Tag: evolution

Dawkins Syndrome

Apparently my hypothesis that atheism is a mild form of autism was correct, but didn’t go anywhere nearly far enough. Scientists are determining that atheists are mutants who are literally unfit in a variety of ways.

Until the Industrial Revolution, we were under harsh conditions of Darwinian Selection, meaning that about 40{434e4795edb8718426f2262f16bc350bda72304c69f2c22d1de5754882bdf177} of children died before they reached adulthood. These children would have been those who had mutant genes, leading to poor immune systems and death from childhood diseases. But they would also have had mutant genes affecting the mind. This is because the brain, home to 84{434e4795edb8718426f2262f16bc350bda72304c69f2c22d1de5754882bdf177} of the genome, is extraordinarily sensitive to mutation, so mental and physical mutation robustly correlate. If these children had grown up, they might have had autism, schizophrenia, depression… but they had poor immune systems, so they never had the chance.

Under these conditions, prevalent until the nineteenth century, we were individually selected for but we were also “group selected” for. Ethnic groups are simply a genetic extended family and some groups fared better against the environment and enemy groups than others did, due to the kind of partly genetic psychological adaptations they developed.

Among these, the authors argue, was a very specific kind of religiosity which developed in all complex societies: the collective worship of gods concerned with morality. Belief in these kinds of gods was selected for, they maintain, because once we developed cities we had to deal with strangers—people who weren’t part of our extended family. By conceiving of a god who demanded moral behaviour towards other believers, people were compelled to cooperate with these strangers, meaning that large, highly cooperative groups could develop.

Computer models have proven that the more internally cooperative group—which is also hostile to infidel outsiders—wins the battle of group selection [The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation by Max Hartshorn, June 2013]. This very specific kind of religiousness was selected for and, indeed, it correlates with positive and negative ethnocentrism even today.

The authors demonstrate that this kind of religiousness has clearly been selected for in itself. It is about 40{434e4795edb8718426f2262f16bc350bda72304c69f2c22d1de5754882bdf177} genetic according to twin studies, it is associated with strongly elevated fertility, it can be traced to activity in specific regions of the brain, and it is associated with elevated health: all the key markers that something has been selected for.

And it is from here that the authors make the leap that has made SJW blood boil. Drawing on research by Michael Woodley of Menie and his team (see here and here)they argue that conditions of Darwinian selection have now massively weakened, leading to a huge rise in people with damaging mutations. This is evidenced in increasing rates of autism, schizophrenia, homosexuality, sex-dysmorphia, left-handedness, asymmetrical bodies and much else. These are all indicators of mutant genes.

Woodley suggests that weakened Darwinian selection would have led to the spread of “spiteful mutations” of the mind, which would help to destroy the increasingly physically and mentally sick group, even influencing the non-carriers to behave against their genetic interests, as carriers would help undermine the structures through which members learnt adaptive behaviour.

This is exactly what happened in the infamous Mouse Utopia experiment in the late 1960s, where a colony of mice was placed in conditions of zero Darwinian selection and eventually died out. [Death squared: The explosive growth and demise of a mouse population. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, January 1973(PDF)].

So Dutton and his team argue that, this being the case, deviation from this very specific form of religiousness—the collective worship of moral gods in which almost everyone engaged in 1800—should be associated with these markers of mutation. In other words, both atheists and those interested in spirituality with no moral gods (such as the paranormal) should be disproportionately mutants.

And this is precisely what they show. Poor physical and mental health are both significantly genetic and imply high mutational load. Dutton and his team demonstrate that this specific form of religiousness, when controlling for key factors such as SES, predicts much better objective mental and physical health, recovery from illness, and longevity than atheism.

It’s generally believed that religiousness makes you healthier because it makes you worry less and elevates your mood, but they turn this view on its head, showing that religious worshippers are more likely to carry gene forms associated with being low in anxiety. Schizophrenia, they show, is associated with extreme and anti-social religiosity, rather than collective worship. Similarly, belief in the paranormal is predicted by schizophrenia, and this is a marker of genetic mutation.

Next, they test autism, another widely accepted marker of mutation, as evidenced by the fact that it’s more common among the children of older men, whose fathers are prone to mutant sperm. Autism predicts atheism.

The good news is that once times get difficult again, atheism will again recede in both quantities and virulence. The bad news is that we are going to have to try to treat people born with what I suggest we call “Dawkins Syndrome” with a little more sympathy, since they probably can’t help their lack of belief or behavior much more than those born with Downe’s Syndrome.

