Get a load of this: Today, anthropology is at war with itself. The discipline has divided into two schools of thought – the social anthropologists and the evolutionary anthropologists. The schism between the two is simple but deeply ingrained. Academics in the subject clearly align themselves with one side or the other; once that choice is made it defines their career. The division lies in the question of whether or not anthropology is a science, and if it accepts that Darwinian evolutionary theory guides research into human behaviour and the development of societies. In other words, Darwinism is once again spreading its malign influence into some hapless discipline. Personally, I would ask one single, simple question of anyone who wants Read More ›

Climb down from the drapes, you idiot! The pattern looks better without you in the middle of it.

In the combox here, in response to this post, “scottrobinson” wanted me to be more clear as to where I stand on teaching creationism in science class.

I see now that my comments may require some unpacking if the reader is not familiar with the point of view that underlies them. So here goes:

1. I do not think that creationism should generally be taught in science classes because creationism is by nature an apologetics project: It harmonizes scripture or tradition with current findings of science. Hugh Ross (Christian), Gerald Schroeder (Jewish), Harun Yahya (Muslim), and Vine DeLoria Jr. (Native American) have all written in this area. I understand that there is a work in progress from Hare Krishna as well.

What should be obvious from my list is that a demonstrated harmony between current science and  a scripture or tradition is of interest only to those for whom a given work or way of life is scripture or tradition. Otherwise, it will sound like an attempt to introduce the religion itself in a more favourable light than other religions.

And how shall we address the Dalai Lama’s obvious disappointment with Big Bang theory in his book The Universe in a Single Atom? (Buddhists are happier with an eternal universe, or perhaps a Big Bounce universe, as recently proposed by Roger Penrose.)

I live in a multicultural society, and I will not attempt to prescribe for a monocultural society. But I would say that the obvious solution for a multicultural society is just not to have any such material on the curriculum.

2. That said, I am intrigued by the neo-fascists who want their government to hound creationist teachers. I worry that these people themselves would be perfectly happy teaching vast reams of Darwinian or Dawkinsian nonsense. Here are some examples of stuff they don’t like and have to teach around: Read More ›

(A synopsis of a play in three acts)

If we go by the recent Michael Reiss drama, Brit Darwin fans seem to be going round the bend on hockey skates …

Act One: Well-meaning Brit clergyman wants kids to know “Darwin loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life … “

On September 11, 2008 Michael Reiss, a biologist, ordained minister in the Church of England, professor of science education at the Institute for Education, and director of science education employed by the Royal Society, wass quoted in an article in the Guardian by James Randerson as telling attendees at the British Association Festival of Science that, 

Creationism and intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons, …

The Rev Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, said that excluding alternatives to scientific explanations for the origin of life and the universe from science lessons was counterproductive and would alienate some children from science altogether.

[ … ]

Reiss said he used to be an “evangelist” for evolution in the classroom, but that the approach had backfired. “I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn’t lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Now I would be more content simply for them to understand it as one way of understanding the universe,” he said.

(Here’s the audio.)

So Reiss was definitely thumping the tub for Darwin. Let no one doubt this. In fact, he made tiresomely clear that he is totally sold on “evolution”, and anyone who doubts has “worldview” problems:

Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson. When I was taught physics at school, and taught it extremely well in my view, what I remember finding so exciting was that we could discuss almost anything providing we were prepared to defend our thinking in a way that admitted objective evidence and logical argument.

So when teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have (hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching) and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion. The word ‘genuine’ doesn’t mean that creationism or intelligent design deserve equal time.

[ … ]

Creationism can profitably be seen not as a simple misconception that careful science teaching can correct. Rather, a student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one’s world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson, however well taught.

So Reiss had apparently decided, from experience, that it is better to listen first, and encourage people to talk before offering a solution. That, of course, is standard modern practice in any kind of evangelism, whether for Darwin, drugs, Christianity, jihadism, or animal rights terrorism. For whatever reason, most people, offered a choice of

1. Think my way,

or

2. Go to hell,

– provided that no firearms are pointed directly at them – tend to respond, “Excuse me while I go check the weather news on the temperature down in hell. Back soon, … uh, honest!”

So, as Reiss made clear, he was earnest about looking for a way to convert the non-materialist sinners to random, purposeless Darwinian evolution.

