Culture

For example, the emergence of segmentation in body plans in his 1988 article “The evolution of Evolvability”: I suspect that the first segmented animal was not a dramatically successful individual. It was a freak, with a double (or multiple) body where its parents had a single body. Its parentś single body plan was at least fairly well adapted to the specieś way of life; otherwise they would not have been parents. It is not, on the face of it, that a double body would have been better adapted. Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, it survived (we know it because its segmented descendants are still around) if only (this, of course, is conjecture) by the skin of its teeth. Even though I Read More ›

The claim was recently dismissed by a judge. From Atlas Obscura: Since its introduction in 2005, the mythology of Pastafarianism has grown to encompass pirates, an afterlife with a beer volcano, and more. There is, of course, a snazzy orientation video to welcome you into the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s noodly arms: Spaghetti, Wenches & Metaphysics: Episode 1—The FSM from Matt Tillman on Vimeo. In fact, Pastafarianism is an officially recognized religion in three countries—first in Poland, where it became an officially registered religious community in 2014 thanks to a legal technicality, then in the Netherlands this past January. And just this weekend, New Zealand recognized the first legally-binding Pastafarian wedding, officiated by “minestroni” Karen Martyn. The happy couple were wed Read More ›

From Heather Zeiger at GoodReads, a review of Richard Weikart’s The Death of Humanity: The second chapter considers man as an animal, which includes Darwin’s influence. Weikart does not demonize Darwin, but instead introduces the reader to several characters who used Darwin’s theory to justify their own agendas, including those that wanted to call people of other races “less evolved” and people with certain neurological and mental disabilities “atavistic.” This leads into the third chapter which addresses how biological determinism contributes to dehumanization and our culture of death. Importantly, the characters in this chapter assume that man lacks free will and is really a product of his genes. In making this assumption, they again reduce man to chemistry. Out of Read More ›

Flying Spaghetti Monster not a religion. (pick self up off floor) From Newsweek: Worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster call their faith FSMism or Pastafarianism, a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarianism. One such worshipper, Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary, sued the state in 2014 over the right to practice his faith. Cavanaugh argued that his religion requires him to wear special religious clothing in the form of “full pirate regalia,” but that prison officials refused to allow him to do so, despite allowing members of other, recognized religions to purchase and wear special clothing and other items. Cavanaugh also argued that prison officials kept him from meeting and holding religious services with other members of his Read More ›

In the original Star Trek pilot entitled “The Cage,” the Enterprise receives a distress signal from a long lost exploration vessel. The signal was transmitted 20 years ago, and the Enterprise responds hoping to find survivors. The landing party arrives at the planet’s surface and, indeed, they find elderly crew members who have carved out a living for themselves on the distant planet. It is a futuristic version of “The Swiss Family Robinson,” but there’s just one problem: It is all an illusion.  Read more

Last news cycle, skim milk was virtuous; now it’s just a fad. Meanwhile, from the Ian Leslie at the Guardian: If, as seems increasingly likely, the nutritional advice on which we have relied for 40 years was profoundly flawed, this is not a mistake that can be laid at the door of corporate ogres. Nor can it be passed off as innocuous scientific error. What happened to John Yudkin belies that interpretation. It suggests instead that this is something the scientists did to themselves – and, consequently, to us. We tend to think of heretics as contrarians, individuals with a compulsion to flout conventional wisdom. But sometimes a heretic is simply a mainstream thinker who stays facing the same way Read More ›

Vincent Torley wrote about the Canadian national mag’s effort here: To give credit where credit is due, Professor Bart Ehrman, in his recent scholarly attack on the reliability of the New Testament, at least took the trouble to draw upon the latest scientific research relating to the fallibility of human memory, even though he overlooked equally impressive research demonstrating the reliability of memory, both within a community and within the mind of an eyewitness, over the course of time. However, Brian Bethune’s hatchet job on Jesus attempts to cast doubt on His very existence, citing the work of one historian (Richard Carrier) who is not recognized as a New Testament scholar, and whose methodology is highly dubious. I am forced Read More ›

In the comments box at Miller’s Mendacity, Barry Arrington asks It is getting to the point that refuting the nonsense is almost beside the point. No one believes it, least of all those who say they do. As you’ve been saying for some time now, the really interesting story here is the psychological story. Why do people profess belief in the obviously false? Okay: Why do people profess belief in the obviously false? A couple notes: – The belief that randomness produces information (central to Darwinism) is obviously false. It’s never been demonstrated because it can’t be. It is assumed. It is assumed for the same reasons as the existence of a multiverse or a naturalist explanation for consciousness are assumed. Read More ›

