The Adarwinist Reader

2003-04-03T12:32:00.000-05:00

I will not be able to post for a while but hope to start back in June. If you are a first time visitor, keep in mind that this is not a curent events blog, so please browse the archives. A little comic relief before I go:

"It's the worst administration I've seen since I went there in 1951. The whole [conservative] trend is a very artificial one made up essentially of three main currents. One is the Christian current, which is isolated from the rest of the country. [But] it's a lot of people, 70-80 million. This is George Bush's main constituency. Second, the neo-conservative movement, which has been developing over the period since the end of the 1960s, as a reaction to the 1960s. But it is now narrower and narrower and more focused. That's why you have people like [Richard] Perle and [Paul] Wolfowitz in positions of power, because they've made an alliance with the isolationist right wing within America... And the third group that feeds into this is the Washington establishment, these think tanks in Washington which have taken the intellectual class and turned them into policy salesmen who have no peer review... The opposition to the war is, I think, an opposition to all of that. It's an opposition to the fundamentalists, who stand, for example, against the theory of evolution. And these are the people pushing for the war. And that's why I think the movement against the war, despite the fact that it is flagging a bit because of loyalty to the boys and girls abroad, as some of the Democrats are saying now, will grow. I think that Bush will not have a second presidency. In fact, I and many others are convinced that Bush will try to negate the 2004 elections: we're dealing with a putschist, conspiratorial, paranoid deviation that's very anti- democratic." - Edward Said, hallucinating with the editors of Arab News.

If I had hitched my wagon to the anti-war movement, I too would be looking for a new definition of what I was trying to accomplish.

2003-03-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

The Henry Project

In the mid 19th century, more than two hundred scientists named “Henry” signed a paper backing the teaching of spontaneous generation, the theory that living organism emerged from non living matter, such as rotting meat. The statement was in response to the latest school science standards that allowed criticism of spontaneous generation (‘spon-gen’). The statement, issued in Paris at the annual meeting of the Académie des Sciences, listed people named Henry to illustrate the large number of spon-gen backers and to honor English bacteriologist Henry Bastion, who had worked tirelessly to fight the small but growing influence of Louis Pasteur.

"Spontaneous generation is a vital, well-supported, principle of the biological sciences.” The statement aimed to discredit the movement founded by Pasteur, which was critical of Spontaneous Generation. "It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for this type of pseudoscience, including but not limited to “germ theory”, to be introduced into the science curricula.” It was organized by the anti-Pasteur National Center for Science Education (NSCE). The debate had been heightened by the recent vote of Ohio's State Board of Education to allow criticism of orthodox spon-gen in its 10th-grade natural-science classes.

Also in the previous year, the Cobb County School Board in George had adopted a resolution saying teachers may criticize spon-gen claims that natural processes generate living organisms from non-living matter with no outside influences. In both Ohio and Georgia, critics of spon-gen circulated statements signed by scientists calling for more critical approaches to be used in biology classes.

The previous fall, 28 members of a group called Georgia Scientists for Academic Freedom joined a list of 132 other scientists who urged "careful examination of the evidence for spon-gen theory." They said, "It is important that students and teachers be permitted, even encouraged, to discuss differing views of origins of living organisms."

The Ohio debate featured a call from state activists to allow teachers to present the alternative called germ theory, the idea that apparent emergence of life is due to outside influences, not spontaneous generation. Though the Ohio school board rejected the strict teaching of Pasteur, it required that 10th graders learn how "scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of scientific theory."

The statement was also aimed to make fun of the anti-spon-gen manifestos that were signed and circulated in the previous few years, its organizers said. "Of course science isn't decided by manifesto; this statement pokes fun at such efforts," said physicist Henry Weinberg. He said the validity of spontaneous generation is seen in scientific papers.

The statement, signed by 220 Henrys, included eight members of the Académie des Sciences. Henrietta Scott, executive director of NCSE, said that signers named Henry represented just 1 percent of scientists, and she challenged the followers of Pasteur to muster such a large sample.

"Germ theorists are fond of amassing lists of Ph.D.s who deny spontaneous generation to try to give the false impression that it is somehow on the verge of being rejected by the scientific community," she said. Biologist Félix “Henry” Pouchet said he and other signers "aren't trying to stifle dissent" but "to demonstrate how misleading it is to claim, on the basis of a handful of dissenters, that spontaneous generation is a 'theory in crisis.' "

Note: the above is based on (or should I say inspired by) a true story. More on that later.

2003-02-19T18:58:00.000-05:00

Purpose

Jim Ryan’s Philosoblog is one of my favorite sites. Jim’s focus is on American political philosophy and I usually agree with, and always pay attention to, anything he has to say. This past week he wrote this:

Some bloggers were talking about Hegel today. All his nonsense about living for some vast historical scheme - bah! We're living in nothing more than a sea of rock, space and fire, to which nothing matters. We may have a historical scheme if we want, or we may do otherwise, instead. There is not more rationality in a history than in a person. History is not a mind or person. We alone matter. While there is an exhilaration in living a very good life that is something akin to living for something beyond oneself, it's nothing more than the feeling of being very glad to exist. And maybe also partaking of a great historical culture is very good. But there is no scheme.

First, since I have never formally studied philosophy, I have to admit that I am ignorant of what Hegel had to say. However, I do know a bit about Bertrand Russell and immediately thought of his universe in ruins when reading Jim’s words. I know that Jim is strictly a materialist in that he believes in nothing beyond matter. Mind and meaning all follow from that. It seems to me that to say that there is no historical scheme is to say that there is no ultimate meaning and to say that “history is not a mind or person” is to deny any purpose behind the emergence of man. It just happened that way.

So far, so good, I suppose, but to say that “we alone matter” doesn’t quite seem right. More like “I alone matter.” And only to myself. And of course, the whole idea of a unified "self" is just a handy type of self-delusion. And of course, the whole idea of "self"-delusion is only....well, you get the picture. It's safe to say, though, that others are no more than props in our existence, so of course, without purpose or intent, the whole of history is just a trajectory, not really a journey.

What caught my attention was the underlying discussion of purpose and that got me to thinking about how absolutely critical it is, to a materialist worldview as manifested in darwinism, that it not exist. Bertvan asserts that purpose is possible without a purposeful god, but I can’t pretend I really comprehend that. But here’s something I do know. Introducing purpose, even the type outlined by bertvan below, would be like tossing a dead mouse into the darwinist punch bowl. No one would ever take another drink. Darwinism would not just be modified, updated “neo-fied” again, it would be dead. Undeniably, certifiably dead.