How fortunate that those born with Dawkins Syndrome are so highly rational and inclined to put perfect faith in science. Surely they will accept these new scientific discoveries about their condition with grace and aplomb.

A theory, falsified, again

One wonders how many times evolutionary biologists are going to see their hypotheses falsified before they finally give up and abandon ship on their pet theory.

Before the advent of rapid, accurate, and inexpensive DNA sequencing technology in the early 2000s, biologists guessed that genes would provide more evidence for increasing complexity in evolution. Simple, early organisms would have fewer genes than complex ones, they predicted, just as a blueprint of Dorothy’s cottage in Kansas would be less complicated than one for the Emerald City. Instead, their assumptions of increasing complexity began to fall apart. First to go was an easy definition of how complexity manifested itself. After all, amoebas had huge genomes. Now, DNA analyses are rearranging evolutionary trees, suggesting that the arrow scientists envisioned between simplicity and complexity actually spins like a weather vane caught in a tornado.

In summary:

  1. Biologists predicted genome size would increase over time, and that was wrong. 
  2. Biologists then predicted that gene number would increase over time, and that was wrong. 
  3. Biologists predicted that complex body parts would develop after simpler body parts, and that was wrong.
  4. Biologists have now found that the oldest living ancestor of animals, comb jellies, already had brain, nervous system, and muscles, and that sponges later lost those genes. Complexity was there at the start. 
  5. Biologists have also found, through experiment, that most mutations cause a loss of complexity.

The latter is particularly important, because it renders evolution statistically improbable to the point of impossibility. How many scientific theories can produce so many predictions that are completely proven wrong, so many hypotheses that are falsified, and still be considered orthodox dogma that one must be a madman or a barbarian to question?

I don’t have the answer, but frankly, at this point, I am more inclined to believe in the possibility either alien breeding programs or the grand simulation hypothesis I am in the combination of abiogenesis and the neo-Darwinian synthesis. The combination is not only too temporally difficult and statistically improbable, but reliably produces incorrect hypotheses. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it isn’t science, merely that it is bad and outdated science that is unlikely to ever have any engineering relevance.

Mailvox: how to teach evolution

Mindy asks how to teach evolution to homeschooled children:

I’m off to purchase materials at a homeschooling conference in couple days. I was wondering what your thoughts were on teaching evolution to grade school level students. I want to introduce a more formal science curriculum but all of the conventional materials are saturated in evolutionary timescales and theory. 

Personally, my thoughts on creationism are rather fluid.  I don’t know that the six days of creation should be taken literally though I don’t believe man evolved from any other animal.  I would like to give my kids a firm foundation in Bible based science before teaching the conventional theory but am not sure whether to use the literal fundamentalist version to start with. Normally, when teaching younger children, we do so from the position of having a definitive answer instead of a more or less open question and yet I don’t want to confuse my first grader with my waffling.  At some point they will need to be introduced to the conventional theory of evolution.

When would you do this and how? Any science curricula that is especially good for grade school kids? I look forward to some new ideas on this. I do so enjoy your home schooling threads.

Many parents prefer to keep their children in the dark concerning intellectual concepts with which they disagree. This is true across the political spectrum. I consider this to be a huge mistake.

If you have read RGD, then you will know that my description of Keynesian economics, which I consider to be utter bollocks, is nevertheless so complete and correct that people have described it as one of the better summaries of it that they have ever encountered. My belief is that if something is false, the best way to understand its falsity is to know it better than its advocates. So read the sources and read the current champions, then critique it.

And if you’re not capable of doing that, how do you know it is wrong?

As for the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, or TE(p)NSBMGDaGF, I would recommend a child be 15 or 16 before studying it. Any younger and they won’t be able to identify the obvious flaws and will be tend to be inclined to simply accept whatever they are told, whether it is TENS, monetarist economics, or magic garden fairies.

Start with an abridged version of The Origin of the Species. Then read one or two of Richard Dawkins’s books; The Selfish Gene is much better than The Greatest Show on Earth because it is an explanation whereas the latter is an apology. That will ensure that the child is better-educated and more up-to-date on evolution than any graduate of the public or private schools.

Then introduce two or three of the critics. I can’t recommend one, because I’ve never actually read any of the various books by TENS critics as I have no need to bolster my own reasons for being skeptical of the theorum. But there are plenty out there and I’m sure the readers here can recommend a few of them.

