Culture

Gosh, if you go with the history … But this is now. Templeton award winner Francisco Ayala graces Baylor March 24/25 7:30 PM, Thursday 24 March, “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion,” public lecture.  1:30 PM, Friday 25 March, “The Molecular Clock of Evolution,” technical lecture. Prof. Ayala is a world renown geneticist, a former Catholic priest, and a high profile advocate for the compatibility of science and religion. In a series of books he has eloquently laid out the arguments for evolution, and particularly for natural selection, and detailed the history of the resulting debates that ensued from Darwin’s first publication of “On the Origin of Species”, which will be the subject of his talk on Thurs night. Dr. Read More ›

In response to my profile of Cap’n “I don’t read the stuff I review” Zen, whoever he may be, a friend – with some experience dealing with these types  – kindly writes to say, … many members of the militant atheist set will often write “canned” reviews of a book with either minimal reading or no reading whatsoever. Most actual users of Amazon will give such “reviews” a negative vote. However, the goal of these writers is not so much to provide their particular slant on the book as it is to try to crowd out serious or thoughtful reviews on a topic they dislike. To further this end, they post a link to their reviews on various “science” (read Read More ›

Okay, it’s not Stephen King, but no scholar ever is. Recently, the journal Synthese had to put a disclaimer on an article written by a Darwin lobbyist about Baylor scholar Frank Beckwith (philosophy and church-state studies*). I am happy to say that, as of this date, his has become the most downloaded article. That is a positive sign for academic life in general, just when we thought they’d fall clear down to China, and out into space. But there is, after all, a bottom somewhere. here is the first story on the subject (what happened), here is a backgrounder, and here are some reflections. * In previous posts, I had assumed he was a law prof, and will correct that Read More ›

Reading further into Suzan Mazur’s Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry, I learned something interesting: Scientists and philosophers who explore self-organization in evolution  also battle the armies of Fortress Tenure (trolls commanded by tax burdens). Mazur notes that zoologist and natural philosopher Stan Salthe, visiting scholar at Binghamton University says “his skepticism about natural selection has made him “poison” in some science circles.” He’s not by any means the only one whose name comes up. Materialist atheist philosopher Jerry Fodor (MIT) joked that he was in the Witness Protection Program for his skepticism of evolutionary psychology.[!] Meanwhile, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College warns, Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the Read More ›

Canadian (yes, and we are not selling him!) commentator Mark Steyn, talking about a critical social issue today, mentions the cultural bonobo myth (we should be sexually uninhibited like them) :

But the new school soldiers on, arguing that chastity, fidelity, monogamy, etc, are mere social constructs: We’ve been indoctrinated into them by repressed cultural hierarchies. Sexual promiscuity is part of our nature: You should be getting it on with that hot chick at Number 27. And her husband. And get your wife in to video it. Screwing whatever you want whenever you want in whatever combination you want is as natural as wearing a mammoth pelt and sitting round the cave rubbing two sticks together – and the way the economy’s going we’ll all be doing that soon enough. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá wrote a rather laborious book on the subject, Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins Of Modern Sexuality, that demonstrates by frequent recourse to biology, anthropology, ethnography and primatology that the idea of lifelong heterosexual marriage is a crock imposed on the world by party poopers. Your hunter-gatherer was the king of the swingers, the jungle VIP.

At this point in the argument, it’s customary to bring up bonobos. No, not the bloke from U2. He loves Africa, too, but not in that way. The bonobo is some kind of chimp that lives south of the Congo River, and is apparently the closest extant relative to humans. And, like us, he’s a bi-guy who can’t get enough casual sex. So, if he’s hip to it, why have we got so many hang-ups?

Hmm. Doesn’t sound like a fan.*

Here’s more about our little bonobo friends, so just like us:

Apes ‘R not us and we just have to get used to it.

Another claim for ape language that just doesn’t pan out

Flurry News Revisited: It’s one thing to dress baby girl chimps in pink, but …

Loving chimpanzee eats its victims alive, study shows Read More ›

gelaskin. If his Pastaship can have one, I wonder if someone would design one for the rest of us. My own gelaskin is, basically, pink bunnies growing on trees. An acquired taste, let us say.

File this under: Darwin conspirazoid’s paper disowned by respectable journal.

Of course it had to happen eventually.