2003-02-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

I was motivated recently to do a little research and write a post on the plight of Galileo some 400 years ago. However, almost immediately I found that the increasingly essential Jonah Goldberg had already done it. What motivated me was a response on Orrin Judd’s excellent weblog from one of the “regulars” there. Whatever it was that was originally posted got turned into a religion/science debate in the Comments section. What the commenter had to say boils down to this: Over the past 25 centuries, “science” has been right about everything. Of course, all this proves is the bias of the modern. Go back in time just a tenth of that span of 25 centuries and see how much “science” had right.

This kind of thinking is usually tied in with a smear of religion (preferably Christianity) as a persecutor of the enlightened scientist. I accept no conventional wisdom without proof (or at least compelling data) and the whole Galileo episode just didn’t ring true for me. In an essay not about Galileo per se, Goldberg uses the story of Galileo’s trouble to make a point:

Some air needs to be cleared here. The myth of Galileo as a "martyr to science" — as countless writers and historians have called him — was born of the French enlightenment. "From Diderot to Brecht, the myth of Galileo the rationalist-scientist-martyr [has] dominated Western thought, and even today it shows few signs of abating," wrote Robert Nisbet in Prejudices. The first choice for hero of reason, Nisbet explains, was actually Isaac Newton. But, unfortunately for the philosophes, Newton was unacceptably pious. So they picked Galileo who, it must be noted, was intensely religious as well.

The story we all learned is that Galileo was condemned for advocating Copernicanism, which held that the Aristotelian view of the sun circling the earth was wrong. And ultimately, this much is true. But, we're also told that the moral of the story is that Christianity is an enemy of science and that science can only thrive when Christianity and other chaotic superstitions are kept safely in a Pandora's box, far from institutions of reason. And this is almost exactly and perfectly wrong.

It is simply a lie to say that Galileo and the Church were enemies. A quick review: Galileo was the pride of the Church in Tuscany and was a friend to numerous influential figures within the Church. His work was sponsored and celebrated by his close friend, Bishop Maffeo Barberini. In 1611, when Galileo's The Starry Messenger came out — which reported his discoveries with his new telescope — the Vatican college in Rome celebrated with a day of parties much like the DNC will when Sidney Blumenthal's book is released. His buddy Maffeo Barberini eventually became Pope Urban VIII and, as pontiff, eagerly authorized Galileo to write and publish Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems — the book which got Galileo into so much hot water.

Goldberg goes some detail about the intrigue of the whole episodes and then arrives here:

…I bring all of this up to make one irrefutable point: Galileo's greatest and most-enduring enemies were not the orthodox clerics of the Church, but his fellow scientists. This was not a case of a superstitious, bureaucratic Church snuffing the light of reason. It was a case of petty and jealous men trying to use the Church to kneecap a whistleblower. If Galileo's way of things won the day, a lot of people would have looked like fools and, possibly, lost their jobs. And, this had less to do with Copernicanism or heliocentricity than with the fact that Galileo represented the introduction of mathematics into the world of physics. Needless, to say, if you were a physicist who didn't know jack about math and, all of a sudden, this guy was going to make math a requirement, you'd be bummed.

This is undoubtedly how Galileo himself saw his plight… the earliest and perhaps most-enduring constraints on Galileo's research was his fear of ridicule and opprobrium from the scientific community. In 1597, Galileo wrote a letter to Kepler admitting that he believed Copernicus had it right, but he was afraid to admit it publicly for fear of being ridiculed by Aristotelian scientists — not persecuted by closed-minded clerics.

When science takes on the role of religion, as it inevitably does – and not just in our age – the scientist can be elevated to something of a diety. They are after all, human beings, with human emotions, ambitions, feelings, and foibles. Nobody wants to look like a fool, lose status and possibly a livelihood because the star to which you have hitched your wagon fizzles.

2003-01-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

Something in the Details

The Access Research Network website promotes the ID (Intelligent Design) movement. Their discussion forums, surprisingly, are mostly free of the creation/evolution fights you find on many sites. Although the popular media has stereotyped IDers as creationists clinging desperately to some hope of a role for God, the reality is very different. Some ID proponents don’t even believe in God.

The following is a short interview with an regular ARN poster called “bertvan”, Berthajane Vandegrift, who’s postings come with the following position statement: Teleology is a part of nature. Whether that teleology is internal or external is a philosophical choice, and I defend anyone's right to define the "designer" differently than I do. Teleology, by the way, is the use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining phenomena.

I have defined a Darwinist as someone who attributes all life on earth as the result of random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS) – a mindless, purposeless, algorithm of which man is a highly unlikely, meaningless result. Mutations are the agent for change and selection preserves ‘good’ change. Over time, RM&NS can account for the steady increase in information and complexity that takes us from primordial goo to human beings. This view has pretty much swept the field and has been championed by the popularizers of science - Dawkins, Sagan, Pinker, Dennett, Asimov and others. As Dawkins famously observed, Darwin makes it possible to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist.” As a darwinian doubter who does not hold a belief in a personal god, what has been your experience in discussing and debating evolution with darwinists?

I haven't particularly liked most people who call themselves "Darwinists". On Talk Origins I was once called "an ignorant creationist pig". Most RM&NS defenders seem to have some adolescent obsession with denouncing conventional religions.

Any thoughts as to why that is so?

Materialism is a religion, and I suppose people are therefore aggressive in defense of it. I have resented their tactics -- the constant assertion that any skepticism of RM&NS as an explanation of life is due to ignorance and religiously motivated. (I believe Dawkins also considers it wicked.) I especially resent the fact that the news media has often been taken in by this assertion. I predict that when reporters realize they have “been had” on the subject, their resentment might exceed mine.

What is your view on how species come about?

I don't question evolution. I question that random mutation and natural selection is much of a factor in the process. I have no original thoughts on evolution. We live in exciting times with new ideas on the subject appearing daily.

So you accept the claim that self-replicating organisms arose on Earth from non-living matter and evolved into the complexity of life we see around us today?

I agree that life arose from non-life. Brig Kleiss’s panspermia may be correct that life arose elsewhere. Or perhaps life arises anywhere in the universe where conditions are appropriate. I suspect multi-celled organisms arose by symbiosis during the Cambrian. The number of multi-celled “common ancestors” -- how many evolved from each other and how many were different from the beginning -- is presently unknown. (Senapathy proposes that almost all were different from the beginning.)

If not much of a factor, is RM&NS any factor at all?

Sure, natural selection probably plays a role but I doubt any random mutation was ever “adaptive”. Random mutations in the genome are either age deterioration or environmental damage and never the origin of creative, adaptive change. Natural selection plays no role in creation of adaptive change, although it could help influence which adaptations proliferate. After being beaten over the head with RM&NS as the explanation for everything for half a century, I fear any recognition of a role for natural selection comes reluctantly.

If not RM&NS, how do you account for the development of complex biological systems?

All living complex biological systems have a limited ability to change and adapt to their environment during growth and development -- purposefully and intelligently, not randomly.

