Retired science teacher wants Darwinism banninated

A friend worries that this won’t help the cause of science education:

A retired science teacher believes the teaching of evolution is "bad science" and has asked a federal court to declare it illegal to teach the subject in public schools.

Tom Ritter, a former physics and chemistry teacher of over 10 years, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against evolution in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the same court that ruled that teaching of intelligent design in public schools is unconstitutional.

Ritter told The Christian Post this week that he didn't pay too much attention to biology before, but now in retirement he saw problems that he couldn't overlook any longer.

"It kind of got to be like picking a scab," he said.

In his one-page brief and one-page suit, Ritter argues that the Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Penn., is an illegal body because it teaches evolution.

A local resident, Ritter wants the district to stop collecting taxes from him until such teaching is halted. This is one scheme in his plan to get rid of public schools altogether, which he considers to be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

I agree that Darwinism, as fronted to students, is a screaming scandal, based on evidence issues. That said, it’s not about one guy’s taxes.

I should stop paying my taxes due to the City of Toronto’s idiotic handling of garbage issues.

Seriously, it takes more than a gadfly to restore the priority of evidence over theory.

Starting to drag the carcass of Darwinism off the scene?

I've long suspected that the carcass of Darwinism is finally getting dragged off the scene, and with any luck, the career atheists and the Christian Darwinists will be fighting over it full time, with few onlookers, and Templeton funding the whack. Have a look at this roundup of abstracts a friend sent me:

Forthcoming articles about Darwinism in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences:

1. The Mastodon in the room: how Darwinian is neo-Darwinism?

Daniel R. Brooks

Abstract Failing to acknowledge substantial differences between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism impedes evolutionary biology. Darwin described evolution as the outcome of interactions between the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions, each relatively autonomous but both historically and spatially intertwined. Furthermore, he postulated that the nature of the organism was more important than the nature of the conditions, leading to natural selection as an inevitable emergent product of biological systems. The neo-Darwinian tradition assumed a creative rather than selective view of natural selection, with the nature of the organism determined by the nature of the conditions, rendering the nature of the organism and temporal contingency unnecessary. Contemporary advances in biology, specifically the phylogenetics revolution and evo-devo, underscore the significance of history and the nature of the organism in biology. Darwinism explains more bio logy better, and better resolves apparent anomalies between living systems and more general natural laws, than does neo-Darwinism. The “extended” or “expanded” synthesis currently called for by neo-Darwinians is Darwinism.

Hmmm. No idea what he is talking about except that the "neo-Darwinians" (now the bad guys) made the mistake of assuming "a creative rather than selective view of natural selection". In other words, they thought natural selection could create information and it can't.

So, when the debts are called ... Darwinism couldn't create a small part of the hind end of a flea?

2. What was really synthesized during the evolutionary synthesis? a historiographic proposal

Richard G. Delisle

Abstract The 1920-1960 period saw the creation of the conditions for a unification of disciplines in the area of evolutionary biology under a limited number of theoretical prescriptions: the evolutionary synthesis. Whereas the sociological dimension of this synthesis was fairly successful, it was surprisingly loose when it came to the interpretation of the evolutionary mechanisms per se, and completely lacking at the level of the foundational epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Key figures such as Huxley, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Rensch only paid lip service to the conceptual dimension of the evolutionary synthesis, as they eventually realized that a number of evolutionary phenomena could not be explained by its narrow theoretical corpus. Apparently, the evolutionary synthesis constituted a premature event in the development of evolutionary biology. Not only are the real achievements of the evolutionary synthesis in need of reevaluation, but this reassessment also has important implications for the historiography of Darwinism and the current debates about the darwinian movement.

So there isn't really a grand synthesis that was supposed to shut up all critics already. Figures. The only synthesis I ever heard of was, "We all agree to keep our jobs fronting this nonsense. After all, the pop science press are all on our side, and everyone else is scared shiftless."
Read more »

He said it: Wait, shut up, believe, pay, wait, shut up, believe, pay, four easy steps ...

Phillip [Johnson] is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record - it's always good to point this out. It's difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient!

