2011

In “Birch Mouse Ancestor Discovered in Inner Mongolia Is New Species of Rare ‘Living Fossil’”, we learn that tiny fossil teeth (ScienceDaily May 25, 2011)” found in Inner Mongolia are “a new species of birch mouse, indicating that ancestors of the small rodent are much older than previously reported”:17 million years old as opposed to the previous estimate of eight. Kimura identified Sicista primus from 17 tiny teeth, whose size makes them difficult to find. A single molar is about the size of half a grain of rice. The teeth, however, are distinctive among the various genera of rodents known as Dipodidae. Cusps, valleys, ridges and other distinguishing characteristics on the surface of the teeth are identifiable through a microscope. “We are Read More ›

One common argument for common descent which one hears very frequently in the evolutionary literature concerns the placement of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) in orthologous loci in primate genomes. Read More>>>

Doubt about evolution is merely a symptom of an underlying condition; the condition is faith itself – conviction without sufficient reason, hope mistaken for knowledge, bad ideas protectd from god ones, good ideas obscured by bad ones, wishful thinking elevated to a principle of salvation, etc.- Sam Harris The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, p. 175.

To the extent that Sam Harris is running your life, you must quit reading stuff like this and this immediately. Read More ›

Dinesh D’Souza, well-known American commentator, offers a few in his book Life After Death: The Evidence (Regnery 2009) reflects on evolutionary psychology accounts of morality, for example, unidirectional skeptic Michael Shermer’s claim that “The best way to convince others that you are moral person is not to fake being a moral person but actually to be a moral person.” To which evolutionary psychologist David Barash adds, “Be moral, and your reputation will benefit.”

Many find this sort of thing uplifting, but what does it mean? D’Souza, noting that this is a version of the “selfish gene” argument, replies, Read More ›

In “Zoologger: Clone army steals genes from other species” (New Scientist, 23 May 2011), Michael Marshall discusses the way clams steal genes from other clams. And how some life forms don’t have sex at all: The poster children for asexuality are bdelloid rotifers, tiny animals that have gone without sex for 80 million years. But they cheat: they steal swathes of genes from bacteria, fungi and plants. So … what about the assured results of scientific evolution theory? What can we certainly predict, other than that bdelloid rotifers will not become anything else, no matter whose genes they steal? But what would that mean for Darwinian evolution? For the theory of genes? Warning: Clam sex (or maybe not) discussed.

One of the major difficulties I have as someone with one foot planted in the theistic evolution camp is discussing the general concept of evolution or Darwinism.

A large part of the problem is with the simple definition of the words – where one person takes Darwinism to mean “a process totally unguided and unforeseen by God in anyway”, another means “a process of variation and selection, where both variation and selected may be or (with some TEs) in fact were ultimately or proximately guided and foreseen by God”, still another means “a process of variation and selection, where the ultimate causes of variation and selection are not considered because that’s outside of science” to otherwise, etc. Navigating this is a headache, and one that constantly reappears.

But another conceptual problem is this: The claim that atheism and evolution are utterly intertwined. Now, this comes in a few forms. Sometimes the claim is that if evolution is true – let’s say, if it’s true that the first man had biological precursors – then theism must be false. More popular is the claim that theism and evolution can both be true, but theism can also withstand the falsity of evolution. Atheism, on the other hand, has a dire link to evolution: If atheism is true, then evolution must be true.

This latter view seems popular, both in and out of the ID tent. And it’s a view I deeply disagree with. My reasons follow below the cut.

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In “Rewriting the textbooks: Noah’s shrinking ark” (part of a series on stuff in the textbooks that could use an airbrush), Kate Douglas (New Scientist, 23 May 2011) tackles the tangled problem of species, supposedly standing at 30 million, which she describes as “almost certainly a huge overestimate.” So not much is systematic apart from the names. Read More ›

Fight card here.

Basically, as David Anderson at creation.com tells it – and we did notice (April 25) the frequent fruit splats here too …,

Recently, a public dispute broke out between two different ‘camps’ of atheists on the Internet. It was not very edifying, but it was illuminating. It illustrated some of the ‘fault-lines’ that run through today’s atheist movements.

Fault between Read More ›

Denyse: First, step with us a moment into Scientific American’s past (a past it repudiates) where, in 1911, it enthusiastically editorialized about “The Science of Breeding Better Men.” How about this for an opening line: “ADA JUKE is known to anthropologists as the ‘mother of criminals.'” Well, how’s that for coming straight to the point? The solution?

The proper attitude to be taken toward the perpetuation of poor types is that which has been attributed to [Thomas] Huxley. “We are sorry for you,” he is reported to have said; “we will do our best for you (and in so doing we elevate ourselves, since mercy blesses him that gives and him that takes), but we deny you the right to parentage. You may live, but you must not propagate.”

Actually, her real name was “Margaret,” and the history was rather more complex than eugenics hysteria allowed for. In Canada, the worry surfaced as a fear that “the British race was ‘becoming small, dark, and emotional'” (p. 26). Maybe that’s code for “like the separatist-minded French-speaking Catholics of Quebec” …
(This is the third and final part of Uncommon Descent’s interview with Jane Harris Zsovan, author of Eugenics and the Firewall about her book on the controversial topic of social Darwinist eugenics in Western Canada in the mid-twentieth century. Here’s Part I and here’s Part II.) Read More ›

Lots of people, including us folk at Uncommon Descent are accused of  “undermining science.”

Dennis Prager, reflecting on last weekend’s “Prepare to Meet Thy Doom“-fest observes that secular apocalypses (that never really happen) have done our work for us:

There is one major difference between leftist and religious doomsday scenarios. The religious readily acknowledge that their doomsday scenario is built entirely on faith. The left, on the other hand, claims that its doomsday scenarios are entirely built on science. Read More ›

One of philosopher Robert Pennock’s arguments for methodological naturalism (which rules out evidence for design in nature in principle, because it cannot be considered) is that “we cannot control the supernatural:”

Experimentation requires observation and control of the variables. We confirm causal laws by performing controlled experiments in whichthe hypothesized independent variable is made to vary while all the other factors are held constant so that we can observe the effect on the dependent variable. But we have no control over supernatural entities or forces; hence, these cannot be scientifically studied.

Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), replies, Read More ›

… and physicist Rob Sheldon will reply on: Could the universe be infinite in space, and how would that affect the design argument? Dr. Sheldon has notified us that he has ordered Dr. Monton’s book, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), which argues that case. Further details later.

Dave Ullmer at Beyond the Information Age asks for critics for his e-book summarized here: Beyond the Information Age discusses a new way of thinking about computers, knowledge and understanding. He’d like to know if it relates to the ID controversy.

Further to previous posts on the Synthese special issue, this blog considers another case of bully-boy behaviour masquerading as scholarship – the paper on demarcation by Robert T. Pennock. Those most opposed to intelligent design (ID) and creationism have typically maintained that a clear line can be drawn between science and non-science, and ID and creationism are declared to be outside the boundary of science. In this essay, Pennock choses to talk down to one of his peers in the world of philosophy. An example is as follows: “When we look empirically at what scientists and science educators themselves say science is, then we see immediately that they all ignore Laudan and clearly operate on the idea that there is Read More ›

Moving beyond (at last, one hopes) “The day we left the Darwin lobby in charge of the office”, the journal Synthese has a great new issue on scientific realism, dedicated to Peter Lipton (d. 2007): Scientific Realism Quo Vadis? Theories, Structures, Underdetermination and Reference here.

It includes Read More ›