Denyse O'Leary

Well, if we go by Britt Peterson’s survey article, “Darwin to the Rescue”, in Chronicle Free, even its supporters don’t totally disagree, despite all the huffery:

Gottschall points out that much of his writing has been published in scientific journals. He admits, however, that under the name of Literary Darwinism “there’s also a lot of crap. There really has been a lot of crap. Now the question is, what does that prove? Does it really prove that it’s futile and jihadist and all of that? Or does it prove that we need to do a better job? Because you can also go out and find hugely depressing lists of problems in quantitative approaches.”

The original idea was to put literary criticism on a “science” footing, in order to rescue it from competing nutty ideas.

The literary Darwinist traces “evolution” themes (= war and sex among cave men) in, oh, Jane Austen and T.S. Eliot. Charts, graphs, PowerPoints.

But their efforts have not been well received.

For the Literary Darwinists, however, the urgency is so high that they see their work, whatever its flaws, as the literary academy’s last, best hope — if, of course, it has the courage to embrace the inevitable. “We’re desperate,” says Gottschall. “The field is really, really desperate. Morale is so bad. No one really knows what to do. Everyone is saying what I am, in some way — they have the same critique, the same feeling that our old ways are just plain spent.

I studied HELL (Honours English Language and Literature) in the bad old days (’71) before my profs had heard of any of these fads. HELL was the course you took if you wanted to be a writer. We studied the history of criticism as well as of literature – a good approach in my view, and an excellent inoculation against fads.

Now, as for literary Darwinism, it has a small, rightful place, as follows: Some famous writers were in fact conscious Darwinists, and the Darwin theme in their work repays study.

I recall, for example, that early twentieth century British playwright George Bernard Shaw had a habit of editorializing on why his characters married whom they did. In Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle marries the foolish Freddy, instead of Professor Higgins (but the movie version was compelled to almost redact this fact, because sentimental taste simply could not endure it). Such themes resonate through Shaw’s work. Darwinian themes are also easy to spot in the work of H.G. Wells.

Seriously, one can dispute design in nature perhaps, but not in plays and novels. These works of art are not created by “selfish genes” to blindly spread themselves.

Oops, I better be careful. Next, I will hear from some pontificator about the “selfish meme” that blindly spreads itself in literature … “The hardwired brain memes do all the writing but fool the writer into believing she is sweating over the word processor herself” … As if.

(Oh wait! For all I know, that’s next month’s New Scientist feature.)

Also, just up at  Colliding Universes: Read More ›

For two hundred years, scientists have believed that the eyespots of butterflies and moths evolved to look like large eyes in order to frighten off predators. A bird might think that the bright eyespots are the eyes of a concealed cat, for example. It sounds logical, but there is a hidden assumption: We are assuming that a predator such as a bird pays attention to the same features that we would.. But does it? Cambridge behavioral ecologist Martin Stevens and his team decided to test the longstanding assumption: Go here for the rest.

Apparently, some fans of the ruins of neo-Darwinism think that President John Lilley’s departure from Baylor relates to intelligent design. So Rack Jite:

Though matters of tenure and logo design (believe it or not) are reported as the reasons, it was about no such thing. Rather it is the revenge of Baptist fundamentalists over encroaching secularism regards Intelligent Design. Ever since ID guru William Dembski resigned in 2000 because Baylor closed the door on his Intelligent Design department room (as it had became the laughing stock of World academia) the Taliban wing at Baylor has been festering to make its move.

and the  Prophet likewise preaches on Rack Jite’s text.

It gives one pause for thought that anyone could believe such foolishness, in view of the fact that

1. Lilley fell out with a number of his academic deans by rejecting an unusual number of tenure causes – essentially slapping the deans in the face and undermining their credibility with their peers. The response was an overwhelming no-confidence vote, and in the wake of that, well, he should have started the job hunt the morning after. Were I a friend, I would give him precisely that urgent advice.

2. I have not heard any evidence cited that the deans who voted against Lilley did so because they supported ID. Indeed, from monitoring a good part of the discussion here, I would say that you couldn’t necessarily predict a person’s support for ID by how they felt about Lilley’s governance or vice versa.