- William Provine, evolutionary biologist, Cornell University*

- * quoted in Michael Powell, “Doubting Rationalist: 'Intelligent Design' Proponent Phillip Johnson, and How He Came to Be”, Washington Post (Sunday, May 15, 2005). For context, go here.

Oh, and did we mention that your kids are legally required to learn in school how to wait, shut up, believe, and pay too? Sure, because we may as well all be one big happy family in the Four Easy Steps plan. Maybe some of our children will be chosen for the noble task of suppressing doubt.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Coffee!: Evenhanded, sure - provided you have only one hand

A friend writes to note, "Evolution and its rivals" - a special issue of the philosophy journal Synthese focused on the creationism/evolution controversy - was just published.

Fortuitously, as part of a special promotion on the part of the journal's publisher, access to Synthese is free until 31 December 2010. When you get there, you will find the following bias-free introduction to the intelligent design controversy:

Coedited by Glenn Branch and James H. Fetzer, "Evolution and its rivals" [Synthese 178(2)] contains Glenn Branch's introduction; Robert T. Pennock's "Can't philosophers tell the difference between science and religion?: Demarcation revisited"; John S. Wilkins's "Are creationists rational?"; Kelly C. Smith's "Foiling the Black Knight"; Wesley Elsberry and Jeffrey Shallit's "Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski's 'complex specified information'"; Bruce H. Weber's "Design and its discontents"; Sahotra Sarkar's "The science question in intelligent design"; Niall Shanks and Keith Green's "Intelligent design in theological perspective"; Barbara Forrest's "The non-epistemology of intelligent design: Its implications for public policy"; and James H. Fetzer's "Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?"

Some of these people seem to actually make a living out of opposing design in nature. I sometimes wonder who they think they're kidding - but come to think of it, if you can make a living out of that, it doesn't matter, does it?

Another nugget from the quote mine: In evolutionary biology, "almost no findings are replicated"

Jerry Coyne is always fun. He has the distinction of being a Darwinist who is perfectly honest about the war between Darwinism and any belief in the uniqueness of humans - many examples here, and such relief from any contact with Christian Darwinists.

Recently, he commented on an article in The New Yorker by Jonah Lehrer, “The truth wears off: is there something wrong with the scientific method?”.

Basically, Lehrer says, an initial demonstration in science tends to weaken or disappear when attempts are made to replicate it:

On September 18, 2007, a few dozen neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and drug-company executives gathered in a hotel conference room in Brussels to hear some startling news. It had to do with a class of drugs known as atypical or second-generation antipsychotics, which came on the market in the early nineties. The therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily falling. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineties. Before the effectiveness of a drug can be confirmed, it must be tested again and again. The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts are losing their truth.

Read more here [some more there, but you must pay for the rest].

Coyne writes in "The 'decline effect': can we demonstrate anything in science?"

I tend to agree with Lehrer about studies in my own field of evolutionary biology. Almost no findings are replicated, there’s a premium on publishing positive results, and, unlike some other areas, findings in evolutionary biology don't necessarily build on each other: workers usually don’t have to repeat other people's work as a basis for their own. (I'm speaking here mostly of experimental work, not things like studies of transitional fossils.) Ditto for ecology. Yet that doesn't mean that everything is arbitrary. I’m pretty sure, for instance, that the reason why male interspecific hybrids in Drosophila are sterile while females aren't ("Haldane's rule") reflects genes whose effects on hybrid sterility are recessive. That’s been demonstrated by several workers. And I'm even more sure that humans are more closely related to chimps than to orangutans. Nevertheless, when a single new finding appears, I often find myself wondering if it would stand up if somebody repeated the study, or did it in another species.

Good thing to wonder about. Time more people wondered about that. Breath of fresh air.

Personally, I am most wary of any finding that is breathlessly touted as proving what our moral and intellectual superiors (in their own view) totally believe already, so why anyone even did the study isn't clear. Couldn't they just save a bundle by making the whole thing up? Given that we all must swallow it anyway, or so we are told.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

From the quote mine: The misunderestimated virtues of skepticism

And look who’s talking, too:

Our theory of evolution has become one . . . which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus `outside of empirical science' but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more scepticism about many of its tenets.

