“New Evidence Debunks ‘Stupid’ Neanderthal Myth” chirps the ScienceDaily release:

Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals.

Published in the Journal of Human Evolution, their discovery debunks a textbook belief held by archaeologists for more than 60 years. (August 26, 2008)

Now, the obvious question is, who decided that the ‘thals were dummies? They were around long enough (conventionally, from about 250 000 to about 28 000 years ago) so they must have fed themselves using their tools.

The textbook belief was in fact based on the now-rotting Tree of Life popularized by Darwin and his modern-day followers. They assumed that modern humans (homo sapiens) were “superior” to the Neanderdumbsters, and interpreted all facts about the latter to fit that view.

However, enterprising researchers from the University of Exeter, Southern Methodist University, Texas State University, and the Think Computer Corporation decided to do some investigation, so they themselves spent three years making both Neanderthal tools and Homo sapiens tools.

And guess what:

… when the research team analysed their data there was no statistical difference between the efficiency of the two technologies. In fact, their findings showed that in some respects the flakes favoured by Neanderthals were more efficient than the blades adopted by Homo sapiens.

 One researcher offers various speculations about why Homo sapiens preferred tools that didn’t work as well, but the inferior intelligence of homo sapiens (hereafter saps) is not one of the options offered.

The researchers already done enough damage to the official materialist narrative for one decade.

I suggest that the next step should be this: Read More ›

Having reported news on the ID scene for about five years now, I could give a number of reasons why I think ID is slowly winning the intellectual battle, but let me focus on just one for now: The increasingly preposterous claims made by anti-ID zealots.

At the high end, we have this editorial in New Scientist, in which we are advised,

But perhaps we have the very notion of intelligence wrong. Scientists are beginning to see that the toughest problems – how to control complex traffic flows, for example – are better solved through the random evolution or self-organisation of artificial systems than by human reasoning (see “Law and disorder”). Such thinking appears to be moving towards the mainstream, as societies increasingly face complex problems that overwhelm the human mind. Engineers are finding that their task is not so much to find solutions as to design systems that can discover their own.

If the NS editors were right, we should see non-life evolving slowly into life all around us, but for some reason we don’t. The most fundamental lesson early biologists learned was that life does not self-organize – i.e., it is NOT spontaneously generated; it is passed on, life to life.

Not only should spontaneous generation be true if they are right, but so should magic, Magic, after all, is simply another name for sudden self-organization.

That’s right folks – just toss the bedclothes into the air and they’ll come down in a perfect mitred-corner bed. Just toss whatever into the stew pot, sans cookbook, and you’ll evolve a gourmet dinner. How generations could have come and gone, and no one ever noticed that before is beyond me. Cinderella’s* fairy godmothers, after all, did the housework via self-organizing sprinkles of magic dust.

My point is that if they need to descend to arguments like this in order to avoid considering design, they might as well start examining design seriously. It’s not going away; in fact, the signal is getting louder all the time.

And what’s all this stuff about “complex problems that overwhelm the human mind”? Read More ›

I notice that at Overwhelming Evidence, Sam Chen announces that a student sympathetic to intelligent design has received the Cassey Luskin Graduate Award, but

The recipient of the 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award will remain anonymous for the protection of the recipient….

It’s interesting to reflect on that in view of the many legacy media know-nothings panning the Expelled documentary, insisting that there is no evidence that anyone has suffered discrimination on account of sympathy for design as a feature of nature.

And they wonder why the blogosphere is whacking the heck out of them …

On most of the issues I monitor, the fact is that, agree or disagree, I can no longer get reliable and timely information from these sources. They seem to have hunkered into their bunker, repeating their well-worn beliefs to people who don’t really care.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack: Read More ›

First, imagining the unimaginable

American-born Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller writes to share the news that his book was Book of the Week in Times Higher, where Keith Ward tries to give a reasonable though plodding account of what he is writing about:

… , Fuller argues that there is no reason to call ID non-scientific. It is a good integrating hypothesis – as good as astrology (now disproved) and Darwinian evolution (another grand theory that may soon be disproved). He provides interesting examples of how religiously inspired ID views have driven the work of many eminent biologists, and suggests that ID should be promoted as “an openly religious viewpoint with scientific aspirations”.

That’s certainly not something that the previous Guardian writer even tried to do.

It’s dull, but it’s progress. And it’s interesting that Ward can bring himself to think that Darwinian evolution “may soon be disproved.” I wonder how many Darwinbots will write to protest any such suggestion?

The problem right now is actually a bit deeper and wider though than Ward suggests: Darwinian evolution is in no fit state to be disproved. If it were so, that would be progress. Read More ›

Is Susan Mazur writing a book that exposes the Darwin industry instead of protecting it?

