Tag: evolution

So much for “the science is settled”

Now it is the turn of evolutionary scientists discover that Richard Dawkins is a deeply unpleasant individual:

A disagreement between the twin giants of genetic theory, Richard Dawkins and EO Wilson, is now being fought out by rival academic camps in an effort to understand how species evolve.

The learned spat was prompted by the publication of a searingly critical review of Wilson’s new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, in Prospect magazine this month. The review, written by Dawkins, author of the popular and influential books The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, has prompted more letters and on-line comment than any other article in the recent history of the magazine and attacks Wilson’s theory “as implausible and as unsupported by evidence”.

“I am not being funny when I say of Edward Wilson’s latest book that there are interesting and informative chapters on human evolution, and on the ways of social insects (which he knows better than any man alive), and it was a good idea to write a book comparing these two pinnacles of social evolution, but unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory,” Dawkins writes.

The Oxford evolutionary biologist, 71, has also infuriated many readers by listing other established academics who, he says, are on his side when it comes to accurately representing the mechanism by which species evolve. Wilson, in a short piece penned promptly in response to Dawkins’s negative review, was also clearly annoyed by this attempt to outflank him.

“In any case,” Wilson writes, “making such lists is futile. If science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston [a mythical fire-like element] and navigating with geocentric maps.”

As I noted a few years ago in The Irrational Atheist, Richard Dawkins is not a scientist, he is an ex-scientist. Dawkins has always been inept when it comes to arguing against intelligent and informed interlocutors, so it should come as no surprise that he would blunder badly when trying to take on EO Wilson, even in the event that he happens to be right.

Dawkins’s statement also raises a serious question. If a famous and heavily credentialed biologist like EO Wilson truly does not understand evolutionary theory, what could possibly be the use of attempting to teach it in public schools?

The end of the evolution debate

It’s always very telling when the so-called scientists resort to wishful thinking and ideological propaganda:

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history. Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself. Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it. If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,” Leakey says, “then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”

Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past…. Leakey, who clearly cherishes investigating the past, is less optimistic about the future. “We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive.”

Leakey is letting the atheist evolutionary cat out of the bag here. Unlike the likes of Harris, whose revolutionary Enlightenment 2.0 globalism is never advertised and can only be confirmed by carefully reading through his books, Leakey is quite willing to draw the connection between evolution, atheism, multiculturalism, all intended to lead towards the long-term utopian fantasy of rule by a scientific and technocratic global oligarchy.

My prediction is quite the opposite. I am increasingly convinced that genetic science will render the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis scientifically unviable in the same manner it previously required the development of the synthesis by rendering untenable classic fossil-based Darwinian evolution by natural selection. One thing that has escaped most professional biologists, who are neither historians of science nor logicians, is that the increasing complexity of the DNA/RNA interplay along with growing understanding of mutations renders the present evolutionary timelines increasingly improbable. Whereas the decoding of the human and other genomes was supposed to provide not only answers, but even conclusive proof of macroevolution, it has instead raised considerably more questions. And while the growing number of proposed evolutionary mechanisms are not necessarily proof that macroevolution has not happened in the past and is not happening in the present, they do show the need to develop epicycles that is always indicative of a theory that is in trouble and on its way to being falsified and ultimately jettisoned.

Could I be incorrect? Of course. That is why I describe myself as an evolutionary skeptic rather than an anti-evolutionist. But once again, we see a conflict between pattern recognition and scientific consensus, and I expect that as has usually happened before, pattern recognition will win out because scientific consensus is not always science, it is often logical conclusions drawn from science by scientists. And the history of science shows that scientists are, for the most part, inept logicians, which is why they tend to keep making the same type of mistakes with each new generation of scientist. So, I am quite comfortable asserting, contra Leakey, that in 15 years, skepticism over evolution will not only not be history, but will be both more popular and more scientifically credible than it is now.

The myth of the evolution myth

The New Scientist doesn’t understand what “a prediction” is, and in doing so, underlines the very point it is attempting to dismiss:

Cosmologists make precise predictions about what will happen to the universe in 20 billion years’ time. Biologists struggle to predict how a few bacteria in a dish might evolve over 20 hours. Some claim that this lack of precise predictive power means evolution is not scientific.

