At one fell swoop, Dawkins exposes another frequent weakness of naturalist atheism: direct conflict with facts. Eugenics does not work for humans. Unlike animals, we make personal choices, which could be based on reason and free will or on the apparent lack thereof. And those choices confound the ambitions of others.
Culture
Jerry Coyne takes a stand: Sex is binary
Jerry may well be brought down by this. Increasingly, “wokeness” rather than correct factual description, will confer academic esteem in science—thanks principally due to the progressivism (that Jerry has always supported) taking hold.
At National Review: There is no “Party of Science”
Now that James mentions it, the war on math and the war on science both got started at universities and the Sokal hoaxes are perpetrated on academic journals, not popular media outlets. It’s a good question whether, today, being the “party of science” is even likely to be a selling point.
Evolution Weekend downplays Darwin, morphs into climate concern, muffles racism issue
Remember, anyone can be a racist if all he must say is: My ancestors were gods, yours were gobs of clay. Absent evidence, he might prevail by force of arms and entrench his view. Darwinism led to racial theories with the trappings of science. That matters and it has never been dealt with honestly because dealing with it honestly endangers the basic ideas of Darwinism.
Was Sagan wrong about “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”? UPDATED!
Deming: Claims that are merely novel or those which violate human consensus are not properly characterized as extraordinary. Science does not contemplate two types of evidence. The misuse of ECREE to suppress innovation and maintain orthodoxy should be avoided as it must inevitably retard the scientific goal of establishing reliable knowledge.
Here’s a question that new ambigram viruses raise
“Not a random boo-boo on evolution’s part”? If the field of biology had not organized itself around Darwinian evolution (insert preferred terminology for the same sort of thing here) in the mid-twentieth century, would anyone think that up just now to account for all this?
Further on Sev (and EG) vs the Christian Faith in community
Some of our frequent commenters have recently made fairly explicit claims against/challenges to the Christian Faith, especially as it intersects community. For one, in responding to my earlier headlining of a response to his claims, Sev has now gone on record: Sev, 2: >> where some Christians imply that the faith as a whole has Read More…
For Darwin Day: Michael Behe on the secrets of the cell
What Michael Behe is doing for Darwin Day
How Jonathan Wells is celebrating Darwin Day
Wells: A biologist wrote years ago that we should celebrate Darwin’s birthday instead, because Lincoln only freed some slaves while Darwin freed our minds. [eek!]
Everyone is bugging us to do something for Darwin Day (today)
Darwin is the village atheist’s answer to serious thinking about origins.
Theodore Dalrymple on what the heck has happened to the New England Journal of Medicine
If you still think science can’t get “woke” (and croak), author and retired psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple would ask you to consider the NEJM
“Let’s see them rip up Dr. Neto’s science papers… “
A usually gentle reader writes to say, “If these flappers had any real courage of conviction, they would print sets of every one of the papers and proceed to tear them in half at press conferences, AAAS and Royal Society meetings, on BioLogos videos, etc. Come on Bill Nye! Richard Dawkins! Jerry Coyne! There must be grants for that sort of thing. Templeton? The bar for truth-telling in the public square has been dramatically raised this week.”
The wholly accidental world of the placenta…
… in which we encounter the remarkable phenomenon of microchimerism (“These cells find their way into mother’s tissue and start acting like the tissue in which they find themselves. This process is known as feto-maternal microchimerism”)
Steve Fuller in Times Higher: Academics are the last “feudal lords”
Fuller: Many if not most academics fancy themselves as “anti-capitalist”, but that may be because they are the last feudal lords. They alone take the metaphors “domain of knowledge” and “field of research” literally, which ultimately explains the fixation on plagiarism.
Evolution News and Science Today’s take on the Brazil flap
You know, of course, that Brazil is suddenly drowning in ignorance and superstition now that an ID sympathizer has been appointed to head up a higher ed program assessing U standards.