Tag: evolution

Darwin’s killer disciples

The murderous children of evolution are a real problem, even if the Darwinists don’t like to admit it:

Darwin would no doubt have been horrified by all this, but it’s easy to see why some of his ideas might appeal to the disturbed adolescent mind. One conclusion implicit in evolutionary theory is that human existence has no ultimate purpose or special significance. Any psychologically well-adjusted person would regard this as regrettable, if true. But some people get a thrill from peering into the void and acknowledging that life is utterly meaningless.

Darwin also taught that morality has no essential authority, but is something that itself evolved — a set of sentiments or intuitions that developed from adaptive responses to environmental pressures tens of thousands of years ago. This does not merely explain the origin of morals, it totally explains them away. Whether an individual opts to obey a particular ethical precept, or to regard it as a redundant evolutionary carry-over, thus becomes a matter of personal choice. Cheerleaders celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday in colleges across America last February sang “Randomness is good enough for me, If there’s no design it means I’m free” — lines from a song by the band Scientific Gospel. Clearly they see evolution as something that emancipates them from the strict sexual morality insisted upon by their parents. But wackos such as Harris and Auvinen can just as readily interpret it as a licence to kill.

The truth or untruth of natural selection, or evolution by natural selection, doesn’t depend upon their consequences. But the inability of biologists to recognize the obvious logical implications of the freedom from the limits of traditional morality that they celebrate only serves to demonstrate their complete incompetence as philosophers. If it’s no longer evil to freely fornicate or worship idols, it’s no longer evil to freely rape or murder either. And a description of a theorized process of historical moral development is no rational basis for subsequent cherry-picking between those developments you happen to believe are positive and those you happen to believe are negative.

Mailvox: the materialist writes back

JS continues the discussion of his previous email:

Thank you for addressing my e-mail on your site. I appreciated your responses and the responses of those who commented on the post. I have to say that much of the naturalist community seems to hold on to what are obviously suppositions on their part. They believe that since their unproven explanation is the best natural one, it is the correct one. Up until very recently, I too tended to believe this, taking a similar approach. As I waxed about a bit in my last e-mail to you, what has chafed me recently about those in the secular web community is the absolute refusal to even allow a line of thinking that goes against their worldview. This growing intolerance is bothering me, as the secularist community seems to be increasingly more defensive and myopic. So, since this question will gain me only ridicule and exile in this community, I will ask you — what are some good books on the argument against TENS that an inquiring mind such as mine should endeavor to read?

I thought that TIA was one of the best refutations of neo-Atheist arguments I’ve ever read (they hate you on the secular boards btw, if I didn’t know any better, I would say you are made of straw). Here is to hoping that RGD finds continued success.

I’ve always felt that one is defined by one’s enemies as well as by one’s friends, so I am pleased to be hated by such a collection of contemptible intellects. Unfortunately, I really can’t recommend any good books that make a case against TENS because I have never read one on the subject. This is in part because I have very seldom heard any author making what I consider to be the substantive arguments against TENS, and in part because my interest in the subject is tertiary at best, I’ve only read pro-evolution books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Gould. My skepticism of TENS is largely endogenous, with a few bits and pieces that I’ve picked up on the Internet such as the revised Haldane’s Dilemma and the application of Chomsky to the tautology of natural selection.

But, I’d like to open this discussion up to suggestions from others, for books that people feel most effectively defend TENS as well as those that most effectively dissect it. I tend to prefer to read those books that most effectively defend their subjects, because then I can see how easy or difficult it is to pick apart that optimal defense. I’m presently in the process of reading Dawkins’s latest, and if it is truly the optimal defense of Neo-Darwinism that its more enthusiastic reviewers apparently believe it to be, I am increasingly inclined to believe it will not be very difficult to demonstrate that TENS is in serious trouble.

I have even discussed writing a book on the subject myself with my publisher, but I’m not convinced that it is necessary. My suspicion is that TENS will eventually implode with or without my assistance in the matter. While there are certainly scientific and atheistic interests who will cling to the Neo-Darwinism in the face of any contrary future evidence, they are neither as powerful nor as powerfully incentivized to hold to it as is the case with political and financial authorities and Neo-Keynesianism.

Mailvox: a new find

GT would like to know what I think about the fossil record in light of this newly announced discovery:

Researchers in China and the UK say they have discovered the fossils of a new type of flying reptile that lived more than 160 million years ago. The find is named Darwinopterus, after famous naturalist Charles Darwin. Experts say it provides the first clear evidence of a controversial type of evolution called modular evolution.

