Fanatic Wanted Still More Darwin Programs

110 hours, 57 minutes ago
Bruce Chapman has an insightful bit of commentary about today's tragic events at the Discovery Channel offices.

It was both scary and pathetic at the Discovery Channel in Maryland today when an environmental terrorist took hostages in an attempt to force the television network to show more programs on Malthus and Darwin and to rail against over-population and global warming. Oddly missing from initial news accounts was any mention of Darwin. But, in James J. Lee's manifesto, emerges this clear demand: "Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!"

Read it all on Discovery News.  more»»

James J. Lee, Hostage-taker and Darwinist

113 hours, 24 minutes ago
We are thankful that James J. Lee, the hostage-taker who invaded the Discovery Channel building today in Maryland, did no physical harm to his hostages, who have now been safely freed. Lee, a radical environmentalist, was shot and killed. While expressing relief that police action averted a greater possible tragedy, it's worth noting the contents of the late Mr. Lee's reported manifesto, a list of demands he published online, directed at the cable channel. Demand number 7 reads:

Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

For the sake of the planet, Lee urges the sterilization of "filthy" human beings and suggests airing "forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation." Somehow it's not surprising that he was an opponent of religion as well. Demand number 4:  more»»

Convergent Genetic Evolution: "Surprising" Under Unguided Evolution, Expected Under Intelligent Design

119 hours, 15 minutes ago
A recent article in Trends in Genetics, "Causes and evolutionary significance of genetic convergence," addresses the apparently "convergent" appearance of genes or gene sequences and how unguided evolution can explain this. The paper defines convergence as the "independent appearance of the same trait in different lineages." Thus, genetic convergence is the independent appearance of the same genetic trait in different lineages. The article starts by explaining how widespread convergent evolution is:  more»»

Designed, Yes -- Just Not by God: The Remarkable Implications of Clarke's Third Law

140 hours, 29 minutes ago
In public debates (and personal discussions) with Michael Shermer and Massimo Pigliucci, I've met an argument, advanced by both skeptics, which opens interesting and largely unexplored territory in the ID vs. naturalism controversy. In a new article, the science writer and astronomer John Gribbin steps into the same territory, a speculative region familiar to fans of science fiction, not to mention philosophy students with time on their hands and imaginations liberated (perhaps) by alcohol. Back in my early teens, when I lived on a steady diet of science fiction and first saw Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, I could have discussed these ideas well into the night. A short blog post will have to suffice today. This figure (below), from Massimo Pigliucci, helps to describe the issue: Both Pigliucci and Shermer have grasped that causation by a higher intelligence does not necessarily entail causation by a benevolent God -- and the former possibility, they think, might follow as a reasonable inference from physical evidence. This was the point, incidentally, of Richard Dawkins's speculations, at the end of the movie Expelled, about extraterrestrial intelligence possibly causing the origin of life on Earth. These physical effects might appear to us as "magic," meaning inexplicable by our current science. Arthur C. Clarke's famous Third Law -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- is the wonderfully pithy bumper sticker version of the argument.  more»»

How Not to Defend Darwin on "Survival of the Fittest"

143 hours, 40 minutes ago
Evolutionary biologists make poor historians, especially when it comes to Charles Darwin. So intent on preserving the reputation of St. Charles, evolutionists typically do their best to paper-over Darwin's less-than-savory views on issues like race or the application of natural selection to society. British biochemist and theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander runs true to form in a newly posted interview at BioLogos. In the interview, Alexander does his best to disassociate Darwin from the idea of "survival of the fittest," noting that the phrase was coined by Herbert Spencer rather than Charles Darwin, and that it was then picked up by nasty politicians like Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler, who used it to promote their noxious views.
Alexander is correct that Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," and that the idea was adopted by the Kaiser and by Hitler. But he neglects to mention one other important figure from history who embraced the term: Charles Darwin himself. As I point out in my book Darwin Day in America, Darwin eventually described "survival of the fittest" as "more accurate" than his own term of "natural selection," and he employed the phrase repeatedly in the fifth and sixth editions of On the Origin of Species as well as in other works.  more»»

Mohler, Giberson, and the Genesis of Charles Darwin: Will the Truth Set Karl Giberson Free?