- L.C. Birch and P. Ehrlich Nature 214 (1967) 349-352

As usual, the abstract makes clear that we must not suppose that the authors mean the plain sense of their words:

While accepting evolutionary theory, should ecologists be more sceptical about hypotheses derived solely from untestable assumptions about the past ? The authors put forward the view that many ecologists underestimate the efficacy of natural selection and fail to distinguish between phylogenetic and ecological questions.

Perhaps the difficulty is this: The Darwinist must defend an increasingly unlikely proposition: That natural selection acting on random mutation can produce the appalling intricacy of life. In order to avoid delusion, he must sometimes admit enough of the problem that he can talk about it briefly in a rational way. So we get these startling admissions tossed off, amid the toasts to the memory of the ol’Brit toff.

But wait: Is this the Paul Ehrlich who predicted the worldwide epidemic of obesity? No, let me check my notes; could be a different one, the one who predicted the 1970s famine in which we all died.

They could all just lay off the Kool-Aid for awhile.

Don't you feel better already, knowing that your innards are accidental globs of goo?

Darwinists complain about the use of machine metaphors for intricate cellular machinery and processes.

That might give the impression that all that stuff was designed. Which is bad for business.

Here are British physicist David Tyler's comments:

Are machine-information metaphors bad for science?

According to Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, the widespread use of machine-information metaphors is unfortunate and misleading. They complain about textbooks that develop metaphors to a considerable level of detail. As an example, they cite Alberts, who is often quoted for his analogy between a cell and a "miniature factory, complete with assembly lines, messengers, transport vehicles, etc." Another machine metaphor they dislike is that of the genome as a "blueprint", notably in the hype surrounding the Human Genome Project. Whilst these analogies are widely held within the scientific community and by educators, the main target of Pigliucci and Boudry's paper appears to be intelligent design:

"The analogy between living organisms and man-made machines has proven a persuasive rhetorical tool of the ID movement. In fact, for all the technical lingo and mathematical 'demonstrations', in much of their public presentations it is clear that ID theorists actually expect the analogies to do the argumentative work for them. In Darwin's Black Box, Behe takes Alberts' machine analogy to its extreme, describing the living cell as a complicated factory containing cargo-delivery systems, scanner machines, transportation systems and a library full of blueprints."

For more, go here.

Coffee! Bats more dangerous than mothballs?

A reader kindly shares this BBC story with me, "Bat and moth arms race revealed" (19 August 2010 ) by Jason Palmer.

In a strategy that may be a moth-hunting adaptation, some bats are known to use clicks that are at a frequency, or pitch, either above or below moths' hearing ranges.

High-pitched clicks have a larger range, while lower-pitched clicks are absorbed less by the atmosphere It remains unclear whether these pitch-shifting techniques adapted specifically to bypass moth defences or simply to cope in certain environments or situations.

Dr ter Hofstede and her colleagues were able to listen in on the Barbastella bat as it hunted, demonstrating that it had a completely different approach - its clicks were much reduced in volume, becoming even quieter as it closed in on prey.

"It seems like the majority of bats... call very loudly because they need as much information as possible from their surroundings," Dr ter Hofstede told BBC News.

"We're saying that this [low-volume tactic] is an adaptation to get around the moths' defence - it doesn't have any other useful purpose."

While the lower volume of clicks reduces the range over which the bats can successfully hunt, the team showed that the approach leads to Barbastella bats eating significantly higher numbers of the nutrient-rich moths than other, louder species.

The information race between bats and a favoured prey, moths, is described as an arms race (it is actually a race to interpret clicks. Neither party is armed, and certainly not the moth.)

As is characteristic of legacy mainstream media, the story must all be interpreted dogmatically through Darwinist theory. But what's missing from this very interesting account is how - exactly - the information race could evolve. "Natural selection" is increasingly evoked as a mere incantation, in the face of ever-growing awareness of complexity that are beyond its powers. That is, natural selection must be the cause because we "know" it is true.

By the way, there is a great closeup of a moth's face.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Intellectual freedom: Why it is important and how it is under threat

I wrote this to an American friend recently, about the importance of intellectual freedom today:

I agree, but respectfully suggest that the main question is whether your country's government agrees.

