Darwinism and academic culture: Darwinism under siege from mainstream proponents of alternative paths of evolution

In a most interesting - and for New Scientist, a surprisingly sensible - overview, Bob Holmes reports on approaches to evolution that do not invoke Richard Dawins's famous "selfish gene" ("The selfless gene: Rethinking Dawkins's doctrine," 09 March 2009 ): These include species selection, group selection, ecosystem selection, and microcosms. Save this one to get up to speed on why many doubt Darwin - and Dawkins:

the consensus is that evolution never favours what might be called "selfless" genes - that is, adaptations that benefit a group of organisms or the species as a whole. An example would be a gene that restricts how many offspring a predator has, to avoid wiping out its prey. Such a gene should always lose out to selfish genes that maximise reproduction, the thinking goes, even if reproducing without restraint threatens the survival of the whole species.

Increasingly, though, this consensus is being challenged, and on several fronts. The least controversial of these is the notion that entire species themselves can have traits that, over geological time, make them more likely than others to escape extinction and branch off new daughter species. This can lead to evolutionary change that could not be predicted from individual adaptations alone.

[ ... ]

If ecosystem-level selection is the norm, it could prompt a major shake-up in our view of the microbial world and, by extension, the macroscopic world, too. "It's only in the last 5 or 10 years that people realised that the majority of bacteria live in multispecies collectives," says Penn. "Bacteria are driving the basic processes of the biosphere, so if their evolution is in this higher-level context, it's going to be very different to the way we've thought about it previously, and their responses to climate change could be very different than we would expect from thinking about them individually."

It is still too early to know whether group, species and ecosystem-level selection are major evolutionary forces or merely minor curiosities - baroque ornaments on the central edifice of individual or gene-level selection. But the dominance of the "selfish gene" in evolutionary thought is facing its strongest challenge in many years.

"[T]he dominance of the "selfish gene" in evolutionary thought is facing its strongest challenge in many years"? Remember that when someone tells you that there is absolutely no controversy over evolution. There is a huge and growing controversy, as Holmes's article makes clear, about mechanisms of evolution, with textbook Darwinism under siege from many quarters. This is a must-read if you want to understand why there is a controversy over Darwinism. Little evidence supports it and the body of evidence against it is growing all the time.

More ridiculous adulation of arch-Darwinist Dawkins: Now upgraded to prophet

Shades of the ridiculous adulation of Darwin, here's some ridiculous adulation of Dawkins, the current ultra-Darwinist in chief, as the "prophet of the selfish gene":

Andrew Read opens the volume with an account of how his view of life was changed after reading The Selfish Gene on a lonely mountaintop in New Zealand. My own first reading had less of Mt. Sinai in it but was still special. I was in the flats of Michigan in my first year of grad school, and Richard Alexander and John Maynard Smith were already laying waste to the false idol of uncritical group selection. Alerted by Maynard Smith to the imminent appearance of The Selfish Gene, I watched for it, snapped it up immediately, and, though I am neither a night owl nor a rapid reader, I had devoured it whole by the early hours of the next morning.

These people are beyond parody, which saves me work. You have to pay to read the rest of the glowing testimonial, including how author Queller and his dad both seen da light and realize that the selfish gene governs everyone's behavior ...

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

The selfish gene is NOT to blame for being selfish ...

Just wanted to get that straight.

In the Wall Street Journal, physicist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, “The Lies of Science Writing” (December 23, 2010) explains,

Writing about science poses a fundamental problem right at the outset: You have to lie.

I don't mean lie in the sense of intentionally misleading people. I mean that because math is the language of science, scientists who want to translate their work into popular parlance have to use verbal or pictorial metaphors that are necessarily inexact.

Of course, it works the other way around too. Efforts to reduce complex matters like elder care to equations will end in frustration for all concerned.

Consider another famous scientific metaphor, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins's idea of the "selfish gene." This is a brilliant and simple way to explain that natural selection relies on the self-perpetuation of genes that promote higher rates of survival. But for some critics, it suggests an intentionality that is absent in the process of evolution. Others worry that it implies an immoral world where selfishness wins out.

Hmmm. I wonder where the others got that idea? Meanwhile, lots of critics are still waiting for evidence that either natural selection or the selfish gene play anything like the role that Dawkins and other ultra-Darwinists claim.

If I wanted to avoid any notion of intentionality in a gene, I would not label it "selfish." It would give the air of sneaking something in that I officially proclaimed I didn't agree with. ;)

Just up at The Mindful Hack

Consciousness: Belated "sublimely ridiculous" award for 2006

Telepathy: When pop science TV wants to hear only one side ...

Psychology: Compassion is an emotion, not a virtue unless disciplined, prof says

Neuroscience: Making sense of uncontrollable itching

Evolutionary psychology: The selfish gene in the art world

Evolutionary psychology: Key concept of "memes" trashed as "one of the bigger crocks hatched in recent decades"

selfish gene: Does a recent discovery in honeybees "prove" that the "selfish gene" exists?

(The Hack is my blog that supports the book The Spiritual Brain)

How science sense becomes popular nonsense, later fishwrap

Here biophysicist George Hunter offers some helpful explanations of how honest research findings become nonsense in the pop science press:

Is it conceivable that so many scientific papers and reports, with their conclusions about evolution, are making the same mistake? Before answering this we first must understand the hierarchy of the evolution apologetics literature.


At the base of the pyramid are the scientific papers documenting new research findings.


Next up are the review papers that organize and summarize the state of the research.


And finally there is the popular literature, such as newspaper and magazine articles, and books.


Across this hierarchy evolutionists make different types of claims that should not be blindly lumped together. Yes, there are problems across the spectrum, but they tend to be different kinds of problems.

So, for example (this is my simplified example, his is more complex),

- The honest scientist spends a third of his career with his face jammed down a mole hole. He discovers that those moles who did not eat their granddams outnumber those who do, over time. He cobbles together some “I can PROVE Darwin!” explanation, publishes, and moves on.
Read more »

No More “Selfish Gene” Biology?

A recent article in the Guardian’s Education supplement suggests that new findings in genetics have undermined Darwinist Richard Dawkins’s famous “selfish gene”to the point where it is a meaningless concept.

Rather than having a single major function, most genes, like roads, probably play a small part in lots of tasks within the cell. By dissecting biology into its genetic atoms, reductionism failed to account for these multitasking genes. So the starting point for systems biologists isn't the gene but rather a mathematical model of the entire cell. Instead of focusing on key control points, systems biologists look at the system properties of the entire network. In this new vision of biology, genes aren't discrete nuggets of genetic information but more diffuse entities whose functional reality may be spread across hundreds of interacting DNA segments.

M‘bye, Dawkins. Whoops, don’t forget those selfish genes of yours, even though they’ll forget you. Seriously, as a result,

Systems biology is reasserting the primacy of the whole organism - the system - rather than the selfish behaviour of any of its components.

