A Look Back at 2007

This year has held its share of accomplishments and surprises. Elly took over as the manager of the Nelson Atkins Museum Store last December, so this marks her first full year in charge. She oversaw the transformation of the original store off Kirkwood Hall to the much larger space in the new Bloch wing of the museum. Thanks to her skill and hard work, and that of her team, the new store is a triumphant success.

I completed the construction of my 22-Inch Dobsonian telescope, which was started in 2005. Building my own telescope has been a dream of mine for years and the result has turned out even better than I had hoped. It is a life-time achievement and will provide many years of enjoyment under the night sky.



Not all the news this year was good. At the beginning of July our beloved dog, Samba, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an incurable and highly aggressive bone cancer that is all too common in large dog breeds. We were devastated. Many dogs with the condition survive for only a few months.

The tumor was on Samba’s left front leg, just above the pastern. We took him to the Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Clinic in Overland Park, Kansas. The doctors advised against a common treatment approach (leg amputation followed by chemotherapy) and recommended instead radiation therapy combined with monthly intravenous pamidronate injections. The results have exceeded everyone’s expectations. Samba has not limped since his first radiation treatment, so far the cancer does not appear to have spread, the original tumor has shrunk and significant bone remodeling has occurred(reducing fears that his leg might break). He is comfortable and happy, romping about having the time of his life. Every additional moment we spend with him is a blessing.

On a happier note, I took up watercolor painting this year, something I have wanted to do for ages. My friendship with Dahl Metters, a work colleague and mentor, has grown considerably. I have made new friends online, especially since starting my blogger site. Among these is Diana Sudyka, a Chicago illustrator and poster artist who volunteers as a bird preparater at the Chicago Field Museum, and whose beautiful bird paintings can be viewed on her blog, The Tiny Avery.

Benazir Bhutto

Like so many others around the world, I was shocked and saddened to learn of Benazir Bhutto’s senseless murder on December 27. Such horrible deeds cause one to dispair for the human race. While exploring Cathy Johnson’s website, I chanced to visit the blog of another artist Cathy praised — Laurelines Drawings and Paintings — and found this beautiful and moving watercolor portrait, made on the day of Bhutto’s assasination as a tribute to her memory.

Discovering Cathy Johnson

Elly told me yesterday that John Hamann, the Nelson Atkins Museum Store’s wonderful book buyer, has added some more watercolor books to their inventory and she thought one would be of particular interest to me. And she was right, of course. I fell in love with Cathy Johnson's Creating Nature in Watercolor: An Artist’s Guide the moment I opened it. I was even more charmed to find one of the demonstration exercises is a painting of the river overlook at Weston Bend State Park, which is just north of Kansas City and a park Elly and I frequently visit. It turns out Cathy lives in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, which is not far from Kansas City. Cathy has a wonderful website, a link to which I have added to my Flora and Fauna list.

I took up watercolor painting this year and have checked out some books from the library, and purchased a few others. It dawned on me I have one of Cathy’s books checked out, Painting Watercolors, a North Light Books First Step Series title, and I also own The Sierra Club Guide to Painting in Nature, which is another of her books. She also offers online classes, which is something I plan to look into. Cathy has a fresh and frank approach to art instruction that is friendly and easy-to-understand. She has published many books. I was thrilled to learn she is a fellow Missourian.

Owen Flanagan on Quietism

“The failure of the arguments that there is a God warrants quietism. ...When we try to speak of God, we attempt to go outside the world, to transcend the concepts that are required for us to have coherent thoughts. ...The quietism I am recommending involves resisting the question, saying that I cannot speak on the issue (nor can you, despite your willingness to do so) because we have reached the limits of language. I am being asked to speak about matters on which I cannot coherently or sensibly entertain thoughts. ...The quietist thinks that there is nothing worth saying, nothing sensible to be said, either about any conceivable positive characterization of God or about the denial of any characterization. Some people will see this quietist as tantamount to an atheist, and that may be a reasonable way to understand her. But she is not an atheist who disbelieves a certain conception of God. She sees no basis to coherently believe to be true or false any claim for any God.” (pp 207-208, The Problem of the Soul)

