Darwinism

A friend advises me that the Creation Museum in Kentucky disturbs some visitors, according to LiveScience. Its sponsors chose to respond by defending their beliefs.

It seems to me that there is a larger principle at stake here. People can have a private museum on their own land about whatever interests them. I could have a museum featuring heritage tomatoes, if I wanted to, on land that I own. Assuming I charged admission or was selling seeds, a question might arise whether it is for profit or not for profit. But that is an administrative issue.

I knew that this was part of a growing culture war when I heard that the fact that the museum ‘disturbs’ some is supposedly important.

I told my friend, who supports the museum’s cause: You don’t need to defend your beliefs. Defend your right to have a private museum. It doesn’t become someone’s business to interfere just because they disagree, and have friends in influential places. Period.

I strongly recommend Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, for orientation in this area.

I summarize his key findings here. Read More ›

Al Mohler has written an interesting open letter to Karl Giberson, titled “On Darwin and Darwinism: A Letter to Professor Giberson“, which is a response to Giberson’s article at The Huffington Post, titled “How Darwin Sustains My Baptist Search for Truth“.

The disagreement between the two is ultimately about the compatibility of Darwinism and Christianity, but the specific context of Giberson’s complaint against Al Mohler pertains to what Giberson claims is a misrepresentation of Darwin by Mohler in a speech given at Ligonier Ministries:

The second great challenge was the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Coming at the midpoint of the 19^th century, we need to be reminded that Darwin was not the first evolutionist. We need to be reminded that Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged in all of its diversity, fecundity, and specialization. Darwin left on his expedition to prove the theory of evolution. A theory that was based upon the fossil record and other inferences had already been able to take the hold of some in Western civilization. The dawn of the theory of evolution presents a direct challenge to the traditional interpretation of Genesis and, as we shall see, to much more.

Giberson’s complaint is this:

In this talk Mohler made false statements about Darwin. He apparently wanted to undermine evolution by suggesting that it was “invented” to prop up Darwin’s worldview, rather than developed to explain observations in the natural world. He said, “Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged in all of its diversity, fecundity, and specialization. Darwin left on his expedition to prove the theory of evolution.”

Watch the video of the speech here or read the transcript here. The speech was actually more concerned with the age of the Earth than Charles Darwin. Nevertheless, Mohler’s response to Giberson in the open letter:

Read More ›

Darwinists have long had a problem with the fact of human longevity, compared to that of chimps. Presumably, that is because they need equivalence between humans and chimps. The article referenced here, from Nature, takes, for once, a skeptical view of Darwinist claims.

I don’t see why an explanation is required at all. If you live like a chimp, you will die like one. Nowadays, if you live like a responsible human being with a mind, you can reach eighty years old quite easily in a technologically advanced democracy. (You know, Rabbi ben Ezra, and “Grow old along with me/The best is yet to be …) The rabbi’s  thoughts are only meaningful for creatures with a mind.

So this  skepticism re the “news from Darwinism”, rightly casting doubt on how grandmothers help natural selection, points to  the ridiculous disgrace that Darwinism has become, while dominating the academy for so long:

These researchers found that among Tanzanian hunter-gatherers, the Hadza, mothers faced a trade-off between foraging for food for themselves and any weaned offspring, and caring for new infants. But if grandmothers helped with foraging, they were rewarded with healthier, heavier grandchildren who weaned at a younger age. Over evolutionary time, this fitness boost could have selected for women who survived long past menopause, an anomaly among humans’ evolutionary kin.

“Chimps almost never live into their forties in the wild, but most humans, if they’re lucky enough to make it to adulthood, live beyond the childbearing years,” says Hawkes.

Further support for the grandmother hypothesis came from studies of other subsistence cultures, as well as from historical records, although not all studies back up the hypothesis. (Ewen Callaway, 24 August 2010 Nature )

Contrary to such claims, aged seniors can be a considerable burden on their families, and are normally cared for due to reasons of affection, morality, religion, etc. In other words, reasons that begin with the assumption that we are thinking beings in real time, making decisions.

Some true key causes of increased human longevity (all of which require an active mind) are Read More ›

A reader kindly shares this BBC story with me, “Bat and moth arms race revealed” (19 August 2010 ) by Jason Palmer.