Systems biology courses are infiltrating curricula in campuses across the globe and systems biology centres are popping up in cities from London to Seattle. The British biological research funding body, the BBSRC, has just announced the creation of three systems biology centres in the UK. These centres are very different from traditional biology departments as they tend to be staffed by physicists, mathematicians and engineers, alongside biologists. Rather like the systems they study, systems biology centres are designed to promote interactivity and networking.

This new trend should be good news for the intelligent design scientists, who tend to thrive better in interdisciplinary groups than in closed, reductionist ones.

Remember - one gene codes for one protein? Also. you ARE your genes? And all that?

Good. Now exercise your brain by forgetting all that.

Here Emma Young at New Scientist (09 July 2008) brings us up to date with a more plausible story:

No one is arguing that Lamarck got everything right, but over the past decade it has become increasingly clear that environmental factors, such as diet or stress, can have biological consequences that are transmitted to offspring without a single change to gene sequences taking place. In fact, some biologists are already starting to consider this process as routine. However, fully accepting the idea, provocatively dubbed the "new Lamarckism", would mean a radical rewrite of modern evolutionary theory. Not surprisingly, there are some who see that as heresy. "It means the demise of the selfish-gene theory," says Eva Jablonka at Tel Aviv University, Israel. "The whole discourse about heredity and evolution will change" (see " Rewriting Darwin and Dawkins?").

The demise of selfish gene theory is long overdue, of course.

I am a bit queasy about at least one aspect of this New Scientist article: An attempt to blame modern obesity rates on ancestral diets. Modern obesity is mainly due to lack of exercise. If the most exercise you ever get is moving the cursor around, you have one impressive index finger, second joint upward, but ... that's like about .2 percent of fitness.


Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

The selfish gene?: Seems to have been left out of the chromosomes in the liver

Who sucker punched this guy's "selfish genes" ?

(a 28 year old Ontario power company employee - a complete stranger - is donating part of his liver to help a toddler in Toronto who needs a transplant.)

Oh, and here and here are some other everyday "genuine altruism" stories I happen to know about from Canada, one of them from the Toronto area, involving young guys, who (as a group) are supposed to be selfish, according to feminists. Toronto is not the City of Angels, by the way; readers can likely supply instances from their own communities.

As philosopher David Stove would probably have said, if Dawkins was right about the selfish gene, these cases would be much more rare and they would be socially disapproved. Yet we see the opposite; such persons are admired. (In Canada, we don't pay for organs; the only thing the guy gets is paid time off work while he recovers.)

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Agnostic philosopher David Stove: Ten false Darwinian propositions

The late Australian philosopher David Stove, for whose book of essays, Darwinian Fairytales, I have provided an introduction on line, also wrote a paper in which he identified ten false propositions of modern Darwinism (sometimes called neo-Darwinism), as applied to humans.

He begins,

Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.

but notes

I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one, obviously false in the case of our species, at least.

Now, keep in mind that Stove is an agnostic and no friend to religion, let alone creationism or intelligent design. He is simply explaining why Darwinism (and therefore evolutionary psychology) does a poor job of accounting for human behaviour.

His ten propositions start from the present day and work backward. You can go to the site to read most of his comments on them. I will provide only a brief summary in parentheses.

1. Dawkins’ selfish gene thesis: "The truth is, 'the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances’, genes. (Despite his denials, Dawkins' thesis in fact requires that genes be smarter than creatures equipped with actual brains, consciousness, and self-interest, a situation that certainly requires some explanation, and cannot simply be shuffled under the heading of "natural selection.")

2. "'…it is, after all, to [a mother’s] advantage that her child should be adopted' by another woman. This quotation is from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, p. 110." (That is because she is free to spread her selfish genes further, but, of course, few mothers have ever thought that way, which makes Dawkins' thesis suspicious at best.)

Read the other eight, other eight, which he develops in more detail because some of them are not obviously ridiculous, though they are errors.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Al Mohler vs. Mark Sprinkle: Is all this about being right or being nice?

Recently, Southern Seminary prez Al Mohler responded to claims from Mark Sprinkle at BioLogos (Christian Darwinists’ site) that he had unfairly characterized them as not Christian

... in any but a nominal or diminished way, not authentic followers of Jesus no matter what we say and despite the evidence of the Holy Spirit both in us and working through us ...

Sprinkle’s prescriptive advice follows,

I invite Dr. Mohler to refrain from condemning (even by faint praise) those whom the Spirit has sanctified and is sanctifying, and through whom He is calling more of the lost to Himself. More, I invite him to join me at the table as a brother and to put off the too-common practice of acting as if we know everything we need to know about those on the other sides of these issues from what we read on-line.

and then an invitation,

As Cornelius asked Peter “to stay with them for a few days” to see what the Lord would be teaching them together, I invite Dr. Mohler to come and see what I see in the hearts and lives of people in the BioLogos community.

Mohler denies he has ever said or implied that the BioLogists are not sincere Christians. Why would he? Lots of folk who follow a church-emptying theology lead exemplary private lives. And we are all thankful that judgment belongs to God alone. But that’s immaterial to the issues at hand.

Two problems I experience with “you will know we are Christians by our love, by our love” as an argument are that

1) I didn’t know this was an exam on virtue. I thought we were discussing the evidence re Darwinism (survival of the fittest) as the great engine of nature.

2) Anyway, protests of virtue sound like a bid for praise, as well as for the repentance of those who think evil of the folk at BioLogos.

When people imply that their lives are the witness to their theology – and no one has volunteered to be their Judge, as it happens – one must assume that one is overhearing a soliloquy, and speak no more.

Mohler points out, re the “Holy Spirit ... working through us”:

That is an interesting statement, but it is nonsensical unless there is some means of evaluating what is and is not authentic evidence of the Spirit at work. And that, of course, would mean some kind of biblical and theological test. The effort to escape theology gets us nowhere.”

Here, in my view, is the BioLogists’ problem:

As Bill and I will show in Christian Darwinism (Broadman and Holman, 2011), there can be no reconciliation between Christianity and Darwinism (survival of the fittest). Nor did Darwin and his circle ever intend one. And Darwinism - the Creation story of atheism - is in fact the only theory of evolution that is vigorously opposed or promoted.

The key characteristic of Darwinism is the belief in the awesome powers of natural selection acting on random mutation to produce all forms of life – and, for most Darwinists, the power to produce mind, consciousness, and moral choice too. And for some, even universes. Darwinism undergirds and embraces everything, like God used to.

Biologos invites us to embrace Darwinism. But any Christianity that survived by embracing Darwinism would be a monstrous perversion, so we have little to lose by rejecting it, come what may.

