Darwinism

No, really. See this: PLEASE read https://t.co/vEUBmgqcwL Terrifying. Sinister social-media bots read minds & manipulate votes. Explains mystery of Trump & Brexit — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) February 27, 2017 Dawkins now appears to be channelling persons who cannot handle the new non-gatekeeper world of online media, who think it must all be a big plot involving fake news, the alt right, the Russians, and all things that scare them.     Memo From: UD News To: UD News Robotics Dawkinsbot II Special Project Re: Retooling needed for Dawkinsbot II – urgent Our revamped Dawkinsbot has been performing fabulously to date.* But AI experts are warning that our introduction of a ramped-up politics algorithm could endanger the entire mechanism. We have Read More ›

From Douglas Axe, author of Undeniable, at The Stream: Hidden Figures — the true story of three brilliant African-American women who proved themselves in a 1960s NASA culture dominated by white men — is sure to inspire. The film is filled with emotive lessons, most powerfully a vindication of the hope that those who persevere honorably for a just cause will not be disappointed. Another lesson, more pragmatic, occurred to me as the drama unfolded. Having migrated in my own career from the measurable-fact culture of engineering to the more descriptive culture of biology, I felt a tinge of nostalgia as I watched a roomful of nerds with their calculators and chalk boards working together to find the answer to Read More ›

Dover cleared the decks for critical discussion of Darwinism and design by getting school board micro-politics out of it. Fuller studies ID as a social movement in science. We hear some colleagues don’t like his views much. See also: Dover all over White cliffs. Dover: Creationism invades Europe The Dover case, John West, and intelligent design Steve Fuller: Humans will merge with AI and Steve Fuller’s Dissent over Descent Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Cassandra Willyard at Nature: At the time, biologists were getting excited about the epigenome — the broad array of chemical marks that decorate DNA and its protein scaffold. These marks act like a chemical notation, telling the cell which genes to express and which to keep silent. As such, the epigenome helps to explain how cells with identical DNA can develop into the multitude of specialized types that make up different tissues. The marks help cells in the heart, for example, maintain their identity and not turn into neurons or fat cells. Misplaced epigenetic marks are often found in cancerous cells. Why didn’t it happen sooner?: The governing rule of molecular biology – the central dogma – holds that Read More ›

Maybe this time it will matter. From Frank Harrell at Statistical Thinking: In my opinion, null hypothesis testing and p-values have done significant harm to science. The purpose of this note is to catalog the many problems caused by p-values. As readers post new problems in their comments, more will be incorporated into the list, so this is a work in progress. The American Statistical Association has done a great service by issuing its Statement on Statistical Significance and P-values. Now it’s time to act. To create the needed motivation to change, we need to fully describe the depth of the problem. We thought that Darwin’s reputation in pop science would be enough to frustrate any inquiry, but maybe not. Read More ›

From Tom Bethell, author of Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates, at American Spectator: The Lord’s Day, Meet Darwin Day… and Shudder – Methodological Atheism Gray told Darwin that he didn’t see why they couldn’t have both Darwin’s theory of evolution and a role for a designing intelligence. Darwin would have none of it, but realizing that a thoroughgoing materialism wasn’t an easy sell, he actively concealed this aspect of his thinking. In one notebook he reminded himself to “avoid stating how far, I believe, in Materialism.” Darwin promoted his materialistic worldview indirectly by supporting the principle that science should invoke only material causes. According to this methodological rule, you needn’t be an atheist to Read More ›

And in other breaking news that’ll really surprise you, snowbanks continue to pile in Ottawa, Canada. 😉 Seriously, from Sarah Chaffee at Evolution News & Views: Strauss provokes alarm about a lack of accountability — “maverick teachers” who can teach whatever they wish. However, SB 55 offers very limited freedoms. Indeed, the language of the bill says that teachers can only present information in an “objective scientific manner.” Under this legislation, they can only talk about “scientific information.” And they can do so only in classes aligned with state science standards. School administrators retain the authority to ensure that teachers follow all these guidelines. Yet, quoting a local newspaper that quoted a science teacher in Sioux Falls, Ms. Strauss raises Read More ›

