Culture

From Stephanie Hertzenberg at Beliefnet:  Are Islam and Evolution Compatible? The question is controversial and hotly debated. Helpful information but some well-meaning misdirection: Some Muslims hold that evolution is partially compatible with Islam. At “Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution,” a London event organized by the Deen Institute in 2013, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi argued that Islam is compatible with all of Darwin’s theory of evolution except in the case of humans. He claimed that, from an Islamic theological perspective, a Muslim can say that Allah inserted a created Adam into the natural order. This would be, he explained, as if Adam were the last domino placed in a line by Allah. Non-believers would see Adam’s domino as a casual connection or continuation from all Read More ›

From Notes and Comments at The New Criterion: If you are thinking of building a bridge, be careful if your engineer went to Purdue University. Donna Riley, the head of the engineering department at Purdue, has put the world on notice that “rigor” is a dirty word. In an article for Engineering Education called “Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit,” Professor Riley, who is also the author of Engineering and Social Justice, argues that academic “rigor” is merely a blind for “white male heterosexual privilege.” Yes, really. “The term,” she writes, “has a historical lineage of being about hardness, stiffness, and erectness; its sexual connotations—and links to masculinity in particular—are undeniable.” There follows a truly surreal Read More ›

From Evolution News and Science Today: Due to the tradition of professional scientific writing, major developments in scientific literature often arrive muffled in language so bland or technical as to be totally missed by a general reader. This, along with the media’s habit of covering up for evolution, is how large cracks in the foundation of Darwinism spread unnoticed by the public, which goes on assuming that the science is all settled and will ever remain so. A case in point is a recent article in the Journal of Mathematical Biology, a significant peer-reviewed publication from the influential publisher Springer. The title of the article announces, “The fundamental theorem of natural selection with mutations.” … Fisher’s theorem, offered as what Read More ›

There is such a strong tendency to project all sorts of accusations against Christian ethics that I believe it is necessary to put the indisputable core of the Christian ethical tradition on the table, to clear the air. And so, Matt 5 – 7, ESV: >>The Sermon on the Mount 5 Seeing the crowds, he [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. The Beatitudes 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and Read More ›

“The mission of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. … some of the founding members of CSI include scientists, academics, and science writers such as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Philip Klass, Paul Kurtz, Ray Hyman, James Randi, Martin Gardner, Sidney Hook, and others.” Those people should weep. Maybe. Read this: 8. With the current administration, how do you think science education, mainly evolution, will change? Americans are becoming more accepting of evolution. The people President Donald Trump has hired and the decisions being made (see for example Florida SB 989) will slow down this positive trend. Darwin said, “Ignorance begets confidence more often Read More ›

Over the years, I have noticed a tendency at UD and elsewhere to ignore and bury quite significant and substantial comments when discussion threads reflect interactions with those more concerned to make points rather than to have serious dialogue. Ironically, serious dialogue is what is necessary if a genuine consensus is ever to be built. In one of the current threads, HGP (welcome aboard) has made a substantial comment in reply to Seversky, apparently based on an earlier discussion.  He highlights some of the main challenges of cultural relativism in an outstanding comment. One that is well worth headlining. (And yes, headlining of exceptional comments is a way to recognise and encourage those who make thoughtful contributions to genuine dialogue.) Read More ›

From Richard Gunderman at The Conversation: Wells, one of the founders of science fiction, was a staunch believer in science’s potential. Orwell, on the other hand, cast a much more skeptical eye on science, pointing to its limitations as a guide to human affairs. … Wells’ enthusiasm for science had political implications. Having contemplated in his novels the self-destruction of mankind, Wells believed that humanity’s best hope lay in the creation of a single world government overseen by scientists and engineers. Human beings, he argued, need to set aside religion and nationalism and put their faith in the power of scientifically trained, rational experts. … Orwell was not bashful about criticizing the scientific and political views of his friend Wells. Read More ›

From Will Storr at the Guardian, on how the obviously false “self-esteem” bunkum in education received the status of “science”: In the 1980s, Californian politician John Vasconcellos set up a task force to promote high self-esteem as the answer to all social ills. But was his science based on a lie? The flawed yet infectious notion that, in order to thrive, people need to be treated with unconditional positivity first gained traction in the late 80s. Since then, the self-esteem movement has helped transform the way we raise our children – prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences. One manifestation of this has been grade inflation. In 2012, the Read More ›