And now, a question, Dr. Mohler: Won’t we soon be hearing how the Bible can be attributed to the selfish gene at work? And soon after, a Christian Darwinist will proclaim that the Bible can nonetheless be accepted as the authentic Word of God. Wait, better news still: Despite the universal rule of the selfish gene, the Christian Darwinist himself is a nice person and a member of a praiseworthy community.

Fine. Now if they would all just collect their brownie points and depart, we could have a real discussion of the accumulating failings of Darwinism, and what should replace it. That is what we want and need.

The new "anti-God" crusade: Further evidence of materialism's failure?

O'Leary looks at the spate of anti-God books and other promotions for the new Church of Atheism, and suspects that atheism was way more fun in the days when it was just a quiet, Godless Sunday at home.

Now, the church - as we all know - is the weak point of any religion. And when all you've got is a church - and remember, these people are supposed to be "beyond" belief - well, to me, that sounds a bit like getting married and finding out that you have no spouse but two mothers-in-law ... and more too, if you want them!

Part 1: What's with the recent anti-God crusade, supposedly in the name of "science"?

Recently, spurred perhaps by the growing failures of materialism, materialist atheists have attempted to institutionalize their beliefs as a Church of Atheism. And they are full, chock full, of angst.

Part 2: Antireligious zealotry riffs off materialist science

Put simply: Materialist science is in trouble. And the trouble does not stem from traditional religions, though materialists are - as one might expect - quick to blame their troubles on traditional religions and to reassure themselves that - despite all the evidence - traditional religions are doomed. But, materialists are also smug and thus cannot imagine or respond to any source of trouble arising from their interpretation of the evidence.

They have apparently decided instead to target the Christian religion as the source of their problems.

Part 3: The Beyond Belief conference

Goodness, it's hard to think of a single reason for joining these people's sect unless you have a lot of hostility to vent! And$30 billion from Bill Gates isn't going to change that.

Actually, it's hard to tell whether some of these people hate Christians more than they hate each other. Thus I would argue against any atheist getting involved with them, on mental health grounds alone.

Part 4: The "Blasphemy Challenge"

As Jerry Adler's Newsweek article admits, most theologians do not interpret blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as simply making a statement of that type, so most of the kids are probably doing it for a lark, but their atheist elders are deadly serious. Atheists don't tend to have had many children, so they must recruit.

Part 5: Why the acclaim for atheist authors?

One thing I have learned from a lifetime in media is that most media people are unidirectional skeptics - they are very skeptical of non-materialism but not the least bit skeptical of materialism.

Two things follow: Journalists in the legacy mainstream media are regularly astonished by phenomena that better informed people might have predicted - for example the prevalence of religious belief in a high tech age.

Part 6: Profiles in militant atheists - Daniel Dennett and Breaking the Spell

In Dennett's Breaking the Spell, as in the entire recent spate of atheist books, there isn't a single new idea of any significance, as noted earlier. The two main things that the current crop of atheist books have going for them is the unperturbable certainty of their authors that they are conferring a great public benefit - a certainty that they uncritically project onto others - and the assurance of a good deal of flattering attention from the legacy media.

The flattering attention usually will usually not include references to the highly illiberal elements of the anti-God extremists' message - elements that typically come to the fore whenever Darwinism is questioned, on whatever ground.

Part 7: Profiles in militant atheists - Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion

Ever since American Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi paid for his chair at Oxford in the Public Understanding of Science, zoologist Richard Dawkins has promoted atheism and an extreme form of Darwinism as the best way of doing science. In recent years, however, he has become best known for using his chair to promote atheism, rather than for promoting science ideas. His actual ideas, the selfish gene and the meme (a hypothetical mental variant of the hypothetical selfish gene) have not fared well under analysis, but no matter.

Part 8: Profiles in militant atheists - Sam Harris and Letters to a Christian Nation

From what I can tell, Harris is misplaced among professional materialist atheists. As David J. Theroux notes, he has bought into a variety of New Age and Eastern beliefs such as reincarnation. That has subjected him to many materialist attacks. Remember, materialists "know" that there is no soul.

Harris's dilemma has a simple explanation: He is in neuroscience, and he knows perfectly well that neuroscience does not confirm materialism.

Part 9: Darwinism and militant atheism

Of course, some would argue, not every Darwinist is like that. Perhaps not, but it is a reliable indicator of the true state of affairs that the "moderates" tolerate the "extremists" quite well.

Indeed, the Beyond Belief conference makes the true direction quite clear: Those theistic or Eastern traditions that are willing to morph slowly into materialist atheism, treated as a religion can spare themselves many attacks by increasingly militant atheists, who have, in many cases, found public funding for their cause. Anyone who so much as wants equal time for evidence for non-materialist views faces a storm - made all the foggier by Christian clergy who wish to converge with the materialists. Perhaps such clergy hope to be eaten last?

Part 10: British atheists vs. ID-friendly Truth in Science group

Just what the beleaguered schools need. Caught between Islamic extremists, drug dealers, sclerotic administrators, antisocial unions, and irresponsible parents, they, um, need a whack of "anti-God" literature to mix into the swirl ...

Part 11: So what are the actual trends in religion?

So far as understanding the anti-God crusade is concerned, the most useful thing to know is that the longstanding mid-twentieth century prediction that religious belief would wither away has been largely falsified.

Part 12: Unmasking the authoritarian intent of the militant atheist campaign

While some clergy are content to reassure their congregations that going along with materialism (especially Darwinism) is okay, many thoughtful Christians and Muslims are getting the picture pretty fast. The threat is not an intellectual one, but a political one.

Part 13: Theistic evolutionism and the new militant atheism

The underlying problem of accommodationist theistic evolution, of course, is the felt need to embrace Darwinism - and the materialism from which it springs. As I have suggested above, the most likely explanation, based on my encounters with theistic evolution accommodationists, is that they assume that materialism is basically true and that spiritual traditions must somehow accommodate themselves to its rule.

Put another way: Once you do think that materialism is not true, Darwinism is not true either. That raises the question of why any clergy should feel the need to sell "evolution" to their congregations, as part of their ministry.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Mary Midgley: Philosopher who questions the "Selfish Gene"

The recent Guardian profile of British philosopher Mary Midgeley, basher of ultra-Darwinist Richard Dawkins, is interesting for the way in which it seems to withhold praise for a generally admirable woman who made the mistake of questioning ultra-Darwinism during her philosophy career.

"I'm not anti-science," she maintains. "What I object to is improper science sold as science. I understand Dawkins thinks he was talking about the survival potential of certain lines rather than the motives of the genes themselves, but I believe he is mistaken. Scientists in this country have little cultural overlap with the arts and humanities and ... they are unaware of when they start bringing their own political and psychological views into the argument. There's nothing wrong with scientists having such views as long as they are aware of what they are doing ... Dawkins may argue that he is using selfishness as a metaphor but he must have been aware of how the concept might be interpreted and used. And Dawkins has to take some responsibility for that."