The point is that there is never any need for those dedicated to the truth to shy away from falsehood or fear it. Hit it head on. Study it. Master it. And then you will be able to explain its weak points to others. That being said, I can see the need for an Evolution curriculum; if we can find a suitably credentialed skeptic, we will likely publish one.

Post-evolutionary Man

Roosh not only observes that natural selection no longer applies to human evolution, but concludes that this indicates the inapplicability of the evo psyche model to human behavior:

Anti-evolutionary behaviors should have been weeded out of the gene pool according to the idea of natural selection, but the more I looked around, the more I saw nothing but my own behavior, of people who were actually frightened to death about being a parent even though they were healthy and could afford to raise children. In fact, the sum of Western ideologies seem aimed to specifically halt human reproduction.

Western people are structuring their lives in deliberate ways to not reproduce at all and where their cherished hedonistic lifestyles would be greatly harmed if children entered the picture, and while it’s easy to use evolutionary theory in describing which man a woman chooses to have sex with, how can that possibly be correct if the man used condoms or the woman used birth control? Darwin’s theory refers to reproduction, not recreational sex and definitely not a prolonged period of sterile sport fucking, which has no benefit to the genes of the “athlete.” Having an explanation for why a girl on birth control went home with the “alpha male” after meeting him in the club has nothing to do with evolution or natural selection, since they both knew that no child would result and used the full force of their consciousness to prevent the creation of life. If reproduction was the purposefully blocked intent, evolution was not present during the sex event….

We must therefore conclude, with logic and rationale, that evolution is so flawed at explaining modern human reproductive
behavior (and not merely casual sex where reproduction was never the
intent), that evolution is not an observable or correct principle for
human beings living in Westernized nations. We must discard evolutionary
theory as applying to all humans through the mechanism of natural
selection and begin a search for a new explanation that explains our
current biological behavior.

Evolution may have been the correct theory for a window of human
existence, but that window has now closed and theories for
post-evolutionary man, one in which there is no struggle for survival
and where the strongest of the species are not reproducing, must be
devised.

Even if we were to concede that we got here through the process of
evolution from a primordial soup, and that our brains are the result of
it, these brains are now in a modern environment which has tripwired,
hijacked, or corrupted any applicable evolutionary program. We have
become one with the plugged-in cosmopolitan borg, and that regardless of
the process that caused us to come about, that process is no longer in
effect and a new process, yet to be described or understood, is
manifesting itself throughout humanity and shattering Darwin’s “survive
and reproduce” model.

I never bought into either the natural selection explanation for human evolution or the evo psych explanation for human behavior, but it is fascinating to see other high-caliber thinkers like Roosh who did beginning to reach similar conclusions.

Needless to say, this is one of the many topics we will be discussing at next week’s open Brainstorm event. There are 500 290 seats left and seats can be reserved here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5402452949014075905. But whether you’re interested in the event or not, you should definitely read the piece linked above.

Western society is now dysgenic as well as dyscivic. This means it cannot survive in its current form. Regardless of how fervently you support concepts like women’s suffrage, equality, diversity, immigration and so forth, it is important to understand that, in the long term, you are choosing them over indoor plumbing, cheap and plentiful water, airplane travel, living wages, access to high-tech medical care, and reasonably full employment.

Believe or don’t believe that you are doing it, but that is exactly the choice you are making every single day. The fact that you can’t see the brick wall looming a few miles down the road does not mean it is not there.

Evolution or equality

There can be only one… at most.

It is impossible to simultaneously understand the theory of evolution and to believe in blank-slate cognitive equality among human groups of different continental origins.

Both propositions—evolution and equality—cannot simultaneously be true. You have to pick one. Choose wisely, because you can’t have both.

Either evolution is a real and ongoing process that has rendered different groups with different mean aptitudes, or we’re all equal—and thus all measurable group disparities in things such as income and intelligence are due to unfairness, hatred, injustice, and flat-out stinking evil.

Yet against all logic and evidence and propelled purely by the smarmiest sort of saccharine emotionality that has ever been shit-sprayed out of human hearts, modern progressives insist that these two fundamentally contradictory belief systems are simultaneously true.
“What sort of person who claims to believe in evolution would deny its fundamental role in shaping human history?”