Against much hostility and opposition, some of us got inserted into the Constitution of another (big and unimportant) country:

“Whereas [don't fall asleep] is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:”

As a result, even the worst justices on that country's supreme bench have been forced to acknowledge that truth is a defense to libel.

By contrast, in Holland, which belongs to an EU system Constitution that pointedly excludes God, Geert Wilders was informed that it made no difference if his angry claims against Islam are true, if they "insult" Muslims.

That is precisely the difference we need to note. Excluding God means that truth does not matter.

The trouble with trying to found governments without God is that no one recognizes ideas like truth, let alone the rights and dignities of the human individual.

You might find that your mom is in competition with a baboon for health care - and she might lose, if some sentimental animal rights campaign starts up in favour of the baboon.

Big whoop. Your taxes are paying for the baboon's health care, but not your mom's. Group huggie! Group huggie!, right?

Look, there ARE people out there with nothing better to do, and all day to do it in. It is possible that some are funded by your taxes.

As I see the Comer decision (where a Texas education administrator was fired for advocating Darwinism), it set a limit on the extent to which a lobby can just take over government when most people actually think that the policy is reasonable, and represents a cultural consensus [= that reasonable challenges to Darwinism are permissible].

PS: I hold no brief for Wilders - like all free speech journalists, I am concerned about the principle itself. Here, a Muslim is free to argue that Wilders's claims are untrue, in any available forums, most of them free. But the Muslim takes the risk that he had better have an opposing case to offer, other than that he is merely offended. We have been in this battle for a while here and so far, we are winning! - d.

Lighter moment: Want to attract a school of sharks?

Randal Rauser, a self-described "Tentative Apologist" explains,

I ventured into turbid waters a couple days ago by mentioning that in the future I would discuss Steve Meyer's Signature in the Cell in the blog. What followed was a barrage of discussion which led AnAtheist.Net to observe:

"It looks like you have discovered a quick way to attract a fiery horde of new readers."

Indeed. Actually I learned last year about the effect that mention of "intelligent design" has in a blog. I like to think of it as being like a bucket of fish heads and blood. Slop it in the ocean and within fifteen minutes you'll have a number of sharks swimming around the boat snapping things like: "That's just creationism in a cheap tuxedo. Goddidit! Magic! You suck! Ha ha ha!"

So the question. Do you want to deal with the sharks? (Jul 08, 2010)

In my own view, the key question is, do you want to believe that little separates you from a baboon or would you rather be an authentic human being? If the former, behave like a Darwinist troll. You can probably even get money for being a baboon's cousin, if you do a good enough impression. If the latter, try Uncommon Descent, where you will learn things you will not hear from the Darwinists' media sheep heard.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

People will say anything to defend Darwin

Get a load of this one:

Infants presumably acquire the special strain of bifido from their mothers, but strangely, it has not yet been detected in adults. “We’re all wondering where it hides out,” Dr. Mills said.

The indigestible substance that favors the bifido bacterium is a slew of complex sugars derived from lactose, the principal component of milk. The complex sugars consist of a lactose molecule on to which chains of other sugar units have been added. The human genome does not contain the necessary genes to break down the complex sugars, but the bifido subspecies does, the researchers say in a review of their progress in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk. Besides promoting growth of the bifido strain, they also serve as decoys for noxious bacteria that might attack the infant’s intestines. The sugars are very similar to those found on the surface of human cells, and are constructed in the breast by the same enzymes. Many toxic bacteria and viruses bind to human cells by docking with the surface sugars. But they will bind to the complex sugars in milk instead. “We think mothers have evolved to let this stuff flush through the infant,” Dr. Mills said. - "Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat" Nicholas Wade, New York Times (August 2, 2010)

Read the whole article. You know Darwinism is a religion when you see how people will twist themselves into corkscrews in order to avoid considering design.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

DNA evidence: The gold standard?

In "Fallible DNA evidence can mean prison or freedom" (New Scientist , 11 August 2010), Linda Geddes discusses the limitations of DNA evidence:

If DNA analysis were totally objective, then all 17 analysts should reach the same conclusion. However, we found that just one agreed with the original judgement that Robinson "cannot be excluded". Four analysts said the evidence was inconclusive and 12 said he could be excluded.

It is nice to see New Scientist doing something useful*, in the best traditions of journalism. This is what journalism is supposed to be.

