Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Darwinism

Coffee!!: Should we reject Darwinism due to its obvious support for new atheism?

Recently, a group of friends was mulling over coffee whether one should reject Darwinism in principle because it is the creation story of atheism. One friend argued that we should not reject it just because its staunchest proponents are mostly atheists.

I am not so sure. Consider this: Approximately 80 percent of evolutionary biologists (= Darwinists) are pure naturalists (no God and no free will, according to William Provine’s recent study). Welcome to the world of Minority Report, where social engineering seems completely reasonable, even “humane.” As in the “Humane Society.”

Now let me put a case to you: Read More ›

Deconstructing Avida

Back in 2003 NATURE (vol 423, pp 139-144) published an article by Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami titled “The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features.” The abstract reads: A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital organisms—computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. Populations of digital organisms often evolved the ability to perform complex logic functions requiring the coordinated execution of many genomic instructions. Complex functions evolved by building on simpler functions that had evolved earlier, provided that these were also selectively favoured. However, no particular intermediate stage was essential for evolving complex functions. The first genotypes able to perform Read More ›

The End of Natural Selection

Playing off the title of Dr. Dembski’s new book, I’m going to cite three articles that are summarized at PhysOrg.com just this past week. I don’t have access to any of them, but let’s just take a look at what these summaries report. I think it’s quite interesting.

First, there is this article, DNA study sheds new light on horse evolution, that informs us that ancient species of zebras and horses are actually much more related to the modern day versions than previously thought. Here’s what they say:

The study used bones from caves to identify new horse species in Eurasia and South America, and reveal that the Cape zebra, an extinct giant species from South Africa, were simply large variants of the modern Plains zebra. The Cape zebra weighed up to 400 kilograms and stood up to 150 centimetres at the shoulder blades.

“The Plains zebra group once included the famous extinct quagga, so our results confirm that this group was highly variable in both coat colour and size.”

while concluding that:

“Overall, the new genetic results suggest that we have under-estimated how much a single species can vary over time and space, and mistakenly assumed more diversity among extinct species of megafauna,” Professor Cooper says.

This now means that the already tiny portion of “intermediate forms” that RM + NS produces in reduced in size. And perhaps greatly. This weakens what Darwin would call the “principle of divergence” and weakens the notion of gradualism that is implicit in his theory.

Next, there is this article: Introns: A mystery renewed.

Here we read:

“Remarkably, we have found many cases of parallel intron gains at essentially the same sites in independent genotypes,” Lynch said. “This strongly argues against the common assumption that when two species share introns at the same site, it is always due to inheritance from a common ancestor.”

which now calls into question prior notions of “proof” of common descent, and, I would think, requires a new look at how transposons operate.

Read More ›

Darwinism and popular culture: Socrates, the employment line forms out back, eight blocks from here, in front of a boarded-up door …

A philosopher recently wrote to some friends, including me, with the following problem: He was tired of the stupidity that passes for discussion over at certain Darwinist blogs that we will leave unnamed at present. He proposed to engage the bloggers and commenters in discussion.

Well, he certainly isn’t the only person who has proposed this idea to me recently, and I offer no advice, only an observation: Nearly eighty percent of evolutionary biologists are pure naturalists = no God and no free will. My valiant friend intended confronting the Internet entities that are attracted to these key Darwinists, who help them out by pouring abuse on anyone who disputes the Law given on Mount Improbable.

He tells me, “… this is the strategy of the skunks. We need to let them stink alone and turn our attention elsewhere.” Sensing I should say something in reply, I responded,

Read More ›

A Frightening Admission?

Peter J. Bowler published an article in Science (Jan. 9, 2009) titled “Darwin’s Originality.” While much of Bowler’s analysis is just plain wrong (e.g., Darwin’s theory being already “in the air” is NOT accurately premised largely upon Wallace co-discovery of natural selection as Bowler suggests but upon much deeper secularizing processes coextensive with skeptics like David Hume and positivists like Auguste Comte, both of whom deeply influenced Darwin, and ideas even predating them), but another of his comments is just plain frightening. Toward the end of his essay Bowler distances Darwinism from the racial hygiene of the Nazis but then writes the following: “But by proposing that evolution worked primarily through the elimination of useless variants, Darwin created an image that could all Read More ›

Afternoon coffee!: If Darwinists worked in the private sector …

A friend directs me to the following sketch:

Today’s Debate inside the Scientific Community

Darwinist: I.D. isn’t science. And if it’s not science, it isn’t true.