However, what matters in science is not how much you can predict on the basis of a theory or how precise those predictions are, but whether the predictions you can make turn out to be right. Meteorologists don’t reject chaos theory because it tells them it is impossible to predict the weather 100% accurately – on the contrary, they accept it because weather follows the broad patterns predicted by chaos theory.

The amusing thing is that in an effort to claim that evolution really is a predictive science despite the inability of scientists to use it to predict anything, the article then denies that the failure of any evolution-based predictions could falsify the theory. And it is telling that the primary examples it cites cannot be reasonably described as predictions, which relate to the future and not to the past.

“Most predictions relate to very specific aspects of evolutionary theory. If a eusocial mammal like the naked mole-rat had not been found, for instance, it would have proved only that Alexander’s ideas about the evolution of eusocial behaviour were probably wrong, not that there is anything wrong with the wider theory.”

Right, just like the failure of Keynesian theory to predict the simultaneous rising inflation and unemployment of the 1970s only related to the very specific aspects of the historical American economy, not that there was anything wrong with the wider theory. This article makes it very clear that evolution, or if one wishes to be more specific, the theory of evolution by (probably) natural selection is not a science when viewed from either a predictive or Popperian perspective.

Climate change is the new evolution

I couldn’t agree more, considering that they’re both most likely little more than pseudo-scientific fiction.

Is climate change education the new evolution, threatened in U.S. school districts and state education standards by well-organized interest groups? A growing number of education advocates believe so, and yesterday, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, which fights the teaching of creationism, announced that it’s going to take on climate change denial as well.

NCSE expects this task to be much harder than fighting creationism. “The forces arrayed against climate science are more numerous and much better funded,” Scott says, and are better able to get their message across in the mainstream media than creationism supporters.

The reason the task will not only be much harder, but impossible, isn’t because of the more formidable nature of “the forces arrayed against climate science”, but because it is significantly harder to lie to people about something that they can readily observe, at least in part, for themselves. That is why I am merely deeply skeptical about evolution by natural selection whereas I completely reject the observably false assertion of anthropogenic global warming.

That is why AGW/CC will go the way of phrenology, the global Ice Age, the food pyramid, and other past scientific consensuses sooner than TE(p)NS. I’m confident that genetic science will eventually shoot down the latter, but it’s going to take a considerable weight of incontrovertible evidence to finally root out the die-hard Neo-Darwinian dogmatists, considering how they are still clinging so desperately to their evolutionary epicycles.

They just never learn

Keep in mind that the following assertion is from the same individual who five minutes later departed the scene with the following Parthian shot: “Arguments from ignorance galore – ah, how I love Vox day. Anyways, enough of arguing with people of IQ below lima beans. Ciao. Just a Random Atheist wrote:

How about the fact that a molecular tree of life and a morphological tree of life has over 99% congruency? Do you think anyone would take evo seriously if the case was different?

There is not much that needs to be said except that “the fact” is clearly nothing of the kind. And yes, it is entirely obvious scientists will still continue to take evolutionary theory seriously despite the fact that the case has been determined to be different, as the fifth search result for “Darwin tree of life” shows that this is already the case. Consider the following statements.

The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 – whose pioneers believed it would provide proof of Darwin’s tree – opened up new vistas for evolutionary biology. But current research is finding a far more complex scenario than Darwin could have imagined – particularly in relation to bacteria and single-celled organisms.

Dr Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said: “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.”

“It’s part of a revolutionary change in biology. Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure.”

“The tree of life is being politely buried – we all know that. What’s less accepted is our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change.”

So, precisely whom is arguing from ignorance here? Now, note that it was me, the evolutionary skeptic, who predicted that this would happen, that the standard model of evolution, the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, would not only come under enormous pressure due to advancements in genetic science, but eventually be junked entirely. That hasn’t happened yet, of course, but the trend is clear and the predicted outcome has become increasingly likely. It is also worth noting that it is evolutionary true believers like Just a Random Atheist who are simply not up on recent developments in biology, in part because they erroneously assume that the standard model is not only correct, but infallible and unquestionable.

That is not scientific thinking. That isn’t even theological thinking. That is pure, unquestioning, religious dogma.