3. I hope that a person who thinks logos and branding are not important has the good sense never to blunder into a fight with Disney, Inc.

An ID sympathizer writes to say, “What struck me about these posts is how deluded and obsessed these people are. The world does not revolve around ID politics, and yet they blame Lilley’s downfall on us!”

Yes, but remember, the whole world is a vast right-wing conspiracy so everything really does revolve around ID politics – it just doesn’t look that way because the ID Taliban has immense power via the Chimpy McBushitler Conspiracy and is so very clever at disguising it.

Also, Just up at Colliding Universes: Read More ›

I notice that at Overwhelming Evidence, Sam Chen announces that a student sympathetic to intelligent design has received the Cassey Luskin Graduate Award, but

The recipient of the 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award will remain anonymous for the protection of the recipient….

It’s interesting to reflect on that in view of the many legacy media know-nothings panning the Expelled documentary, insisting that there is no evidence that anyone has suffered discrimination on account of sympathy for design as a feature of nature.

And they wonder why the blogosphere is whacking the heck out of them …

On most of the issues I monitor, the fact is that, agree or disagree, I can no longer get reliable and timely information from these sources. They seem to have hunkered into their bunker, repeating their well-worn beliefs to people who don’t really care.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack: Read More ›

First, imagining the unimaginable

American-born Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller writes to share the news that his book was Book of the Week in Times Higher, where Keith Ward tries to give a reasonable though plodding account of what he is writing about:

… , Fuller argues that there is no reason to call ID non-scientific. It is a good integrating hypothesis – as good as astrology (now disproved) and Darwinian evolution (another grand theory that may soon be disproved). He provides interesting examples of how religiously inspired ID views have driven the work of many eminent biologists, and suggests that ID should be promoted as “an openly religious viewpoint with scientific aspirations”.

That’s certainly not something that the previous Guardian writer even tried to do.

It’s dull, but it’s progress. And it’s interesting that Ward can bring himself to think that Darwinian evolution “may soon be disproved.” I wonder how many Darwinbots will write to protest any such suggestion?

The problem right now is actually a bit deeper and wider though than Ward suggests: Darwinian evolution is in no fit state to be disproved. If it were so, that would be progress. Read More ›

After reading American journalist Pam Winnick’s A Jealous God (Nelson, 2005), I informed her that I wish I had written it.

Winnick and I both started writing a book on the intelligent design controversy at about the same time. My By Design or by Chance? is a closeup look; Winnick used the ID controversy as a jumping off point for a number of interrelated science controversies – and produced a highly informative, easy-to-read book as a result.

She may also have damaged her career, as the Expelled film suggests, because she did not stick to a party line on many topics, but looked at what the evidence actually showed.

Party line vs. evidence? In science? Yes indeed. A profoundly illiberal trend is growing up in science. Once a party line becomes widely accepted, not only are dissenters ostracized and punished but truth, fair comment, and good intent are not permitted as defenses. If that sounds like a Canadian “human rights” commission, the resemblance is not accidental. The trend in science is part of a larger trend in society, though it is expressed in different ways.

Winnick begins with the 1970s debate on the use of live human fetuses in research. She focuses in particular on the sudden importance of “bioethicists” – whose main job, it appears, was to construct justifications for what researchers wanted to do. (pp. 28-29) For example,

“Research on the Fetus” was filled with the moral doublespeak of bioethics, the intellectual shifting, the illogic and the numerous loopholes that soon would typify nearly all writings in the emerging field of bioethics. (p. 80)

These are the things that mainstream journalists like Winnick, who wrote for the Pittsburgh Gazette, are just not supposed to say.

One must rather speak of “anguished choices” and “no easy answers” – as if, in the entire history of the world, the word NO! had never been invented and there had never been a reason to use it. She adds:

Virtually unnoticed at the time was the sub-rosa dismantling of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, the “bias for life” that at least in theory, holds each life dear. (p. 29)

In my experience, that dismantling wasn’t so much unnoticed as impolite to mention. To notice such a thing implied the moral judgement that the loss of Judaeo-Christian ethics was a genuine loss. But our North American society has grown suspicious of moral judgments of any kind, especially judgements in favour of that kind of thing.

