The (re)birth(?) of Greece.

The real victors?

Darwinism and the rise of the expertocracy.

Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism: John West’s Darwin Day in America

Kenneth Feucht

 

 

I have been reviewing Darwin Day in America: How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, by Discovery Institute Vice President John West. See my post from yesterday, “Darwinism and the ‘So What?’ Question.”

In the following section of the book, Dr. West considers a subject near and dear to me as a surgical oncologist, and that is life and death. He covers abortion and pre-birth issues, but also euthanasia, various forms of assisted suicide, and every moment in between birth and death. In my work, I was surrounded by the possibility of death on a daily basis. In an ethical context, the prolongation of the dying process can be as evil as its acceleration. As a physician, I found it easy to identify those colleagues who had a low view of human life, with their callous disregard for the patient as a person. In the academic setting, the unnecessary prolongation of life in order to support the effectiveness of an experimental treatment plan, or perhaps in order to improve hospital statistics, or to increase federal reimbursements, was the norm and not the exception. 

The Beginning of Life

It seems bewildering that there would be perplexity as to when human life begins. No one is uncertain about that in the breeding of a racehorse or in the gestation of an embryo belonging to an endangered species. So, what’s different about the human embryo? What is so difficult about recognizing the beginning of a human life, such that the pundits of this age have excused the slaughter of the unborn, and even of the born, as Dr. West documents? There is trouble only when an ideological fog inhibits the cerebral function of the Darwinist. If humans really are nothing more than the product of chance events in the primordial slime, then perhaps it doesn’t matter how we treat each other. 

It’s odd that so many Darwinists demean humanity even as they aver that humans represent the pinnacle of evolution,  given the “evolution” of speech, superior intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity. In a “nature rights” perspective, these are all to be trashed in order to spare the lower forms of evolution, whether animals or plants. Stranger is the fact that only humans are sentient and able to appreciate the lower forms of beings on our planet. Beauty does not exist in the mind of an endangered yellow-legged frog as he glances at a flower-covered meadow, or foliose lichen growing on the side of a tree that overlooks a majestic mountain scene. 

The Law of the Jungle 

The chapter on death is a difficult and troubling one. West presents and discusses the Shiavo and Cruzan cases. These are two exceptional cases, both of which were mismanaged (in my estimation), and neither of which should set a precedent for medical ethics. The main point that West tries to drive home is that the personal worth of the individuals, Shiavo and Cruzan, was devalued by those who thought that the termination of life was the most viable option for their care. Does this mean that virtually every effort must be extended in order to prolong life? I mentioned above that the prolongation of death can be as immoral as the prolongation of life. In addition, the patient’s quality of life becomes a confounding issue that muddies any discussion. Respect for life remains of utmost importance. However, in a world where the survival of the fittest selects out who shall live, the law of the jungle (West’s term) prevails. Financial, social, personal, and other concerns are judged to be more important than the life of the patient.

The Rise of Totalitarian Science

In his conclusion, West offers a succinct and well-written summary of his thesis, including a defense of the theory of intelligent design. It would have been the best chapter in his book had he not added a later addendum. 

The afterword, on “Totalitarian Science,” published in 2015, shows John West as a prophet of things to come. We now see “science” wielded in defense of any sort of nonsense and untruth imaginable. In my years as a doctoral student in the cell biology laboratory, I heard many lectures on integrity in research. This was because the notable academies of science were finding evidence of a troubling trend toward fraud. 

This was in the 1980s, and the situation is much worse today. It’s a perfect example of Darwinism in the performance of science. The publish or perish mentality among academics is simply another form of survival of the “fittest.” Before the Enlightenment, theology was known as the Queen of the Sciences. Rather than being in competition with science, theology was understood as the foundation for all science. Indeed, science did quite well as long as there was understood to be a theological basis for it. With theology stripped from its place at that foundation, we must not be surprised that the house of science is crumbling around us. 

West wrote this afterword before the Covid crisis, in which the name of “science” has been tossed about as a support for any sort of government oppression. Meanwhile, the mega-media complex aggressively strips the population of free speech, all in the cause of defending the edicts of those who call themselves scientists. West was able to see all of this coming a few years before it happened. Yet prophets most often go without honor, and I don’t expect West to get the acclaim that he deserves. If he did, his book would be on the New York Times bestseller list.

 

Darwinism where the rubber meets the road.

Darwinism and the “So What?” Question: John West’s Darwin Day in America

Kenneth Feucht

 

 

Many books have been written about scientific problems with the theory of evolution. Neo-Darwinism, as the leading construct of evolutionary theory, has its fierce supporters as well as its opponents. Few topics have the capability of generating heated conversations and of turning friends into foes. Few people, though, ever ask the “So what?” question. How does Darwinist thinking affect the man on the street? Or is Darwinism simply a neutral scientific doctrine? How does Darwinism influence what we do once you or I wake up in the morning? 