I.D. Proponent: Isn’t science the quest for truth about life and the universe?

Darwinist: Only if that quest is done within a materialist framework.

I.D. Proponent: But what if that quests needs to go OUTSIDE the materialist framework?

Darwinist: Then it’s not science. And thus, it’s not true.

 Let’s take this debate into the private sector… Read More ›

Discovery Institute suing California Science Center over alleged undisclosed documents

The skinny:  Discovery Institute filed the public documents request on October 9, 2009, following the Center’s October 6, 2009 cancellation of a contract with the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) to screen a pro-intelligent design video, Darwin’s Dilemma, at the California Science Center’s IMAX Theatre on October 25, 2009. Podcast here, media release below: Discovery Institute Sues California Science Center for Suppressing Public Documents Showing Viewpoint Discrimination Against Intelligent Design Go here to listen. This episode of ID the Future features a special news alert by Casey Luskin. Discovery Institute has filed a lawsuit against the California Science Center for unlawfully refusing to disclose public documents requested by Discovery Institute under the California Public Records Act. Now the media release. For Read More ›

Truth and Science

It is almost axiomatic in our culture that the pronouncements of Science are synonymous with Truth. This received wisdom is so prevalent that whenever media reports begin with the words “Scientists have found that…[fill in the blank]”, whatever follows is widely believed by the public to be unassailable fact. So revered is Science and so respected its methods, that the mere suggestion that something might be amiss is considered ignorance or heresy. And so the statements of Science are defended vigorously while the critics are dismissed as quacks and uninformed idiots. The prevailing attitude seems to be (to slightly bend the well-known quote from Richard Dawkins) “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in the findings of Science [emphasis and edit mine], that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”

For those of us who have long been engaged in the ongoing Evolution/Intelligent Design debate, we know that Read More ›

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy, with brief comments

1. The Positive Case for Intelligent Design Listen here. What exactly is the positive argument for intelligent design? This episode of ID the Future is taken from a recent lecture on intelligent design given by Casey Luskin. Because of the way the media misrepresents the issue, even those who may be predisposed to support ID don’t understand what the theory actually is. Listen in to discover what the scientific theory of intelligent design really entails. Actually, all that it really entails is what most humans have always noticed – that there is design in life, as well as iron law and brute chance. Just how science ended up supporting some unbelievable alternative position will doubtless be the subject of many dissertations Read More ›

IVP launch website to plug anti-evolution book

When I posted before to mention IVP’s new anti-Darwin book, I had no idea they’d launched a website: www.shouldchristiansembraceevolution.com It’s very comprehensive, and very impressive. IVP (UK) are obviously taking this particular publication very seriously.

Interview: Mathematician David Berlinski explains why famous mathematicians have doubted Darwin

Darwin and the Mathematicians”, here, is David Berlinsk’s final interview with Evolution News and Views. Berlinski, a Darwin skeptic of long standing, discusses the reasons famous mathematicians have doubted Darwin, along with entertaining anecdotes. In the first part of the 20th century, Darwin v. Dissent had not yet acquired its riveting incarnation as a melodrama of intolerance. No heresy, no heretics is a useful proverb, and using, say, 1950 as a reference point, there were no heretics among the mathematicians because there was yet no heresy. Darwin’s theory was not then considered totemic; and his touch was not widely understood to cure erysipelas. Darwin v. Dissent is of our time and place. For more, go here. Berlinski has a new Read More ›

Coffee! Evolution – Sometimes you just don’t know what or who to believe.

A reader sends me this oldie but goodie: In “Can evolution make things less complicated? Scientists suggest cell origins involved a forward-and-backward process” Becky Ham for MSNBC.com explained (May 18, 2006 – a century ago in these times) that … the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand. Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden’s Lund University and Massey University’s L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise. “We do think Read More ›

Horkheimer on Darwinism

 

Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) in 1930, the year he assumed directorship of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research).
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) in 1930, the year he assumed directorship of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research).