Essentially, there are practical limitations in all systems of accumulating evidence in the real world. There is also the risk of incompetence, and there could sometimes even be corruption.

*This is just so unlike the world of Darwinism because it is all about known events in real time, affecting real people. I am not nearly as interested in the inner life of baboons (?) as in the possibility that someone is stuck in the slam because the jury is convinced that DNA evidence is always the gold standard for truth - but the researchers overinterpreted flimsy evidence.

Evaluating Nature's 2009 "15 Evolutionary Gems" Darwin-Evangelism Kit

Here's something worth knowing if you don't want your kids spending a lot of time on Darwin worship when they could be learning something useful:

Last year, during the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin's birth, Nature released a free online packet titled "15 Evolutionary Gems." Its subtitle was "A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection." It might have been better subtitled 'A evangelism packet for those wishing to spread the good news about Darwinism.' After all, when Nature announced the packet, they said they were heeding a prior call which "urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word'" about evolution and "highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact." The packet is to be used not just in schools, but also in home evangelism or relationship evangelism.

[ ... ]

The packet is simply an extension of Nature's "campaign" for Darwin. But it is quite useful in one important respect: the packet is from the world's top scientific journal and purports to show us "just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection." So if the evidence isn't very strong, then that should tell you something.

As we'll see, far from being "incontrovertible," most of the "evolutionary gems" in the packet do not show any significant amount of evolution and might be best views as "microevolutionary" gems. A couple of the "gems" have little to do with evolution, but an evolutionary interpretation is added in after-the-fact.

Right now, Darwinism is right up there with "recovered memories" in believability, which is the main reason I would want it minimized in tax-funded schools. Maybe my local used car salesman can spout it, along with extolling the glories of the used Lada he is trying to unload before it falls to pieces on the sales lot.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

The Fitter Race: Yes, It Is Possible to Say Something New About the Nazis . . .

As long as it’s NOT about their love for evolution. It is common to hear that the Nazis utterly lacked morality. Of course, that satisfies deep anger. But is it true? University of California professor Richard Weikart’s recent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), offers an illuminating answer: No.

Hitler’s Ethic (a companion to his From Darwin to Hitler, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) demonstrates that the Nazis indeed had an ethic. It flowed directly and painstakingly from evolutionary theory, as understood in Germany at the time.

I wish I had said this stuff. Come to think of it, I at least reported it here. Subscribe to Salvo, one of the few pubs worth reading these days, if you are not a gorilla somewhere.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Coffee!!: Takin out the trash

I always know that I am halfway down the hall with the coffee wagon when someone writes me to say, "You are not going to believe this ...."

Friend, where Darwinism is concerned, one can believe anything, everything, or nothing. Truth, falsehood, and nonsense are all the same in that line of work.

Anyway, he writes,

I still can't believe this happened.

Not too very long ago , I sharpened 3 'Turquoise' brand drawing pencils... (7H, 2H and B)..., tossed them into a large black plastic trash bag along with a 9" x 7" pristinely white/blank piece of hot press illustration board, closed it up with a "twisty-tie" and then randomly bounced, jiggled, shook, rattled and rolled the bag and its contents for an extended period of time. When I finally opened the bag and peaked inside, I was absolutely flabbergasted at what I saw.....

It was a picture that ( to me anyway) looked like the "Swirling Primordial Soup and the Beginning of Life".

When I saw it, all I could mutter was, "Holy cow!....and then..."HOLY COW!"

I am still shaking at the wonder, the power and the blind LUCK of the randomly undirected and purposeless energy of nature unleashed.

I know you won't believe it happened this way but I swear on Dawkins' latest book that it's true.

And here's a picture to prove it.

I am not sure if my friend wants credit for his incredible discovery, but if he does, I will put his name in here.

Is there any thesis about origins that is so implausible that conventional modern Darwinism would not support it?

Actually, my friend is Tom Graffagnino, as he has just given me permission to post.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Coffee!!: Darwinism as support for racism

I have sometimes been excoriated for saying that Darwinism has been used to support racism.

