Denyse O'Leary

After a laundry list of stuff in nature that is bad for humans (so?), we are told, “We must not, of course, ascribe the origin of these sinister features of the natural world to God.” (P. 133). Instead, Science has shown with remarkable clarity that nature has built-in creative powers. (P. 134) But if nature exists by the will of God, how exactly does that get God off the hook? (quotations from: Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (InterVarsity Press, 2011.)

We were all taught to look up to E. O. Wilson as the eminent, gentlemanly, Dear Pastor … Darwinist, not the “secular bigot” kind. And some were duly grateful.

So Wilson disowning his own kin selection theory was an almost incredible development. That theory – that caring for others can be explained by a desire to pass on our selfish genes – is the heart and soul of the “evolutionary” psychology he founded.* Which in turn is the heart and soul of pop science coverage of human psychology.

Leon Neyfakh  offers a look at what happened:

What Wilson is trying to do, late in his influential career, is nothing less than overturn a central plank of established evolutionary theory: the origins of altruism. His position is provoking ferocious criticism from other scientists. Last month, the leading scientific journal Nature published five strongly worded letters saying, more or less, that Wilson has misunderstood the theory of evolution and generally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. One of these carried the signatures of an eye-popping 137 scientists, including two of Wilson’s colleagues at Harvard.

– “Where does good come from?: Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson tries to upend biology, again”  (Boston Globe, April 17, 2011)

The cause of their dismay and anger is spelled out:

The puzzle of altruism is more than just a technical curiosity for evolutionary theorists. It amounts to a high-stakes inquiry into the nature of good. By identifying the mechanisms through which altruism and other advanced social behaviors have evolved in all kinds of living creatures — like ants, wasps, termites, and mole rats — we stand to gain a better understanding of the human race, and the evolutionary processes that helped us develop the capacity for collaboration, loyalty, and even morality. Figure out where altruism comes from, you might say, and you’ve figured out the magic ingredient that makes human civilization the wondrous, complex thing that it is. And perhaps this is the reason that the debate between Wilson and his critics, actually somewhat esoteric in substance, has become so heated.

It’s heated because the commander of the beachhead of materialist atheism into human psychology has abandoned the battle … Read More ›

No, not here. Trolls are currently on the Ecosphere Critically Endangered list at UD –  and if you know of an inhabited cave, snitch. But look here: Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry offers this discussion forum: “The most snaky Christian theologian/philosopher I know of today is … ” is never mind who. Someone we’ve discussed here, as it happens. Yes, it’s just as bad when the ID guys are discussed and maybe worse. Hack journo asks (serious question): How do Christian sponsored apologetics sites (assuming this is actually one, and not a front) fall into the hands of “no intelligence required” trolls? Just askin’ is all.

New Scientist aims to prove it with this animation. You need the illusion of free ill but that’s all it is. Any idea why so many people need you and me to believe that? What follows? Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

In “Human+: forecasting our future” (New Scientist, 15 April 2011), Cormac Sheridan takes us on a tour of metro retro speculation about the human future: The premise underlying Human+, the exhibition that opens today at the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, is that the future is knowable – even though everyone knows it’s not. As a species, we seem to be hard-wired to speculate on what’s going to happen next. Science Gallery director Michael John Gorman and his team have tapped into this tendency to put together a fascinating array of objects, creations and schemes, each of which explores some aspect of our engineered future. Gorman’s catalogue essay aptly describes the show as “an Alice-in-Wonderland world of pills, Read More ›

Here, kind readers were invited to “predict Darwin’s doom (or not)”, and win free stuff, either an Expelled or a Privileged Planet DVD.

Here are the winners: Read More ›

Here Darwin stalwart Nick Matzke gamely attempts to defend Barbara Forrest in the Beckwith Synthese affair, by pretending that there is some important discrepancy as to Beckwith’s unsympathetic views re intelligent design theory. Some background here.

Matzke must hope that everyone will overlook the fact that it was Forrest’s responsibility to get her facts right before she attempted a character assassination on Beckwith, and she signally failed to do so. Why Matzke and others can’t just accept that and move on remains a mystery.

Beckwith has always maintained a principle that may be difficult for some  to grasp: Read More ›

In “Survival of the Frummest: Darwinism and Judaism on Dating, Mating and Procreating,” Talia Kaufman of Yeshiva U enlightens us (April 14, 2011):

Human Mating Is Inherently StrategicOur subconscious has a whole lot more influence on our animalistic desires than we realize. Every aspect of attraction is subliminally dictated by our drive to find the mate that will best carry on our genes.