Obviously, naturalism (materialism) is an impotent ideology if any genuine criticism, on whatever ground, is seen as "anti-science." In fact, evolutionary psychology (EP), which Midgley rightly criticized in her disaproval of the "selfish gene", would be a big embarrassment to Darwinism IF the latter were itself more securely founded on fact.

You know the kind of thing we hear constantly from EP: If kids don't eat their greens, that's because "evolution" is protecting them from poisoning. Or if they do, well that must be because "evolution" is encouraging them to have strong bodies. Yeah right.

(Avoidance of chewy, non-greasy vegetables with complex flavours couldn't have anything at all to do with easy access to soft, greasy, sugary fast food in recent years. It must be shipped back hundreds of thousands of years in the past and called "evolution," ... possibly to assuage guilt?)

One reason I know Darwinism is on the way out is that Darwinists do not seem anxious to rise up, as a group, and drive this stuff off the scene. That fact alone implies that most arguments for Darwinism are similarly poorly founded.

Ottawa Citizen's David Warren vs. the Darwinoids

Here David Warren sends up the attempt - most recently fronted in the New York Times to expunge the word "Darwinism" from our vocabulary, so that evolution can mean whatever anyone anywhere wants it to mean, and therefore no nonsense can ever be confuted:

Olivia Judson, the house cheerleader for Darwinian evolution, was trying to retire the word “Darwinist.” Her typically breathless argument was that we know so much more about evolutionary processes today, than could be known in the age of Darwin, that the term has become useless.

Genes, for instance. Darwin knew nothing whatever about the genetic processes later discovered by the Polish Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel -- observations that would have wiped Darwinism clean out of biology were there not something else in Darwinism that people wanted to preserve.

Indeed, our “modern evolutionary synthesis” consists, in a candid view, of 100 parts of Mendel to zero parts of Darwin, and the whole idea of The Origin of Species -- that new species could emerge from the gradual accumulation of small random mutations “selected” by an impersonal nature for their survival value alone -- remains to this day utterly undemonstrable. It moreover flies in the face of the observed evidence, which is for dramatic, sudden, yet extremely complex changes.

“Darwinism” survives not as a science, but as an ideal: to eliminate God from any consideration of how nature works. It is intrinsically no more nor less rational than using God as the sole explanation for every event in view. The words, “Darwinism,” “Darwinian,” or as I prefer, “Darwinoid,” correctly describe those who continue loyal to this ideal, in the face of everything we now know about evolutionary biology.

I wrote on the same thing here, noting,

Darwinian evolution is in no fit state to be disproved. If it were, that would be progress.

To some, it means "cosmic Darwinism," to others, the "selfish gene" that creates "memes" that rule our minds, to others, group selection (long a no-no). To some, it still means a parsimonious, testable idea: Natural selection acting on random mutation to produce new species.

But there is only weak evidence that new species commonly arise that way. There are a number of ways that they might in fact arise, including gene-swapping, neoteny, and front-loaded design.

Some think that sexual selection, Darwin's other theory, should be included, but the problem is that at least one of its legendary icons (the peacock's tail) is in serious trouble.

Similarly, even common ancestry, long accorded the status of a religious belief, is showing cracks. For one thing, gene swapping, where it occurs, makes ancestry irrelevant, unless you mean where a given gene came from - information that may not be available or even important.

(Note: The image is from Real Clear Politics.)

Darwinism: Imagining the unimaginable, and cutting through the terminology fog

First, imagining the unimaginable

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

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

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

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

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

To some, it means "cosmic Darwinism," to others, the "selfish gene" that creates "memes" that rule our minds, to others, group selection (long a no-no). To some, it still means a parsimonious, testable idea: Natural selection acting on random mutation to produce new species.

But there is only weak evidence that new species commonly arise that way. There are a number of ways that they might in fact arise, including gene-swapping, neoteny, and front-loaded design.

Some think that sexual selection, Darwin's other theory, should be included, but the problem is that at least one of its legendary icons (the peacock's tail) is in serious* trouble.

Similarly, even common ancestry, long accorded the status of a religious** belief, is showing cracks. For one thing, gene swapping, where it occurs, makes ancestry irrelevant, unless you mean where a given gene came from - information that may not be available or even important.

Terminology fog

And still others, like Olivia Judson of the New York Times, want to abandon the term altogether. For example, Judson writes,

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed.

In my view, the main reason Judson wants to abolish the terms is that terms – of any type – force us to at least try to define what circumscribes the field we are talking about. What, for example, is it not?

Is "evolutionary psychology", as portrayed in Psychology Today, a science? In what way? Are evolutionary biologists prepared to say that it is not a science? Few seem to be.

Their problem is most likely this: Once we confess that the obvious flim flam is not science, we will inevitably go on to address other questionable items, like the peacock's tale and the Monarch-Viceroy butterfly mimicry puzzle. To the extent that those proposed examples of evolution according to Darwin's theories of sexual and natural selection respectively at least try to be science, the evidence against them must count, as well as the evidence for them.

As friend David Rice III writes to say,

I'm inclined to agree .... I really think that the reason they don't like the term is precisely because it IS a term. If the Darwinists don't like the word Darwinism then the burden is on them to come up with another term that suits them. Instead they want to talk about the 'field' of modern evolutionary biology...a 'field' suggests an entire panoply of possible options making it that much easier for the Darwinist to maneuver around arguments against it - just switch the emphasis and you're all of a sudden off the hook. Real arguments don't work that way.

A war over terminology is much safer for evolutionary biologists right now than a hard look at the true state of the evidence for and against Darwin's account of the history of life. So, here's a prediction: Expect many more efforts to make a smokescreen out of terminology.

Which reminds me: One possible sign of significant change is that unleashing a horde of Darwinbots to swamp a discussion of evidence with protestations of faith in faith may be a much less useful tactic now than it was five years ago.

(* I suspect other examples are in trouble too. For one thing, the theory requires us to believe that the females of many relatively stupid species are somehow able to assess male fitness using burdensome secondary characteristics that supposedly pose a handicap that only the strongest can bear. Such theorizing exists only to protect the theory from falsification, not to explain the behaviour of hen birds.
**as when someone writes to me to ask if I "accept" common ancestry, using the same idiom as the door-to-door evangelist who wants to know if I "accept" Jesus.)

Agnostic Aussie philosopher: Neo-Darwinism's failings

The late agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove’s hilarious book, Darwinian Fairytales (Aldershot UK: Avebury, 1995) is once again commercially available

(Note: I intend to do a wrap-up on the Pianka affair this weekend, but for logistic reasons, I am posting this now.)

The gist of Stove’s argument is this: Darwin wanted to demonstrate that human development is controlled by natural selection. (Yes, Darwin talked about animals and plants, but the real quarry was always humans. However, he did not directly address humans until his later book Descent of Man (1871).)