Ah, but in the most faithful hearts, a seed of doubt may be nourished … Read More ›

Second Baptist in Houston (www.second.org) is a terrific church with a huge membership. My good friend Ben Young is a pastor there and runs two contemporary services at two different campuses Sunday mornings. I was there on Sunday, July 27th at those two services, with Ben and I having a conversation in front of the congregation and then fielding questions. The church is high-tech, so in addition to questions from the microphones, we were also taking text messages from people’s cell phones. Below are all the questions received (about 250 total). Such text message questions give people a fair degree of anonymity. It’s interesting what people ask when they feel less self-conscious: Read More ›

Well, Expelled, now back up and running legally, I guess, is still #5 in documentaries, and has grossed as of May. 29, 2008, $7,614,754. In theory, it can now be shown in Canada. There is much local punditry of the worthless “don’t see it!” variety – which is interesting in view of the show trial of commentator Mark Steyn currently in progress in Vancouver.

The unspeakables who would protect Canadians from anything that might upset or offend us are doing very nicely indeed with our “human rights” commissions. The picketers are carrying blank picket signs, of course. My comments are here. 

Here are some links from The Post-Darwinist on the Ono judgment: “Oh no, Ono! Judge rules, the film about the ID guys can still be shown”

Also, just up at Colliding Universes (and at The Mindful Hack, below):

Newton: Does every genius need a tincture of crackpot?

But then maybe the entire universe is just a wave function?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the Big Fix with the Sure Thing? Read More ›

On Saturday, 19 April 2008, philosopher of psychology Angus Menuge debated blogger and biologist P.Z. Myers at the University of Minnesota-Morris. What follows is Menuge’s summary of their interaction; his slides are available here.

Read More ›

George W. Beccaloni and Vincent S. Smith of The Natural History Museum (London) recently drew attention to the nearly forgotten figure of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) in Nature vol. 451.28 (February 2008): 1050.  Bemoaning “how Wallace’s achievements have been overshadowed by Darwin’s . . ., a process certainly not helped by the Darwin ‘industry’ of recent decades,” the authors call for a revision of “the current darwinocentric view of the history of biology.”  Few among this blog could dissent from such a bold proposal.  Beccaloni and Smith would like the focus to be upon the reading of Darwin and Wallace’s seminal papers to the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858, with due recognition accorded Wallace for his joint discovery of natural selection.  Published one month later, this most surely was a major turning point in the history of the biological sciences and in that regard one can hardly find fault with the simple but instructive point that for all the Darwin Day hype, natural selection was indeed a joint discovery.

Yet this in itself fails to do justice to Wallace.  The theory Wallace developed from years of field experience in the Mayla Archipelago did not end with that 1858 reading; in fact, it was just the beginning of an intellectual odyssey that would find fullest expression in what might arguably be regarded as his magnum opus, The World of Life: a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, published just three years before his death in 1913.  That book more than any other expressed Wallace’s fullest and most complete views on the subject of evolution.  While Beccaloni and Smith want us to remember Wallace’s discovery, I suggest a fuller reflection upon what that discovery meant to Wallace and to the biological sciences will uncover a wholly different kind of evolutionary scenario than that fashioned by Darwin, Huxley and their X-Club fellow travelers.  In short, I call for not a recognition of Wallace within this much-touted Darwinian context but rather upon Wallace as the originator of an independent design-centered view best expressed as Wallaceism.  What precisely that means requires some explanation.

Read More ›

Friends draw my attention to this Banned Books Week event at Baylor, and this hasty reassurance that we are NOT supposed to think that there is any clear comparison between the suppression of Bob Marks’s evolutionary informatics lab and the banning of books. (Hat tip Anarchicharmony’s William J. Murray.)

No, there isn’t. At Banned Books Week, so far as I can tell from the advertising, you mostly snore through old chestnuts whose ideas have long been accepted or dismissed by most of society. You don’t learn about dangerous ideas that genuinely threaten the CURRENT establishment. Oh, and you might hear calls for violent jihad, et cetera, that some have tried to ban.

The jihadis actually do pose a physical threat to subway, train, and airline passengers, as well as restaurant and supermarket patrons. But whether the best way to address the problem is by banning access to detailed information is a question of security strategy rather than ideas as such. I have yet to hear of anyone who wanted to be a jihadi’s blast victim – but complained that the government was somehow interfering with that individual’s personal liberty by preventing terror attacks … (Oh, make my day … surprise me. Tell me about such a case … )

The best way to see what happens when someone genuinely threatens the current establishment’s illusions is not to look at ID guys like Guillermo Gonzalez or non-Darwinists like Rick Sternberg – interesting as their cases are. I always say, look at Larry Summers, once Harvard prez, now Unperson. His crime? Only to say what every thinking person actually knows: That the preponderance of men in maths and hard sciences is most likely based in nature, not social prejudice.

It is instructive to note that the vast majority of the people who would nod approval at propositions as foolish as the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution probably purse their lips at Larry Summers, who has nothing on his side but the preponderance of the relevant evidence. However human evolution happened, it left more men than women with the types of aptitudes that are rewarded in math and hard sciences.