96 hours, 29 minutes ago
On August 21 Karl Giberson, physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College and one of several engaged in the ever-interesting juggling act of defending "faith and science" by means of a Darwinian apologetic, now has added to his litany of misconceptions a boorish attack on Al Mohler in The Huffington Post, "How Darwin Sustains My Baptist Search for Truth." Since David Klinghoffer has provided an excellent summary of the issues involved in an earlier post to this site, Karl Giberson v Al Mohler on Darwin: The Grudge Match, they need not be restated here. The point here is to address Giberson's principal objection, namely, Mohler's assertion that "Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he was looking for or having no theory of how life emerged . . . ." Giberson wants to dismiss Mohler's comments as merely an effort "to undermine evolution by suggesting that it was 'invented' to prop up Darwin's worldview." Giberson's complaint is easily addressed from his own standpoint. Since he seems to privilege the historians on this issue (rejecting Mohler's comments as those of "a theologian and not a historian" is an odd dismissal since Giberson isn't a historian either!), what have the subject specialists said on this matter? As will become evident, it really is very much a question of worldview. The central issue at hand isn't whether or not Darwin embarked upon the Beagle "in search of evolution" but whether or not his mental attitude was prepared for it and what the nature of his attitude really was. In other words, had Darwin already formed a mental template of how natural phenomena would be interpreted once he encountered them on the Beagle? The issue certainly isn't Genesis but the genesis of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The historians tell us three major things in this regard.  more»»

Major Media Spike Discovery Channel Gunman's Darwinian Motivations

104 hours, 27 minutes ago
If someone opposed to abortion were to take hostages at an abortion clinic, you can be sure the newsmedia would tenaciously track down and publicize every anti-abortion association and comment of the criminal in question. But when a gunman inspired by Darwinism takes hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel, reporters seem curiously uninterested in fully disclosing the criminal's own self-described motivations. Most of yesterday's media reports about hostage-taker James Lee dutifully reported Lee's eco-extremism and his pathological hatred for humanity. But they also suppressed any mention of Lee's explicit appeals to Darwin and Malthus as the intellectual foundations for his views. At least, I could find no references to Lee's Darwinian motivations in the accounts I read by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Lee obviously was mentally disturbed, and the vast majority of Darwinists today would not defend his violent actions, just as the vast majority of those in the pro-life community would not embrace violence against abortion clinics. But the complete absence of Lee's Darwinian motivations from many, if not most, news reports is noteworthy.  more»»

James Lee Was Disturbed, but What Happens When an Entire Culture Embraces Social Darwinism?

32 hours, 29 minutes ago
There is little doubt that hostage-taker James Lee's virulent Social Darwinism was the product of a tragically disturbed man. But can an entire culture fall for the pernicious ideology of Social Darwinism, especially its scientific and political elites? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes, as I have documented in my book Darwin Day in America, and as the new documentary "What Hath Darwin Wrought?" persuasively shows. Perhaps the most jarring fact about the troubling views of James Lee is that similar views have been espoused over the past century by leading scientists, politicians, and thinkers. Ideas do have consequences, and not just for seriously disturbed individuals like James Lee.  more»»

Racism? Sexism? Que sera, sera.

208 hours, 45 minutes ago
Evolutionary evangelist Jerry Coyne argues that we are all just slaves to our genes and that behaviors likes racism and sexism are facts of evolution. They're in our "own nature".

We may also have evolved to be sexist and xenophobic, but that doesn't mean that we should give up trying to extirpate racism and sexism from our world. After all, by asking people to stop disliking foreigners, or those of different races, we may be asking them to defy their own nature.

Yet, he thinks we should try to stamp them out anyhow. But, if these traits are simply a result of our genetic make-up won't evolution eventually either enhance such traits or eradicate them forever? In its own good time? It seems that in Jerry's world these things shouldn't even be up for a debate since things are just the way they are. Naturally. Que sera, sera.  more»»

Hawking Not Needed to Explain His New Book, Says Universe

56 hours, 29 minutes ago
Reached today for comment about Stephen Hawking's new book, the Universe said that Professor Hawking should receive no credit for the ideas. "You humans naively assume that 'physicists' exist, who discover theories," said the Universe. "But I did it all. Me. The transitory entity known to you as 'Stephen Hawking' is merely an epiphenomenon of the laws of nature, otherwise known as Me, the Universe itself. Mindless physical stuff, the only thing that ever really existed, or ever will exist." "Hawking, and that other guy -- what's his face, Dawkins -- have been stealing my royalties for years. I've got some lawyers working on that." "Anyway, I don't know why Hawking and Dawkins, or Harris and Dennett and the rest of that crew, go on and on about 'God' not existing, when they don't exist either. 'Noted atheist authors,' blah, blah, blah. What a load. Physics is everything, and ultimately, the only thing." "I wrote this article, for instance. Interviewed myself. Wrap your minds -- which you don't possess, actually -- around that, you bits of unreal cosmic debris."

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