There is a strange belief abroad that critics of Darwinism are found chiefly among right-wing, ultra-conservative reactionaries and their cadre of uneducated backwoods religious fundamentalists for whom, according to Philip Kitcher, Darwin “serves evangelical Christians as the bogeyman.”1 Keith M. Parsons, writing for Eugenie Scott’s National Center for Science Education (largely an organization devoted to fear-mongering against ID), praised James H. Fetzer in his Review: Render Unto Darwin for effectively tying “creationism to larger political and ideological forces that provide the impetus for creationism as a social movement and prompt wealthy sympathizers to bankroll its organizations.” Parsons further sensationalizes these “elements of the religious right” as “fascist.”

Of course it is easy enough (persistent conflations of creationism and ID aside) to discount such stereotyping as itself the product of ignorance and ideological prejudice. A recent Zogby poll, for example, showed that self-identified liberals supported the teaching of evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution by a significant percentage over self-identified conservatives. Quick and easy typecasting does not, it would appear on closer scrutiny, hold up. In fact, critics of Darwinian evolution can be found across the ideologicial spectrum, from the conservative right to the radical left, a fact worthy of further investigation.

Though seldom discussed or analyzed, the left has indeed directed some telling criticisms at Darwinism and none so interesting or instructive as that of Max Horkheimer (1895-1973).  Although Horkheimer is hardly a household name, his assumption of the directorship of the Instutute for Social Research placed him within the center of leftist intellectual circles, and he would exert important influences over Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen Habermas.

Horkheimer is most notably associated with the Frankfurt School, a group of neo-Marxist philosophers and social critics who championed “critical theory,” a leftist analytic with varying admixtures of Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, and Freud. Thus, on one level Horkheimer’s philosophy was an idiosyncratic blend that lent itself well to an overarching pessimism that ultimately wound up as an ineffectual nihilism. For all of Horkheimer’s flaws as a philosopher–and they were many–he refused to rubber-stamp the Communist regimes of the 20th century, accusing the “murderers in the Kremlin” of adopting the fascist tactics they had so recently defeated. Even as Horkheimer retreated from the strident and at times ebullient Marxism of his youth, his leftist transcendentalism offered a spiritualism without spirit, a scathing critique of the Englightenment and modernity with no clear enlightened replacement save for a vague demand for “otherness.”

None of this should suggest a sweeping dismissal of Horkheimer’s views, however. “To acknowledge the latent nihilism in Horkheimer’s thought as a whole . . .,” observes Brian J. Shaw, “is not to deny those real flashes of critical insight which illuminate even the most obscure and wrong-headed regions of his philosophy. That Horkheimer mistakenly poses the alternative to contemporary society in an uncompromising manner does not automatically disqualify the validity of each of his insights into its problematic nature. One does not have to possess the cure to an illness to recognize illness when one sees it.”2 One of the illnesses endemic to contemporary society Horkheimer identified as Darwinism.

Read More ›

Tag-Team ID Debate in Beverly Hills

On the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s seminal work, The Origin of Species, the American Freedom Alliance is pleased to present a series of events in Los Angeles devoted to an examination of issues surrounding the debate on the origins of life.

The Origins of Life Debate

A Public Debate featuring:
Stephen Meyer, Rick Sternberg, Michael Shermer and Don Prothero

Two Advocates of Intelligent Design vs Two Advocates of Evolutionary Theory

Monday, November 30, 2009 7:30 PM
Saban Theater
8440 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills Read More ›

Published Today: Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Today, Intervarsity Press (IVP) in the UK publish a new symposium, entitled “Should Christians Embrace Evolution?” edited by leading geneticist Professor Norman Nevin. Andrew Sibley has already posted about it on UD and linked to the preface. Believers in a God-guided Darwinism are preaching that Darwinism is a fact and that the Bible can be reconciled with it. This new book comprehensively refutes both ideas. Far from necessary, theistic evolution is both bad theology and bad science. It particularly interacts with Dr. Denis Alexander and his recent work, “Creation or Evolution – do we have to choose?”.

Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Here is the contents table from the first draft:

Read More ›