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The Evolutionary Psychology Journal, Serious Entertainment

“That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.”

~G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday

I am endlessly intrigued by Evolutionary Psychology. I found this evolutionary psychology journal, and it’s just too good not to share. Here are a few articles, and a quote from their respective abstract:

1. Parent-Offspring Conflict over Mating: The Case of Mating Age

Parents and offspring have asymmetrical preferences with respect to mate choice. So far, several areas of disagreement have been identified, including beauty, family background, and sexual strategies. This article proposes that mating age constitutes another area of conflict, as parents desire their children to initiate mating at a different age than the offspring desire it for themselves. More specifically, the hypothesis is tested that individuals prefer for their offspring to start having sexual relationships at a later age than they prefer for themselves to do so.

Read More ›

On the Vastness of the Universe

Nevada is mostly empty; I mean really empty.  Ninety percent of the state’s residents live in the vicinity of Las Vegas or Reno, and the rest of the state is all but uninhabited.  I realized just how empty the state is when I was riding my motorcycle across the desert last month, and I passed a sign that said “Next Gas 167 Miles.”  They weren’t kidding.  My bike’s range is only a little over 200 miles, and if I hadn’t stopped to top off my tank, I would have run out of gas in the middle of the desert. 

This is the kind of riding I love the best.  Riding hour after hour through a vast emptiness, alone with my thoughts, the wind in my face, and the deep-throated throb of my engine in my ears, fills me with a peace and joy that is difficult to describe.  One day my two friends and I decided to just keep on riding after the sun went down, and at about 11:00 we stopped in the middle of the desert and turned off our motorcycles.  There was no moon that night and the wind had died down.  No other vehicles were on the highway, so we were alone in the quiet darkness, the only sound the pinging noises made by our engines as they cooled in the night air.

Hundreds of miles from the lights of the nearest city, the night sky was stunning.  The Milky Way was clearly visible from one horizon to the other.  Antares glowed like a tiny ruby in the heart of Scorpio.  My friends and I just stood there, gaping in awed silence at the numberless points of twinkling light in the celestial sphere.  Then John said, “I wonder why God made the universe so big.” 

John’s comment got me to thinking.  Why is the universe so big, with billons of galaxies and with each galaxy containing billions of stars, there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in all the beaches of the world.  Read More ›

Message from a really small part of the disastrous population overload

A friend advises that Darwinist Douglas Futuyma’s recent book, A New Biology for the 21st Century informs us, Now more than ever, biology has the potential to contribute practical solutions to many of the major challenges confronting the United States and the world. A New Biology for the 21st Century recommends that a “New Biology” approach–one that depends on greater integration within biology, and closer collaboration with physical, computational, and earth scientists, mathematicians and engineers—be used to find solutions to four key societal needs: sustainable food production, ecosystem restoration, optimized biofuel production, and improvement in human health. The approach calls for a coordinated effort to leverage resources across the federal, private, and academic sectors to help meet challenges and improve Read More ›

Evolution of live birth: Provided we ignore the placenta

Here’s an article on the supposed evolution of live birth: … even the live-bearers have not got rid of the shell entirely. Baby skinks that are born live come out encased in a membrane – all that is left of the eggshell. With a bit of help from their mothers, most of them break out of the membrane within 36 hours. How did live birth evolve? One group of the egg-laying skinks retain their eggs inside their bodies for longer than the others, and it seems that the live-bearers evolved from these “intermediate” skinks. Reptiles are more likely to develop live birth if they live in cold climates, where it is a good idea to protect their offspring in their Read More ›

If Darwinian Evolution Can’t Fix Broken Genes, How Can It Create New Ones?

The Darwinian model of evolution holds that one of the key mechanisms of evolutionary innovation is the duplication of genes and the subsequent divergence of one of the duplicate copies to undertake a new functional role. Because a probability of a single gene stumbling upon a significantly different (yet functionally advantageous) sequence is so small, the idea is that, following a duplication of a gene, one copy is able to retain the original function, while the other is free to explore the vast sea of combinatorial possibilities in search of some novel function. It is widely believed that a duplicate gene has no phenotypic cost or advantage associated with it – that is, it is selectively neutral. In such a Read More ›

Coffee! Smiling android is a great date?