Such adaptations are inherited epigenetically [inheritance involves mechanisms other than DNA], and if persistent over generations, may become incorporated into the genone. Adaptation happens in the phenotype, not the genome, and the organism controls its genome as much as the genome controls the organism.

Do you mean that a single individual will change over its lifetime? You seem to be saying that the organism is pre-programmed and environmental pressures activate this programming.

I believe all evolutionary change occurs in individual, living organisms as they adapt intelligently to their environment. I don’t know if organisms are necessarily “pre-programmed”. I suspect developmental adaptation is creative, designed constantly, and on the spot, by the complex biological system. Volition and intelligence are a part of all living matter and perhaps of inanimate matter also, to some undetectable degree.

Volition would seem to mean a conscious choice. Wouldn’t this imply that mind preceded matter?

Absolutely.

But you don’t see this ‘mind’ as God?

Some people's religion is sophisticated and other's are more naive, but all of us wonder about unanswerable questions. At the moment I'm inclined to view the purpose of the complexity universe as the evolution of volition. I call myself an agnostic, and have no desire to change anyone else's religion. I am comfortable viewing the volition/intelligence in living matter as a natural force, but participation by anyone's god cannot be ruled out.

Who are thinkers who have recently influenced or helped buttress your views?

I particularly like Mae Wan Ho’s “The Biology of Free Will.” When I say that I suspect volition, or free will, is a limited, perhaps undetectable, aspect of all matter I am speaking of Quantum effects.

I recently read “The Mindful Universe”, by Henry Stapp. However I didn’t understand what Stapp was up to in much of the book. I suspect the significance of quantum unpredictability is difficult for many scientists, and perhaps they devise all sorts of stuff -- such as multiple universes -- rather than merely accept the obvious. The obvious significance of quantum theory is that mind is a component of reality, especially living matter.

You seem to be open to a variety of options – God, panspermia (life transplanted from other planets), volition and intelligence as some innate property of matter. Would it be fair to say that the only option that you do not entertain is the widely held darwinian RM&NS model?

RM&NS is the Darwinian model. It is the only detailed proposal darwinists offer for the creation of adaptive biological complexity. "Drift" or "other mechanisms" are meaningless without specific details. "Duplicated genes" are merely another version of random mutation so long as the duplication performs some new function accidentally and without purpose. I'd be really interested in hearing how "self-organization", "gene expression" or "gene suppression" might occur randomly -- (accidentally and without purpose).

It may be possible, in broad perception, to separate darwinism from evolution, but not usually in the way discussed above. Darwinism and evolution are wedded for some very specific reasons. More on that later.

In regards to the concept of evolving volition or how mind can be a component of matter, I’ll have to take bertvan’s word for it at this point. Although I don’t pretend to fully grasp these ideas, I admire an intellectual pursuit based on a reasonable evaluation of evidence and circumstance and not on a philosophical preconception.

2003-01-09T14:49:00.000-05:00

Entropy and peer review – A cautionary tale

There are many, many bad arguments against Darwinism and one of them is the appeal to the 2nd law of thermodynamics – often made by those with little or no education in the subject. Of course, darwinists repeatedly trot out some groaners of their own – the peppered moth, finch beaks, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria – as proof of darwinian evolution. In any event, it’s always a good idea to research your subject and, if possible, run it by someone more knowledgeable than you in the subjects involved.

David Heddle is a physicist who publishes a Christian-oriented blog. As you might expect, he’s especially interested in topics that involve both his science and his faith. Recently he took on the evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument:

Oh Lord, save us from foolish Christians who think that science is your enemy! And save us from the well-meaning but self-deluded who think that they understand enough science to use science against itself.

…the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy are not trivial. In physics they are defined in a precise manner, and if one applies the second law without understanding the details, then the results one obtains and the conclusions reached are meaningless.

David’s argument doesn’t lend itself to selective quoting so I’m not going to post much of it here. It needs to be considered as a whole. If you are not up for studying the whole thing, understand that basically those who use the 2nd law against evolution claim that the natural progression of things is from a state of order to disorder (increasing entropy). This would seem to disallow the Darwinian notion of increasing order and complexity coming about by purely naturalistic mechanical means.

To summarize: the second law, when applied to an open system, does not demand nor preclude the possibility that either the system or the surroundings experiences a decrease in entropy. It might happen, or it might not. Whether it does depends on the details of the overall system.

What would make complex, ordered biological systems come about?

It requires something that the second law doesn’t deal with, something in the details of the processes. The second law speaks in broad terms and provides broad constraints, it says little about what happens under the hood.

Even though the second law argument does not harm darwinism, this statement is interesting. Darwinists cannot supply such details and fall seriously short of plausible descriptions about what happens under the hood.

2003-01-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

Circularity

It may be a little odd to link to a site linking back to me, but there's a good thread at arn.org following up on my last post on Michael Shermer at Skeptic magazine:

Not all ID [Intelligent Design] critics are obsessed with a Dawkins-type crusade against religion, but Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine has sometimes rivaled Dawkins as evangelical atheist

It is worth noting that the author of these words is a self-described agnostic. More on that later.

2003-01-05T21:21:00.000-05:00

Skeptical

I am reasonably sure that this is not a parody, attached as it is to the Scientific American website. Still, this makes me wonder:

Self-organization and emergence arise out of complex adaptive systems that grow and learn as they change. As a complex adaptive system, the cosmos may be one giant autocatalytic (self-driving) feedback loop that generates such emergent properties as life. We can think of self-organization as an emergent property and emergence as a form of self-organization. Complexity is so simple it can be put on a bumper sticker: life happens.

Michael Shermer, the author of the article and editor of Skeptic magazine, seems a little selective in regards to where he aims his skepticism.

2002-12-20T07:53:00.000-05:00

Robert Wright, Call Your Office

An update of sorts on a past blog post. Evidence that the male perception of feminine beauty is changing as reported by the British Medical Journal:

The assertion comes from two psychoanalysts who pored over every Playboy from December 1953 and calculated the body mass index of every centrefold. Over 577 issues, the models became taller and their waist increased, while their hips became narrower and their bust became smaller. If Playboy is any guide, the needle on the male sexual compass has switched from Marilyn Monroe to Eva Herzigova, the scientists say.

The body of evidence is a slap to evolutionary biologists who contend that men have always preferred women with big curves because of the association of breasts and hips with health and fertility.

Not to worry. I'm sure that a theory that so obviously explains everything will have no problem incorporating this.

2002-12-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

What is Evolution? (again)

Doing some research on the conventional thinking on human origins, I happened across the Becoming Human web site. I noticed that this traditional darwinian-oriented site included a glossary of terms. I checked their definition of Evolution:

A change in a population over time. Genetically, this means a change in the frequency of certain alleles over many generations.