Following Thomas Malthus, Darwin thought that natural selection was fueled mainly by the fact that food, unlike many resources, is not sharable. (If one wolf eats the rabbit, another doesn’t.) Thus, he focused on food issues as a source of natural selection.

The problem is, as Stove notes, the known history of the human race has never demonstrated that Malthusian principles are true (more on that later), and there is good reason to think that they are not true of many animal species either.

Note: Stove is not arguing that evolution does not occur. His argument is explicitly with the Darwinist/neo-Darwinist/population genetics/inclusive fitness approach to understanding evolution does not accord with the facts for many animal species and does not at all accord with the facts for humans.

Below, I offer the briefest of introductions to each essay, offering some of the points he makes. along with links to my further comments at the Access Research network site. I suggest saving this post, as a handy introduction to some of the issues, with links to more (until you have time to read Stove's book):

Read more at Preface

Essay 1: Darwinism's Dilemma

Stove starts out by pointing out a fact that should be obvious, but, in a culture like ours, is not:

"If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species, a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species." (P.1)

Hence the need to propose weird theories such as the selfish gene or evolutionary psychology, to try to explain how natural selection would work in situations where it really doesn't.

Read more at Chapter 1.

Essay 2:Where Darwin First Went Wrong About Man

Darwin found a plausible mechanism for evolution in Malthus's theory that population increases geometrically, but the food supply only arithmetically, and thus numbers are kept in check by starvation. In that case, the fittest slight variations in every population would survive and breed, and by slight progressive changes, form new species.

But. Stove asks, is the mechanism correct? Is it true that population always exceeds the food supply (which both Malthus's description and Darwin's mechanism of natural selection would require)? Certainly not with humans!

Read more at Chapter 2.

Essay 3: But what about War, Pestilence, and All That?

Stove shows that Malthus and Darwin tended to go well beyond the evidence in assuming the importance of the food supply, as opposed to other differentials, in determining birth rates. Generally, human birth rates crash with affluence, as they have done in North America and Europe.

It is not clear that animal birth rates always rise with affluence either. One thinks, for example, of wolf packs, where the jealousy of the alpha male likely prevents his subordinates from mating, even if food is plentiful.

Read more at Chapter 3.

(I can't make this link work either, currently. Go here: http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2) Scroll down.

Essay 4: Population, Privilege, and Malthus' Retreat
Darwin simply refused to acknowledge that the actual pattern of human population growth and decline refuted his and Malthus's ideas. Stove notes, "He was temperamentally allergic to controversy, and would always, if he could, either ignore or else candidly expound a criticism of his theory, as a substitute for answering it." (p. 46) In this case, he had good reason because, whereas his theory should have explained human population patterns, it was consistently falsified by them.

Malthus himself eventually gave up the idea that humans were just like other animals and admitted that his biology had been wrong. Darwin and Wallace never did. (p. 50).

Read more at Chapter 4

Essay 5: A Horse in the Bathroom or the Struggle for Life

Stove begins Chapter 5 by clarifying his position on evolution:

I have no difficulty in accepting the fact of evolution. The proposition, for example, that existing species have all evolved from others, is not at odds with any rational belief that I know of. But I do not believe the Darwinian theory or explanation of evolution. There are several reasons. One of them is, that if that theory were true, then a struggle for life would always be going on among the members of every species; whereas in our species at any rate, no such struggle is observable.

Read more at Chapter 5.

Essay 6: Tax and the Selfish Girl or Does "Altruism" Need Inverted Commas?

Stove points out that many animals might well spread their selfish genes much more effectively by behaving otherwise than they do. For example, a female chimpanzee could let other females raise her infants and have many more of them, but if anyone thinks she herself is likely to see the matter in that light, one would give little for his chances of reasoning with her in the primate enclosure. Again, among the most important motivators of human beings are that we hate to be alone for long, even if it would be in our interest, and we love to communicate, even when it harms our interest. These primary human motivators may help or hinder survival or passing on genes, but they are actually irrelevant to that project, just as the mother chimpanzee's attachment to her baby (or to another chimp's baby if she loses her own) is irrelevant to it.

Read more at Chapter 6.

Essay 7: Genetic Calvinism or Demons and Dawkins

Incredibly, Dawkins insists at one and the same time that altruism "has no place in nature," but nonetheless asserts "let us try to teach generosity and altruism." (p. 126) But how can we? How are we to acquire altruism if it has no place in nature, let alone teach it? And remember, we are but puppets of our genes. At this point, it is fair to say that Dawkins isn't making any sense.

Stove usefully contrasts the scientific discoveries related to genes with the entertaining but useless intellectual froth associated with Dawkins's notion of the meme (pp. 132–33).

Read more at Chapter 7.

Essay 8: "He Ain't heavy, He's My Brother," or Altruism and Shared Genes

Stove introduces the basic sociobiological belief that generally, how altruistic (unselfish) an organism is toward another of the same species depends on the proportion of genes they share. This is part of the theory of kin selection or inclusive fitness — inclusive means that you will care about someone according to how many genes you share. Altruism has always been a problem for Darwinism.

He raises a number of problems, including the fact that identical twins, however emotionally close, do not consider their interests identical (pp. 146– 47), but inclusive fitness would suggest that they should. If anyone wonders about this, a simple test would be to watch what happens when an identical twin steals her sister's boyfriend. The most altruism you are likely to get from the bereft twin is, "Well, honestly, I would have shot her, but Mom would be devastated ... " It's hard to imagine that matters are any different among twins in the animal world.

Read more at Chapter 8.

Essay 9: A New Religion

Stove talks about the way in which sociobiology has become a religion. Now, Stove has not much time for any religion, but of sociobiology in particular, he says, "Socibiology is not incomprehensible, but it is one of the religious that are obviously false. The only part of it that is true is the doctrine that genes are invisible. But this is not something peculiar to sociobiology. Everyone agrees that genes are invisible .... " (p. 175)

The problem is that genes are so unlikely to really function the way the sociobiologist needs them to that the self gene hypothesis can only be held on faith as a religion:

Read more at Chapter 9.

Essay 10: Paley's Revenge or Purpose Regained

Stove shows that if Darwinists were prevented from smuggling teleological language into their descriptions of the activity of genes, they would not be able to demonstrate that genes ever even "try" to get themselves replicated at all. How could they? They are rows of molecules, not mail order brides.

Read more at Chapter 10

Essay 11: Errors of Heredity or The Irrelevance of Darwinism to Human Life

In the eleventh and last chapter, Stove addresses the fact that, from a Darwinian perspective, humans must be a biological error. "A biological error, or error of heredity, is an organism which does not have as many descendants as it could have. ora characteristic of an organism witch prevents it having as many descendants as it otherwise could." (p. 212)

Now, he reasons, among plants or cockroaches, there is no biological error. They do not fail to have as many descendants as they can. Yet humans routinely do so, for a number of reasons, ranging from natural or voluntary celibacy through lifestyle choices that reduce fertility right through to heroic self-sacrifice.

