Culture

Further to PBS’s “shocking” revelation about long-ago humans (“we met and mated with other types of human” and “40 kya human bones contain Neanderthal and current genes,” one couldn’t help wondering about last year’s apparent attempt to revive Darwinian racism, in the form of science writer Nicholas Wade’s Troublesome Inheritance. In the increasingly Soviet system that governs the evolution elite today, science writer Ash Jogalekar was supposed to know that he should privately agree with the premise of the “Dark Enlightenment” in which non-racists are “creationists” but—publicly—mildly disparage the book. He made the mistake of actually saying he liked it: That mainly shows us the power that Darwin’s name exercises over a large swatch of the U grad public. Just Read More ›

Further to Barry Arrington, asking: Why Does NBC News Continue to Employ a Known Liar?, Here’s an analysis of the Brian Williams story that makes sense to me (O’Leary for News): Williams will lose his lofty NBC position and face a reduction of salary from $15 million to $10 million per year. On MSNBC, Williams will handle special reports and anchor breaking news coverage. While it is astonishing that he still has any journalistic position and will be earning such a salary after his downfall, the reality is that Williams will be working for MSNBC, a network watched mainly by liberal zealots. Williams survived because he is also a liberal. Unquestionably, a conservative in a similar position would have been Read More ›

That is called cherrypicking patterns. A common argument against design in nature is that humans randomly evolved to see patterns where there are none. Many a Darwinian airhead advances such received wisdom at the usual bongfests. He can be fairly sure that few bong-ees are going to point out the obvious: We evolved to see patterns that are there, for our own best interests. We are sometimes mistaken, but disparaging the seeking of patterns supported by evidence is hardly a solution. Most often the patterns we see are there. Indeed, more people come to grief by not noticing than by noticing them. (“But I thought this would be an exception, you see…” or “But I never thought it would happen Read More ›

Also can’t avoid this: A fly in this ointment is that there are serious reasons to doubt that fitness is in fact maximised. The central assumption of the approach has been known to be untrue in general for decades… Not that the rest of us were necessarily let in on that. The goal of the formal darwinism project is to construct a mathematical bridge between two of the many ways of studying natural selection. One approach is population genetics, in which models are constructed that trace the change over time of the frequencies of some defined set of genotypes. … The other approach is based on the expectation of finding good design in nature: this stretches back at least to Read More ›

Libertarian John Stossel writes This year is the 10th anniversary of a book called “The Republican War on Science.” I could just as easily write a book called “The Democratic War on Science.” Oh yes, that’d be the one by Chris Mooney. Wasn’t he the fellow who claimed that the big shill for 99% DNA identity beteen humans and chimps terrifies creationists. Hey, we still get Darwin followers in the combox, insisting on that stat. What mainly terrifies us is their simplemindedness. They can’t seem to absorb the fact that the more they claim that chimps are exactly like people, the less they are credited with providing useful information. We know that’s not true by the most elementary observations. I Read More ›

Further to: Dawkins is destroying his reputation? (He is now generally accepted as a figure of fun, when not just bloody offensive. A threat only to his allies): Brian Eno tells us, It’s a subject that deserves serious, courageous discussion, and nobody has been more effective in stimulating that discussion than Richard Dawkins. I think that’s all that needs to be said. We agree. We would vastly prefer that Dawkins make the case for Darwinism (the creation story of new atheism)  and against any view that assigns actual meaning to life than anyone else. See also: Dawkins empties bank accounts in Minnesota (A threat only to his allies, unless you bring your charge card.) Follow UD News at Twitter!

Give the premise that humans are merely evolved animals (the 99% chimpanzee schtick*), it is hard to see how a fight against global warming (if it exists and however caused) would not devolve into a morass of oppression. After all, our behaviour is ruled by selfish genes which mechanically replicate themselves. That process creates the illusion of purpose. So if the chatterati who take Darwin (and Dawkins) for granted also want to remake the world to “fight anthropogenic global warming,” their cause will mainly turn out to be helpful to the “alpha apes.” And that would be nature unfolding as it simply must. In the Hobbesian war of all against all, there is no appeal to ethics, which are one Read More ›