An allele is the alternate form of a gene or trait. For example, A, B, and O are the possible alleles of the gene for human bloodtype. If this is evolution, I can't think of anyone who would question it.

2002-12-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

The Cliffs of Mount Improbable

Richard Dawkins has written four or five books with the same basic theme: Darwinism only looks impossible. If you break it down into small plausible steps, then seemingly complex systems can be built up one tiny piece at a time. In Dawkins words, from the title of one of his books, darwinism “climbs Mount Improbable” by taking the back way up the gentle slopes. The problem is that these gentle slopes don’t really exist. Darel Rex Finley makes this point nicely and gives a name to the real topography: the Benefit Cliff. I can’t do graphics here, so be sure to take a look at Darel’s essay for a more thorough discussion of this point.

On paper, evolution assumes that the beneficial function of a complex system can be slowly accumulated, as the parts of the system are accumulated. This concept is vital, because for complex systems to arise by the guidance of natural selection, the accumulating parts of the system must provide a benefit which natural selection can select.

Empirical studies of biology show that all life forms, from the simplest microbes to humans, are filled with complex systems that do not appear to be amenable to this evolutionary requirement. Instead of a smooth path from nonexistence to the modern state, most biological systems exhibit what might be described as a "benefit cliff," impassable by chance mutation.

To illustrate — consider the car. There are many parts on the car which are beneficial, but not strictly necessary. It is safer to drive with a rear-view mirror, but we could still drive without one. It is comfortable and fun to have air conditioning and a stereo, but we could still drive from one city to another without those things.

Suppose we remove all of these frills, stripping the car down to only what is absolutely necessary to drive from point A to point B, at a level of utility greater than could be provided by a bicycle. The car would still be very complex. A large number of critical parts (particularly in the engine) could not be removed.

The obvious problem is that natural selection doesn't even get to start selecting until a rather large amount of complex functionality is achieved. But if natural selection didn't design the complexity, then what did?

Most evolutionists today are aware of this problem, but insist that the incremental path required by evolution… does exist; it just "hasn't been discovered yet." Of course, any false theory could be defended this way: "It only looks false; its truth hasn't been discovered yet."

It is conceivable that a beneficially-neutral part could arrive, and stick around until — by unbelievably spectacular chance — other parts arrived that would work together with that one. But then we should expect to see most life forms rife with unused parts that may one day be beneficial in combination with as-yet-nonexistent parts. We do not observe anything of the sort. Useless or apparently useless features, such as the human appendix, are very unusual exceptions, not the general rule.

I have tried, on various evolution discussion boards, to get an explanation on how a complex system could evolve under the Dawkins scenario. The quality of the responses, from some highly educated people, is basically on the level of a four-year-old describing how a computer works: “the electricity goes in here, it does something in this box, and that makes pictures on this screen.” Usually these discussions end with something like “we may not understand all the details of the mechanism but that does not invalidate the fact of evolution.” Yes, and this used car I’m selling you, even though I can’t seem to find an engine, is still a totally viable means of transportation.

2002-12-01T20:44:00.000-05:00

What is Evolution?

I was asked, in response to one of my posts, where exactly I stood and to what, about ‘evolution’, did I object. That’s a fair question, but not an easy one since an answer requires first a clear idea of what is evolution. Talkorigins.org is one of the most influential promoters of evolutionary theory on the world wide web. Their site contains a collection of essays intended to provide a solid background in evolution for anyone who wishes to enter the various debates on the subject. Consider carefully these definitions from a Talkorigins essay entitled What is Evolution?

"evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years." – Oxford Concise Science Dictionary

"evolution: ...the doctrine according to which higher forms of life have gradually arisen out of lower.." – Chambers Dictionary

"evolution: ...the development of a species, organism, or organ from its original or primitive state to its present or specialized state; phylogeny or ontogeny" - Webster's Dictionary

If you maintain a belief in evolution and if any of these definitions sound about right to you, then I am sorry to inform you that you are scientifically illiterate. That is not my assessment, but that of the essay’s author, Talkorigins contributor and scientist Laurence Moran, who says of the first statement: “This is not a scientific definition…inexcusable for a dictionary of science” while the other two are “simply wrong.” Please note that these statements have not been edited in any way by me as you can see here. Personally, I’ve never had a discussion about evolution with anyone who I think would seriously question the basic premises any of those definitions.

On the other hand, Moran quotes approvingly:

“Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.”

This is a good working scientific definition of evolution; one that can be used to distinguish between evolution and similar changes that are not evolution. Another common short definition of evolution can be found in many textbooks:

"In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next." - Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

Based on these definitions, I would be a true believer in evolution. If you release a population of brown mice on a snow covered plain with an adequate food supply, little cover, and the occasional hungry hawk lurking overheard, I have no trouble with the idea that over time, either by recombination of recessive genes or an albino mutation, the population could turn from brown to white.

As usually happens, though, once we have the simple, clear, and innocuous concept of evolution in place, we move on to the shifting sands of darwinian speculation. Moran quotes how “one of the most respected evolutionary biologists has defined biological evolution:”

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."
- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

Most of this statement is more of what we see above; simple and straightforward. But the author finishes up in full darwinist mode: The process by which a population can become predominantly blue-eyed instead of green-eyed can account for the journey from protoorganism (I assume he means whatever is supposed to have preceded the first single cell organism) to the giraffe.

Moran journeys back to safer ground for his conclusion:

Recently I read a statement from a creationist who claimed that scientists are being dishonest when they talk about evolution. This person believed that evolution was being misrepresented to the public. The real problem is that the public, and creationists, do not understand what evolution is all about. This person's definition of evolution was very different from the common scientific definition and as a consequence he was unable to understand what evolutionary biology really meant. This is the same person who claimed that one could not "believe" in evolution and still be religious! But once we realize that evolution is simply "a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations" it seems a little silly to pretend that this excludes religion!

Scientists such as myself must share the blame for the lack of public understanding of science. We need to work harder to convey the correct information. Sometimes we don't succeed very well but that does not mean that we are dishonest. On the other hand, the general public, and creationists in particular, need to also work a little harder in order to understand science. Reading a textbook would help.

This reminds me a little of the fate of the Democratic Party in this last election cycle, blaming it on the failure to get their “message” out. The quality of the message does not seem to be a consideration. Well, I’ve read a few textbooks and I know a little about science, but I still don’t know what exactly ‘evolution’ means. I’m afraid that Dr. Moran’s essay has not really helped unless I’m free to pick the definition I like. If so, I’d take “a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.” But protoorganisms to giraffes? Those two definitions can only be connected, at least for the non-scientist, by taking the most superficial view of the whole enterprise and/or stupendous leaps of faith and suspensions of common sense.