Read more at

Chapter 11

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

The Pope using the term "intelligent design" to describe the Catholic view of origins, go here.

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams attacked by Darwinist, hits back. Will he now cartoon on the subject?

"Academic Freedom Watch : Here's the real, ugly story behind the claim that 'intelligent design isn't science'?".

Roseville, California, lawyer Larry Caldwell is suing over the use of tax money by Darwin lobby groups to promote religious views that accept Darwinian evolution (as opposed to ones that don’t). I’m pegging this one as the next big story. See also the ruling on tax funds. Note the line that the “free speech” people take.
How to freak out your bio prof? What happened when a student bypassed the usual route of getting frogs drunk and dropping them down the chancellor’s robes, and tried questioning Darwinism instead.

Christoph, Cardinal Schonbon is not backing down from his contention that Darwinism is incompatible with Catholic faith, and Pope Benedict XVI probably thinks that’s just fine. Major US media have been trying to reach rewrite for months, with no success.

Museum tour guides to be trained to "respond" to those who question Darwinism. Read this item for an example of what at least one museum hopes to have them say.

World class chemist dissed at Catholic university because he sympathizes with intelligent design.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Dover a half decade later: And what difference did it really make?

A friend offers observations about the Dover (Kitzmiller) decision (2006 or something). I didn't cover it, because everyone else did, and I was writing a book, under contract, about something else, basically. Just as well. Everyone else who cared seemed to be on the scene already, and I was otherwise occupied.

Essentially, modern American culture is biased toward atheism, and nothing suits atheism better than Darwinism, its creation story. That Darwin himself thought so can be determined from his own writings, so one does get tired of the various bible school profs, museum curators, and textbook writers who pretend otherwise.

If you believe it, fine. If you don't, why suck up to it?

I exempt the sweet museum docent who merely landed a summer job and does not know what is at stake. Unfortunately, she might find out later, if her boyfriend dumps here when she is pregnant, and the boyfriend has no idea that he is even doing anything wrong when he just suggests that she has an abortion, still less that there is any reason why he (not the girl, especially if she refuses) should be banished from polite society.*

*Darwinism? Yes, of course. That guy is saving his selfish genes for a more worthwhile and advantageous woman.
Or maybe there is no selfish gene, just people misbehaving, who do not wish to accept responsibility for their activities?

Don't believe me? Watch the film, A Place in the Sun, where a clergyman patiently explains to a guy why he really is guilty of murder, and you will see the difference between Judaeo-Christian culture and what happened later.

But, back to the main point, what really surprised me was how little public effect followed from Dover, in the long run. The usual professional tax burdens raged and thumped, of course, and their clever public opinion managers have recruited identified Christians who say that evidence for design in the universe is the reason that the last nail has not been driven into the coffin of design in the universe.

But few people who did not believe the Darwin nonsense before do so now. And courts cannot enforce against what most people must really know.

See, that's the big thing. Anyone can get a prof or reverend somewhere to rant against the idea that the universe shows evidence of design. It is much more useful than getting an atheist soap boxer to do the same thing. Darwin lobby honch, Eugenie Scott, said that herself here (one of many references).

Don't trust the court system you pay taxes for to decide against the continuing Darwin imposture; they have every reason to decide for it - not because it is true but because the idea that there is no design, no responsibility, and no free will makes your local tax burdens' lives a lot easier. They can force you to support them while they do nothing of consequence.

And they may even be doing something that harms you. What if they are persecuting a local white coat who is actually developing useful treatments, but he refuses to affirm Darwinism as true? So they run him out of town. The question hangs: Do you want help or do you want the Darwinist's ideology?

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

A word about the Post-Darwinist ...

Posting here at the Post-Darwinist is time-consuming, but worthwhile and fun. Thanks to generous donors to my PayPal button (right), I can take time from regular work to post.

I will shortly be reactivating Mindful Hack and Colliding Universes, neglected due to the demands of 2010's books. I’ll announce their news stories here. I hope to start offering more services as well.

Why do I do it? Following the story, I guess.

First, you needn’t think that life’s pattern is best accounted for by design in order to give yourself permission to doubt Darwin’s increasingly dubious tale and despise its current function in our society.

Consider: Darwinism is the only “science” most lifestyle editors and their writers will ever know (except, perhaps, dubious environment apocalypses, one-a-month). So an endless stream of rubbish filters through to the public, about how Darwin the liberator has freed us evolved apes to follow our selfish genes.

The fact that there is little evidence for that selfish gene’s very existence hardly matters. Darwinism’s value today is exclusively social: It undergirds nonsense like evolutionary psychology, and more dangerous but popular projects like neurolaw (= it’s neurologically impossible that people could be responsible for their behaviour, so ... ).

Naturally, those who benefit from the Darwin industry cannot tolerate a rational assessment of its fact base. But some of us think evidence matters. You do, and that is why you come to this site. You come for what you won’t read in the Journal of Confirmation Studies or hear on Airhead TV.

No orphans will starve if you read here for free. I am inviting you to invest in what you actually read. And the best of the New Year to kind readers like yourself!

Enron and Darwinism: A perfect fit?

I've sometimes said that Darwinism is the Enron of biology, but I hadn't realized that the Enron guys themselves were actually Darwin freaks. A friend tells me, re the Enron doc, The Smartest Guys in the Room,

Of interest to me was the unapologetically explicit philosophy of Darwinism which was prevalent at Enron from top management to commodity traders.

Hmmm. Every year, in the Freelance Survival 101 course that I teach at Write! Canada, I spend a certain amount of the available time disabusing students of the view that Darwinian competition is the best way to understand how business works.

The business environment with which I am familiar - and in which I have managed to thrive as a freelance writer for nearly four decades - is best seen as an ecology, not a Darwinian jungle.

The secret of thriving in an ecology is to know how the system works, your place in it, and the safe limits for any activity.

Example: I am only occasionally in direct competition with other writers. Most of the time, they have the same interests as I do, and the whole publishing industry has certain interests in relation to other industries and to government - and to the publishing industries and governments in other English-speaking countries. So we all work together most of the time.

Lone Darwinians are usually pole-axed.

And the Enrons didn't know that? Oops, I am admitting that Darwinism is nonsense. It isn't safe for you to hear me. Don't listen to me if your job requires you to believe that Darwinism is the best idea anyone ever had, as American philosopher Daniel Dennett puts it.

Here is an interview that attempts to rewrite Darwin, to rescue him:

METRO: You stressed that Skilling's misreading of Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene changed him: Skilling got his ideas from it, in the same way the robber barons of the Gilded Age misread Darwin.