They insist that evolution is real and that only a dumb hillbilly would not believe in it. But they also insist that evolution had nothing to do with quantifiable disparities between groups in brain size and intelligence, and even if those dumb apelike hillbillies consistently score higher on intelligence tests than your average nonwhite hood rat, well, then, you’re dumb—and evil—for even noticing.

Now, I happen to be skeptical of one and outright reject both the existence and the possibility of the other. But that is an intellectually consistent position. Subscribing to both evolution and equality is intrinsically nonsensical.

Evolution and the problem of time

I always find it amusing when someone who has credentials in a subject, but is at a distinct disadvantage in IQ terms tries to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. You may recall that over the years, I have repeatedly asked various evolutionary True Believers a very simple and straightforward time-based question, to which there absolutely must be an answer, and they not only have been unable to answer it, but frequently tried to deny it was either a) relevant or b) possible, thereby demonstrating that they don’t understand ANYTHING about their own faux-scientific faith. But the speed of evolution, and of the underlying mutations, is absolutely central to understanding the theory, as well as determining whether it is total nonsense or not:

Mathematicians keep refining π even though they know it to more than 12 trillion digits; physicists beat themselves up because they cannot pin down the gravitational constant beyond three significant figures. Geneticists, by contrast, are having trouble deciding between one measure of how fast human DNA mutates and another that is half that rate.

The rate is key to calibrating the ‘molecular clock’ that puts DNA-based dates on events in evolutionary history. So at an intimate meeting in Leipzig, Germany, on 25–27 February, a dozen speakers puzzled over why calculations of the rate at which sequence changes pop up in human DNA have been so much lower in recent years than previously. They also pondered why the rate seems to fluctuate over time. The meeting drew not only evolutionary geneticists, but also researchers with an interest in cancer and reproductive biology — fields in which mutations have a central role.

“Mutation is ultimately the source of all heritable diseases and all biological adaptations, so understanding the rate at which mutations evolve is a fundamental question,” says Molly Przeworski, a population geneticist at Columbia University in New York City who attended the Human Mutation Rate Meeting….

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and
archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution,
such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world.
But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when
extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most
recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered
dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many
researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting
multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is
assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

You know you’re dealing with QUALITY science when scientists start substituting variables for concrete numbers depending upon what they want the results to be. Here is the money quote: “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,” he
says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite
embarrassingly bad and uncertain.”

As I have repeatedly predicted, genuine genetic science is eventually going to kill evolution by natural selection deader than phlogiston or the Flat Earth theory.

Probability and belief

A few days ago, in Probability and the Problem of Life, I pointed out that there is no need to precisely calculate probabilities that we cannot possibly know in order to reach logical conclusions about them. Contra the opinions of the misguided math fetishists, logic is the foundation of math, not the other way around, and we can reach perfectly sound logical conclusions even if we are not able to make precise mathematical determinations or quantifiy all of the various factors involved.

Throughout the course of the discussion, it soon became abundantly clear that those who defend the theory of TENS on probability grounds do not actually believe their own position. Furthermore, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that although the very low probability events to which they appeal are mathematically possible, they are so highly improbable that no sane human being can credibly feign to take seriously, as evidenced by their own daily behavior with regards to other, much more likely events.

WRF3 asked me to identify the precise point at which mathematical possibility and belief part company; I said that for me it was somewhere between 1 in 4,165 and 1 in 17,347,225. The latter are the odds of being dealt four aces twice in succession from two properly shuffled card decks; I would not view that as credibly possible and continue to play poker with a machine that dealt out such hands. The absolute outer limit for even the most credible individual is probably 1 in 72,251,192,125, which would be three such unlikely hands.

But the reality is that for the average individual, the credibility ratio is much lower. Consider the recent statistical evidence of the New England Patriots having systematically cheated by deflating the football since the 2007 season:

While speculation exists that “Deflate Gate” was a one time occurrence, data I introduced last week indicated that the phenomena MAY have been an ongoing, long standing issue for the New England Patriots. Today, that possibility looks as clear as day.

Initially, looking at weather data, I noticed the Patriots performed extremely well in the rain, much more so than they were projected.  I followed that up by looking at the fumble data, which showed regardless of weather or site, the Patriots prevention of fumbles was nearly impossible.  Ironically, both studies saw the same exact starting point:  2007 was the first season where things really changed for the Patriots.  Something started in 2007 which is still on-going today.