2002-11-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

Morality and Intellectual Incoherence - last of a series

In the early part of the 19th century, John Keats lodged a protest against what he saw as the cold science of Isaac Newton for “unweaving the rainbow” and draining the wonder from the natural world. One hundred and seventy five years later Richard Dawkins issued a rebuttal of sorts with his book Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder.

Both Keats and Dawkins, I think, missed the point. Our pleasure in the rainbow is not necessarily less for understanding the prism effect. I would go so far as to say that the more we know about material phenomenon, the more our wonder increases. The heart of this particular darkness lies elsewhere.

Derk at Mind Floss said this:

The properties of water are not obvious from the properties of hydrogen and It is not clear to me why the moral domain can’t find its justification right here, in this world. Hydrogen is not wet. Oxygen is not wet. Yet when they are combined in the right combination, wetness emerges. Viewed in isolation, atoms, mass, and velocity may be amoral, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that morality is not a product of their combined effects.

The properties of water emerge from the atomic properties of hydrogen and oxygen. True. Morality can also be said to be a product of the combined effects of physical phenomenon. Again, true, but only in the sense that throwing a dozen darts can result in a dozen bullseyes (or any other combination of results). The properties of water are written into the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen, two pieces of a puzzle that fit together in the molecule of water. Unless thwarted by temperature, pressure, or some other condition, it will always be so; you will always end up at the same place. If you rewind the tape of evolution will you end up at the same place with the same ‘morality’? Unless morality is a real, though immaterial, thing like a circle or a line segment, no. So although morality (in the Darwinian view) is the product of combined material effects, it is fundamentally different than the combined effects that lead to water.

So what? Only this: If we conclude that there is nothing beyond us, that nothing exists outside of physical objects and the abstractions that describe them, it means that we just happen to being making our way through a highly improbable world with moral beliefs that, though existing for a reason of sorts, float – untethered to any real meaning or value - in our minds.

This is a profound conclusion and profound conclusions have profound consequences. Once we accept this conclusion as viable, three paths are presented to us: 1.) We accept it and fully embrace it, 2) we accept it but act as if we really don’t – we live a lie, or 3) we believe that the final truth of these matters is beyond our grasp and we defer to a higher power. Few follow the first path since people like Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, and Pol Pot are probably already there. Most everyone who accepts the darwinian worldview ambles down the second path. They say things like “this world is sacred” (Dennett) or “there is a difference between the way we know the world is and the way we know it ought to be” (Dawkins) and leave it at that. They then occupy themselves with beating to death the ‘illusions’ of the people on path three, using their own as club.

It is easy for a child to pretend to be a fireman. The excitement, the noise, the heroics, are the stuff of childhood fantasy. He’s not concerned with (even if he is aware of) the reality of the job – long hours of boredom, short moments of panic, low pay, and the horror of having to confront charred bodies and bereaved victims. I think that if one follows the second path, he is like the child pretending to be a fireman, but I am inclined, like Samuel Clemens, to draw down the curtain of charity on this scene. Just don’t yank it back up unless you want it to stay up. I am pleased to read the books of Dawkins and Dennett about the charms of natural history and the very interesting ways our minds operate, but I ask that they spare me the chimera of their illusions being better than somebody else’s because they are ‘scientific’.

2002-11-20T12:34:00.000-05:00

A composite statement from an on-line evolution discussion board:

If you have ever taken a flu shot or antibiotics you have benefited from evolutionary theory. Flu viruses mutate rapidly and every year researchers identify the most threatening strains (mutations) that we may be exposed to. The fittest viruses are those most likely to survive against the human immune system. Likewise, bacteria become resistant to antibiotics through an evolutionary process. Mutation produces many new strains, some of which are not affected by the antibiotic and the fittest strains survive. Educated by evolutionary theory, we can try to stay one jump ahead of the natural evolutionary development of these populations.

When darwinists make claims such as “nothing in biology makes sense outside of evolutionary theory” or point to the ‘fact’ of evolution (scroll down the page a little), this is the kind of thing they are talking about. Let’s take a look.

Antibiotics destroy bacteria in two ways: either the cell wall is weakened or the bacteria’s metabolism is interrupted. Bacteria can become resistant to an antibiotic in one of two ways as well. A bacterium can exchange genetic material with other bacterium through a couple of different mechanisms and thereby pick up a gene for resistance. This is somewhat analagous to sexual reproduction except that it’s a direct transfer, not a transfer from parent to offspring. Although a non-resistant bacterium can become resistant to antibiotics this way, no new information has been created, just transferred.

It is also possible for bacteria to become resistant due to random mutation. To greatly simplify (but not change the basic mechanism) antibiotic molecules work by attaching themselves to mating sites on the bacteria’s genetic material. It then does its work as noted above. A bacterium becomes resistant when it loses the ability to attach to molecules of the drug. This change is inheritable and a new strain of antibiotic resistant bacteria can emerge. In other words, bacteria become resistant due to a loss of information. It’s actually wrong to say ‘become resistant’ when in fact they simply lose sensitivity.

This phenomenon does indeed show a form of natural selection at work but in fact argues against darwinian evolution which states that complexity (increasing information) is built up one small step at a time. All that happens here is a neutral exchange or a net loss of information.

And there’s another little annoyance: After eons of time, bacteria are still bacteria.

2002-11-16T09:09:00.000-05:00

Consider this statement:

Women will never break through the glass ceiling in significant numbers because they have less of men's innate ambition and willingness to take the risks necessary for success. Quite literally a woman is made to be the complementary companion for a man and her role is mainly bearing and nurturing of children. The male-headed traditional family structure is what works best. Man, by the way, cannot escape his true nature, his selfishness, his violent tendencies, so dreams of creating a man-made utopia here on earth are doomed.

Although these could easily be the thoughts of a Southern Baptist Church elder, they are in fact a composite of statements made or implied by people like Robert Wright, Edward O. Wilson, and Steven Pinker – all outspoken darwinists and outspoken atheists. These ideas follow a very simple line of logic. If all biological life can be explained in darwinian terms, then the behaviors of these life forms can (only) be understood in darwinian terms as well. Over the years varieties of this school of thought have gone by various names: social darwinism, sociobiology, and most recently, evolutionary psychology.

No matter what you call it, it is an ambitious endeavor that claims to explain the patterns of human behavior we call morality - and everything else significant about us - as a consequence of darwinian natural selection. What humans tend to like or think of as ‘good’ are behaviors and tastes that have, or had, survival value. Those that we do not like or think of as ‘bad’ are detrimental to our survival. Over time, and with changing conditions, some ‘good’ things may lose their survival advantage and become neutral or even end up over in the ‘bad’ column.