GIBNEY: And a close reading of Adam Smith shows it's not a "What, me worry?" world. Yes, Skilling misread that book to believe that if everyone is as selfish as possible, the best possible social outcome will emerge. There's a lot in Darwin about cooperation as a viable genetic strategy.

METRO: The stuff anyone who goes on a rainforest tour learns, about symbiosis and interlocking systems. It's all just beyond the ken of these guys.

Actually, Darwin agreed with Herbert Spencer that Darwinism was about "survival of the fittest."*

Agree? Disagree? If you need to rewrite Darwin to make him fit YOUR philosophy, why do you? What's going on in your head at this point? Why don't you just junk all that crap, and admit that you live in a designed universe. And so?

*You will, of course, hear modern hagiographers of Darwin attempting to soften or dismiss all this, to accommodate Darwinism to the nanny state. They need Darwin so badly, he can't just wrong, so he needs to be rewritten so that he is right.

Fun sendup and straight talk about evolutionary psychology - why does anyone take it seriously?

Columnist Mike Adams, whose spoofs regularly outrage odd, tax-funded people at universities, was last seen fronting the "Journal of Genetic Rationalization", whose research projects include the following:

The Tardy Gene. Attention seeking has been a common explanation for chronic lateness. Television star and psychologist Dr. Phil has advised – to Brittany Spears and others he is unqualified to counsel – that such strategies often backfire. A person will often make late appearances at social gatherings in order to draw attention without realizing that the attention she draws is significantly more negative than she had expected. Since it is assumed that people are not likely to make choices that bring about adverse consequences – even when those adverse consequences were unforeseen – the existence of a tardiness gene is assumed. Researchers are encouraged to begin the search for evidence of a tardiness gene before it is too late.

Seriously, the basic problem with evolutionary (= gene-driven) psychology (EP), as I explained in a recent piece in Salvo 4, is that EP must locate the causes of human behaviour in genes inherited from prehuman ancestors - genes that want to replicate themselves - rather than in decisions made by conscious minds today. So what you do is driven by your genes, not by your current perceptions of your environment.

That entails an amazing number of silly ideas. For example,

A recent article in Psychology Today (July/August 2007) avers that men prefer women with big breasts because the man can see whether the woman’s breasts sag, which indicates reduced fertility.

Really? Isn't the general human preference for the anticipated pleasure of abundance over scarcity a better explanation - and a wee bit simpler too? But to think that way is to be out of step with the whole point of evolutionary psychology, which derives from a materialist view of human nature. To say that men prefer abundance to scarcity is to say that they have minds and that - to their minds - abundance seems better than scarcity.

But to an evolutionary psychologist, framing the preference that way is simply not acceptable. Evolutionary psychology looks for a program in the genes that governs what men like. Its practitioners are entirely convinced that such a program exists. The program must exist because the mind does not cause anything to happen. Men do not know what they like until their selfish genes act on their neurons, creating the appropriate buzz. The man himself has no preferences, but his genes do.

Believe it or not, the central dogma of neuroscience today is that the mind is an illusion, but Mario Beauregard and I dispatch that doctrine handily in The Spiritual Brain.

Actually, evolutionary psychology contains within itself the seed of its own downfall. Taken seriously, it means that precisely nothing has changed since the days of our prehuman ancestors. In that case, no evolution occurred. That is strange, considering the wonders Darwinists attribute to natural selection. And if nothing has changed between our prehuman ancestors and ourselves, has anything changed between the amoeba and ourselves?

Either Darwinian evolution can induce real change (in which case, the evolutionary psychologists' pursuit is highly doubtful) or it can't, in which case it is futile because evolution did not happen by Darwinian means.

Essentially, evolutionary psychology, in an effort to prop up Darwinism, is stabbing it through the heart by trying to show that no evolution in human behaviour has actually occurred. In all that time, no evolution occurred ... Well, then, ... you shouldn't have even asked.

Quick posts: Recent events in the intelligent design controversy - 2

■ Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box is publishing a new book in 2007, The Edge of Evolution, again with Free Press. The blurb reads,

In order to get a realistic idea of the power of Darwinian evolution, it leaves behind most of the popular images—dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, pretty Galapagos finches—to focus mainly on the invisible foundation of biology, the molecular world of the cell. There are two vital reasons for this: First, mutations—the fuel of Darwinian evolution—are themselves molecular changes, where the DNA of an organism is accidentally altered from that of its parents. Second, the most intricate work of life takes place at the level of molecules and cells. Imperceptible molecules are the foundational level of life. So, to locate the edge of evolution, we have to examine life's foundation.

Interestingly, a lit agent told me a couple of years ago that Free Press would not accept a book like Mike Behe's today. They were moving away from all that. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

■ The American Association for the Advancement of Science has put out a book attempting to address the incompatibility between Darwinism and traditional beliefs, noting "grew out of concerns among scientists and some religious leaders that intelligent design is being sold as an integration of science and religion, enticing even some members of mainstream religious communities to question evolution." It sounds dull, actually, featuring a "Christian girl" stereotype, attempting to reconcile her stupid, stereotyped "faith" with reality. The press release proclaims:

Evolution remains one of the most substantiated theories in all of science, it notes, and serves as the essential framework for modern biology. The book discusses recent observations that have led to revisions in the theory since the time of Charles Darwin, including new views on why the giraffe's neck is long. But it emphasizes the underlying principles of evolution that continue to stand the test of time: all species, living and extinct, are related to each other, and the forms of life that populate the Earth have changed over eons and continue to change.

Right away, I can guarantee that AAAS's efforts efforts are wasted, for two reasons: Increasing numbers of people now notice the trick by which Darwin's troubled theory of evolution is seamlessly equated in the press release with "evolution" generally, and then evolution is defined so broadly that few would care to disagree with it. It is Darwin's theory that is under assault. The increasingly sophisticated modern reader will also know that evolution (= Darwin's theory) is NOT one of the most substantiated theories in all of science. There are few observed examples of new species forming. That situation is not the evolutionary biologists' fault, but it is a situation with consequences. Second, as NAS member Phil Skell has pointed out, most scientists do not need Darwin's theory of evolution to do their work. Oh and the reality is that more people are drawn into the subject by the arch-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins than anyone else, yet do you hear AAAS ever actually distancing itself from that sort of thing absolutely directly, in a press release? I wonder when they will get around to taking the problem seriously enough to do anything substantial?

■ Riffing off a recent Time article, promoting the idea that one or two simple ingredients make us human, In "Neo-Darwinism vs. Reason", Fr. Jonathan Morris identifies the follies in the Time reasoning:

The assumptions these authors make are common. They showcase the materialistic, post-modern ideology (not scientific theory) that reigns in the classrooms and in the textbooks of scientific America and Europe. According to this worldview, the idea of a personal God, a creator, or even a clockwork intelligent designer is all together passé and unacceptable. According to them, the problem is not that this is not a scientific question, but that it doesn't fit with their "scientific" theory.