From a featurette on a New Zealand spider with really fast jaws at Mashable: The spiders are only found in New Zealand and southern parts of South America, with the quickest of the 14 species of trap-jaw spider closing their jaw more than 100 times faster than the slowest. … Not only are some of these trap-jaw spiders fast, four of the spiders boast a power output exceeding the known capacity of their muscles. It’s a finding which shows that a spider’s movements aren’t necessarily powered by their tiny muscles, according to the statement, but have perhaps developed structural mechanisms in their bodies which allow the storing of energy — thanks to evolution. More. Huh? What’s “thanks to evolution” doing in Read More ›

According to a Discovery Institute-sponsored poll: According to the survey, 43 percent of Americans now agree that “Evolution shows that no living thing is more important than any other,” and 45 percent of Americans believe that “Evolution shows that human beings are not fundamentally different from other animals.” The highest levels of support for the idea that evolution shows that humans aren’t fundamentally different from other animals are found among self-identified atheists (69 percent), agnostics (60 percent), and 18 to 29 year-olds (51 percent). The theory of evolution is also reshaping how people think about morality. A majority of Americans (55 percent) now contend that “Evolution shows that moral beliefs evolve over time based on their survival value in various Read More ›

Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and Hitler’s Ethic. has a new book out, The Death of Humanity. Here’s some info from Evolution News & Views: Although Weikart points out the many sources at work in diminishing the centrality humanity in our social and moral relations, one that recurs is Darwinism. This is for good reason. Darwin himself expressed the two foundational sources of the attack on anthropocentrism, an assault that unfortunately “is becoming mainstream in our ‘culture of death’” (4). First is the notion that regard for our special mental attributes is little more than self-centered arrogance. The second, related to the first, is that human beings are really not unique and are, in fact, just another Read More ›

From Thony Christie at Aeon: Galileo’s vast reputation, and the hyperbolic accolades that go with it, are not justified by the real history. With a corrected perspective on the man comes a rich and compelling pair of questions: what did Galileo actually achieve, and where does the science superhero image come from? Ah! At last! A question we can answer. The Galileo of pop science is the science teacher people wish they had, instead of the fourth-rate union dweeb they did have, and were ordered to be grateful to the public school system for. Having parlayed his discoveries into a new position as court philosopher and mathematician to the Medici in Florence, Galileo’s fame rested largely on those telescopic discoveries Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: I keep circling back in my mind to the dramatic juxtaposition of atheist, theistic evolutionist (TE), and ID advocate in Saturday night’s debate at the University of Toronto. I won’t use names, since it was almost a clash of archetypes where the personal identities and personal circumstances hardly matter. That the TE persistently joined with the atheist in going after the ID’er speaks volumes. An email correspondent, thinking along the same lines, offers the phrase “science signaling,” a play on “virtue signaling.” The latter refers to the habit of some in political and other debates to care more about signaling their own virtue than about winning the election or other contest against Read More ›

Recently there has been a spate of newspaper reports extolling Denmark as the world’s happiest country. Secular liberals often point to the Scandinavian countries as an earthly paradise, when compared with what they see as a broken-down, inegalitarian, hyper-religious United States. Are they right? I decided to check out the facts, and here’s what I’ve come up with. My findings, in a nutshell 1. Latin Americans are actually the world’s happiest people; Danes are the world’s most contented people. 2. The success of Sweden and Denmark is due to its social homogeneity and its Protestant work ethic, rather than socialism. 3. Scandinavian societies are egalitarian, but they also tend to stifle individuality. 4. Denmark and Sweden have their own social Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Behind the apparent randomness of a basketball game, a process of self-organisation is actually taking place amid the teams. The interactions between team mates and opponents are constantly influencing each other while the game itself allows for creative behaviours to emerge. This phenomenon, detected by Spanish researchers after analysing over 6,000 NBA games, resembles the way in which living things must continually evolve in order to survive in nature. More. Hmmm. If the basketball players are evolving as a result of their strategies, they are keeping it a secret. In a predator-prey system, for instance, or in a natural changing environment with limited resources, species evolve in their arms race by adapting. They continuously fight and give it Read More ›