For the darwinian there is no other way to approach morality and the bizarre implications of this approach can hardly be overstated. Andrew Ferguson, writing in The Weekly Standard a few years back, provides a glimpse in regards to our sexual roles and our aesthetic sense, supposedly hard-wired by evolution:

For the sociobiologist, the ramifications of [the] view of sexual roles range from the relatively trivial to the cultural and the political. But the important point is to reduce all of human behavior to evolutionary (and hence genetic) process. This is the sociobiological imperative. For example, an entire field of "Darwinian aesthetics" has sprouted from evolutionary psychology to explain why men like the types of women they do. It turns out that what we consider beautiful in the opposite sex is merely a measure of reproductive fitness. It is not clear though why male interest in, say, lesbian sex can aid in reproductive fitness.

The evolutionary psychologist Devendra Singh [has] discovered that waist to hip ratio is an important indicator of child-bearing ability among women. The optimum is 0.7. And that, says Singh, is the waist-to-hip ratio that men around the world, from all cultures, in all regions, prefer in their women. Coincidence? Absolutely not, say the sociobiologists. Nothing will budge them from their scientific discovery that men (on average) would rather have sex with young and pretty women than old and ugly ones.

You don’t have to study this idea long, that morality (and aesthetics) has evolved due to its survival value, to realize that it’s a powerful predictor. Of the Past. In most cases, darwinists do little more than observe moral or other hard-wired traits and then speculate on conditions that could have lead to their evolution. Ferguson continues:

Many of sociobiology's speculations rest on question-begging and circularity. In his textbook (Evolution and Human Behavior), John Cartwright includes dozens of examples, with varying degrees of plausibility. He wonders, for example, why human beings crave salty and fatty foods. Surely this is "non-adaptive," unhealthy behavior. By sociobiology's own logic, natural selection should have "selected out" such cravings; that is, organisms who ate too much fat and salt should have perished earlier and so passed on fewer of their genes. But now here we are, millennia after the close of the Pleistocene, neck-deep in chili-cheese fries. What happened? Like a good sociobiologist, Cartwright takes a leap into the speculative blue yonder. "Our taste buds," he says, "were probably a fine piece of engineering for the Old Stone Age when [salty and fatty] foods were in short supply and when to receive a lot of pleasure from their taste was a useful way to motivate us to search out more."

Aside from being untestable, Cartwright's theorizing (which he has borrowed from other sociobiologists) tells us only that we like food that tastes good to us. He still hasn't explained why natural selection has programmed us to prefer unhealthy foods high in fat over healthier foods that are, say, high in protein or rich in complex carbohydrates.

And then there’s this:

As a theory, it is one size fits all. In a famous example, Steven Pinker accounted for mothers who kill their newborns by pointing to the pressures of natural selection and reproductive fitness that young mothers suffered back in the [distant past]. Of course, the same pressures, the same overriding criterion of reproductive fitness, are used to explain why mothers will die for their children. Kill them, die for them: Sociobiology explains it with the same set of theories.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the darwinist account of morality does not go so far as to make morality arbitrary, but does make it beholden to one thing only: survival value. And since cockroaches are much better equipped for long term survival, man’s moral sense (actually, his need for one) is less than pointless and meaningless from the survival standpoint, it is a detriment. But let’s elevate it to the level of meaninglessness for a moment. Even darwinists recoil at this since evolution can neatly account for – even speak favorably for – racism, sexism, ageism, and (especially since many darwinists are left/liberal types) the utter futility of welfare states and other methods of wealth re-distribution. In an interview quoted in Ullica Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth, left/liberal darwinist Richard Dawkins takes on both critics and enthusiastic supporters of this aspect of darwinism, who "are too stupid to understand the distinction between what one says about the way the world is, scientifically, and the way it ought to be politically."

Ought cannot be derived from is. Too Bad. It’s the darwinist’s only option.

2002-11-10T20:19:00.000-05:00

Intellectual Incoherence, part 5

It may be useful at this point to define a few terms. To keep it simple, morals are the seemingly hard-wired and universal feelings; the things that make us want to help the neighbor’s son in the lawnmower accident scenario. Our moral sense is not all-powerful, though, in that it can be overridden even if it cannot be over-written.

That’s where ethics or values come in. The use of our moral sense – the embracing of, ignoring of, or attempt to change it - is the difference between Ghandi and Stalin. Empirically speaking, a system of ethics that denies our moral sense would seem to lead to disaster, New Soviet Man and the (thankfully shortened version of) The Thousand Year Reich being two recent examples.

Of course, the darwinist has no problem with the belief that morals evolved and has plenty of just so stories to prove it. As is the case with all of darwinism, on a superficial level the evolution of morality can be presented in compelling terms. A detailed and ruthless analysis, though, is not so compelling.

And there is another problem. Along with the ‘good’ stuff we are hard-wired with (love, compassion, guilt for wrongdoing, and so on) we have some ‘bad’ stuff too: greed, hatred, and lust to name a few. Both the good and the bad can be explained in terms of their survival value. So we are left with the problem of how to sort them out, or to be more exact, how it is that we have already sorted them out, calling some good and some bad.

Playing the part of broken record, I must point out yet a deeper problem by going back to the lawnmover accident. On the basest darwinist level, the long-term survival of my DNA, going to the aid of the injured party fails the test. As to the next level, survival of man in aggregate, the feedback loop to extract and preserve this biological trait from the gene pool is clearly fantastic, and in my mind impossible. But let’s forget all that. At the end of the day, in the darwinian world, it makes no difference. A thousand years from now, or when, as Russell put it “all of man’s noonday brightness is buried under a universe in ruins”, it will matter not whether the neighbor’s son dies today, or as an old man, or ever lived at all. It is absurd for a bunch of beings that are the result of “the ultimate odd-ball improbability” of evolution (Gould), who’s very concept of a unified self that even has political opinions is an illusion (Pinker, Dawkins, and others), to have a discussion about the merits of libertarianism. Clearly, trying to determine if libertarianism is “false” or “wrong” is a non-starter.

This may also be a good time to restate my purpose for this blog. It is not to bring anyone over to my way of thinking; it is to let the darwinian doubter know that there are excellent reasons for his doubts. Even if I allow for the possibility of being wrong, that darwinian evolution is truly the theory of everything, I am cheered by the knowledge that there is absolutely no downside to being so.

2002-11-08T07:57:00.000-05:00

Intellectual Incoherence, part 4

From Steven Pinker’s quote below:

Many of our faculties evolved to mesh with real things in the world. We have a complicated system of depth perception and shape recognition that prevents us from bumping into trees and falling off cliffs. The fact that our ability to recognize an object comes from complicated circuitry of the brain does not mean that there aren't real objects out there.

What Pinker is clearly stating is that the complicated circuitry of the brain, like depth perception, hearing, and the opposable thumb, answers to only one 'higher authority', survival value, our ability to mesh with real things in the world. As the evolutionary tree of life thrusts ever upward, its creations encounter trees, cliffs, and many other obstacles. Through clever (only seemingly) adaptation it conquers these obstacles and makes them its own, or at the very least finds a path around them.

