We all know that the theory of evolution is as well-established as gravity, because we have been taught this in school all our lives. What many people may not know, however, is why evolution is as well-established as gravity.  In his 1888 book Evolution Joseph Le Conte, University of California professor of geology and natural history, and later president of the Geological Society of America, helps us understand why this is so. Of the fossil record, Le Conte writes: [S]pecies seem to come in suddenly, with all their specific characters perfect, remain substantially unchanged as long as they last, and then die out and are replaced by others. Certainly this looks much like immutability of specific forms, and supernaturalism of specific origin.  According to a Read More ›

Since the days of the Terror, authoritarian leftists have been fundamentally the same everywhere. For example, the difference between the authoritarian progressives who run The Atlantic and the authoritarians who ran the Soviet Union is one of degree, not kind. The Atlantic’s recent call to ignore the plain text of the Constitution because it interferes with progressives getting what they want (see here) brings this point into relief. As Justice Scalia once observed, on paper the old Soviet Constitution was far superior to the United States’ Constitution: Our Constitution isn’t the best, if you judge it by its guarantees.  Frankly, the old Soviet constitution was better, and it was full of all kinds of grand guarantees . . . For Read More ›

If so, it’s remarkable outcome for genome mapping: So it has been dawning on us is that there is no prior plan or blueprint for development: Instructions are created on the hoof, far more intelligently than is possible from dumb DNA. That is why today’s molecular biologists are reporting “cognitive resources” in cells; “bio-information intelligence”; “cell intelligence”; “metabolic memory”; and “cell knowledge”—all terms appearing in recent literature.1,2 “Do cells think?” is the title of a 2007 paper in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences.3 On the other hand the assumed developmental “program” coded in a genotype has never been described. It is such discoveries that are turning our ideas of genetic causation inside out. We have traditionally thought of cell Read More ›

Some arguments are not merely wrong; they are evil. Eric Orts is a professor in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a progressive, and like most progressives he chafes at the checks on the unbridled power of numerical majorities built into the United States Constitution.  On Wednesday Professor Orts took to the pages of The Atlantic to vent his spleen against the unfairness of one of those checks, the provision that gives each state equal representation in the Senate.  It is not fair, declares Orts, for Wyoming to have the same representation in Senate as California, because Wyoming’s population is a small fraction of California’s.  Set aside for Read More ›