For a person who believes so strongly in the power of natural selection, yes, how the genes get together would be a good thing to know. Myers recently asserted that when he meets people, he infers nothing about their sexual identity. Egnor responds to the general question and the particular one in two parts:
If you want a shock, read this essay by two biologists in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Dangerous Denial of Sex.” The shock is not the thesis: that there are two biological sexes is obvious and has been obvious for, oh, the past million years or so. Nor is it a shock that our culture has reached the point at which the observation that there are two human sexes is expressed in an “opinion” piece. Even a cursory glance at the morning news affirms our cultural devolution.
The shock is that these scientists are lone voices affirming the most basic fact of human biology — unsupported by mainstream scientific journals and organizations — and that they risk their careers for affirming publicly the biological fact that there are two, and only two, human sexes.
Michael Egnor, “Is sex binary?” at Evolution News and Science Today
Well, yes, as we have been saying for years, there is a war on science. With the arts wrecked, the Woke have nowhere else to go. Their prize is the right to impose on the public a vast array of reality-defying nonsense that serves their agenda while bearing not the slightest relationship to reality. The science bureaucrats are caving to save their pensions, of course, all the while signalling Virtue like crazy. And the spoils for the victors—from compulsory taxation—are immense. – O’Leary for News
And as for Myers, well,
It’s risible that Myers — a professor of biology — claims to be unaware of rudimentary facts about the biology of people he meets. He is uncertain whether a woman he meets has female organs or a man has male organs. While it’s possible that we are misled, we can be quite sure about the chromosomes or sexual organs of the vast majority of people with whom we interact. We can be more sure about the biological sexual identity of people we encounter each day than we can be sure, for example, of the number of eyes or legs or lungs or kidneys they have — after all, it is not uncommon that people have prosthetic eyes or limbs or lack a lung or a kidney. Yet nearly all of the men and women we meet have chromosomes and organs to match.
Gender is a matter for linguists or sociologists, not for biologists. It is a fundamental fact of human biology that human sex is binary. There are intersex people — born that way — but intersex is a medical disorder, not an event on a normal spectrum, and “intersex” implies the reality of human sexual binary.
Michael Egnor, “Help a Darwinist Tell Boys from Girls” at Evolution News and Science Today
The nastiest part (not directly related to Myers, well beyond his sphere) is some of the provenance:
It is a rudimentary scientific fact that human sex is binary, that human life begins at conception, and that intelligent design is evident in living things. And don’t forget — the scientists who remain silent on these obvious facts also remained utterly silent when their paychecks flowed from Jeffrey Epstein.
Michael Egnor, “Is sex binary?” at Evolution News and Science Today:
Yes. You can read Egnor on Epstein and the corruption of science organizations run by our moral and intellectual superiors here.
While we are on this kind of topic in general, is there reason to think that a showdown is coming between our moral and intellectual superiors and ourselves?
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See also: The progressive war on science takes dead aim at math