolence, literacy, thrift and patience – spread as genetic traits within the population, according to Wade, an old Etonian.Europe benefited early on from industrialisation because their people were more genetically predisposed to being open and tolerant, unlike the Chinese, while the Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ because the more intelligent among them were richer and therefore able to afford more children, he says.“Conventionally, these social differences are attributed solely to culture. But if that’s so, why is it apparently so hard for tribal societies like Iraq and Afghanistan to change their culture and operate like modern states?” he writes.“The explanation could be that tribal behaviour as a genetic basis. Human social structures change so slowly and with such difficulty as to suggest an evolutionary influence at work.”
Mark Stoneking, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in Germany, who signed the letter to the New York Times, said that Mr Wade is wrong to say that modern genomics shows there is a biological basis for race.“How to define the concept of race biologically is not easy, but to me one prediction is that not only should one be able to define discrete clusters of people that correspond to races, there should be distinct boundaries between them,” Dr Stoneking said.“And if you look at patterns of genetic variation in human populations, you find they are distributed along geographic ‘clines’ with no distinct boundaries,” he said.“It's like a rainbow. Sure, I can identify parts of a rainbow that are different –red, yellow, blue, and so forth – but there are no sharp boundaries between them; a rainbow is a gradient of colours.”
Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago, said that Mr Wade should be deeply embarrassed because his propensity to “make up” stories.
“For Wade to write a whole book resting on this speculative house of cards – the idea that genes and natural selection are everything in explaining culture – is simply bad popular science,” Professor Coyne said.
Mr Wade, meanwhile, has issued a statement saying that the protest letter is driven by politics rather than science and that most of the signatories have not read his book but are responding to “a slanted summary devised by the organisers”.
“As no reader of the letter could possibly guess, A Troublesome Inheritance argues that opposition to racism should be based on principle, not on anti-evolutionary myth that there is not biological basis to race,” Mr Wade said.

Popular Science, the lay person and the Christian's reference point,

My one point here is about the reading of popular science by lay people.  Most of us know next to nothing about ,say, about the field of genetics. So we read, pretty much ignorantly.  What is our reference point as we read, how do we discern what to take on board and what to ditch?  How are we influenced by what may be guess-work but wrapped in gripping brilliant journalism?

So.....here am I, knowing next to nothing about genes. The title grabs me and I start to read with no reference point of a reasonable knowledge about genetics.  But, no worries, I read on.  You know, as most would read the page-turner,  The Da Vinci Code, for example.  Sure I have my views.  Sure I'm not on offer as a candidate for getting brainwashed.  But I get a kick out of reading modern journalism. Yes, yes,  I'm aware I am adopting new opinions here and there.  Oooooops  - I hear that I've  missed  a few reviews, but this is leisure reading, not research.  My friends don't really know what's going on either.  Yet, the content leaves a big or small mark on my thinking about life.  I may even throw in a line or two  about genetics and racism in conversation next time.

Ahh, but don't forget,  the book is written by a science writer and he has based his thesis arguing that .........in this example ......economic success can, at least in part, be attributed to racial differences with a genetic foundation. 

I am really getting into the book and I may happen to feel a bit uneasy - but hey! - I'm not the scientist around here.  And this guy knows what he is writing about.

To add to the muddle I'm getting into  - I haven't spotted in the media that 150 SCIENTISTS  in the field of genetics are incensed and they have now signed a letter criticising Mr Wade for his latest book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, published in the US by Penguin Press.

My one point for this blog is a caution of reading popular science as a lay person who cannot discern between true science and guess-work - without a solid life philosophy.   It's common knowledge that all scientists are not in agreement. 

What is your reference point when you read popular science as a lay person?  Is it your accumulated opinions up to now, common sense, personal preferences?

As a Christian I'm profoundly thankful that God, in His grace, reveals Himself to people  in His Word.  I believe He has given the human race enough knowledge of Himself, of our origins, of ourselves, to have peace with Him through Jesus and also how to live our earthly lives. My Christian reference point is that God loved the whole world so much He sent His Son and that spiritual life is offered to all to receive God's forgiveness by faith in Jesus.  Racism?  That's a word and a reality I grew up with in South Africa. I'm convinced with my whole heart that there are only 2 groups of people of  all skin colours:

1. those in the kingdom of darkness 
2. and those who have been transferred to the kingdom of light.

If you are interested in the Independent article, either google it or click on this link.

Church without God - tragically, not only for atheists.

It  could be interesting to compare the atheists’ “church without God “ - on the one hand with churches with suffocating or empty man-made rules/regulations who claim that God is their King, but He isn’t really that to the attendees.

 27 Jul 2014 - America

Step inside where people are swaying along to music, listening to talks and discussing ways to help their local community, it sounds very much like a church, too. 

There is, however, one rather fundamental missing ingredient - this is a church without God.

Started in London in January 2013 by a pair of British stand-up comedians, Sunday Assembly offers a church experience but without the ‘God part’.  

In America…for Kris Tyrell, a 28-year-old atheist who was raised as a Catholic but brings up her six-year-old daughter, Kai, outside any faith, the Sunday Assembly provides a welcome opportunity to belong to something without having to believe and to positively embrace a life without God.

“The idea is why not steal all the good bits about church – the music, the fellowship, the community work – and lose the God stuff,” he says. 

“Not having a church doesn’t mean I don’t have a moral code,” says Landry Butler, a 46-year-old graphic designer who co-founded the Nashville branch. “I want to get away from this idea that ‘you have to have God to be good’. You don’t.”

 “Sunday Assembly is all about coming together to celebrate the one life we know we have,” she shares the snappy motto,  ‘Live better, Help Often, and Wonder More’.”

The Sunday Assembly model includes music, active participation, short talks, humour and pop music.” Sometimes there is a long moment’s silence, at which the congregation is invited to “turn down their inner volume knob” and be grateful to this impersonal universe that you have a place, and people in it that love you.”

But mostly the emphasis is upbeat and life-affirming.  One member talks about coping with depression; then a life-coach talks about the importance of self-knowledge.

It all ends with a quotation from Albert Einstein – “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving” – before coffee and doughnuts are served, followed by lunch at a local Southern barbecue restaurant.