Darwinism

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, responds to BioLogos (= Dawkins’s scissors, applied to Bible in Jesus’ name): Then, after chiding the church for paying too much attention to anti-evolutionary voices, he offers a sentence which, taken seriously, represents a breathtaking intellectual commitment: Scientific knowledge is not seriously flawed and we cannot allow ourselves to be led down this pathway any longer. That is nothing less than a manifesto for scientism. Science, as a form of knowledge, is here granted a status that can only be described as infallible. The dangers of this proposal are only intensified when we recognize that “scientific knowledge” is not even a stable intellectual construct. Nevertheless, these words do reveal why BioLogos pushes Read More ›

Evolutionary biologists have long proposed that the genes most important to life are ancient and conserved, handed down from species to species as the “bread and butter” of biology. New genes that arise as species split off from their ancestors were thought to serve less critical roles — the “vinegar” that adds flavor to the core genes. But when nearly 200 new genes in the fruit fly species Drosophila melanogaster were individually silenced in laboratory experiments at the University of Chicago, more than 30 percent of the knockdowns were found to kill the fly. The study, published December 17 in Science, suggests that new genes are equally important for the successful development and survival of an organism as older genes. Read More ›

Recently at Prosblogion, philosopher Alexander Pruss started a conversation off with the following:

Classic Paley-style design arguments go like this: There is some complex biological feature C which is such that

I shall suggest that the story is not so simple, and that, in fact, a very powerful Paley-style design argument may continue to go through.

Pruss later mentions that he thinks there’s a possible flaw in the argument, but not one due to Darwin. More on that below.

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In 1959, the physicist-novelist-UK science policy advisor CP Snow gave his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge, where he canonized ‘the two cultures’ , a long-standing and — to his mind at least — increasing distinction between the mindsets of those trained in the ‘arts’ (i.e. humanities, social sciences) and the ‘sciences’ (i.e. natural sciences, engineering). Even back then, and certainly more so now, there was another ‘culture’ that was increasingly set adrift from the rest of academic knowledge — theology.  For example, it would be interesting to learn whether most academics believe that theology constitutes a body of knowledge — and, for that matter, whether most theologians themselves believe that their knowledge applies to more than just fellow believers.  After Read More ›

Phillip [Johnson] is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record – it’s always good to point this out. It’s difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient! – William Provine, evolutionary biologist, Cornell University* – * quoted in Michael Powell, “Doubting Rationalist: ‘Intelligent Design’ Proponent Phillip Johnson, and How He Came to Be”, Washington Post (Sunday, May 15, 2005). For context, go here. Oh, and did we mention that your kids are legally required to learn in school how to wait, shut up, believe, and pay too? Sure, because we may as well all be one big happy family in the Four Easy Steps plan. Maybe some of Read More ›

David Berlinski recalls Gould’s tetchy relationship with the iron rice bowls of the Darwin establishment: Of course, if the fossil record does not fit the theory, it is always possible to adjust the theory to fit the record. In science, an enterprising theoretician has several degrees of freedom within which to maneuver before the referee reaches ten and the final bell comes to clang. Steven Jay Gould, who was trained as a paleontologist, surveyed the fossil evidence early in the 1970s and came to the obvious conclusion that either the theory or the evidence must go. What went, on his scheme of things, was the neo Darwinian orthodoxy by which species change into different species by means of an endless Read More ›

Christian Darwinists are fond of reassuring us all that Christianity and Darwinism are a natural fit. They don’t seem to have taught the chant to everyone yet. Old Earth creationist Stephen E. Jones has noted, Barbara Forrest, has explored what she believes are the religious implications of neo-Darwinism and astronomy in her article, “The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution,” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 35.4 (Dec 2000), 861-889. She writes (p. 862, notes omitted): We have established scientifically some disquieting facts: (1) human beings have evolved from nonhuman life forms, meaning that (2) at one time we did not exist, and that (3) according to paleontological and astronomical evidence, at some time in the future we shall cease Read More ›

Wanted: Examples from recent textbooks that match these examples from the 1990s through 2001?:

From Joseph S. Levine and Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life (D.C. Heath and Co., 1st ed. 1992, p. 152:

Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit.Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.

(My source tells me that this language was not removed for the 2nd ed. in 1994.)

From Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates), p. 5:

Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx’s materialistic theory of history and society and Freud’s attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin’s theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism…

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A friend has unearthed another Darwin troll “reshelving” books: Reshelving antievolution books in the name of science Every time I go into the Hastings bookstore here in Butte, Montana, I get annoyed to see antievolution books in the science section, especially since these books are not scientific in their antievolutionism, but motivated by the intelligent design movement or other religious factors. So, I usually remove the books from the science section and reshelve them in the religion section. Usually I find the books eventually returned to the science section, and wonder if the bookstore employee returning them ever thinks, “Why do these particular books keep ending up in the religion section?” So, I keep moving them. Today I went to Read More ›

In Science , we read: Altering the Past: China’s Faked Fossils Problem Richard Stone Specialists and collectors around the world have long decried the flood of sham fossils pouring out of China. But Science has learned that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums. One paleontologist estimates that more than 80% of marine reptile specimens now on display in Chinese museums have been “altered or artificially combined to varying degrees.” One consequence of the fakery is an erosion of trust in museums, which are supposed to enlighten—not con—the public. Scholars, too, pay a price: They waste time sifting authentic specimens from counterfeit chaff. And a genuine blockbuster fossil can be destroyed by Read More ›

With a hat tip, one supposes, to Wiki Leaker Julian Assange, a friend alerts me to DarwinLeaks hoping it will “do the same to Darwin and disciples from a history of science point of view.” The blog is in Portuguese, but can be translated at the site. It certainly looked interesting; when I checked in, the question was why the correspondence between Darwin and Mivart, the well-known anatomist with whom Darwin fell out, has never been released to the Internet. There is some thought that it may falsify some current explanations for the breach between the two men. Well, there is only one way to find out about that … That said, Darwinism thrives on its cultural power. It wouldn’t Read More ›

From Live Journal via Mark Shea, originally at Why Evolution is True (Jerry Coyne’s site), we have the Brazilian Treehopper, also this model … And if you think that’s weird, see these. The funny part is the proposed Darwinian explanation: A first guess is that it’s a sexually-selected trait, but those are often limited to males, and these creatures (and the ones below) show the ornaments in both sexes. Kemp hypothesizes—and this seems quite reasonable—that “the hollow globes, like the remarkable excrescences exhibited by other treehoppers, probably deter predators.” It would be hard to grab, much less chow down on, a beast with all those spines and excrescences. Note, though, that the ornament sports many bristles. If these are sensory Read More ›

A friend writes to note, “Evolution and its rivals” – a special issue of the philosophy journal Synthese focused on the creationism/evolution controversy – was just published. Fortuitously, as part of a special promotion on the part of the journal’s publisher, access to Synthese is free until 31 December 2010. When you get there, you will find the following bias-free introduction to the intelligent design controversy: Coedited by Glenn Branch and James H. Fetzer, “Evolution and its rivals” [Synthese 178(2)] contains Glenn Branch’s introduction; Robert T. Pennock’s “Can’t philosophers tell the difference between science and religion?: Demarcation revisited”; John S. Wilkins’s “Are creationists rational?”; Kelly C. Smith’s “Foiling the Black Knight”; Wesley Elsberry and Jeffrey Shallit’s “Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Read More ›

Just wanted to get that straight. In the Wall Street Journal, physicist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, “The Lies of Science Writing” (December 23, 2010) explains, Writing about science poses a fundamental problem right at the outset: You have to lie. I don’t mean lie in the sense of intentionally misleading people. I mean that because math is the language of science, scientists who want to translate their work into popular parlance have to use verbal or pictorial metaphors that are necessarily inexact. Of course, it works the other way around too. Efforts to reduce complex matters like elder care to equations will end in frustration for all concerned. Consider another famous scientific metaphor, Read More ›

 Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings! May you and all your friends be cheerful. Posting at Uncommon Descent is a pleasure for all of us authors, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our generous donors. Recent posts explain why we put so many hours into the site: Evidence and honest discussion of evidence. But now, suppose I told you that a theory about how life forms change over time has been known since the 1960s to be mathematically impossible (assuming evidence-based circumstances). Yet courts order it to be taught to all children uncritically in tax-supported schools. Anyone who raises doubts, public or private, is not only demonized or silenced in the academy but trashed by a Read More ›