I remember reading Barbara “ID is coming to GET you” Forrest’s 2009 attack-from-nowhere on  Beckwith (philosophy and church-state studies*).

Phrase “tinfoil hat” haunted me all that day, for whatever reason.

It’s one thing, of course, to publish a potboiler like her Trojan Horse, entertaining the Darwin faithful with dark tales of the big ID conspiracy. I mean, the faithful would vastly prefer space aliens, but the aliens haven’t been by lately.

And so what? Well, here’s what: A respectable journal, Synthese, has a habit of making every fifth issue a special, with outside editors. Unfortunately for the folks at Synthese, they left a recent issue (Vol 178, No22010) in the hands of the Darwin lobby, with NCSE employee Glenn Branch as co-editor.

Oops.

Oopser: One of their gems was Barbara Forrest’s “The non-epistemology of intelligent design: its implications for public policy”, where Forrest once again whacks Beckwith with her magical Darwinbroom.

This might have been a mistake on her part, for two reasons. First, Beckwith is a gentleman and a scholar, but not a wimp. And second he is not, as Forrest assumes, an ID sympathizer. So he isn’t someone to whom the elementary principles of justice do not apply.

Anyway, he complained. The journal editors let him publish a 23-page rebuttal that mostly defends scholarly integrity, including his own, against the tangled Forrest of insinuations. It’s a zinger.

Better still, the editors have done “something unprecedented” – they have issued a disclaimer and, in Beckwith’s words, “distanced themselves from her literary misconduct”.

Good for them: I take a somewhat populist view: The public supports and respects scholarship when it means high intellectual combat.

But when it is the intellectual equivalent of machine politics (as it becomes when it gets lost in the Forrest), it’s not clear why support or respect is warranted.

So I see Beckwith as backstopping a form of corruption, and am thankful for it.

I guess someone who wasn’t an ID sympathizer had to be buzzed by Darwin’s broomstick before anyone could call these people for what they are.

Here are some brief excerpts from Beckwith’s rebuttal: Read More ›

A friend writes to say that he has a “very anti-Christian friend” who seems to have gotten herself high on “evolution” (= a fool for Dawkins). She wanted to know if any of my books would help. I recommended this one and this one, but ended by saying Re evolution: Do reassure your friend that it is okay to be an atheist and doubt current accounts of evolution. Many now do. Reviewing current accounts of evolution is like watching sausages get made, and hearing the details spelled out. It could throw you off meat altogether or else cause you to be much more selective in what you consume.

Cautiously introduced as a “guest voice” in the Washington Post, commentator David Klinghoffer talks about Alfred Russel Wallace, co-theorist of natural selection, as a voice for healing the current social divide between the elite sinless Monkeyman and the traditional popular Adam: Pro-Darwinian educators were frustrated this week to find that most public high school biology instructors in their teaching do not wholeheartedly endorse evolution. The teachers reflect a stubborn division across American culture. For the past three decades, Americans have been locked into a basically unchanging split of views on the subject, with only about 16 percent believing in Darwin’s theory of unguided evolution. Darwinism is, at bottom, a theory about us (trousered apes, meat puppets, etc.). Now, obviously, when Read More ›

This is one of those stories about which one says, I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.

These three Ohio bucks somehow locked antlers while battling near a small creek. When one deer slid into a shallow pool, it sealed the fate for all three, who drowned together, antlers still locked. Steve Hill talked to the men who found and recovered the deer and their combined 400-inches of antler to bring you the story of this sad, almost poetic scene.

Some said, heartlessly, that they’d make a nice chandelier. Others asked sensible questions:

Wildlife biologists are taught that anthropomorphism—endowing the animals they study with human qualities—is not good science. Yet, says Mike Tonkovich, deer project leader for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, “I can’t help wondering what was that third buck thinking? Whatever possessed him to get engaged when the two were already entangled?”

Mmmm … Stupidity? He wasn’t thinking anything? Question: How many times has this happened when no human was around to see it?