Sometimes, a blog comment is so cogent that it desrerves headline billing. In the following case, Origenes brilliantly rises to that level in responding to frequent critic, CR. So, from the moral grounding thread: Origenes, 268:>>CR @ CR: My point was and has continues to be: how does a proposition obtain the status of being “already true” before reason has its say? No, that is not your point at all. Your “point” is that every proposition is fallible. According to you, it can never be settled whether a proposition is true or false — “no proposition is immune to criticism.” One problem with this is that certain propositions are obviously immune to criticism. Here you apply a little trick: by Read More ›

From Katherine Hignett at Newsweek: Religious people tend to live healthier, longer lives than atheists.This trend has puzzled academics for some time, but social scientists may have discovered the reason why. Research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science has linked a rise in atheism to increasingly prevalent mutant genes. Lead author Edward Dutton from the Ulster Institute for Social Research explained the research to Newsweek. He says: “Maybe the positive relationship between religiousness and health is not causal—it’s not that being religious makes you less stressed so less ill. Rather, religious people are a genetically normal remnant population from preindustrial times, and the rest of us are mutants who’d have died as children back then.” More. Paper. Mutant genes? Maybe we Read More ›

Well, Shermer does write for them. Here’s the list, from Andrea Gawrylewski at Scientific American: If you spent any part of 2017 trying to argue someone out of their deepest-held beliefs, this one’s for you. Our own Michael Shermer offers how to convince people who aren’t swayed by cold hard facts. More. Yes, we remember that story and, as we said at the time, Pot. Kettle. Rusty. — Michael Shermer should have a look in his own rummage room. He might find more evidence there. As noted earlier elsewhere, Fudging Truth for the Cause One wonders why the “skeptic” Michael Shermer isn’t embarrassed by his praise of peer review in Scientific American, “The Believing Brain: Why Science Is the Only Way Out of Read More ›

From Alex Berezow at ACSH: #3. Stephen Hawking continues to be wrong about almost everything. Stephen Hawking apparently has decided to spend the remainder of his career as a doomsday prophet. Artificial intelligence. Climate change. Asteroids. Epidemics. Overpopulation. Electricity consumption. In Dr. Hawking’s opinion, any one of these could wipe humanity off the face of the Earth, and hence, we should prepare to leave Earth within 100 years. He’s wrong on all counts. More. One reason we can tell that Hawking is not a prophet is that he is not being ridiculed and persecuted. Serious prophets, of course, usually are persecuted because people don’t want to hear what they sense is true but don’t want to face. And that is what most Read More ›

Physics Today’s media analyst., Steven T. Corneliussen, whom we quoted earlier on the downturn of pop science writing drew attention to the fate of the March for Science, as covered by Kate Sheridan and Lev Facher at STAT: The event’s official diversity policy, posted just days after the march was announced in January, has undergone repeated revisions, and is now in its fourth version. They were not inclusive enough, it seems. The statement was designed to be an evolving document, Holloway said, but the massive early interest led to a level of scrutiny the march’s organizers didn’t expect. It was rewritten and expanded in late January, and tweaked again in February to add language about disability and inclusiveness. The official Read More ›

In an earlier story today, the woes of the pop science mag industry were mentioned. To expand a little further, Steven T. Corneliussen tells us at Physics Today: The Financial Times highlighted one dimension of science journalism’s ceaseless churn by reporting in April that RELX, formerly Reed Elsevier, had sold the magazine New Scientist to “investment vehicle” Kingston Acquisitions. The half-century-old publication claims a weekly global audience above 3 million. Across the science magazine business, a wider recent sampling shows multiple dimensions of the churn, seen in innovation, adaptation, transformation, and high hopes. “Churn” typically means severance packages. Corneliussen also reports The Nieman Lab recently examined other dimensions of change at Popular Science. It has had four editors in five Read More ›

A recent piece by Natalie Wolchover in The Atlantic (also in Quanta) tells us: String Theory: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe. String theory (or, more technically, M-theory) is often described as the leading candidate for the theory of everything in our universe. But there’s no empirical evidence for it, or for any alternative ideas about how gravity might unify with the rest of the fundamental forces. Why, then, is string/M-theory given the edge over the others? At Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit answers a question with a question: In a time when the credibility of science is under attack, does anyone else see a problem with telling the public that the “Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe” that science Read More ›