Could just be the air we breathe. From Rachel Newer, a Valentine’s Day riff, at Smithsonian: Fall in Love With Cannibalism This Valentine’s Day We “civilized” folk tend to write off cannibalism as a freak phenomenon reserved for psychopaths, starvation and weird animals (I’m looking at you, praying mantis). In fact, eating others of your kind is a well-established biological strategy employed throughout the animal kingdom. Moreover, our own species’ history is rich with examples of this “eccentric” behavior, from medicinal consumption of human body parts in Europe to more epicurean people-eating in China. More. Nuwer recounts her experience of eating chef-prepared human placenta. See also: Darwin’s wastebasket: The evolutionary purpose of suicidal behaviour and Darwin’s wastebasket: “Evolutionary” explanation for Read More ›

From Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True: From Big Think we have physicist Lawrence Krauss showing why the “teach both sides” argument for evolution—and science in general—is fallacious. This argument is now being inserted into school standards by religionists who have lost repeated court battles trying to get creationism and intelligent design taught explicitly in public schools. Their new tactic is to pass school standards allowing or urging teachers to present evidence for alternative views and “critical evidence for and against” theories like evolution and anthropogenic global warming.More. Larry Krauss, though a cosmologist, is mooted as a possible successor to zoologist Dawkins in the defence of Darwin. Thus he may not know that there is a lot of rethinking going Read More ›

This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to ID. These posts will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to find responses to a particular ID critic. This first one is on the work of Kenneth Miller (no stranger to anyone involved in this debate of course). If there are any articles I have missed, do let me know and I shall add it to the page.

Hitchens (1949–2011) was one of the four New Atheist horsemen.  From Larry Alex Taunton at First Things: In December 15, 2011, Christopher Hitchens died of esophageal cancer. Some remember him as a man of the left who, after 9/11, converted to a kind of neoconservatism; others remember him as an atheist provocateur and serial blasphemer. For me, Christopher Hitchens was much more than either of these things. He was, as he put it, my “debate partner” and friend. And the subject of Taunton’s book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist. The book received ample praise, with Booklist calling it “loving” and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hailing it as “beautiful.” The Gospel Coalition declared Read More ›

By now, fulsome comparisons of Darwin to Lincoln as a “great liberator” should be tumbling down the byteway once again. The push for a national Darwin Day in the United States may have lost a little of its oomph! recently, due to changes in personnel in elected office. At the same time, there is a new addition to the cultural Darwin mix: serious attention paid to the proudly Darwinian and racist alt right. As it happens, anti-white racism is picking up the Darwinian theme more explicitly as well this year, though with less free publicity. (See the context here). The beginning of a banner year maybe… Groups like Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend (Clergy Letter Project) help—doubtless unwittingly —by their seeming silence. As Read More ›

From Matthew Hutson at Nautilus: The second strategic model of suicidality is the bargaining model, which relies on the notion of “costly signaling.”6 A colorful example of costly signaling is the peacock. Managing a big, eye-catching tail is costly, in that it wastes energy and draws predators. But the fitter a peacock, the less costly a big tail, and so big tails have evolved to signal genetic fitness to peahens. They are attractive not despite their costliness but because of it. In addition to communicating fitness, costly signals can also communicate need. Consider baby birds. They don’t need to chirp for food if their mother is right there, and chirping attracts predators, making it costly. But the more hungry or Read More ›

From Nature Ecology and Evolution: Frequency-dependent female genital cutting behaviour confers evolutionary fitness benefits Female genital cutting (FGC) has immediate and long-term negative health consequences that are well-documented, and its elimination is a priority for policymakers. The persistence of this widespread practice also presents a puzzle for evolutionary anthropologists due to its potentially detrimental impact on survival and reproductive fitness. Using multilevel modelling on demographic health survey datasets from five West African countries, here we show that FGC behaviour is frequency-dependent; the probability that girls are cut varies in proportion to the FGC frequency found in their ethnic group. We also show that this frequency-dependent behaviour is adaptive in evolutionary fitness terms; in ethnic groups with high FGC frequency, women Read More ›

 From Kerry Grens at the Scientist: Last week, the Texas Board of Education approved a draft of revisions made to its science education standards. While board members approved nearly all of the changes suggested by a committee of educators, they also voted to partially replace cuts made to controversial language regarding the teaching of evolution. “What they did . . . was accept two of our recommendations [to change evolution teaching standards], but added some language that reintroduced the creationist open-door policy,” Ron Wetherington, a committee member and professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told The Scientist. “The committee of school teachers on which I served is going to be upset about this.” The board members and two committee Read More ›