Austin Anderson: Now I understand why I’ve never been asked in a biology class to read the original text of Darwin’s theories: Our contemporary reverence for Darwin’s gentlemanliness and the pure scientific brilliance of his theories is an overly optimistic illusion that shatters upon a closer look at his publications.
Tag: Charles Darwin
Slice of history: Darwin helped his co-theorist Wallace get a pension
Even though they emphatically disagreed about design in nature. Michael Flannery tells the story.
Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne contemplates the idea that Darwin might be Canceled
But here’s the really interesting part: Coyne points to a medallion struck by Darwin’s wife’s family, the Wedgwood (who were abolitionists). But the medallion fits creationism far better than Darwinism.
Vox Day on canceling Darwin
One got the impression years ago that the Darwinians never really thought there was any chance it could happen to them. However, Darwin may not have been doing for others as much as he was doing for them and they never stopped to think about it.
Darwinian wonders: Will Darwin survive the purge?
Carl admits that “Up until now, Darwin has been considered something of a hero on the political left… In short, all that dynamite (Darwin’s racism) was lying around, just waiting for someone to find it and make an issue of it—but the Darwinians didn’t want to deal with it themselves in case doing so complicated their culture war? Oh my.
The Genetic Literacy Project confronts Darwin’s Descent of Man
And starts to acknowledge some harsh realities that most Darwinists drown in a word salad of obfuscation.
Once upon a time, scientists were allowed to think that Darwin might be wrong
Emily Morales: Adam Sedgewick, professor of biology and geology at Cambridge University, and a mentor to the young Darwin similarly concluded he had “. . . leaped beyond the evidence.”
Eugenics and the “bad guy” in everyone but Darwin
This article about Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, a key figure in the eugenics movement, manages to avoid mentioning Darwin, even though he was clearly among those Victorians for whom racism was a normal point of view.
New book: Darwin, unlike some of his followers, was an “evolutionary pluralist”
Now they tell us. But how did his followers get it so wrong? Or were they just funning us all these years? Re Revisiting the Origin of Species: The Other Darwins (Thierry Hoquet, CRC Press, August 13, 2018): Contemporary interest in Darwin rises from a general ideal of what Darwin’s books ought to contain: a Read More…
Design Disquisitions: Design & the Problem of Intelligibility
Many critics of intelligent design argue that not only is ID false (or at least unscientific), but that it is basically meaningless. Such lines of criticism come from philosophers such as Sahotra Sarkar and Elliott Sober. They argue that the general concepts that are assumed in ID discussions like ‘design’ and ‘intelligence’ are too primitive and Read More…
Design Disquisitions: Jeffrey Koperski on Two Bad and Two Good Ways to Attack ID (Part 2): Two ‘Good’ Ways
Part two of my series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones’ is now up on my blog. This one is quite in depth, but a couple of interesting issues come up along the way. I examine the concept of soft and hard anomalies in scientific Read More…
Debating Darwin and Design: A Dialogue Between Two Christians
A couple of months ago, I agreed to take part in a written debate with a good friend of mine, Francis Smallwood. Francis, like me, is a commited Christian. Unlike me though, he is also a neo-Darwinist. On his blog Musings Of A Scientific Nature he writes on many different scientific issues, although his primary Read More…
Theist, Agnostic, Atheist: Will the Real Charles Darwin Please Stand Up?
Those old enough to remember TV in the late 1950s through the 60s will recall a delightful game show, “To Tell the Truth.” As a kid I fondly recall trying to figure out along with the celebrity panelists which of the three contestants was the “real” person to be identified. It was a challenging game; the three Read More…