Pinker faithfully follows the darwinian script and it leads to a rather odd result. Indeed, the brain evolved in order to give us as accurate a representation as possible of what is objectively out in the world. The conclusion is that morals were pre-existent and man merely encountered these "real things" that are "objectively out in the world” along his evolutionary trajectory. For the darwinist, this would appear to be intellectual incoherence.

Pinker offers a way out:

...many moral philosophers argue that right and wrong have an existence, and that our moral sense evolved to mesh with them. (That's exactly what you just said, Steven) Even if you don't believe that, there's an alternative that would make the moral sense just as real -- namely, that our universal moral sense is constituted so that it can't work unless we believe that right and wrong have an external reality. So if you want to stop short of saying that moral truths exist outside us, you can say that we can't reason other than by assuming that they do.

In other words, just frame the issue in the way that best suits your sensibility, agenda, and audience at the time. Be that as it may, it’s not clear how a darwinist could seriously entertain the idea that "moral truths exist outside of us." The unsupported claim that it makes "the moral sense just as real" notwithstanding, self-deception - the swallowing whole of comfortable and useful myths - is the only option left. More on this.

2002-11-05T07:47:00.000-05:00

Intellectual Incoherence, part 3

In the Dawkins/Pinker talk linked below, Steve Pinker, of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, a best-selling author and darwinian celebrity of the current age, takes on the idea that a darwinian derived morality is of little real value. Does this make our morality arbitrary and inconsequential?

Not at all. This supposed devaluation of morality does not follow from the idea that we have an evolved moral sense. Many of our faculties evolved to mesh with real things in the world. We have a complicated system of depth perception and shape recognition that prevents us from bumping into trees and falling off cliffs. The fact that our ability to recognize an object comes from complicated circuitry of the brain does not mean that there aren't real objects out there. Indeed, the brain evolved in order to give us as accurate a representation as possible of what is objectively out in the world.

Being a no-nonsense darwinist, Pinker frames his argument in darwinian terms, i.e. morals have survival value, much like depth perception and object recognition. Leading up to this, Pinker calls this idea - that evolved morals have no real value - a non sequitur. But in fact, his entire statement above is a non sequitur unless it can be demonstrated that our morality, our sense of duty, our willingness to risk harm for the benefit of a sometimes unknown other, furthers the chances of our personal genetic material's survival.

2002-11-03T21:01:00.000-05:00

Intellectual Incoherence, part 2

The reason that libertarianism is so fascinating to me is that it is, in its pure form, analogous to the darwinian worldview. I'm imagining here an end-of-the-scale atheistic libertarianism. In this world there is no higher purpose than the proliferation of your DNA. Here, helping the neighbor's son is absolutely unthinkable. The potential benefits to you and your life purpose are exactly zero. On the other hand, helping the injured party has many dangers. What if the lawnmower is still a threat? What if you're exposed to aids-infected blood? And so on. Such behavior should be weeded out of the genetic pool in short order.

Please understand that I am not saying than any individual consciously thinks “my life’s work is to have as many viable offspring as possible to pass on my genetic material.” The great algorithm of darwinism demands it to be so however, whether the individual is aware of it or not. This is not my assertion, it is the assertion of Richard Dawkins and others who have fully embraced (sort of) the idea that the highest ‘moral’ principal is survival. This is Dawkins speaking at a joint presentation with Steve Pinker in the recent past:
Darwinism in this more general universal sense refers to the differential survival of any kind of self-replicating coded information which has some sort of power or influence over its probability of being replicated. DNA is the main kind of replicating entity that we know on this planet that has that property. When we look at living things on this planet, overwhelmingly the kind of explanation we should be seeking, if we ask what the functional significance is an explanation in terms of the good of the genes. Any adaptation is for the good of the genes which made that adaptation.

And yet, what kind of a monster would serenely read the newspaper on his front porch while his neighbor’s son bleeds to death in his full sight a couple of hundred feet away?

2002-11-01T22:37:00.000-05:00

Intellectual Incoherence

The germ of this idea has been buried in the back of my mind for some time. An exchange with another blogger this past week on the subject of libertarianism brought it to the forefront. To keep it simple, let’s just call it the disconnect I so often see between an individual’s professed world view and the way that individual conducts his life. It all started when I responded to this basic question (I’m paraphrasing and simplifying) from ‘Phil’ (not his real name):

If you notice your neighbor’s son on the ground in his front yard, bleeding to death because his lawnmover has severed his foot, is it ‘right’ to simply ignore the situation and let him die? If you consider yourself a libertarian and cannot prove that this response is ‘right’, then (I’m now quoting) “libertarianism is false”.

Now, before I go much further, please realize that libertarianism is only tangentially the subject here. However, I’ve noticed that libertarians, or those professing libertarian beliefs, exhibit more than their fair share of the type of disconnect I mentioned. There’s a lot more to this and it’s instructive in regards to the darwinian mindset.

Having juggled more than my usual allotment of weasels this week, I don’t have the energy to go any further at present. So let me just leave you with an example of a fragment of a more coherent worldview from a certain Frank J:

Even if you don’t want to go all the way and be Catholic, I think a belief in God is a cool thing. Me, it helps me be humble. Yeah, I know, I’m not that humble; but I’d be completely intolerable without religion. I might have even ended up as some loudmouth idiotarian. Plus, it’s nice to have God as that ace up your sleeve for the time you find yourself having to jump out of a plane without a parachute. On the other hand, I would like to say I know a number of atheists who are good, moral people even without a belief in God and I don’t think they’re going to hell or anything. God thinks they’re going to hell, though, and His opinion counts more.

There’s more and it’s worth a look. Sure it’s tongue-in-cheek but there’s an unusual amount of honesty, self-awareness, and intellectual consistency as we shall see.

2002-10-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

(A) Wonderful Life

In the past couple of years, two of the most prolific popularizers of science of our time - Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould have died - entering that state of eternal, dreamless sleep that Sagan envisioned - or not. In any event, they are gone and the world of scientific bestsellers is the poorer. Well, at least in the case of Gould. I found Sagan to often be a pompous bore and many of his 'insights' little more than the self-indulgent ramblings of a middle-aged pot-head; which in fact he was.

In many ways Gould was an outcast, disinvited from the head table of the darwinists. He was dismissed and insulted partly because he did not fully sign on to the theophobia of Richard Dawkins or the intellectual fascism of Daniel Dennett. Not that he didn't have his moments. In a 1996 interview, in answer to a question about politics, he sniffed "well, I don't like Newt Gingrich any more than other intellectuals do", and other such groaners, but overall he at least appeared to tolerate viewpoints other than his own.

