Author William Cole emphasizes Darwin’s opposition to slavery but one of his quoted experts puts that in perspective: “Professor James Moore, a biographer of Darwin, told The Telegraph: ‘Almost everyone in Darwin’s day was “racist” in 21st century terms, not only scientists and naturalists but even anti-slavery campaigners and abolitionists.” Of course. There’s no reason why a racist couldn’t also be a passionate abolitionist. Whatever a person may believe about human equality, slavery is a corrupting influence on any society.
Darwinism
BioLogos hosts Stephen Meyer to talk about his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis
Readers may recall Biologos as a theistic evolution confab, founded by, among others, genome mapper Francis Collins. Here’s both a podcast and transcript of an interview with Steve Meyer on The Return of the God Hypothesis. BioLogos Vice President Jim Stump is the host. There’s even a guide to the episode.
Kin selection? The selfish gene? Researchers ponder why animals adopt other species’ orphans
Human exceptionalism is never more obvious than when humans are offering rational-sounding arguments against it.
Re design in nature: New AAAS head says… What? Follow the… evidence?
Of course, Dr. Parikh may be forced to clarify and qualify, to make clear that Darwinism, however implausible in the light of new evidence, occupies a special position as the single greatest idea anyone ever had. But if he even put on the table the idea of following the evidence instead of the demand for assent, he can’t just take it back with no one noticing.
Why are statements about “evolution” so often just filler?
Laszlo Bencze: “If you say, “Most people prefer vanilla ice cream,” you’ve just made a trivial claim of no great significance. But if you say, “People have evolved to prefer vanilla ice cream,” well now you’ve made an insightful and fascinating statement backed by years of scientific research, no doubt about it.” Well, if they can’t have the cattle, they are going to insist on the Big Hat, right?
Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on Richard Dawkins getting canceled by the American Humanist Association
Sheldon: Dawkins was part of the cancel culture 30 years ago “Christianity is like smallpox only harder to eradicate”. So the fact that the cancel culture turns on its own, is not surprising.
Planned Parenthood now denouncing Margaret Sanger — a bit late maybe
Cancel Culture is basically fascism, tweeted. But the way Darwinism and Social Darwinism sponsored racism — because in that scheme of things, someone always needs to be the lesser human — should have been dealt with a long time ago. There are certainly plenty of other reasons for doubting Darwin and denouncing Sanger today.
Biologist tackles “evolution” and racism with commendable zeal…
… but varying results. The awkward problem with Smith’s approach is that, to most people, evolution means Darwinism, period. And until comparatively recently, the “less evolved” stuff was what Darwin’s followers genuinely did believe. It wasn’t an extrapolation, it was part of their global belief system — as it was of Darwin’s. It’s no use looking hither and yon for how that “less evolved” idea got started. At one time, racism was based on a variety of folklore grounds; Darwin came along and made it sound scientific.
Researchers: Cyanobacteria were an important part of marine ecosystems 1400 million years ago
Well then, how did a complex process like photosynthesis get the time to “evolve” by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism)? Researchers (wisely, for now) state such findings without making any obvious inferences. But the number of these situations is building.
At Popular Mechanics: The universe is a “machine that keeps learning”
It sounds as though some would like to hold onto the name of Darwinism while — in reality — adopting panpsychism. That would be consistent with other trends we’ve noted.
Scott Turner, author of Purpose & Desire, has a new video series on evolution
Readers may remember J. Scott Turner, author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. He was taking a risk even putting things that way (we thought he’d been Canceled a while back) but now he has a new video series out.
Darwinism as useless padding for news media prose
Bencze: the “evolutionary hack” is … “the task of safely raising the next generation.” That is certainly an odd way of referring to parenting but, by alluding to evolution, the tone of the review rises to a more exalted scientific level thus confirming that reviewer Emily is no mere mommy but sort of a scientist herself.
Has New Scientist returned abjectly to Darwin’s fold?
New Scientist: “Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is arguably the most important scientific idea ever” … Thing is, last year (was it only last year?), New Scientist published a thirteen-part serious that would make you think they’d sworn off all that Darwin stuff. Maybe readers missed it too much. Or they need to reassure readers that nothing has changed…
Horizontal gene transfer between vertebrates: herring and smelt
We don’t know that HGT is “extremely rare” in vertebrates. We know that it was unexpected so no one was looking for it. We also know that it is extremely inconvenient for a discipline that invested so heavily in natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism).
How cells signal that they should be killed
Again, a complex signalling system that supposedly just so happened and in this case it doesn’t function for the protection of the cell but for it’s elimination.