Significantly, foreshadowing later developments, advocates of live fetal research called their opponents “scientific know-nothings” who were “anti-research,” thus subtly positioning science itself as on the side of dehumanizing trends.

Next: Part One: Science as popular religion Read More ›

A friend writes to say that nonsensical materialism is now being marketed to engineers, via IEEE, the largest professional engineering society in the world, with over 365 000 members.

This article, “I, Rodney Brooks, am a robot”, appeared in the IEEE Spectrum which is the magazine that goes to all members:

To look at this account of the religious fervour surrounding Barack Obama by Michael Medved, one would think so. Consider

Author Garen Thomas makes similar observations in “Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama”, a newly published book for children. “There has emerged a new leader who seems to be granting Americans a renewed license to dream. Barack Obama has proven repeatedly that he can touch people from all genders,” (not just both of them, you’ll note, but all of ‘em), “political affiliations, and across racial divides. There are few times in your life when you have a real opportunity to alter the course of history and put civilization back on a course toward prosperity and unity for all races and genders.” All of them—again. “If you were to look at dates in your history books, you might see centuries pass before something remarkable and worth noting occurred, when one person or a group of people stood up for change, making an enlightened leap in the evolution of the human story.”

It goes on. Take your anti-nausea prescription before you follow it up.

Now, some, including Logan Gage at the Discovery Institute, think that innate religiosity proves that religion is an innate human impulse. I have never agreed with that, and in The Spiritual Brain neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I made clear that there is no innate religious impulse.  Here’s the skinny:

If you have a human mind, you naturally wonder about stuff like

– Are there laws that govern the universe? Can I influence them in any way?

– Could beings greater than myself be in charge of what happens? Can I contact them?

– I know I will die, but what will happen then? What happened to my parents and grandparents?

– Does it matter how I live? Can I change anything by thinking or praying about it?

– Why do bad things happen to good people?

And so forth.

I am not convinced that we need anything more than a human mind to ask these questions because the mind will generate them when in contact with reality, for the same reasons as mathematics works.

If I am wrong, I would like to hear a reasonable explanation why that is so.

Also, at the Post-Darwinist:<<

Is Susan Mazur writing a book that exposes the Darwin industry instead of protecting it?

Her e-book title is “Altenberg 16: An Exposé Of The Evolution Industry”
Sunday, 6 July 2008, 12:32 pm | Article: Suzan Mazur

—–

<oreword

Introduction

Chronology

Evolution Tribes

1 The Altenberg 16

2 Altenberg! The Woodstock of Evolution?

3 Jerry Fodor and Stan Salthe Open the Evo Box

4 Theory of Form to Center Stage

5 The Two Stus

[ and further … ]

Susan, you mean, no more of the “dancing with the biologists” on Galapagos rubbish (and, person who wrote that silliness, you know who you are … ) A real accounting at last? Read More ›

I’ve been covering the ID controversy for about seven years now, as one of only a handful of journalists to make a specialty of it.

Along the way, I have encountered several j’s who were scared off by threats of career ruin. I thought that too bad.

If your stories are consistently about stuff that’s in the news, it’s actually hard to ruin your career covering them.

When people ask me whether ID is making an impact, I usually focus on three criteria I developed back then and monitor routinely: Read More ›

Many of us have heard a wearisome amount of commentary about whether the Expelled film should have – or should not have – dwelt on the Darwin-driven Nazi extermination of “inferior” peoples.

Scholar Richard Weikart, who knows more than anyone alive about the  Nazis and Darwin, writes to say,

The point about showing the social and ethical impact of Darwinism is not to *disprove* Darwinism. However, many people fail to understand that Darwinism necessarily has ethical implications, in ways that other sciences do not, because it makes claims about the origins of morality (at least Darwin in Descent of Man made such claims, as have myriads of Darwinists thereafter).