So the tendency for Banned Books Weeks to be, essentially, dinosaur halls of the mind, is part of a trend, actually. Go here, here, and here for recent examples of the pervasive and growing problem that genuinely challenging ideas are increasingly banned or shunned. And go here if you want to help do something about it.

How bad has it got? Pretty bad, actually.

In The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard and I chuckled at the ideas that The Edge (Wedge the Edge! – d.) thought “dangerous” in 2006: Read More ›

You might wonder whether Prof. Robert Marks is the only faculty member at Baylor who has a “group” or a “lab” not blessed by the Baylor administration. The other day I mined a bunch of cases here at UD where the terms “group” and “lab” are used at Baylor, almost certainly without the Baylor administration’s blessing or knowledge. Here’s what I wrote: (1) Robert Marks has another research entity on the Baylor server: “The Baylor University Time Scales Group” (note the Baylor URL: web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Research/TimeScales). This research group (a collaboration between engineering and mathematics) has been allowed to proceed unimpeded by Baylor, using its name and absent any disclaimer. Is Baylor now, to maintain a foolish consistency, going to take down Read More ›

In her remarks to the Baptist Press, Lori Fogleman (well beloved Baylor sports personality who regularly comments on “Inside Baylor Sports” for the Lady Bears) offers the following argument against allowing Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab to continue at Baylor: Lori Fogleman, director of media communications at Baylor, told Baptist Press Sept. 5 that the school’s objection to the website involves standards by which something can or cannot attach its name to Baylor. “This isn’t about the content of the website. Really the issue is related to Baylor’s policies and procedures of approving centers, institutes, products using the university’s name,” Fogleman said. “Baylor reserves the exclusive right to the use of its own name, and we’re pretty jealous in the Read More ›

The recent North American polls I’ve seen recently show several key trends:

1. Both evolution and creation are widely accepted, and the distribution of numbers is roughly stable over the years. No dramatic proof or disproof of Darwin’s theory that would change many minds has occurred. That said, it is quite likely that many people believe contradictory things.

2. Americans are (or think they are) well aware of the arguments on either side, and generally do not want the issues politicized.

3. Canadian responses differ markedly from American ones in several ways, principally because the issues have not been politicized in Canada. The reasons why they have not are worth noting. Read More ›

The Council of Europe may justly be renamed as “The European Council for the Advancement of Atheism.” To believe in a God who acts in the world (aka theism) henceforward constitutes “religious extremism.” It will be interesting to see at what point advocacy of ID is regarded in Europe as a “hate crime” against … science? … society? … humanity?

Oh, your’re wondering what this is all about. Check out the following report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the CU (assembly.coe.int):

Doc. 11297
8 June 2007

The dangers of creationism in education

Report
Committee on Culture, Science and Education
Rapporteur: Mr Guy LENGAGNE, France, Socialist Group

——————————————————————————–

Summary

The theory of evolution is being attacked by religious fundamentalists who call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of it. From a scientific view point there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of the Universe and of life on Earth.

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.

The Assembly calls on education authorities in member States to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline.

A. Draft resolution

1. The Parliamentary Assembly is worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist theories within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights, which are a key concern of the Council of Europe. Read More ›

This Wednesday, there’ll be an ID symposium at Grove City College:

GROVE CITY, Pa. – The Grove City College Society for Science, Faith and Technology and The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College will host a one-day conference Feb. 7 on “Creatively Seeking a Creation Story: Evolution and Intelligent Design in America.” All lectures will be given in the Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus and are free and open to the public. Read More ›

Here’s an illuminating book review. We are increasingly seeing two streams of Darwinism — one which says there’s no problem reconciling it with religion; the other which sees the two as completely incompatible. As the reviewer notes: “Stanovich takes the hard line that accepting darwinism has to mean opposing virtually all religious beliefs. He praises fundamentalists as recognizing this point while arguing that mainline churches do not see the incompatibility of science with religion.”  
 

Book Review: A rebellious revolution
Gordon M. Burghardt
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 21, Issue 10 , October 2006, Pages 537-538

Keith E. Stanovich, The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in an Age of Darwin, University of Chicago Press (2005) ISBN 0 226 77125 3 US$18.00 pbk (374 pages). Read More ›

The October 30, 2005 issue of the Vital Theology newsletter (www.vitaltheology.com) summarizes an interview with Alan Padgett, whom I know from a Templeton funded Oxford seminar at which I spoke (on ID) in June 2001 and at which he was a participant (this was still in the days when I used to be invited to Templeton events). We had a whole week together, so I don’t see any excuse for the following remarks by him. Quoting from the newsletter: Current debates [over ID] center on two false assumptions. The first is that evolution must imply that God does not exist. The second is that there is something wrong with the theory of evolution, so it must be defeated to promote Read More ›