I wanted to compare the New England Patriots fumble rate from 2000, when Bill Belichick first arrived in New England, to the rest of the NFL.  Clearly, one thing I found in my prior research was that dome teams fumble substantially less frequently, given they play at least 8+ games out of the elements each year.  To keep every team on a more level playing field, I eliminated dome teams from the analysis, grabbed only regular season games, and defined plays as pass attempts+rushes+times sacked.  The below results also look only at total fumbles, not just fumbles which are lost.  This brought us to the ability to capture touches per fumble.

To really confirm something was dramatically different in New England, starting in 2007 thru present, I compared the 2000-06 time period (when Bill Belichick was their head coach and they won all of their Super Bowls) to the 2007-2014 time period.  The beauty of data is the results speak for themselves:

The data is jaw dropping, and this visual perfectly depicts what happened.  From a more technical perspective, John Candido, a Data Scientist at ZestFinance who is a colleague of mine over at the NFLproject.com website and was also involved in the development of this research, comments:

Based on the assumption that plays per fumble follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten since 2007 once in 5842 instances.

Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0001711874 probability to win. In other words, it’s very unlikely that results this abnormal are only due to the endogenous nature of the game.

Many of the arguments giving the Patriots the benefit of the doubt are evaporating.  While this data does not prove they deflated footballs starting in 2007, we know they were interested in obtaining that ability in 2006. (This is something I found out AFTER I performed the first two analyses, both of which independently found that something changed starting in 2007.)

I was skeptical when I first read the analyst’s theory, because he initially used fumbles lost rather than all fumbles; it is generally believed by football statisticians who have considered the question that fumble recoveries are random. And when fumbles rather than fumbles lost are utilized, the Patriots are considerably less of a radical outlier, although they are the only team that plays outdoors that fumbles as little as a dome team.

My first thought was that the anomaly was more a result of New England’s pass-happy offense than statistical evidence of ball deflation. However, a look at the passing statistics showed that New England was pass-happy as early as 2002, when they threw 601 passes, compared to 582 in 2014, and the fact that their plays per fumble from 07-14 increased so dramatically from 00-06 after the rule change that they requested does tend to confirm the analyst’s original suspicions.

 But my point is not to take a side in the latest New England scandal, only to observe that for the professional statistician, observation of a successful event against 1 in 5,842 odds is sufficient to indicate the results observed are probably not obtained naturally. And while this statistical evidence is not absolute proof (although it is interesting to see that the statistician’s odds are in the range I suggested should preclude belief), it is enough to indicate that the greater part of one’s efforts should be directed at discovering the precise nature and mechanism of the unnatural tampering indicated rather than on the unlikely natural explanation.

“The bottom line is, something happened in New England.  It happened just
before the 2007 season, and it completely changed this team.”

Which brings us back rather to my long-held position contra Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Once you have calculated the sufficiently improbable, you must reconsider your assumptions of the impossible.

Evolution is a random process

Mindstorm wrote:

Selection is not random, because it eliminates what is locally worse and leaves what is locally better. Mutations
without selection – that would be pure randomness. Good luck finding a
biologist that would believe in such ‘evolution’.

This is a point frequently made by the evolutionarily faithful. It is also completely and utterly wrong; one need only consult a dictionary to see that it is, without question, “random” in the primary sense of the word. 

1. proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern 

2. of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen. 


Evolution by natural selection absolutely fits the first definition of random. I should be very amused to see anyone attempt to claim otherwise and cite the “definite aim, reason, or pattern” involved. As for the second definition, it falls to the evolutionist to demonstrate that the probabilities of being chosen are unequal without resorting to circular logic.

That being said, I think it is fair to state that logic indicates evolution by natural selection is not a statistically random process simply because it is not credible to insist that all mutations have an equal probability of being chosen. However, it’s not consistent to make such a probability-based argument while simultaneously rejecting a more calculable probability-based argument against the occurrence of the phenomenon.

In my opinion, the correct way to describe TENS in this regard is as a random, hypothetical process that is probably not statistically random. However, it should be noted that the selection process postulated is a logical construction, and a circular one at that, and has not been reliably observed or demonstrated.

Probability and the Problem of Life

Yesterday, I observed that most biologists and believers in evolution have a poor grasp of probability. In the subsequent discussion, the otherwise perspicacious wrf3 demonstrated that he is not entirely clear on the difference between math and philosophy, two fields it is rather important to distinguish between despite their occasional overlap:

If you’re going to claim that the occurrence of low probability events is evidence of behind-the-scenes tampering in nature, then you’re going to have to show how the math for that works without assuming your conclusion. Otherwise, you’re a fraud.

