Darwinism

From Aeon: Curiosity about trivial things might have evolved. Not because it’s likely to be adaptive, but maybe as a necessary by-product of a drive to understand the world, which is itself useful. … But even if the truth is valuable in itself, that doesn’t mean it’s always better to know. There might still be situations where we should choose ignorance. Indeed, it’s important to distinguish here between intrinsic value and overriding value. Saying that truth has intrinsic value means that something being true is a reason in favour of believing it, and that it might sometimes be good to pursue the truth even when it’s not useful for anything else. It doesn’t mean that the truth is so valuable Read More ›

Re the excerpt from Evolution: Making sense of life by science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Doug Emlen (from 2012, hardcover valued at $80): In response to the offer noted here, the reader kindly writes to say, The free download is only the first part of the chapter, not the whole thing. Most of the discussion in this excerpt is about patterns in the fossil record (species diversity temporally and geographically, rates of origination and extinction, etc.) Concerning possible mechanisms of macroevolution, the downloaded pages included this: In Chapter 13 we saw how microevolutionary processes, such as natural selection and drift, can produce new species. The only other references to possible mechanisms of macroevolution included “convergence” as an explanation Read More ›

One of biology’s most important concepts, no? From Pos-Darwinista: A lizard lineage which has evolved over the last 19 million years has helped scientists to re-think one of the most important concepts of modern biology. ‘Adaptive radiation’ is recognised as a pillar of evolutionary science. It describes the development of new biodiversity, and is triggered when a species encounters a new environment with plenty of available resources –this is called ‘ecological opportunity’. This single species then makes the most of these resources and multiplies rapidly into several new forms. When all these resources have been used up by new species, the process of biodiversity proliferation slows down dramatically. ‘Early-bursts’ of new species diversification have previously been seen as a central Read More ›

As so often, we close our religion desk coverage for the week with the new atheists kindly supplying the entertainment, today via a polite atheist at Salon: Richard Dawkins’ moralizing atheism: Science, self-righteousness and militant belief – and disbelief Books by Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens as well as Dawkins (they have been dubbed the ‘four horsemen of the non-apocalypse’) argued that religious faith could or should be brought to an end. Dawkins made himself the cheerleader of the ‘new atheists’ when he set up the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to hasten the day. His book The God Delusion makes the argument at length, but it is his frequent sulphurous outbursts on Twitter that better Read More ›

Megan Fox at PJMedia writes, Anyone who questions the great religion of Darwinism, specifically that all living things come from one common ancestor and more specifically, that people evolved from apes, is violently and quickly attacked, silenced, and treated like they’re a heretic. … I have personally been threatened by people who say they want to call the state and report me for child abuse because I made a video questioning the validity of some of the evolutionists’ claims at the Field Museum in Chicago. These threats are not to be taken lightly, considering that children have been taken from their parents over idiotic circumstances like a homeschooling father who takes a natural supplement that the FDA doesn’t approve of Read More ›

Purposeful Darwinism? From Mercatornet, The retail giant is conducting an experiment to see how far it can push white-collar employees. After reading the quotes and claims by former and current employees, both named and anonymous, “purposeful Darwinism” doesn’t quite capture what is being described, rather English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ abbreviated view of the state of nature is more fitting: “And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk” said Bo Olson, a former books marketing employee. “Raising children would most likely prevent her from success at a higher level because of the long hours required,” is what Michelle Williamson explained regarding what her boss, Shahrul Ladue, Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Stripes might not offer protection for animals living in groups, such as zebra, as previously thought, according to research published in Frontiers in Zoology. Humans playing a computer game captured striped targets more easily than uniform grey targets when multiple targets were present. This rebukes assumptions that stripes evolved to make it difficult to capture animals moving in a group. Rebukes? Hey, guys, this is St. Darwin of Sandwalk we are talking about! Anna Hughes, University of Cambridge, says “We found that when targets are presented individually, horizontally striped targets are more easily captured than targets with vertical or diagonal stripes. Surprisingly, we also found no benefit of stripes when multiple targets were presented at once, despite the Read More ›