It is hard to think of a proposition more consistently refuted by human experience than the idea that people have a “drive to find the mate that will best carry our genes.” Read More ›

Just recently, it came out that some Darwin lobbyists are attempting to get redress for the fact that the journal Synthese was forced to disclaim an unscholarly attack by one of their number on Baylor philosophy professor Frank Beckwith in one of Synthese’s guest-edited issues.

Indeed!

I can shed a bit of light on the affair. Read More ›

An interesting column by one, Howard Rich, the moral of which is not to rely on legacy media for news you actually need:

In the immediate aftermath of the tragic Tucson shooting earlier this year, the legacy press took it a step further — essentially implying that the new media was complicit in the attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by virtue of the “climate of hate” it helped create in America.

Obviously, the facts of the Tucson case quickly (and completely) debunked this theory — but not before a parade of liberal talking heads had spewed a torrent of reckless vitriol on new media outlets and the First Amendment freedom they exercise.

But is there something in it for them?

Fast-forward three months to April 6, when reporter Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller published a report outlining the details of Read More ›

Christian evolutionary biologist Todd C. Wood has been dismissing ID-related research that attempts to determine the boundaries of Darwinism, demanding that ID researchers show what ID can do.

In this, he overlooks a simple fact: Today’s Darwinism functions as a sort of magic. It can do anything at all. Thus, no other mechanism, design or whatever, is needed.

In fact, no science can be done in the area of evolution until that ol’ Darwinian magic is discredited in favour of a rational evaluation of the probabilities of various proposed methods of evolution.

Otherwise, everything devolves into the usual witches’ cauldron of Darwindunit, complete with cackles from the broomsticks overhead.

The ID guys are only doing what everyone should be doing now, but few dare or have the sense to: Read More ›

Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, 2 Volume Set

Bernard Wood (Editor)
ISBN: 978-1-4051-5510-6
Hardcover
1264 pages
June 2011, Wiley-Blackwell

Price: US$ 560.00

This comprehensive A to Z encyclopedia provides extensive coverage of important scientific terms related to improving our understanding of how we evolved. Specifically, the 5,000 entries cover evidence and methods used to investigate the relationships among the living great apes, evidence about what makes the behavior of modern humans distinctive, and evidence about the evolutionary history of that distinctiveness, as well as information about modern methods used to trace the recent evolutionary history of modern human populations. This text provides a resource for everyone studying the emergence of Homo sapiens.

The Foreword by Francisco J. Ayala introduces this: Read More ›

Here, Barry Arrington notes that MatthGrrl seems to think that specified complexity is a meaningful term if Leslie Orgel uses it to mean A, but not if Bill Dembski uses it to mean A.

This reminded me of something, couldn’t think what it was for a while, then remembered…

For a while, one heard the claim that ID advocates invented the Marx-Freud-Darwin triad of materialist influences evident in your Sunday Fishwrap.

That was an unlikely scenario in my experience because, in order to communicate with a broad audience from a minority position (which they apparently do if you believe the frantic screeds of the Darwin lobby), they must riff off an accepted cultural link.

Well, they did. Here it is, in a textbook written a person who, to the best of my knowledge was a thoroughgoing Darwin advocate at the time, Read More ›

Jerry Coyne, DN*, disses Lynn Margulis, NAS**, over her recent Discover magazine interview, here:

round 1970, biologist Lynn Margulis achieved renown for suggesting, and then showing, that eukaryotic cells originated by a symbiotic union of early prokaryotes, with some engulfing others and then the engulfed bacteria evolving into at least two of the cell’s vital organelles: mitochondria and (in plants) chloroplasts. Although others had suggested this before, Margulis gets the credit for pushing the theory forward, supporting it with biochemical and microbiological data, and recognizing its implications. Later work on DNA sequencing supported her completely.

But, alas, in his view, Read More ›

In “Scientific solutions to sin?”, Suzanne Morrison (April 08, 2011) of Canada’s Mcmaster University asks,

Most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth – but could there be molecular solutions for this daily struggle between good and evil?That’s what first year bachelor of health sciences students in the undergraduate biology course at McMaster University were asked to find out: their assignment required that they explore the molecular underpinnings of human misbehaviour.

At the Physiological Society’s DC annual meeting, they are to be feted for their project in which Read More ›