Richard Dawkins: Atheist Shock-Jock

The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath. Though I hold a naturalistic world view, do not share the beliefs of any organized religion, and have been a long-time fan and admirer of Richard Dawkins’s science writing, I was surprised and disappointed with his book on atheism, The God Delusion. It is an ill-conceived and poorly researched polemic against religion, primarily Christianity, that does no credit to Richard Dawkins or atheism in general. Instead, the book showcases an accomplished science writer lowering himself to the level of a TV “shock-jock,” exhibiting the same lack of concern for accuracy, and the same simplistic, narrow-minded orientation.

The McGraths offer a much-needed response in this succinct and intelligent book, which I noticed in the New Books section of the Kansas City Public Library a few weekends ago. At 118 pages, including end notes, annotated bibliography, and author profiles, it is not a lengthy reading project. In their introduction the authors explain they do not intend a point-by-point rebuttal of all the inaccuracies, misstatements, and mistakes in The God Delusion, which would be tedious indeed given the long list of blunders it contains. Their approach, instead, is to challenge Dawkins “at representative points and let readers draw their own conclusions about the overall reliability of his evidence and judgment.” (p 13)

Their challenges are presented in four chapters, “Deluded About God?,” which critiques the distorted characterization of contemporary religious belief Dawkins presents; “Has Science Disproved God?” which explores scientism (a worldview insisting only scientific investigation can provide reliable knowledge) and takes exception with Dawkins’s argument that the vast majority of scientists are atheists; “What are the Origins of Religion” highlights gross mischaracterizations by Dawkins about research on the historical origins of religion and also demonstrates Dawkins’s conclusions about it have no evidentiary basis and are, in fact, nothing more than uninformed speculation; and “Is Religion Evil?,” which provides a balanced view of the healthy and unhealthy aspects of religious belief, as well as other sociological processes that can also lead to violence.

These chapters are not constructed as comprehensive arguments, but provide general overviews of the topics covered and direct readers to more detailed resources for further reading and evaluation. Alister McGrath, the principal author, has a tendency to repetition with increasingly emphatic statements. One rather imagines him typing away at the word processor, becoming more and more heated by some particularly irksome inanity in Dawkins’s book, pounding the keyboard with more and more force, until Joanna pokes her head into the study with a mildly admonishing “Alister, perhaps it’s time for some tea?”

One passage I found telling occurs in the chapter on the origins of religion. The authors discuss cognitive biases which “predispose us to fail to notice or to discount data that are inconsistent with our view. On the whole we do this because it is efficient — it takes effort and is upsetting to have to change one’s mind — even if change is in a positive direction.” The God Delusion is then presented as an example of such bias. “Without full awareness that he is doing so, Dawkins foregrounds evidence that fits his own views and discounts or distorts evidence that does not.” (p 62)

This struck me because I have had difficulty accounting for how an experienced science writer with a reputation for accuracy could distort and misrepresent so many reference sources. While reading the book, I began obtaining some of Dawkins’s references and found that he frequently does misrepresent them. Just one salient example is Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion, which Dawkins uses to support a statement that Einstein was “repeatedly indignant” about being described as a theist; that is, one who believes in God (Dawkins, p 18). Jammer’s book demonstrates exactly the opposite: Einstein was repeatedly indignant about being described as an atheist. “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” (Jammer, p 97)

Such problems, and this is only one of many examples, demonstrate that Dawkins’s position regarding atheism is so strongly biased he cannot be objective about the evidence. He can’t even read references accurately.

Einstein’s phrase, the “harmony of the cosmos,” recalls another passage from The Dawkins Delusion, which sites an argument for the existence of God, as phrased by Richard Swinburne, “that the intelligibility of the universe itself requires an explanation.” In other words, what can account for the natural order of the cosmos which science has been so effective at discovering? Answers to this question seem clearly beyond the realm of science. Is faith not a legitimate response? Earlier in their book, the McGraths observe that much of the available evidence supports both atheistic and theistic interpretations. Fundamentalists on either side of the argument deny this, but the observation should give pause for thought to readers with more moderate views.