However, while not disproving Darwinism, pointing out the ethical implications and impacts of Darwinism is nonetheless important, as I have learned from reactions to my book, From Darwin to Hitler, and to lectures I have given. Some individuals have told me that before learning about my work on the intersection of Darwinism and bioethics, they didn’t think Darwinism was all that important—they saw it as irrelevant, a mere intellectual curiosity. Darwinism, however, makes claims about life and death issues—indeed, about the very meaning of life and death (in addition to its claims about the origins of morality). Granted, there are various ways philosophically to try to meet these challenges, but knowing the directions that Darwinism has taken historically can help clarify the philosophical issues, it seems to me. For those who think that the social implications have only been felt by Nazi Germany, get John West’s excellent book, _Darwin Day in America_, where he shows the way that Darwinism has impacted many diverse fields in the US.

I do not disbelieve in Darwinism because of its ethical and social consequences. I disbelieve in Darwinism because it is inconsistent with the available evidence. It simply is not true. Showing that people have been (and are being!!) killed in the name of Darwinism, however, lends poignancy and urgency to exposing the falsehood.

If I did not have any other reason to believe Weikart, I need only look at the rubbish at Wikipedia on the subject.

Surely no one sends their students there? It is nothing but a whitewash of Darwin’s racism and the inevitable consequences of same. It will be instructive to see Barack Obama’s campaign get hold of this stuff and turn it into something really slick.

Meanwhile, key news from the north: Read More ›

Can’t sleep? Thinking of trying that leftover spicy dip again?

Mmmmmm, can’t comment on that but, as you munch ….

As if to prove that modernization and secularization are not the same thing – as sociologist Peter Berger maintains – long-deceased cultural icons are “appearing” again. Darwin’s face has been discovered in a tree and Turkish secularist Kemal Ataturk’s face in a hillside shadow in a remote Turkish village. All the more interesting because Darwin is the icon of North American atheists and Atatürk was a devout secularist.

Apparently, the silhouette of Turkey’s revered founder appears on the shadow that falls on these heights between June 15 and July 5. And thousands of Atatürk lovers, including military officers, bureaucrats and urban professionals, visit the region in order to observe this fascinating solstice.

Mr. Gülcemal Fidan, the mayor of Damal and a member of the ultra-secular People’s Republican Party, or CHP, recently announced that the “Damal Festival in the Shade of Atatürk” will be observed every year, and his office has spared YTL 200,000 (about $163,000) for this year’s organization — which is quite an amount for a tiny and poor area like his. Mr. Fidan also added that they expected Turkey’s Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Büyükanit to attend the celebrations.

Did Atatürk get “time off for good behavior” to come back and get his devotees favours from the government?

Now, I ask you, reasonable folk, does this – or does it not – beat the “Virgin Mary on a piece of toast“?

Toronto hack’s view: Devotees – of Darwin, Ataturk, or kitsch Catholicism – “see” things.

The Florida toast cult claims that their piece of bread has mystical power. It never went bad in a whole decade – or anyway, no one ate it and got sick. No one ate it at all. It was offered for sale.

Match THAT< Darwin and Ataturk!

(Note: The Catholic Church thinks that Jesus’s mother Mary has sometimes appeared to help people. But read this for qualifying details. Do not try to phone the Pope about your toast. If you have not been living a really holy life, Mary prays for you. But if you are not listening to usual sources of good advice – why not start by listening to them, instead of waiting for a visit from her?)

Meanwhile, at The Mindful Hack, if you still haven’t gone to sleep … Read More ›

A reader of The Spiritual Brain asks,

… , you write that evolution (i.e., macro-evolution, descent by a common ancestor) is a fact, given the fossil record. Do you really believe this, or this is simply a concession to the scientific establishment, in other words, a disclaimer of sorts that is making sure that your ideas in this book can be taken seriously …

Well that was grounds for a gourmet cup of coffee!

The Spiritual Brain was an enormous amount of work. Mario and I risked much to maintain what we think the evidence supports about the non-material nature of the human mind. 

Anyone who thinks we would complicate our lives by also maintaining positions we do not support … has a future in writing afternoon soaps, where life is the art of the impossible.

So I wrote back and said,

I am intrigued by the way you put your question, “Do you really believe this?”

It reminds me of the day I was received into the Catholic Church (as an adult).