Well, here is a classical modern day example, from no less a luminary than John Derbyshire:

First, the rational grounds. If a species is divided into separate populations, and those populations are left in reproductive isolation from each other for many generations, they will diverge. If you return after several hundred generations have passed, you will observe that the various traits that characterize individuals of the species are now distributed at different frequencies in the various populations. After a few ten thousands of generations, the divergence of the populations will be so great they can no longer cross-breed; and that is the origin of species. This is Biology 101.

[ ... ]

We see the same differences in traits that we don't think of as directly physical, what evolutionary psychologists sometimes refer to as the "BIP" traits — behavior, intelligence, and personality. Two of the hardest-to-ignore manifestations here are the extraordinary differentials in criminality between white Americans and African Americans, and the persistent gaps in scores when tests of cognitive ability are given to large population samples.

There is a huge academic literature on the gaps in cognitive test results, practically all of it converging on the fact that African American mean scores on cognitive tests fall below the white means by a tad more than one white standard deviation. There is in fact so much data on this now that we have meta-studies — studies of the studies: the one best-known to me is the meta-study by Roth et al. in 2001, which covered 39 studies involving nearly six million test-takers. That one standard deviation on cognitive testing has been so persistent across so many decades, a friend of mine, an academic sociologist, calls it "the universal constant of American sociology" — it's like the speed of light in physics.

Etc.

Read the rest here.

I’m sure glad that I would be unable to demonstrate that I am an African or an American or an African-American. I’d feel so depressed hearing this that I would probably drop out of school, and maybe get frustrated and ... well, if a crime got committed, would reserve my defence.

By the way: Apologies to those who entered recent Uncommon Descent contests, so far unjudged. I was assigned a long chapter of a book on a subject I had never researched. I have not forgotten you. Indeed, I can’t. My Calendar persecutes me every morning. I will get to your entries as soon as I turn in the chapter.

Some people fear God rather than men. I fear men more than Calendars.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Sal, no we cannot all just get along

Here, Sal Cordova wonders why we can't all just get along, after a senior JPL computer system administrator was demoted for loaning co-workers DVDs supporting intelligent design.

Well, Sal, here is why we can't: Darwinists, like Islamists, have the Final Revelation, after which there is no other revelation. No-God will punish all infidels.

Of course, in practice, with Darwinists as with Islamists, that means that the fanatic must punish the infidel himself.

That makes sense. Both God and No-God can be mighty slow in these matters, and the best way to keep up a fanatical faith is quick vengeance now against any and all dissenters.

I wrote to a friend recently on this very topic:

Harvard's Steve Pinker reminds us that "our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth." Darwin thought such things, too, and the thought terrified him in a way that it doesn't terrify Pinker or the average pop science writer - which shows us how much Darwinism is now part of academic and popular ethos.

The obvious response I hear all the time is, well then, Pinker's argument is no truer than anyone else's - indeed, many have made that precise point any number of times.

But that quite reasonable response completely misses the point! To the extent that The Prophet Darwin is the Final Revelation, after this, there is no other revelation. Darwin cannot be confuted. The Final Revelation obviates argument. So argument ends.

Truth, falsehood, and evidence are irrelevant. Demonstrations of contradiction and nonsense are not actually a means of confuting Darwinism. Just listen to the nonsense Darwinists talk, and compare it to the probability statistics for what they claim and the paltry evidence they actually present.

If my interpretation is sound, it would explain the need to put everything, including nonsense like "evolutionary psychology" or "evolutionary medicine" under Darwin's umbrella.

Why? Because anything that falls inside the Final Revelation of Darwinism falls beyond the reach of truth, falsehood, evidence, or - in the case of evolutionary psychology - the judgement that it is patent nonsense. And, in the case of eugenics, consider the obvious contradiction between "survival of the fittest" and the eugenicists' apparent inability to just mind their own business about who has children.

Why JPL's execs should think it any of their business if that guy was loaning non-porn/non-crime DVDs to his co-workers is beyond me - but I am a free speech journalist, and not a Darwinist.

The typical Darwinist has little use for intellectual freedom, because he has the Final Revelation.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Further to National Science Board dropping Darwin propaganda from science to-do list

Speaking as one who has worked in education curriculum, I would say that this news item, noted by Sal Cordova, is really a very significant change, if it lasts.