Steve Gould, non-believing Jew, descended from the priestly tribe of Levi, was a profilic writer. One of his last books was Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Time. Here's an excerpt from a review of that book by an original thinker named Ross Rhodes:

But the sincere scientist always must be willing to acknowledge, at least in principle, that human knowledge is subject to constant and sometimes drastic revision. If presently there does not appear to be any serious challenge to evolutionary theory, we may take it as an excellent working hypothesis and explanation of the natural order; we may not, however, take it as an article of faith -- as many scientists appear to do -- because that would be, in Gould's phrasing, an intrusion upon the magisterium of religion. Perhaps because his own field of evolutionary biology is a relatively youthful 140 years old and is now triumphant, having swept the field, Gould may not be mindful of the broader history of science which is littered with discarded theories once thought incontrovertible. To cite one example only, physics in 1899 was thought to be a dead field because all of physics had been thoroughly and finally understood by expansion and refinement of Newton's magnificent summation; between 1900 and 1905, the entire structure of physics was overturned; by 1927, a new structure was proposed, so profoundly different from the conventional wisdom of 1899 that science has yet to make sense of it all. I do not mean to imply that the same fate awaits evolutionary theory; I mean only to caution that placing limits on God -- even based on firmly established scientific theory -- is both perilous and, at its root, contrary to the noblest traditions of scientific inquiry.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. If you're interested in quantum physics and the meaning of life, check out the rest of Ross's site.

2002-10-27T11:34:00.000-05:00

Darwinian Apologetics

Many, many of the objections to darwinism are of little value and easily refuted. Darwinists love this. It makes an excellent stuffing for their anti-evolution strawman. The darwinian true believer site, Talk.Origins, maintains several lists of FAQ's meant to 'debunk' these arguments and it's a great place to start if you think you've found the silver bullet against darwinism. Read all answers carefully, however. Just because there is an answer don't assume it's a good one. The issues brought up by many objections are not so much explained as they are explained away.

By the way, it is still unclear whether darwinism will die by a silver bullet or a thousand cuts.

2002-10-26T13:59:00.000-04:00

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of websites dedicated to darwinism, creationism, or some other aspect of the eternal question: How did we get here and why are we here? The ones I will be linking to either have something unique and compelling to say or tackle aspects and angles ignored or glossed over in the mainstream evolution debate. Darel Rex Finley has authored a very readable essay, Why I Disbelieve Evolution, that highlights some of these ignored or glossed over arguments. The first of which is available time:

On paper, the theory of evolution can assume that whatever amount of time is needed to evolve existing lifeforms was available. However, massive geological evidence exists that the environment of the Earth has been hospitable to the survival (not to mention the appearance) of life for roughly 4 billion years. That may sound like an eternity, until you start considering what has to have happened in that time. Human DNA alone (leaving aside the other complex structures of the cell) consists of about 3 billion nucleotides of genetic instruction. This means that according to evolution, they must have evolved at an average rate of about 0.75 nucleotides per year (not per generation). If the rate was not constant, then there must have periods when this rate was even faster.

Naturalistic evolution is supposed to happen so: Periodically an individual organism will be formed that has a genetic mutation, an error, in its DNA. Probably, this error will be neutral or detrimental, but it is conceivable that a very rare error will be somehow slightly beneficial. Thus, this individual creature will have a slightly better chance of surviving and procreating than its peers. If this individual survives and procreates (i.e., is not eaten in infancy), then over many (hundreds?) of generations, that slight advantage may slowly spread through the population until it is a permanent part of the species.

Is it even remotely conceivable that the naturalistic process described above could support a rate like 0.75 nucleotides per year? No. Trillions or quadrillions of years might solve this anomaly, but those timespans utterly dwarf the actual time of 4-5 billion years. Evolution fails this empirical test.

There are many subset examples. The whale, which appeared about 10 million years after the first mammal, probably has millions of nucleotides of DNA that have nothing to do with being a simple land mammal, and would have required impossible rates of naturalistic evolution to have acquired them in the time available.

What I mean by 'glossed over' is this: once a theory is considered 'fact', the scientific method gets turned on its head. Instead of using evidence to evaluate the theory, the theory is used as a filter for all evidence. "You say there's not enough time? Well, that's obviously wrong. We know that we've gone from a lifeless void to the diversity of life you see today in 4 billion years. Therefore, 4 billion years is obviously enough time".

2002-10-25T16:10:00.000-04:00

Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do: such things as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe. - David Stove, “What is Wrong With Our Thoughts?”

The late Austrailian philosopher David Stove, though an avowed atheist, found darwinian theory fairly useless as it applies to human beings. This essay should give anyone pause before they hitch their wagon to the evolutionary psychology star.

A defect that I would add to the above quote is "the simple inability to call things by their correct names". But that's another story.

2002-10-24T18:28:00.000-04:00

A place to start

If you've read many books by popularizers of science or the philosphy of science you've probably noticed a certain choppiness. After reading a chapter that would be appropriate for the Parade magazine insert in your sunday paper you plow into a dense swamp more suited to a graduate level textbook. That's because most authors collect various essays and other works and, when they have enough, knit them together into book length for publishing. There are few books that you really want to read from front to back. But that's ok.

Because most chapters or sections stand on their own, they are ideal for more in-depth consideration. Instead of reviewing entire books, I'll be taking, from time to time, a salient point of a book and provide my analysis of it. I'm going to start with one of the most influential philosopy of science books of the past decade - Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett.

2002-10-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

But what exactly is darwinism?

I don't like the term evolution because it can be made to mean almost anything - and often is - in various bait-and-switch tactics. 'Neo-darwinism' is the term generally used to denote the thinking of Charles Darwin on the origin and development of life on Earth updated to incorporate the latest knowledge from the various sciences, but I think the 'neo' confuses people. There are other terms for the worldview I'm talking about, but they are somewhat cumbersome and equivocal: material reductionism, philosophical naturalism, or sometimes just materialism or naturalism. So 'darwinism' is the term I prefer to use but rather than me trying to define it, I'll let darwinists do it themselves. This, from the National Association of Biology Teachers, will do:

The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

Mind did not precede matter; no pre-existing intelligence was required to get things started or to keep them going. No God required. We've got everything neatly explained, thank you. Or do we?

2002-10-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

Darwin disciple Richard Dawkins has observed that Darwin 'made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist'. I have started this web log because I want you to know also that it is possible to be an intellectually fulfilled 'adarwinist'; that is, a darwinian infidel or heathen - a non-believer in (or skeptic of) darwinism. This is not an easy road. Expressing even the slightest doubt can be dangerous. You will be branded 'anti-intellectual', 'anti-science', 'willfully ignorant', and strip-searched for your 'hidden agenda'. It will be implied that you must also believe the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese. If you're up for that; if you can keep an open mind; if you can allow for the possibility that the major scientific paradign (I promise, I will not use the word 'paradign' again) of the present age is seriously flawed (it wouldn't be the first time), then this site is for you.