[ ... ]

It is easy to see a similar fundamentalist trend in science and philosophy, especially in the important study of evolutionary processes. Too often the debate is defined by those who, on the one hand, rule out a priori, any possibility of intelligent design, and call everything absolutely random just because they say so, and on the other hand, those who rule out any possibility that the designer is intelligent enough to make use of evolution to create just because they say so.

My opinion? I think the human intellect, through the light of reason, can easily and clearly find a program or a design in the physical world. And some evolutionary theories — free of neo-Darwinian atheistic principles — help us to do just that.

What I love about these priests entering the fray is the way they use the terminology freely: Ah yes, "neo-Darwinism". Thanks, Father, for not acting like we are all stupid now.


■ In Catholic thinkmag Commonweal, Peter James Causton addresses the effort to reconcile Darwinism with authentic Christian theology and concludes that the Christian Darwinist approach (God is so humble that he leaves no evidence of design, purpose, or intelligence in nature) does notwork:

... it remains intuitively difficult to reconcile their loving, power-renouncing, creative God with the picture of Darwinism dominant in popular and scientific literature. Natural selection seems more capricious than the Greek Fates. Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene seems like some brute, dumb materialized version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Stephen Jay Gould’s epic of evolution is all contingency and catastrophe. The twin gods of evolution, as it is currently understood, go by the names of chance and necessity. Considering all this, is nature really where we want to go to find reliable evidence of the Divine? It is unlikely we will find it there unless our hearts and minds have already been illumined by a grace we don’t find in nature itself, but rather in nature’s author.

Yes, but we don't really have hearts or minds, you know; it's only an illusion that favored the survival of the fittest ...


■ I mentioned to ID guy Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design that Larry Moran (the evolutionary biologist who objected to the term "Darwinist" during my talk at the University of Toronto last Saturday, had left a comment, saying that he also does not like the term "Darwinian evolutionist" and asks to be called an "evolutionary biologist."

Wells wrote back saying,

The problem is that Moran's fellow "evolutionary biologists" deliberately misuse the word "evolution" to peddle materialism in the innocuous guise of "change over time" or "changes in gene frequencies."

In my Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design I define "Darwinism" as the combination of ideas that "(1) all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor; (2) the principal mechanism of modification has been natural selection acting on undirected variations (originating in DNA mutations); and (3) unguided processes are sufficient to explain all features of living things -- so design is an illusion."

If Moran objects to being called a Darwinist, I would ask him what part of that definition he rejects -- and whether he's willing to do so publicly, in the front of his "evolutionary biologist" colleagues.

In my experience, Darwinists don't like being called Darwinists because they have to equivocate on the meaning of "evolution" to ensure that religious taxpayers continue supporting them in the manner to which they've become accustomed. Funny, too: Darwinists don't seem to have any compunction about referring to ID theorists as biblical creationists, despite the many times we have pointed out their misrepresentation.

Not to worry, after certain recent posts I have received from Moran, I fear that it is all up between him and me, and no reasonable dialogue is possible, but I will blog on that later if time permits.

■ Evangelist Chuck Colson's broadcast pays tribute to ID guys' godfather, law prof Phillip Johnson, by promoting the book in his honor, Darwin's Nemesis.

Through all the controversy—and just plain mud-slinging—that followed the publishing of Darwin on Trial, Phil has maintained his stance, continuing his lawyerly probing and careful research, and he has kept his good humor and graciousness. In these ways, he serves as a magnificent example to all of us involved in worldview teaching.

[ ... ]

And it even includes a couple of articles by critics of intelligent design, including philosophy professor and evolution advocate Michael Ruse—the kind of balance you’d like to see in classrooms. In the contentious debate that surrounds the intelligent design vs. evolution issue, getting the participation of someone like Ruse is a testimony to Phillip Johnson.
There’s no doubt that Phil’s willingness to encourage the work of scientists and help create a network for them has allowed the movement to flourish. This book really shows just how far the intelligent design (ID) movement has progressed in a relatively short time, despite the best efforts of many Darwinists to shoot it down—because, as is becoming clearer and clearer, ID has the evidence on its side.

Having the evidence on one's side is a darn good thing, but in these times having an excellent lawyer - now that is really something.

■ Catching up with the backlog: Regular readers of this blog will recall that Coral Ridge aired a documentary on the relationship between social Darwinism and the rise of Hitler. The Anti-Defamation League recently complained, among other things, that genome mapper Francis Collins was misled:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."

After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.

Aw come on. Hitler's rendition of Darwin's theory (which was about as sane and virtuous as his other activities) was simply a part of the Nazi scene. ADL should focus on anti-Semites, and stay out of the Darwin wars. Goodness knows, there are enough anti-Semites to keep them busy. For various attacks on Weikart for making some pretty obvious points, go here.


■ Here is a list of Darwin skeptics, of varying degrees of originality and/or usefulness, compiled by Jerry Bergman, who notes,

On this list I have well over 3,000 names but, unfortunately, a large number of persons that could be added to this list, including many college professors, did not want their name listed on the published list because of real concerns over possible retaliation or harm to their careers. Many of those who did not want their names on this list are young academics without tenure, or academics who are concerned about if outing them could damage their career. Many on this list are secure tenured professors, teach at Christian Universities that protect their academic freedom to criticize Darwinism, or are in industry, or in a medical field where less antagonism exists to questioning Darwin exists. Some on this list are now involved full time in speaking and writing on origins, and no longer depend on secular employment to put bread on the family table. Many are also retired, thus no longer face retaliation for their doubts about Darwin. Some consented to include their names only if their current employment was not listed.

I hear rumors that Bergman may publish a book, detailing case histories of what happens if you doubt that Darwin's theory largely accounts for the history of life.

Thinkquotes of the day: Why there is an intelligent design controversy

"The operations of a higher level cannot be accounted for by the laws governing its particulars forming the lower level. You cannot derive a vocabulary from phonetics; you cannot derive the grammar of a language from its vocabulary; a correct use of grammar does not account for good style; and a good style does not provide the content of a piece of prose. . . . it is impossible to represent the organizing principles of a higher level by the laws governing its isolated particulars".
- Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.

— John B.S. Haldane, "When I Am Dead", Possible Worlds: And Other Essays

"…evolutionary speculation constitutes a kind of metascience, which has the same fascination for some biologists that metaphysical speculation possessed for some medieval scholastics. It can be considered a relatively harmless habit, like eating peanuts, unless it assumes the form of an obsession; then it becomes a vice."

- cell biologist Roger Stanier, in Organization and Control in Prokaryotic Cells: Twentieth Symposium of the Society for General Microbiology, Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more - and for more drastic - modifications of the average person's worldview than Charles Darwin.

- Ernst Mayr

also

"Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques" for explaining evolutionary events and processes."

- Ernst Mayr, "Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, July 2000, 80.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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