But others outgassed on Darwinism: Read More ›

From the Templeton Foundation we learn that the big crackdown paper, morphed into a Templeton-funded book taking dead aim at aimed at science teachers who have enough sense to doubt Darwinism. Think anti-evolution teaching is confined to schools in certain regions? Think again. Plutzer says he and Berkman find that “active proponents of creationism as science can be found in every state, even in fairly cosmopolitan school districts.” While it is true that those who reject evolution tend to find jobs in more socially conservative school districts, where they receive parental backing, it’s also the case that teachers who experience the most pressure teach in districts with large and clashing constituencies of conservative Protestants and pro-evolution opponents. Says Plutzer, “In Read More ›

In “Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality, Says Templeton Prize Winner” (Science 16 March 2009), David Lindley profiles French physicist and Templeton winner Bernard d’Espagnat, 87: Quantum mechanics allows what d’Espagnat calls “weak objectivity,” in that it predicts probabilities of observable phenomena in an indisputable way. But the inherent uncertainty of quantum measurements means that it is impossible to infer an unambiguous description of “reality as it really is,” he says. He has proposed that behind measured phenomena exists what he calls a “veiled reality” that genuinely exists, independently of us, even though we lack the ability to fully describe it. Asked whether that entails a kind of mysticism, d’Espagnat responds that “science isn’t everything” and that we are already accustomed Read More ›

Here’s a good one: NCSE’s Eugenie Scott Serves as Chief of Darwinian Thought Police for University of Kentucky Faculty Casey Luskin February 11, 2011 9:29 AM As reported on ID the Future interview, Martin Gaskell’s attorney Frank Manion stated that during the course of Gaskell’s lawsuit, it became clear that Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), consulted University of Kentucky (UK) faculty about whether UK should hire Gaskell. She gave Gaskell a clean bill of health–not because she endorsed hiring Darwin-skeptics, but because at the time she believed Gaskell was a died-in-the-wool evolutionist–“accepting of evolution.” According to her e-mail, Eugenie Scott wrote: Gaskell hasn’t popped onto our radar as an antievolution activist. Checking his Read More ›

Jonathan Haidt decided, for some reason, to point out the obvious to a group of American academics recently, that they are overwhelmingly modern materialist statists (liberals).

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

Why anyone would bother pointing that out, I don’t know. It’s not a bias against conservatives, anyway; it’s a bias against rationality, which they don’t believe in. Our brains, remember, are shaped for fitness, not for truth. Indeed, these are the very people who channel Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone for insights into human psychology, and anyone who doubts the validity of such “research” should just shut up and pay their taxes, right?

Well, his talk had attracted  John Tierney’s attention at the New York Times (February 7, 2007), who drew exactly the right conclusion (for modern statists and Darwinists):

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” It’s easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace “intelligent design” while rejecting Darwinism.

[ … ]

For a tribal-moral community, the social psychologists in Dr. Haidt’s audience seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument. Some said he overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020. The society’s executive committee didn’t endorse Dr. Haidt’s numerical goal, but it did vote to put a statement on the group’s home page welcoming psychologists with “diverse perspectives.” It also made a change on the “Diversity Initiatives” page — a two-letter correction of what it called a grammatical glitch, although others might see it as more of a Freudian slip.

I have friends here in Canada who make bets on when the Times will finally, mercifully shut down.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle weighs in at Atlantic Monthly, driving home the shame: Read More ›

He notes, regarding scientists who mysteriously disappear after they start muttering that Darwinism is bullshot or something similar,

The University of Kentucky chose to pay a $125,000 settlement to Gaskell, now at the University of Texas, after Gaskell’s attorneys released records of e-mail traffic among the faculty hiring committee. Seeking a scientist to head UK’s observatory, professors complained that Gaskell was “potentially Evangelical,” while a lone astrophysicist on the committee protested that Gaskell stood to be rejected “despite his qualifications that stand far above those of any other applicant.”This is no isolated incident. An enormous, largely hidden transformation has taken place in what we mean when we speak of “science.” For centuries, the free and unfettered scientific enterprise was fueled by a desire to know the mind of God. “The success of the West,” writes historian Rodney Stark in his important book The Victory of Reason, “including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.” Now, increasingly, voicing such a desire is likely to get you excluded from the guild of professional scientists.

For years, I’ve tracked the stories that come out regularly about scientists of impeccable credentials whose religion-friendly beliefs proved injurious to their career. In some fields, notably biology and cosmology, Christians who voice doubts about Darwinian theory pay a particularly high price.

That’s because other Christians have bought into big ticket irrelevance and don’t care.

If that ever changes, here’s how you will know: Read More ›