Sightings

Sightings: Extraordinay Encounters with Ordinary Birds by Sam Keen. Keen offers his take on naturalistic spirituality in a series of short essays, many of which center on the author’s experiences as a birdwatcher. More than a few of these present what sounds like a romanticized version of his childhood, as, for instance, when he describes his first sighting of an Indigo Bunting (at the age of 10) as effortlessly slipping “into a state of grace in which I felt honored by a magical being...”. Some of the personal revelations also seem unnecessarily confessional.

In one essay he makes the somewhat bizarre assertion that his DNA has been around since the Big Bang (p 53), indicating a decided lack of familiarity with astrophysics and genetics. He subsequently states he does not understand much about the Big Bang (p 80), which, unfortunately, does not prevent him from indulging in loopy speculation about it.

The theme of the book, experiencing the sacred through rapport with the natural world, is appealing, but the author fails to convey the essence of such experiences and his thinking is often muddled and confused. Despite these problems, the ideas he tries (somewhat ineptly) to explore are worth the attention of those interested in naturalism. Personally, I found myself in strong agreement with some of his arguments and enjoyed the book despite its flaws. My favorite among his essays, “Dwelling Among Familiars,” concerns a flock of wild turkeys that congregated around his house one year.

Mary Woodin’s lovely watercolor illustrations compensate to a certain extent for the shortcomings of the text. The book itself is beautifully designed, as Chronicle books tend to be.

Birds Today

We had ice and snow yesterday, but today dawned sunny and clear. Our home is in an urban, residential area, an older neighborhood that thankfully is near several parks and some bluffs which cannot be developed and are overgrown with trees and shrubbery — ideal habitat for birds. When winter weather strikes, birds like white-throated sparrows, which rarely venture away from the wooded areas, visit our backyard feeders.

This morning I surprised a Northern Mockingbird (above) when I stepped out on the front porch to check our rosemary bush to see if some of the sprigs are still good for cooking. It is next to our porch steps, with a southwest exposure. We have been surprised to find it generally lasts the whole winter. Rosemary is a very hardy plant, I guess.

The mockingbird was sunning itself in the hedge in front of our porch, which faces south. The stone facade collects heat from the sun. Many birds like the spot.

I took some fun pictures of this goldfinch and downy woodpecker on our feeding station in the afternoon sunlight. I saw the goldfinch in the morning, but the feeder was strongly backlit, not good for pictures. It often happens that birds which show up in the morning come back for more in the afternoon when the lighting is better for pictures. The downy is a male, indicated by the red marking on the back of its head. He is a regular visitor, seen often every day. It has been some time since we’ve seen a female downy, but one showed up a few days ago. The goldfinch may be a male or female. The winter coloring of the males is similar to that of the females, but in the spring the males turn brilliant yellow with jet black markings on their foreheads.

Here is a closeup of the goldfinch.



The male downy left and the female showed up on our peanut feeder, but had only been on it for a few moments when a starling zoomed in. This picture was taken the instant before the starling landed. Pretty funny.

The downy decided it was too crowded on the peanut feeder and joined the goldfinch on the sunflower chip feeder. In warmer weather, goldfinches confine their attentions to our niger feeder, which is just to the right of the super starling shot above. The feeder is constructed so only smaller birds can get the seed. In the winter, though, goldfinches switch over to sunflower chips, I guess because they need the energy boost. We have noticed that when grackles show up in late April (they mostly go south in the winter), the goldfinches immediately abandon the feeders and are not to be seen in our yard again until the grackles head south in the late fall. We have found a number of young sparrows killed by grackles. Their aggressiveness is undoubtedly the reason goldfinches (which are smaller than sparrows) avoid them.