A friend wrote recently to advise re this article, that goes to the 365 000 members of the largest engineering society in the world, about an effort to create a female android that smiles. Look, even Dilbert would not take her out for the evening, and that is saying a lot. He would otherwise spend yet another evening with Dogbert and Catbert. I suspect the designers will not get past the barrier created by the fact that the real human brain is more like an ocean than a machine, and many human decisions are not made by step-by-step pathways. (Which does not mean that they are badly made, either.) I stay away from gatherings like the author of the article Read More ›

Darwin as racist, vs. Darwin as anti-slavery hero

From some correspondence with a friend: Darwin was a racist, pure and simple. Why can’t people just accept that fact, and get PAST it? I have become increasingly suspicious of efforts to excuse Darwin’s racism by saying that the old boy was also anti-slavery. Lots of racists are anti-slavery. That was true thousands of years ago, by the way. Slavery is a bad social institution because it disrupts the ties that hold a normal society together. For example, a man can have two sons, one by his wife and one by a slave girl he rapes. He can lavish the best on the first son and sell the second down river to some horrible fate – without thinking he is Read More ›

Bug With Bifocals Baffles Biologists

Take a close look at this organism—a very close look. Now answer these questions: Are you an evolutionist? Was this bug created by random mutations? Is it a Lucretian concoction? For evolutionists the answer is yes, all organisms must be such concoctions, and in so saying they are their own accuser—this is not about science.  Read more

The Parameterized Evolution of Dogs

I was digging around for some good examples for a talk I am doing on mutation theory in a few weeks, and came upon this great paper in PNAS – Molecular Origins of Rapid and Continuous Morphological Evolution. Their argument? “tandem repeat expansions and contractions are a major source of phenotypic variation in evolution”. Hmmm…. it almost seems as if these repeats are functioning as parameters to a larger system. That reminds me of something…. Almost like parameterized evolution. The paper has a great image of repeat-based morphological variation, too: . The primary differences in the skulls are nose bends and midface length, which are governed by a repeat sequence in the Runxp-2 gene. By expanding or contracting parts of Read More ›

Altruism as Darwinian natural selection: How rats help natural selection

Carrying some groceries home from the plaza today, I came across an interesting sight: Note: More altruism vs. Darwinism stories here. A rat in broad daylight. We see this sometimes here, in good years for rats. The rat rushed into traffic and got its right hind foot run over. I wasn’t about to rush out to rescue it. I knew it would bite very deep, and might have rabies. (Rats are nocturnal, generally. A common feature of rabid nocturnes is diurnal restlessness and weird behaviour. Indeed, a biologist friend commented that about half of skunks seen in broad daylight have or are carrying rabies. So why not rats?) The anti-rabies series of injections is not quite as much fun as Read More ›

Science and society: Defending the right to differ

A friend advises me that the Creation Museum in Kentucky disturbs some visitors, according to LiveScience. Its sponsors chose to respond by defending their beliefs.

It seems to me that there is a larger principle at stake here. People can have a private museum on their own land about whatever interests them. I could have a museum featuring heritage tomatoes, if I wanted to, on land that I own. Assuming I charged admission or was selling seeds, a question might arise whether it is for profit or not for profit. But that is an administrative issue.

I knew that this was part of a growing culture war when I heard that the fact that the museum ‘disturbs’ some is supposedly important.

I told my friend, who supports the museum’s cause: You don’t need to defend your beliefs. Defend your right to have a private museum. It doesn’t become someone’s business to interfere just because they disagree, and have friends in influential places. Period.

I strongly recommend Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, for orientation in this area.

I summarize his key findings here. Read More ›

Albert Mohler’s Open Letter to Karl Giberson

Al Mohler has written an interesting open letter to Karl Giberson, titled “On Darwin and Darwinism: A Letter to Professor Giberson“, which is a response to Giberson’s article at The Huffington Post, titled “How Darwin Sustains My Baptist Search for Truth“.

The disagreement between the two is ultimately about the compatibility of Darwinism and Christianity, but the specific context of Giberson’s complaint against Al Mohler pertains to what Giberson claims is a misrepresentation of Darwin by Mohler in a speech given at Ligonier Ministries:

The second great challenge was the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Coming at the midpoint of the 19th century, we need to be reminded that Darwin was not the first evolutionist. We need to be reminded that Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged in all of its diversity, fecundity, and specialization. Darwin left on his expedition to prove the theory of evolution. A theory that was based upon the fossil record and other inferences had already been able to take the hold of some in Western civilization. The dawn of the theory of evolution presents a direct challenge to the traditional interpretation of Genesis and, as we shall see, to much more.

Giberson’s complaint is this:

In this talk Mohler made false statements about Darwin. He apparently wanted to undermine evolution by suggesting that it was “invented” to prop up Darwin’s worldview, rather than developed to explain observations in the natural world. He said, “Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged in all of its diversity, fecundity, and specialization. Darwin left on his expedition to prove the theory of evolution.”

Watch the video of the speech here or read the transcript here. The speech was actually more concerned with the age of the Earth than Charles Darwin. Nevertheless, Mohler’s response to Giberson in the open letter:

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