That is incorrect and is is an indication of subscribing to the conventional fetish-myth of math. Logic does not require math or even any quantification. A correct syllogism holds true regardless of whether it contains any quantities or not.

Consider the following two syllogisms:

  1. All cats are named Tom.
  2. I have a cat.
  3. Therefore, my cat’s name is Tom.
  1. Mike is shorter than Alan.
  2. Zeke shorter than Mike.
  3. Therefore, Alan is taller than Zeke.

Both syllogisms are impeccably correct, without having any need to show how the math for them works. Sure, in the case of the latter we could treat the names as variables, retroactively assign some quantities to them, and thereby confirm the correctness of the logic with math, but that would be redundant. It’s not necessary. We already know that the syllogism is correct because its logical construction is correct. The conclusion follows correctly from the propositions.

Here is the relevant syllogism:

  1. No low-probability event has been observed to take place without tampering in nature.
  2. A low-probability event has taken place.
  3. Therefore, nature was tampered in.

There is nothing fraudulent about that. There is no need for any math, or even any precise measurement of how low the relevant probability is in order to correctly conclude that nature has, in fact, been tampered in. Indeed, that is the only possible conclusion that is dictated by the logic.

Now, one can argue either of the first two propositions. One can claim either a) a low-probability event has been observed to take pace without tampering in nature or b) a low-probability event has NOT taken place to reject the conclusion. Only in the case of evolution, argument b) cannot possibly apply. We are here, after all.

 This leaves argument a) a low-probability event has been observed to take pace without tampering in nature. Very well. That is the only correct objection to the argument, so the burden thus falls on wrf3 or anyone who wishes to argue that there has not been any tampering with nature, be it Divine, divine, or merely alien, in the origin of the various species. I do hope no one is so haplessly midwitted that they fall into the obvious and incorrect trap for the intellectually careless here.

Furthermore, for the stubbornly pedantic, I will note that impossible is NOT a synonym for zero probability. Yesterday’s pedantry was not only foolish and irrelevant, it was technically incorrect and didn’t even rise to the level of Wikipedia.

Imagine throwing a dart at a unit square (i.e. a square
with area 1) wherein the dart will impact exactly one point, and imagine
that this square is the only thing in the universe besides the dart and
the thrower. There is physically nowhere else for the dart to land.
Then, the event that “the dart hits the square” is a sure event. No other alternative is imaginable.

Now, notice that since the square has area 1, the probability that
the dart will hit any particular sub-region of the square equals the
area of that sub-region. For example, the probability that the dart will
hit the right half of the square is 0.5, since the right half has area
0.5.

Next, consider the event that “the dart hits the diagonal of the unit
square exactly”. Since the area of the diagonal of the square is zero,
the probability that the dart lands exactly on the diagonal is zero. So,
the dart will almost never land on the diagonal (i.e. it will almost surely not
land on the diagonal). Nonetheless the set of points on the diagonal is
not empty and a point on the diagonal is no less possible than any
other point, therefore theoretically it is possible that the dart
actually hits the diagonal.

The same may be said of any point on the square. Any such point P
will contain zero area and so will have zero probability of being hit
by the dart. However, the dart clearly must hit the square somewhere.
Therefore, in this case, it is not only possible or imaginable that an
event with zero probability will occur; one must occur. Thus, we would
not want to say we were certain that a given event would not occur, but
rather almost certain.

Or to put it another way: “Consider selecting a point x from the uniform distribution with p.d.f. f over the unit circle D. P(x = r) = int_{{r}}f = 0 for all r in D. However, clearly x is in D.”

In other words, quibbling over the difference between impossible and very highly improbable is totally pointless, because the sufficiently intelligent can also manage to do so over the difference between impossible and zero probability. It’s all beside the point anyhow, as the aforementioned logical syllogism should suffice to demonstrate.

Now, one can, if one wishes, attempt to quibble over the precise level of probability that defines “low-probability event”, but here it suffices to cite Borel’s Law of Chance (which is actually more of a Heuristic of Chance) that states: “Phenomena with very small probabilities do not occur”. However, Borel also directly addressed the Problem of Life directly in Probability and Certainty, p. 124-126:

The Problem of Life.