Her e-book title is “Altenberg 16: An Exposé Of The Evolution Industry”
Sunday, 6 July 2008, 12:32 pm | Article: Suzan Mazur

—–

<oreword

Introduction

Chronology

Evolution Tribes

1 The Altenberg 16

2 Altenberg! The Woodstock of Evolution?

3 Jerry Fodor and Stan Salthe Open the Evo Box

4 Theory of Form to Center Stage

5 The Two Stus

[ and further … ]

Susan, you mean, no more of the “dancing with the biologists” on Galapagos rubbish (and, person who wrote that silliness, you know who you are … ) A real accounting at last? Read More ›

Can’t sleep? Thinking of trying that leftover spicy dip again?

Mmmmmm, can’t comment on that but, as you munch ….

As if to prove that modernization and secularization are not the same thing – as sociologist Peter Berger maintains – long-deceased cultural icons are “appearing” again. Darwin’s face has been discovered in a tree and Turkish secularist Kemal Ataturk’s face in a hillside shadow in a remote Turkish village. All the more interesting because Darwin is the icon of North American atheists and Atatürk was a devout secularist.

Apparently, the silhouette of Turkey’s revered founder appears on the shadow that falls on these heights between June 15 and July 5. And thousands of Atatürk lovers, including military officers, bureaucrats and urban professionals, visit the region in order to observe this fascinating solstice.

Mr. Gülcemal Fidan, the mayor of Damal and a member of the ultra-secular People’s Republican Party, or CHP, recently announced that the “Damal Festival in the Shade of Atatürk” will be observed every year, and his office has spared YTL 200,000 (about $163,000) for this year’s organization — which is quite an amount for a tiny and poor area like his. Mr. Fidan also added that they expected Turkey’s Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Büyükanit to attend the celebrations.

Did Atatürk get “time off for good behavior” to come back and get his devotees favours from the government?

Now, I ask you, reasonable folk, does this – or does it not – beat the “Virgin Mary on a piece of toast“?

Toronto hack’s view: Devotees – of Darwin, Ataturk, or kitsch Catholicism – “see” things.

The Florida toast cult claims that their piece of bread has mystical power. It never went bad in a whole decade – or anyway, no one ate it and got sick. No one ate it at all. It was offered for sale.

Match THAT< Darwin and Ataturk!

(Note: The Catholic Church thinks that Jesus’s mother Mary has sometimes appeared to help people. But read this for qualifying details. Do not try to phone the Pope about your toast. If you have not been living a really holy life, Mary prays for you. But if you are not listening to usual sources of good advice – why not start by listening to them, instead of waiting for a visit from her?)

Meanwhile, at The Mindful Hack, if you still haven’t gone to sleep … Read More ›

Friends remind me of an excerpt from a debate between intelligent design advocate Phillip Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, and Darwinist philosopher William Provine, in which Provine proclaims,

First, the argument from design failed. There is no intelligent design in the natural world. When mammals die, they are really and truly dead. No ultimate foundations for ethics exist, no ultimate meaning in life exists, and free will is merely a human myth. These are all conclusions to which Darwin came quite clearly. (Stanford University, April 30, 1994)

Provine has said this elsewhere over the years, most notably in the Expelled movie.

A friend comments that he admires Provine for at least being honest about where materialist atheism leads – as opposed to Richard Dawkins, who moralizes with abandon, without recognizing that his belief system cannot privilege one morality over another by definition.

What happens then? Well, what happens then is being played out in Canada right now, and all across Europe. All ethical systems come under attack, and degenerate into a swamp of unfocused feelings. In Canada, a quasi-judicial body known as a “human rights commission” – with far more power over individual Canadians’ lives than any court would ever have – is alike empowered to pass judgment on a clergyman’s pastoral advice and a late-night comic’s jokes – based on assorted individuals’ feelings of hurt or offense. One astonishing decision follows another, and you can read about many of them on a regular basis at civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant’s blog.

Straw in the wind: When Levant recently tried debating an establishment lawyer, the establishment lawyer began to claim that Levant “needs counselling” – there are few more ominous words in a rapidly degenerating materialist society. The establishment neither has nor needs arguments for its position; it only needs to flow in whatever direction it is driven by the moods of the moment, and those whose moods (not “ideas”, notice) are out of synch – “need counselling.”