My first thought is that all new fossils should be named after St. Darwin of the Galapagos. I want to see them all named Darwin Darwin Darwinus and anything less would be an insult to a particular agglomeration of atoms that coalesced for a few decades before dispersing more than a century ago. I have to admit, I find the cult of the dead scientist to be tremendously amusing, especially given the way in which this particular dead scientist’s theory has done little more than ride the coattails of Mendel’s for sixty years. But it keeps a number of socially awkward men happily occupied without bothering anyone, and as we know from Keynes, digging holes in the ground stimulates the economy, so it’s all good.

But in answer to the question, there are two ways of looking at this, that of the true believer and that of the skeptic. The true believer, naturally, will point to the discovery and say: “look, one more gap filled!” That’s a perfectly reasonable perspective, and indeed, it fits with the True Belief that given enough time, chance, and government funding, every gap in the fossil record could theoretically be filled. Just do enough digging and eventually there won’t be any room for doubt. At which point, presumably all the evolutionary biologists can go home and spend their days singing songs to St. Darwin since there won’t actually be any need for their so-called science once the bone collection is complete.

The skeptic, on the other hand, notes this interesting sentence in the middle of the piece: “Researchers say that this could be evidence of what they call modular evolution – where natural selection forces a whole series of traits to change rapidly rather than just one.” Given the difficulty evolutionists have had over the last 150 years in demonstrating the ability of natural selection to permanently change even a single trait, this is a significant alteration to the historical theory. I’ve commented before on how a scientific theory in the process of failing requires adding increasingly contorted epicycles and “modular evolution”, like “punctuated equilibrium” sounds very much like one of those things.

Of course, in light of the recent news that paleontologists may not be able to tell baby dinosaurs from distinct species, perhaps the fact that the new discovery has a head and neck just like that of “advanced” pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton is identical to that of “primitive” forms indicates that we should assume these are simply three examples of the same species at different ages.

So much for the fossil record

Big dinosaur, little dinosaur, what didn’t begin with E?

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place. That’s because young dinosaurs didn’t look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University. Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.

Obviously, the jury is still out on this one. But, if it’s demonstrated to be correct, it will be a tremendous blow to TENS. If paleontologists can’t even be relied upon to correctly distinguish between mature and immature examples of the exact same species, this will obviously cast serious doubts on the credibility of the fossil transition sequences between species that they have constructed.

I await with amused interest for the true believers to explain how a complete misreading of a significant portion of the fossil record should not be taken as a reason to doubt any conclusions that were made based on the incorrectly interpreted fossil record.

Revising the revision, again

A Dog Named Flea

Assuredly he lacks the spine
To ascertain the big canine.
Should we encounter in debate
He’ll meet a most odorous fate,
For in taking him down a peg
I have merely to lift my leg
And R. Dawkins will slink away
Wet, and wearing Eau de Day.

It doesn’t matter what the evidence is, evolutionary biologists are happy to change their story to suit. They’ve certainly had enough experience at it:

The story of a critical phase in human evolution may have to be rewritten after the discovery of two remarkable fossils in Kenya that have shed new light on the origins and behaviour of two ancient relatives of Homo sapiens. One of the fossils found near Lake Turkana has shown that two early human species thought to have evolved one from the other actually lived side by side for almost half a million years, redrawing the most widely accepted version of humanity’s family tree.

The discovery means that only one of the two species, known as hominins, can be a direct ancestor of modern human beings, and not both as was previously proposed. While scientists are still confident that Homo erectus, the younger of the two, ultimately gave rise to Homo sapiens, it is now suspected that the older, Homo habilis, was an evolutionary dead end.

Both are likely to have evolved from another, older common ancestor, a missing link that has not yet been found in the fossil record, which lived between two and three million years ago.

It’s probably to be found in the same place as Richard Dawkins’s magic original replicators and the rainbow-maned unicorns of Happy Happy Unicornitopia.

I’ve found the most judicious way to deal with people who ask if I believe in evolution is to respond with a single two-word question: “Which version?” That serves nicely to head off the irrelevant Creationist-ID-God tangent that otherwise tends to pop up, and leads to much more interesting discussions.

“Evolution works like this!”

“I don’t buy it.”

“You ignorant science-hating retard! You probably think the world is flat!”

“No, I just think that your scientific consensus is based on series of false assumptions, unproven postulates and a certain amount of chicanery.”

But 10 out of 10 biologists and geologists agree – hang on – um, okay, actually evolution works like THIS!”

“You do know that a model is only valued based on its predictive abilities… and you’re trying to sell me one that is not only in constant flux but can’t even reliably explain past events, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’ve never done very well on the stock market, have you.”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”