The key point is the admission that "There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution."

Um, yeah. How about the Altenberg 16?

The key issue here is the "Darwinism only" approach to evolution. Few believe this, and no one should. It is increasingly obvious that Darwinism is not the true origin of massive information inputs.

But I would hardly be surprised if lobbyists and helpful ninnies are now running around shouting that the Board has been taken over by religious crackpots, when it is only acknowledging a simple truth (in a politically evasive manner, of course): In North America, "evolution" has usually meant "Darwinism only".

So there are two challenges: Finding out real facts about massive information inputs (the fun part), and second, slowly sidelining the Darwinists (the boring part).

In my view, the Darwinists had it coming. Evolutionary biologists, most of whom are tenured, were never willing to denounce "evolutionary psychology". No matter how ridiculous the theses, they refused to state clearly, publicly, and as a profession, that that is not science.

Well, the problem is that everyone knew that this, for example, wasn't science. Which raises the question of whether evolutionary biology is itself a science. At any rate, the situation fully justifies broad skepticism of evolutionary biology's current approach to evolution.

Here is the problem in a nutshell: If any stupid idea is okay as long as it fronts Darwinism, then stupid competes with - and nullifies - smart. Nice going, guys. Keep up the good work!

Coffee!! Evolution in action! Check with your local humane society!

A friend draws my attention to this lovely little item at his blog, from an utterly convinced Darwinist:

He asks, what about this claim?

What you CAN see with small, easily observed creatures like Lenski's E. coli is evolution in action - new features evolving through random mutation and natural selection. Regardless of what you wish to state about the malaria plasmodia, the best example of evolution in action is the Lenski experiments because he retains the entire record of every genetic event that leads to every change. Now, Lenski's E. coli changed shape, changed size, changed metabolism and changed food source. How much more MACRO do you expect an organism to evolve?"

I replied:

So the claim is, "changed shape, changed size, changed metabolism and changed food source. How much more MACRO do you expect an organism to evolve?"

Hmmmm. Kittens do this all the time.

Change size? You bet. Goes from a couple of ounces to five lbs in half a year.

Change shape? Sure. The average newborn kitten is just a little bag of mewing metabolism, blind and probably deaf, whose only real talent is using its sense of smell to get control of a teat.

Changed metabolism? Sort of. Kittens must be weaned onto something other than cat milk after about six or seven weeks. I am not a vet, but surely some changes in metabolism accompany this transition.

Changed food source? Yes! From mom cat to local rodents, birds, frogs, and eggs that can be cracked by being pushed off the branch or table. Or, if the cat is under human management, a science-based diet for growing felines. Or otherwise, scavenging a local dumpster. Or whatever an obligate carnivore* like the cat can stomach.

Okay, so where are we now? We have explained how a kitten gets transformed into ... a cat.

And this is "evolution"?

Question: Does a bacterium ever get transformed into a cat? As opposed to changing in ways that are normal for most life forms - though not always employed, and forced on some under duress?

And if that ever happened, your local humane society ... will not be very pleased. There are many cats there now who would like kind homes. If what the Darwinist believes is true, their problems would be ever so much worse.

cheers, Denyse

(Who used to write a cat care column for a local paper.)

* Usually requires complete proteins, so tends to be predator on smaller animals. It is - I am told - possible to feed the cat a complete protein diet derived from plant sources. Far more humans are willing to go along with this than cats - a good reason to keep your canary in the cage.

Coffee!! Neo-Darwinians blamed for low birth rate

The leader of Britain’s Jewish community claimed the continent’s population is in decline because people care more about shopping than the sacrifice involved in parenthood.

He blamed atheist “neo-Darwinians” for Europe’s low birth rate and said religious people of all denominations are more likely to have large families. (Telegraph 05 November 2009)

Go here for more.

All I know is this:

1. He’s right about the demographics. Religious people do have more kids. To the point where some think it a big problem.

2. Most of the people I have ever met who have lots of kids have never heard of Darwinism, or have and don’t believe it.

3. Most of the people I have ever met who are passionate about Darwinism have few kids.

4. This means that Darwinism would not likely survive under natural circumstances, hence it must be compulsorily propagated through school systems. Hence all the school board court cases.