From Casey Luskin at Evolution News & Views: Recently a friend sent me a link to a TEDx talk, “Digital biology and open science — the coming revolution,” which affirms that life’s “complex interacting molecular machines” reveal “molecular clockwork is real and pervasive” and appear to be “built by an engineer a million times smarter than” we are. The speaker is biologist and engineer Stephen Larson, who holds a PhD in neuroscience from University of California, San Diego, and is CEO of MetaCell, a systems biology research and consulting company that seeks to understand biology through computation. Now I don’t think that Dr. Larson is pro-intelligent design, which makes his descriptions of biology all the more striking. In fact, after Read More ›

Further to “Dawkins is destroying his reputation?” (He is now generally accepted as a figure of fun, when not just bloody offensive. A threat only to his allies.) Unless, of course, you bring your charge card. No, really. Lawyer and writer John Gilmore says of Dawkins’ visit to Rochester, Minnesota: The program began with an off-putting series of short videos, essentially haranguing the audience to become a member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, with any number of membership levels available depending upon how much one wanted to pay in support of the cause. The similarity to televangelist pitches was so palpable that I couldn’t shake it off for the balance of the evening. Of course, other analogies to religion and Read More ›

His repu—WHAAAA??? He is now generally accepted as a figure of fun, when not just bloody offensive. A threat only to his allies. Wee hours coffee: From The Guardian: Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation? These days, Dawkins describes himself as “a communicator”. But depending on your point of view, he is also a hero, a heathen, or a liability. Many of his recent statements – on subjects ranging from the lack of Nobel prize-winning Muslim scientists to the “immorality” of failing to abort a foetus with Down’s syndrome – have sparked outraged responses (some of which Dawkins read aloud on a recent YouTube video, which perhaps won him back a few friends). For some, his controversial positions have started to Read More ›

Here. Finally, creationism has a solid hold in African American churches. There’s important outreach to be done on that front, and it’ll have to be accompanied by an acknowledgment of racism in science, both historically and in its current practice. While science is not itself racist, and neither is evolution, both have been tainted by and abused for the benefit of racism, and the African American community has cause for its ambivalence. Those of us who love evolution, love science, and want to share that love with our brothers and sisters of all races and religions need to find better ways to bridge these gaps. Well, just admitting it would be a welcome change. They could also stop promoting Darwinism, Read More ›

From a book excerpt at Salon, a mag you’d read if you believe you are smart despite evidence: Over the next two decades Darwin revised the “Origin of Species” five times. Even in his final revision, he did not take the theory to its logical end; but he had already privately concluded that his principles of natural selection applied to the human race as well. “As soon as I had become . . . convinced that species were mutable productions,” he wrote in his later “Autobiography,” “I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law.” In 1871 he finally published “The Descent of Man,” an extension of his evolutionary principles to the human race. The “Descent” brought Read More ›

Get the graphic. Megan Fox at PJ Media If you want to know why people dislike atheists, it’s because they’re thoroughly dislikeable. And if you should find yourself on the wrong side of atheists, like I did by simply posting a video of myself walking through the Field Museum in Chicago asking questions about evolution — a topic many still view as controversial — be prepared to have to go to the police and file reports of harassment and cyberstalking. You are not allowed to question the gods of the atheists, namely Darwin and the scientists who bow at the altar of Darwin. If you do, you’ll face nothing but insults, harassment, death and rape threats, as I quickly found Read More ›

Guess who wrote this frite? Right. Zack Kopplin. The Louisiana Science Education Act, passed by the state legislature in 2008, permits science teachers to use supplemental materials to “critique” evolution, opening a backdoor that these teachers are using, as intended, to teach creationism. Such lessons are allowed under this Louisiana law, but they are illegal under federal law. All it will take is for one Louisiana parent or student to sue the state for endorsing religion in public school. And they didn’t because … On April 22 the Louisiana Senate Education Committee voted on a bill to repeal the Science Education Act, referred to by many on both sides as the “creationism act.” This was the fifth vote since 2010, Read More ›

Here, in a review of Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others (David Sloan Wilson/Yale University/Templeton Press): Wilson believes that to answer this question, we must turn to evolutionary theory, and especially to a theory known as group selection, which holds that better adapted groups produce more offspring, with the result that their traits are passed on. The implications are far-reaching. If group selection is correct, it follows that humans and other group-living creatures are fundamentally not selfish but cooperative and even altruistic—that we human beings owe our existence to distant ancestors who were members of groups that succeeded because they were better able to cooperate than other groups. Group selection departs from the more familiar model Read More ›