To replace the Modern Synthesis: The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis is the name given to the school of thought which is now broadly accepted by evolutionary scientists around the world. Formal amalgamation of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel’s genetics and August Weismann’s germ plasm theory was key to the Modern Synthesis, but other advances in population genetics and palaeontology were also important. Further to: Larry Moran misses the point about Gunther Witzany (The perspective of the critics of the modern synthesis—so far from being shunned—is now one that attracts an “outer circle.” Hardly the sign of a failing cause): There’s a new paper, “The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions,” Proceedings of the Royal Read More ›

Further to “Philosopher of science: Schoolbook Darwinism needs replacement” (Witzany: All these concepts that dominated science for half a century are falsified now): Over at University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran’s Sandwalk blog, we are informed, Here’s why you can ignore Günther Witzany Günther Witzany is one of those people who think the Modern Synthesis needs to be overthrown but he missed the real revolution that took place in the late 1960s. He’s part of The Third Way crowd that includes Denis Noble and Jim Shapiro [see Physiologists fall for the Third Way and The Third Fourth Way]. … He was not one of the Altenberg 16 but he clearly wants to be part of the outer circle. It’s not Read More ›

Closing our religion news coverage for the week, we have Steve Pinker on faitheism. Readers may remember Pinker from this: A truly ethical bioethics should not bog down research in red tape, moratoria, or threats of prosecution based on nebulous but sweeping principles such as “dignity,” “sacredness,” or “social justice.” … Here he is on the dangers of “faitheism” (a Jerry Coyne coinage): The backlash against the New Atheists has given rise to a new consensus among faith-friendly intellectuals, and their counterattack is remarkably consistent across critics with little else in common. The new atheists are too shrill and militant, they say, and just as extreme as the fundamentalists they criticize. They are preaching to the choir, and only driving Read More ›

The modern synthesis (schoolbook Darwinism) must be replaced, says philosopher of science Günther Witzany. Modern synthesis The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis is the name given to the school of thought which is now broadly accepted by evolutionary scientists around the world. Formal amalgamation of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel’s genetics and August Weismann’s germ plasm theory was key to the Modern Synthesis, but other advances in population genetics and palaeontology were also important. From an interview with Suzan Mazur, author of The Origin of Life Circus, at Huffington Post: Over the last half dozen years, philosopher of science and language, Günther Witzany, working from his private practice in Austria, has organized and/or co-organized two major conferences, Read More ›

Details here: A few months ago I painted this portrait of noted evolutionary biologist and writer Richard Dawkins. I shipped the portrait to England on May 15th, 2015, destined for Cambridge, UK CB3. It was shipped from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. It hasn’t been seen since. If you have any information on the whereabouts of this very special portrait, please contact me at heather “at” heatherhorton “dot” com. Thank-you very much… We have no idea where the portrait is. Except Canada Post, absent a tracking number, is a black hole. To judge from the portrait, if Dawkins believed in God, it could be a Sunday School poster. Follow UD News at Twitter!

The way Darwinism got on it. Including tax-funded textbooks in compulsory public schools and all the rest. At Evolution News & Views, Kirk Durston writes, Science is also advancing our understanding of just how fantastically improbable the origin of life is. Evolutionary biologist, Eugene Koonin, looking at the possibility that life arose through the popular “RNA-world” scenario, calculates that the probability of just RNA replication and translation is 1 chance in 10 with 1,017 zeros after it. Koonin’s solution is to propose an infinite multiverse. With an infinite number of possible universes, the emergence of life will becomes inevitable, no matter how improbable. So the multiverse has become atheism’s “god of the gaps” but some scientists point out that multiverse Read More ›

Camilla Paglia: Salon: You’re an atheist, and yet I don’t ever see you sneer at religion in the way that the very aggressive atheist class right now often will. What do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith? Paglia: I regard them as adolescents. I say in the introduction to my last book, “Glittering Images”, that “Sneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination.” It exposes a state of perpetual adolescence that has something to do with their parents– they’re still sneering at dad in some way. Richard Dawkins was the only high-profile atheist out there when I began publicly saying “I Read More ›

On Friday night I participated in an interview, along with philosopher J.T. Bridges, on the Trinity channel on the subject of ID and evolution. Here is the recording.