Mailvox: scientists wanted

A documentary filmmaker is looking for scientists and mathematicians willing to go on camera to discuss TE(p)NSBMGDaGF:

I am a filmmaker currently working on an untitled documentary project with the purpose of revealing the ideological motives of those who act as the gatekeepers for Darwinism. While on the surface this may sound a bit like the 2008 documentary “Expelled”, my proposed film is not about Intelligent Design whatsoever, it is simply an examination of the science of TE(p)NSBMGDaGF, as you so affectionally refer to it, and the ideology of those determined to protect it from criticism and attempt to strong arm others who practice any genuine scientific inquiry to challenge it.

I recently discovered your blog during my research, and though I am an agnostic, I have found your material on this subject very compelling. My funding is in place, and most of my preliminary research has been completed, but I am running into a brick wall when it comes to getting those in the scientific community (outside of ID proponents) to point me in the right direction on the challenges to Darwinism from evo-devo, genetics, and mathematics, and to agree to be interviewed for the project. Though I have simply presented my film as an “evidentiary exploration of Darwinian evolution”, most biologists seem to have learned that it is not wise to provide potential ammunition for a documentary film. Either out of fear of retribution or a sense of their authority being challenged, I have found few who are willing to assist me in my research, or to go on record.

This is why I am contacting you. From the comments on your posts, I have noticed that quite a few scientists and engineers read and comment on your blog, and I was hoping perhaps they might give me some assistance regarding fundamental objections to Darwinian theory from other schools of scientific inquiry, and suggestions on those in the scientific community I should be looking to engage with. I appreciate any assistance you and your “ilk” would be willing to give me on this topic.

I have the impression this guy is looking for credentials, so if you happen to be a sufficiently credentialed scientist or mathematician who is interested in being interviewed about what is happening in the field of evolutionary biology, shoot me an email with your credentials and I will pass them along to the filmmaker.

And before anyone leaps to the wrong assumption, no, I’m not involved in this, and no, I won’t be appearing in it. But it is interesting to see that scientists are either afraid to speak publicly concerning their doubts about TENS or are unwilling to defend the orthodox dogma. No wonder the Darwinists are losing the media war. They’re afraid to even show up for the fight and have resorted to ideological thuggery inside their increasingly irrelevant secular monasteries. Thomas Huxley must be rolling over in his grave at the sight of Darwin’s Yellow-bellied Chickens.

Of snakes and science fads

You will likely recall my citation of Cabal as a poster snake for his claim that Darwinism is a meaningless expression that only exists in creationist literature. Not only was this easily demonstrated to be false, given frequent uses of the term by famous creationists such as Richard Dawkins, but thanks to the Google Ngram Viewer we can see precisely how ludicrously dishonest a claim it was.

The Google Ngram viewer shows the number of times a term was used in various books from 1800 to 2008. This is the tracking of the term Darwinism. Notice how use of the term rises rapidly from 1860 to 1910, then from 1945 to 1998.

Now, what could the two fall-offs that begin in 1928 and 1998 have in common? My initial suspicion is economics. As per socionomic theory, in times of economic contraction, people are less attracted to the purely materialist position for which Darwinism is the primary justification. Everyone is too busy surviving to care much about prehistoric matters or the philosophies that can be derived from them; even the scientists are forced to turn their attention to subjects that provide more immediate grant-generating possibilities and more practical applications. Furthermore, I also surmised that the greater decline in the post-1998 decline may be related to the likely motivation behind Cabal’s claim, because it is apparent that the secular humanist movement has decided to try to move away from the albatross that the term “Darwinism” has become.

However, this latter theory appears to be incorrect, as the use of the term “evolution” has also fallen off at a similar rate of decline. This would tend to support the socionomic theory and disprove the propaganda-related one. And this raises an even more interesting possibility, which is that this relatively recent dropoff may mark the beginning of the abandonment of Darwinism, evolution, and particularly natural selection as real scientific concepts and the end of a 148-year quasi-scientific fad.

Questions for evolutionists

It should be interesting to see the answers to these questions presented by the Question Evolution campaign, assuming of course that an evolutionist who is capable of responding to substantive questions with answers that do not boil down to “you are stupid and ignorant of science to even ask me such a thing” can be found.

How did the DNA code originate?

How did sex originate?

Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing?

How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years, if evolution has changed worms into humans in the same time frame?

How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence?

Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution?

The last question is of particular interest to me. It is my contention that evolution is, from a scientific perspective, an almost totally irrelevant sideshow. The number of scientists who have actually used evolution for anything over the last 150 years is dwarfed by the number of scientists who are still desperately trying to provide a scientific foundation for TENS. The only reason evolution is assumed to be of such presumed importance is due to its philosophical usefulness to materialist philosophers and pedopropagandists like Richard Dawkins.

They can’t read, they can’t write

Naturally, it’s the perfect time to teach them quasi-scientific myths:

Children as young as five should have lessons in the basic principles of evolution, a leading atheist has said. Professor Richard Dawkins claims Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is so important that every primary school in Britain should have it on their curriculum, he told The Times.

The evolutionary biologist believes youngsters are able to grasp the basic principles of the theory which underpin the study of biology.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear an evolutionist posturing as a critical thinker. This should remove any last vestiges of doubt that Dawkins is no longer even pretending to be a scientist, but is nothing more than a full-fledged pedopropagandist for atheism and scientific materialism. It’s also amusing to see his insistence that children who can’t read can grasp the basic principles of the theory while his acolytes insist that university educated adult Mensans cannot.

Even if it is 100 percent true, evolution isn’t important at all. Even if every single transition from amoeba to homo sapiens sapiens could be mapped out precisely, this will have literally zero material impact on anyone, except for a very small number of professionals working in the field. But it is somewhat amusing to think of what the graduates of schools in which 12 years of what passes for education are dedicated to recycling, gay indigenous women’s studies, and evolution in lieu of reading, writing and math would look like. Only one thing is certain. A more sanctimonious and less useful collection of little bastards would be hard to find.

Anyhow, neither evolution nor science, except a single course on general science, should be taught in high schools. Teaching science is a complete waste of time at that level, much less doing so any earlier, and it is quite obvious, from talking to any high school graduate, that practically none of the students who are presently forced to sit through science instruction retain any as much as a genuinely interested ten year old.

Mailvox: a skeptic’s case

EG wonders how I would go about attempting to defend evolutionary theory:

Let’s assume that you were not skeptical of evolution by (probably) natural selection, and let assume that you wanted to try to give a defense of the ‘theory’. How would you proceed to salvage the theory and make it eminently attractive to the skeptics and the deniers?

The first thing I would do is walk through the logic of the theory in reference to itself alone. By this, I mean not proposing it as a more sensible alternative to something else or getting sidetracked in discussing other matters. For example, no amount of Keynesian critique will succeed in establishing relevance of the Austrian Business Cycle. This should allow one to identify the key problems that require empirical support.

The second thing I would do is marshal the empirical facts. This is a methodical, mathematical approach that appears to be foreign to most biologists, for example, my erstwhile biology tutor was outright confused when I asked him what the average rate of evolution was, even though, if evolution did indeed take place, logic dictates that rate must exist as a matter of historical fact and be accordingly calculable according to a variety of metrics. Of course, given the poor performance of econometrics versus Austrian logic and behavioral empiricism, perhaps we should not expect too much from any theoretical evolumetrics.

The third step is comparing the logic with the metrics, to show that both are well in accord with each other despite the unavoidable gaps in the latter, and how the combination serves to provide meaningful and testable predictions even though it is presently incomplete. While this wouldn’t serve as a proof, it would amount to a reasonable working assumption.

Needless to say, this bears almost no similarity to the “assum, imagine, and apply” method which is utilized by most advocates of evolutionary theory. Because they have no respect for logic and subscribe to Bacon’s dogmatic empiricism, they begin with the second step rather than the first and prevent themselves from being able to progress to the third step. Their tactical problem is that while scientific empiricism works very well within small time limits, it is like trying to use a microscope to look at a blue whale when considering matters that stretch outside an observable time scale. Thus they are forced to use logic without ever admitting it or having any familiarity with it, usually with the consequences one would expect.

And their strategic problem is that in most cases, evolutionary theory is intended as a weapon to serve their real object, which is the advancement of materialism, Dennett’s skyhook. The reasonable working assumption that my method could theoretically provide simply isn’t enough to serve their larger purposes, which tends to support their blind adherence to the purely empirical and deceitful insistence that the unprovable has, in fact, been proved.