Darwin of the gaps logic continues to collapse. II

Behold, a Further Use for Body Hair

David Klinghoffer 

purported incompetence or nonexistence of design reflected in bodies, but the hair on your arm or face or elsewhere turns out to have yet another use that was previously unknown. Hair follicles, along with the folds and oil-producing glands in the skin, form a habitat for microorganisms that are vital to the skin's ability to fight off harmful pathogens.

Nature News summarizes:

The folds, follicles and tiny oil-producing glands on the skin's surface create a multitude of diverse habitats, each with its own community of microbes.1 Most of these "commensals" live harmlessly on the skin, and their presence is thought to stop pathogenic microbes from invading the skin's habitats. But these benign residents are not just innocent bystanders -- according to a paper published today in Science, skin-specific bacteria also influence the response from the host's immune system to help fight off infection.2

Immunologist Yasmine Belkaid and her team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, decided to investigate the immunological role of the skin's resident microorganisms, known collectively as the skin microbiome. "For the first time, we've shown that the skin needs microbial signals for proper immune-cell function," says study author Shruti Naik, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, who is based in Belkaid's lab.

Mice raised in a sterile germ-free environment, thus without their normal complement of skin microbiota, were unable to mount an effective immunological response to attack by a particular pathogen -- but the ability was restored after scientists introduced a normally friendly bacterium, Staphylococcus epidermidis.

We have a dear friend who's quite germophobic and whose kids play with our kids. She's always insisting that nobody may come into her house without a severe scrubbing of the hands, face, etc. I need to remember to bring this to her attention.

In the Netherlands the abyss stares back.

The Culture of Death Is Like the Universe

 Wesley J. Smith 

Once set in motion, it never stops expanding.

Euthanasia boosters, as we know, are so full of baloney. To get the death agenda adopted, they promise the moon, that medicalized killing will be strictly limited, and always restricted to competent adults. Then, once society widely accepts killing as an answer to suffering, the age limits drops -- because how in the name of compassion can a (now) "right" to die be limited to competent adults? 

Belgium has already legalized assisted suicide for children deemed, by their death doctor, mature enough to decide. Now the Dutch Pediatric Association wants to go there too, where the current age limit -- once 16 -- is now 12. But that's not low enough! From the deVolkskrant story (Google translation):

The Dutch Association of Pediatrics (NVK) comes to the position after intense debate. If a child is incompetent, parents should be able to consult with the doctor to decide on euthanasia...

The 12-year-age limit for euthanasia is a problem for pediatricians: they see in practice that even younger children are often well able to see the consequences of their decisions.

Still, doctors are not allowed to do anything when a child between 1 and 12 years asks for euthanasia. The NVK therefore proposes to include "real mental competence" as a benchmark, rather than chronological age.

For children who can not make the decision, the physician in consultation with the parents can decide. This happens already in children between 0 and 1, but doctors believe it should also be possible for incapacitated children under 12 years.

Two points. Infanticide is legally (still) murder in Netherlands and yet, as the story admits, killing sick and disabled babies is an accepted part of Netherlander euthanasia practice.

You see, when it comes to euthanasia, "protective guidelines" and legal boundaries soon don't matter. Netherlander pediatricians and neonatologists kill babies in their cribs without consequence, proving that protective guidelines aren't worth the time it takes to read them. (See the Groningen Protocol, a published bureaucratic check list for deciding which babies can be killed.)

Second, note that the "suffering" would not have to be a terminal illness, which is not a required criterion for euthanasia in Netherlands. This means a depressed child with disabilities, who feels isolated and marginalized, could ask for euthanasia and be killed! Perhaps even a mentally ill child deemed, by a death doctor, sufficiently "competent" to decide that life is not worth living.

How Darwinism undercuts reason.

Lawyer, Scientist, or Animal? Choosing Between Evolution and Human Reason

Sarah Chaffee 

psychologist Tania Lombrozo asks, "Is the Mind's Approach More Like a Scientist or a Trial Lawyer?" She praises advances toward greater scientific objectivity, suggesting this holds promise that humans can overcome their natural biases. But the case for scientific objectivity only makes sense in a context where we can trust our reason. And guess what? That's an assumption more compatible with intelligent design than with an evolutionary framework. 

Lombrozo asks whether we tend to reason like scientists -- that is, examine the evidence and draw conclusions based on it -- or more like trial lawyers -- cherry-picking data to fit our case. She notes:

People are capable of impressive scientific thought (indeed, the best scientists are all people!). And at the same time, people are quite capable of fooling themselves into thinking the evidence does support their beliefs, even when a more objective assessment would suggest otherwise.

But she offers hope: Science is becoming more objective. Therefore we as human beings could be improving too. 

But optimists can point to a critical respect in which we might just be like scientists. Science is continually reinventing itself: We develop new statistical tools, better practices and better theories.

As one example, some scientists have recently adopted a practice called "blind analysis," which guards precisely against the kinds of confirmation biases that could otherwise influence scientific research. With blind analysis, scientists make all decisions about how data will be analyzed prior to seeing the data itself. As a consequence, these decisions can't be guided by their expectations or preferences about the conclusions the data will ultimately support.

If we're like scientists in this sense -- in the sense that we can recognize problems with our thinking and develop better practices, at least some of the time -- then there's room for a more optimistic view of the human mind. Instead of fooling ourselves into believing what we expect or want to believe, we can develop better ways to get ourselves to make the best decisions -- be it through education, artful nudges or better technology.

Blind analysis is a good idea. 

But notice this. Lombrozo places her confidence in science -- a human endeavor -- to reveal truth about the universe. Is that confidence justified? Well, it depends. Judging from her earlier blogging, Lombrozo seems to be in favor of materialistic evolution, but that same viewpoint undermines our trust in reason, or ought to do so if you're consistent. In The Magician's Twin, John West describes C.S. Lewis's views: 

The scientific method is premised on the idea that "rational inferences are valid," but the Myth [of materialistic evolution] undercuts human reason by depicting it as "simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true." Darwin's own gnawing doubt rears its head yet again: "If my own mind is a product of the irrational... how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about evolution?" 

Lewis is joined in this argument by Nancy Pearcey in Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, and Alvin Plantinga in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. 

Darwinism, in other words, undermines itself as a scientific idea. It asks that we trust the theorizing done by human minds, yet tells us those minds are a step away from irrational animals. How did trustworthy reason "evolve" ex nihilo? Materialists sidestep that conundrum.

But if study of the universe reveals evidence of intelligent design, we may have reason to trust our minds after all. Yes, sometimes we evaluate facts objectively and revise our actions accordingly -- while other times we look for data that supports our preconceived notions. Scientists included.

Under materialistic evolution, we are neither scientists nor trial lawyers -- but animals. Under ID, at least there is the chance of human beings exercising right reason and, on that basis, making real scientific progress.