In a strategy that may be a moth-hunting adaptation, some bats are known to use clicks that are at a frequency, or pitch, either above or below moths’ hearing ranges.

High-pitched clicks have a larger range, while lower-pitched clicks are absorbed less by the atmosphere It remains unclear whether these pitch-shifting techniques adapted specifically to bypass moth defences or simply to cope in certain environments or situations.

Dr ter Hofstede and her colleagues were able to listen in on the Barbastella bat as it hunted, demonstrating that it had a completely different approach – its clicks were much reduced in volume, becoming even quieter as it closed in on prey.

“It seems like the majority of bats… call very loudly because they need as much information as possible from their surroundings,” Dr ter Hofstede told BBC News.

“We’re saying that this [low-volume tactic] is an adaptation to get around the moths’ defence – it doesn’t have any other useful purpose.” Read More ›

Nowhere better illustrated than in this article from Wired Science about claims of stone tool use by supposed prehumans. How about “Australopithecus was a very primitive, ape-like early human,” said biological anthropologist Craig Stanford at University of Southern California, who edited a book on meat eating and human evolution. “The fact that they were using tools and eating meat indicates this was something that was widespread very early in human history.” The ability to carve meat off large mammal carcasses likely put Australopithecus in competition with dangerous scavengers, Alemseged says. It is unlikely they were hunting for the large game because their body shape would not have allowed them to run fast, which is necessary to chase down an antelope Read More ›

This NOVA program looks interesting. They look like dragons and inspire visions of fire-spitting monsters. But these creatures with their long claws, razor-sharp teeth, and muscular, whip-like tails are actually monitors, the largest lizards now walking the planet. With their acute intelligence, these lizards—including the largest of all, the Komodo dragon—are a very different kind of reptile, blurring the line between reptiles and mammals. Thriving on Earth essentially unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, they are a very successful species, versatile at adapting to all kinds of settings. This program looks at what makes these long-tongued reptiles so similar to mammals and what has allowed them to become such unique survivors. I have never been a fan of the Read More ›

Randal Rauser, a self-described “Tentative Apologist” explains, I ventured into turbid waters a couple days ago by mentioning that in the future I would discuss Steve Meyer’s Signature in the Cell in the blog. What followed was a barrage of discussion which led AnAtheist.Net to observe: “It looks like you have discovered a quick way to attract a fiery horde of new readers.” Indeed. Actually I learned last year about the effect that mention of “intelligent design” has in a blog. I like to think of it as being like a bucket of fish heads and blood. Slop it in the ocean and within fifteen minutes you’ll have a number of sharks swimming around the boat snapping things like: “That’s Read More ›

It is Sunday, so I allow myself one religious story. One is informed by the Reverend Michael Dowd, and evangelist for Darwinism, that the “new atheists” are God’s prophets: According to Dowd, God is speaking pointedly to Christians today through some very unlikely messengers outside the church—namely New Atheists, such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. These bestselling authors mock the biblical view of a God who, according to the U.S. Department of Defense’s definition of terrorism, is a cosmic terrorist. “The God that Richard Dawkins says is a delusion is a delusion!” asserts Dowd. “That way of thinking about God reflects an outdated, Bronze Age worldview that we have blindly believed for generations simply because someone said Read More ›

Here, in “Justification by Faith”, Darwinist atheist Michael Ruse comments on Christopher (new atheist) Hitchens’s esophageal cancer diagnosis ( bad news): Third, with Hitchens I simply don’t see that deathbed conversions, especially those done in fear or pain, are worth a thing. They have about as much validity as a confession forced out through waterboarding. I have often wondered, when I am on a plane, if it were announced that it was hijacked and we were on the way to the White House or whatever, what then would I do? Would I tell Jesus that I am sorry? I confess that I might. But if Jesus thinks that that is worth anything, then he loses my respect entirely. This is Read More ›

Get a load of this one: Infants presumably acquire the special strain of bifido from their mothers, but strangely, it has not yet been detected in adults. “We’re all wondering where it hides out,” Dr. Mills said. The indigestible substance that favors the bifido bacterium is a slew of complex sugars derived from lactose, the principal component of milk. The complex sugars consist of a lactose molecule on to which chains of other sugar units have been added. The human genome does not contain the necessary genes to break down the complex sugars, but the bifido subspecies does, the researchers say in a review of their progress in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The complex sugars were Read More ›