In conclusion, I feel it is necessary to say a few words
regarding a question that does not really come within
the scope of this book, but that certain readers might nevertheless
reproach me for having entirely neglected. I mean the problem of
the appearance of life on our planet (and eventually on other planets
in the universe) and the probability that this appearance may have
been due to chance. If this problem seems to me to lie outside
our subject, this is because the probability in question is too
complex for us to be able to calculate its order of magnitude. It
is on this point that I wish to make several explanatory comments.

When we calculated the probability of reproducing by mere chance
a work of literature, in one or more volumes, we certainly observed
that, if this work was printed, it must have emanated from a human
brain. Now the complexity of that brain must therefore have been
even richer than the particular work to which it gave birth. Is it
not possible to infer that the probability that this brain may have
been produced by the blind forces of chance is even slighter than
the probability of the typewriting miracle?

It is obviously the same as if we asked ourselves whether we could
know if it was possible actually to create a human being by combining
at random a certain number of simple bodies. But this is not
the way that the problem of the origin of life presents itself: it
is generally held that living beings are the result of a slow process
of evolution, beginning with elementary organisms, and that this
process of evolution involves certain properties of living matter that
prevent us from asserting that the process was accomplished in
accordance with the laws of chance.

Moreover, certain of these properties of living matter also belong
to inanimate matter, when it takes certain forms, such as that of
crystals. It does not seem possible to apply the laws of probability
calculus to the phenomenon of the formation of a crystal in a
more or less supersaturated solution. At least, it would not be
possible to treat this as a problem of probability without taking
account of certain properties of matter, properties that facilitate
the formation of crystals and that we are certainly obliged to verify.
We ought, it seems to me, to consider it likely that the formation
of elementary living organisms, and the evolution of those organisms,
are also governed by elementary properties of matter that we do
not understand perfectly but whose existence we ought nevertheless
admit.

This is often cited as evidence that it is not possible to apply the laws of probability calculus to the question of evolution. John Stockwell wrote: “In short, Borel says what many a talk.origins poster has said
time and time again when confronted with such creationist arguments:
namely, that probability estimates that ignore the non-random elements predetermined
by physics and chemistry are meaningless.”

However, the elementary properties of matter that Émile Borel, who died in 1956, did not understand are better understood today. We now know that the probability of the beneficial mutations required for the theory of natural selection are very low; we have also observed that the number of generations needed for even fairly small selective changes to spread across a population are too great to fit the timescales required. So, Borel’s arguments for the inapplicability of probability calculus to the problem of life is outdated, leaving us with one more logical construction to consider.

  1. The Law of Chance states that phenomena with very small probabilities do not occur
  2. We do not understand the elementary properties of matter that govern the formation
    of elementary living organisms and the evolution of those organisms. 
  3. Therefore, we cannot apply the Law of Chance to the Problem of Life.

That may have been true in the 1950s. But in 2015, we possess considerably more information and we sufficiently understand those elementary properties of matter in order to estimate enough of the probabilities concerned to characterize them as “very small”. This falsifies proposition two, leaving us with the inescapable conclusion that the Law of Chance does apply to the Problem of Life, and therefore evolution by natural selection has not occurred. Which then brings us back to the original point and forces us to conclude that if evolution has taken place, it is the result of artificial selection.

Lamarck lives!

And the Neo-Darwinian wall continues to crumble:

LANDMARK Adelaide research showing that sperm and eggs appear to carry genetic memories of events well before conception, may force a rethink of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, scientists say.

It also suggests the bad habits developed through a parent’s lifetime could be passed on genetically to their children.The University of Adelaide research, published internationally today, shows that babies may be prone to their parents’ youthful behaviour, from gorging as obese teenagers to a preference for fruit or even dislike of smells.

The work by the university’s Robinson Research Institute appears on Friday in the international journal Science after being put through scrupulous peer review.

It paves the way for a review of the work of French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose theory that an organism can pass to its offspring characteristics acquired during its lifetime was largely ignored after Darwin’s publication of On The Origin of Species in the mid-1800s, that work defining evolution as a process of incidental, random mutation between generations.

I’m just curious how much more the theory has to be shown to have gotten wrong before its advocates decide that it is time to start viewing it as just another scientific hypothesis rather than unquestionable dogma. The conceptual epicycles are stacking up at an ever-increasing rate.

It should be readily apparent that genetic memory would be a considerably more powerful mechanism than waiting for random mutations, then gradually selecting for those genes across an entire population, one favored mating survivor at a time.