But I am not sure that a question about common descent should remind me of my reception into the Church. Let me explain why: Read More ›

A friend writes to tell me that this article uses the design concept effectively. What do you think?

ASAP Biochemistry, ASAP Article, 10.1021/bi800357b
Web Release Date: June 19, 2008
Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society
11-cis- and All-trans-Retinols Can Activate Rod Opsin: Rational Design of the Visual Cycle†
Masahiro Kono,* Patrice W. Goletz, and Rosalie K. Crouch
Department of Ophthalmology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 29425
Received February 29, 2008
Revised Manuscript Received May 25, 2008

Abstract:
Rhodopsin is the photosensitive pigment in the rod photoreceptor cell. Upon absorption of a photon, the covalently bound 11-cis-retinal isomerizes to the all-trans form, enabling rhodopsin to activate transducin, its G protein. All-trans-retinal is then released from the protein and reduced to all-trans-retinol. It is subsequently transported to the retinal pigment epithelium where it is converted to 11-cis-retinol and oxidized to 11-cis-retinal before it is transported back to the photoreceptor to regenerate rhodopsin and complete the visual cycle. In this study, we have measured the effects of all-trans- and 11-cis-retinals and -retinols on the opsin’s ability to activate transducin to ascertain their potentials for activating the signaling cascade. Only 11-cis-retinal acts as an inverse agonist to the opsin. All-trans-retinal, all-trans-retinol, and 11-cis-retinol are all agonists with all-trans-retinal being the most potent agonist and all-trans-retinol being the least potent. Taken as a whole, our study is consistent with the hypothesis that the steps in the visual cycle are optimized such that the rod can serve as a highly sensitive dim light receptor. All-trans-retinal is immediately reduced in the photoreceptor to prevent back reactions and to weaken its effectiveness as an agonist before it is transported out of the cell; oxidation of 11-cis-retinol occurs in the retinal pigment epithelium and not the rod photoreceptor cell because 11-cis-retinol can act as an agonist and activate the signaling cascade if it were to bind an opsin, effectively adapting the cell to light.

The rest of the article is in Paywall City. If you’re from there, read and spill.

Also, new at the Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

Friends remind me of an excerpt from a debate between intelligent design advocate Phillip Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, and Darwinist philosopher William Provine, in which Provine proclaims,

First, the argument from design failed. There is no intelligent design in the natural world. When mammals die, they are really and truly dead. No ultimate foundations for ethics exist, no ultimate meaning in life exists, and free will is merely a human myth. These are all conclusions to which Darwin came quite clearly. (Stanford University, April 30, 1994)

Provine has said this elsewhere over the years, most notably in the Expelled movie.

A friend comments that he admires Provine for at least being honest about where materialist atheism leads – as opposed to Richard Dawkins, who moralizes with abandon, without recognizing that his belief system cannot privilege one morality over another by definition.

What happens then? Well, what happens then is being played out in Canada right now, and all across Europe. All ethical systems come under attack, and degenerate into a swamp of unfocused feelings. In Canada, a quasi-judicial body known as a “human rights commission” – with far more power over individual Canadians’ lives than any court would ever have – is alike empowered to pass judgment on a clergyman’s pastoral advice and a late-night comic’s jokes – based on assorted individuals’ feelings of hurt or offense. One astonishing decision follows another, and you can read about many of them on a regular basis at civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant’s blog.

Straw in the wind: When Levant recently tried debating an establishment lawyer, the establishment lawyer began to claim that Levant “needs counselling” – there are few more ominous words in a rapidly degenerating materialist society. The establishment neither has nor needs arguments for its position; it only needs to flow in whatever direction it is driven by the moods of the moment, and those whose moods (not “ideas”, notice) are out of synch – “need counselling.”

As Mario Beauregard and I put it in the The Spiritual Brain, the root of this sort of abuse is materialist atheism, in which

“science-based, effective and progressive policies” are not offered by a self to other selves, but driven by an object at other objects.” (p. 117)

That, I think, is what breeds the totalitarian impulse. The materialist has first dehumanized himself, then he dehumanizes others.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›