A friend writes, regarding this information regarding some information about science philosopher Karl Popper on a Scientific American blog: “It’s the first time I’ve read that Popper later regretted allowing himself to be browbeaten on the subject of the irrefutability of Darwinism.” In “A Dubitable Darwin? Why Some Smart, Nonreligious People Doubt the Theory of Evolution”, John Horgan writes (Jul 6, 2010) The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called the theory of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” I’m inclined to agree. But Darwinism sticks in the craw of some really smart people I don’t mean intelligent-designers (aka IDiots) and other religious ignorami but knowledgeable scientists and scholars. He goes on to trash knowledgeble scientists Read More ›

Greetings this Friday the 13! It is an unlucky day for Darwinism when Dawkins and Darwinism are criticized by the most elite members of the scientific community.

The most elite scientists in the United States are recognized by their membership in the National Academy of Sciences. To date, I’m now aware of 3 members who have expressed some form of serious criticism of Darwinism. The first brave NAS member was Phil Skell (see: Phil Skell Writing for Forbes ). Another NAS member critical of Darwinism is Masotoshi Nei (see: Peer-Reviewed Article Critical of Darwinism by NAS Member, Evolution by Absence of Selection.).

And now with his recent induction into the National Academy, Michael Lynch is the third member I’m aware of to be openly critical of Darwinism. This time Lynch uses the Proceeding of National Academy to lambast the behavior of Darwinists. He delivers the ultimate insult of his colleagues, he likens them to creationists!

His lambasting can be found here in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

The article was a gold mine of quotable morsels:

the myth that all of evolution can be explained by adaptation continues to be perpetuated by our continued homage to Darwin’s treatise (6)
Read More ›

Casey Luskin, Program Officer in Public Policy and Legal Affairs for the Discovery Institute, has recently published an article entitled ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM:HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE in the Liberty University Law Review. Luskin continues to be a favorite target of the anti-ID crowd over at The Panda’s Thumb, and this article is no exception. The task of misrepresenting Luskin fell to attorney Timothy Sandefur, who frequently contributes to the Panda’s Thumb blog site.

Luskin clearly lays out the intent of the article in the very first paragraph and writes:

The common stereotype in the controversy over teaching evolution holds that it is the opponents of evolution who are constantly trying to “sneak religious dogma back into science education.”1 While perhaps in some
instances this caricature is not entirely undeserved,2 the mainstream media and legal community pay scant attention to incidents where proponents of Darwinian evolution transgress the boundary between church and state erected by the Establishment Clause. By documenting ways that evolution advocates encourage violations of the Establishment Clause—in some instances, explicitly advocating state endorsement of pro-evolution religious viewpoints in the science classroom—this Article will show the impropriety of the common “Inherit the Wind stereotype.”3

Apparently this clear of a statement isn’t good enough for Sandefur who sniffs:

It will come as no surprise to anyone that Luskin’s argument is flimsy, his evidence illusory, his readings of the case law distorted, and the overall effect essentially a fun-house mirror version of First Amendment law.

Read More ›

In this Nature Alert article, we find out that sponges, present as early as 635 million years ago in the fossil record, have 18,000 genes, among which are genes for apoptosis, that is, cell death. Now here is a creature that has “a simple body plan lacking organs, muscles and nerve cells.” Let’s remember that the number of human genes, prior to whole genome analysis, was thought to be at least 100,000. With early genomic results in, this number was revised downward. Today it stands at 25,000—and shrinking! (There are arguments for lowering it still) So the lowly sponge—no nerves, no muscles, simple as you can get—has around 65% the number of genes as humans. Well, all of this presents Read More ›

This started in the combox on a post below, but … xxxxxx, I do not get your point. Eugenics was not science; it was nonsense. Nonsense firmly founded in Darwin’s own beliefs. Remember, Darwin was a guy who thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people. Darwin has always been protected by professional Darwinists from the normal social consequences of such antisocial beliefs. I am not letting the matter go because it cannot be let go until the belief is formally renounced. I am not interested in what “whackjobs” or “dopes” think (who is?).  Can’t they just yell in the cell block or mental home? The use of such terms is classically how Darwinists like yourself avoid facing Read More ›