As Mario Beauregard and I put it in the The Spiritual Brain, the root of this sort of abuse is materialist atheism, in which

“science-based, effective and progressive policies” are not offered by a self to other selves, but driven by an object at other objects.” (p. 117)

That, I think, is what breeds the totalitarian impulse. The materialist has first dehumanized himself, then he dehumanizes others.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›

Are the stickleback fish in Lake Washington really reversing evolution, as the media releases claim? Or just tailoring their existing design? A much more remarkable example of apparent reverse evolution is a little fish in Washington State, U.S.A. The threespine stickleback is named for its bony armour plate. But as Seattle’s Lake Washington became highly polluted over the years, the predatory trout population could barely see the sticklebacks. Many threespines got by with relatively little armor plate. However, when the lake was cleaned up during the mid-twentieth century, trout could see better. The threespine once again developed body armour which made it unpalatable to trout. It dug back into its genetic code to find traits to survive in a changing Read More ›

In “The Neural Buddhists” (New York Times, May 13, 2008), David Brooks (yes, he of the BoBos, the bohemian bourgeois*) references Tom Wolfe’s dramatic 1996 article “Sorry, but your soul just died,”

.. in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems.

Uh huh.

Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I took it all to pieces in The Spiritual Brain. There was no basis whatever from the new neuroscience for that view – on the contrary, the new neuroscience was killing it!

Brooks, author of BoBos in Paradise, acknowledges, 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 ›

As reviews of Expelled pile up, ranging from the “Dishonest!” (as if) through “missed the exit lane two hours ago*” through facile, and on to thoughtful, ending with the rousingly positive, one thing has become quite obvious: There really is a culture war, and whether you love or hate this film will largely depend on which side you are on.

If you are a materialist, you will think that any level of harassment, persecution, or unjust dealings against non-materialists or Darwin doubters is justified. Or else you will simply refuse to see it when it is before your face. After all, you know that Darwin was right, there is no free will and no hereafter, and all that matters is winning now.

If you are a non-materialist, you think that the line between good and evil passes through the human heart and that there really is free will and truth, and you keep hoping that evidence will one day finally matter.

This struggle for the soul of science will  be played out  in public from now on, which is probably a good thing. But expect to groan through many TV-driven fatuities  (Big Science, meet Big Hair; New Science, meet Christian pundettes).

Prediction: The ability to communicate skillfully with the public – over against legacy media story distorters – will be critical.

*This critic apparently believes that Expelled will wreck Ben Stein’s career. Yeah really.

Just up at the Overwhelming Evidence blog

From Mutation Works: Evolve your own musical cave man. (And if he turns out to be a great, yawping troll, please reclassify him as an anthropoid ape and send no photos). Read More ›

Men and women communicate differently, an irritated commenter informed me over at Mindful Hack. Science has settled the issue! Well, I am not sure that the matter is simple enough to be “settled” by science. And, as it happens, the Gender Genie has just popped out of its lamp or castaway bottle or whatever today’s genies use, to provide me with a handy tool. Using an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, you can find out whether the genie thinks you are a man or a woman by submitting a sample of your writing. Given that the genie works best on texts of more than 500 words, I decided to Read More ›

A friend tells me there is quite the kadiddle going on over at Darwinist Web sites on account of PZ Myers getting the bum’s rush out of the recent Expelled screening. And he wasn”t let in  even though Richard Dawkins, also sneaking around, was let in and introduced. What, I wonder, did Dawkins say? Hi, I’m Richard Dawkins and, even though I live in Oxford, England, I just happened to be skulking around here this evening, so I …. (?) Gotta admire his initiative though. Rats, I can’t get a DVD out of the Expelled myself, and their show won’t open in Canada till way later than the States’ kickoff. I didn’t think of trying to sneak into a US showing because Read More ›

Why SETI hasn’t found any space aliens yet: Excerpt: Gonzalez and fellow astronomer Hugh Ross have pointed out, Over the last four centuries the CP [Copernican Principle] has evolved from a simple claim that the Earth is not located at the center of the solar system to an expansive philosophical doctrine that the Earth, and particularly its inhabitants, are not special in any significant way. It is worth noting that the Copernican principle is not testable. It is simply an assumption. If right, it will aid research, but if wrong, it will impede research. Suppose it is wrong? Could that be one reason why the SETI search for extraterrestrial civilizations has not turned up any results for forty years, despite Read More ›

The reviewers start to look at The Design of Life, a design-friendly biology textbook. Excerpt: “In this atmosphere, The Design of Life was bound to be controversial. It actually shouldn’t be. It’s a good book and well written, but the fact that it is even remotely controversial shows just how committed the science establishment is to ideas about evolution that do not conform to the current available evidence.” Also, today at The Mindful Hack Researchers ask, What does it mean to be an animal? How the Catholic Church built up science Kind words from a fellow blogger How much does the hole in your wallet improve the taste of wine? Chronic pain reduced by meditation, not medication How far has Read More ›