At first glance, it might seem that whether we believe in evolution as a purely material, unguided process should make no difference to values or morality. Yet, in his 2007 book Darwin Day in America: How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, Discovery Institute’s John West looks at the question more deeply and shows otherwise. In a nearly encyclopedic manner, he documents the numerous impacts Darwinism has had in the public square. It has had a distinctively destructive effect on our society. Dr. West provides a plethora of examples in each chapter of how Darwinism has changed the courts, the schools, the medical establishment, the conduct of the scientific community, and, indeed, the man on the street. 

A War of Worldviews

As the book shows, Darwinism is a Weltanschauung at war with the Judeo-Christian theistic system on which Western civilization and scientific inquiry are based. Many of Dr. West’s examples were unknown to me, and will be news to many other readers. In a skillful and scholarly fashion, he unearths the contest between faith and “science,” while providing references for any claims that he makes. The book is divided into sections, with each oriented around a specific theme. I’ll be as brief as possible in this two-part review. 

I took a psychology class in college and wrote a book review and rebuttal to B. F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity. I got an “A” on that paper, and still have it in my files. This was back in the day when colleges (I attended the hyper-liberal Portland State University) still had free speech. Looking back on this paper recently, I noted that I had used what John West calls the “nothing buttery” argument, and could not remember where I picked up that phrase since I did not provide references in my paper. It was thus with great surprise that I noted the title of the first chapter of Darwin Day in America, “Nothing Buttery.” Thankfully, Dr. West referenced the book that is the source of the phrase, a book I had first read between high school and college. It is A Clockwork Image: A Christian Perspective on Science, by Donald MacKay. 

Nothing buttery is when a “scientist” makes the preposterous (and impossible to prove) claim that the world is “nothing but” what we can detect and observe through science. Truly, it is science-of-the-gaps thinking which forces a pseudo-scientific explanation on the entirety of the world. So much of what we see and know is unprovable and so much more is simply unknowable, yet advocates of nothing buttery use science to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Out of this nothing-buttery scientific materialism, there emerged the Darwinist Weltanschauung that is currently deconstructing our society. West, in a subsequent chapter, gives a brief and instructive summary of the rise of Darwinism as a picture of reality.

Crime and Punishment

In the next section of the book, he addresses the themes of crime and punishment. When Dostoevsky wrote his masterpiece Crime and Punishment, there was still a Christian Weltanschauung, and the novelist knew that his readership would comprehend the sense of guilt after committing murder. If written today, his book probably would not pass muster with critics, though Woody Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors could still play on the residual Judeo-Christian worldview of 30-plus years ago. Through a number of examples, West shows how the Darwinian mindset removes responsibility for crime, or turns the criminal into nothing more than a victim of mental illness. Rather than punishment or restitution, rehabilitation becomes the recommended treatment. “Science” is claimed as the guiding beacon for the new management of criminal offenses. However, it strains the imagination to see how injustice and recidivism reflect a scientific approach. 

On our journey through the dismal night of Darwinian conceptions, West turns next to wealth and poverty. This section covers big finance, eugenics (and though only indirectly mentioned, critical race theory), utopianism, advertising, architecture, and more. All have been heavily influence by a materialistic worldview deriving from Darwinism. West offers multiple examples, and I believe that he succeeds in his argument. 

As Leaky as a Colander

The section on how Darwinism has affected education is fascinating. The establishment does NOT want you to know how campus free speech has been stifled, and this is especially true in the context of teaching students, or not teaching them, about the controversy that still exists about Darwinian theory. Though it is a theory as leaky as a colander, educators feel that to admit problems with the theory would be troubling to young people, who might then even dare consider intelligent design as an alternative. How horrid that would be! On the other hand, sex education and the new thinking on sex, including any sexual deviancy under the sun, is permissible, should we be in reality functional blobs generated by a few accidents in the primordial slime. 

Next, “Darwinism and Scientific Totalitarianism.”

 

OOL science makes another sale?

Yale’s Steven Novella Falls for Origin-of-Life Hype

Brian Miller

 

 

Earlier this week, I described how the University of Tokyo greatly overstated the research results of a team of their origin-of-life scientists. The exaggerated claims have been spreading across the Internet. For example, Yale neurologist Steven Novella repeated the same misinformation: 

Researchers at the University of Tokyo published a study in Nature Communications in which they establish that an RNA system can spontaneously evolve complexity. …This RNA network had the critical components of evolutions — able to generate new information, greater complexity, and new variation. Further there was a differential survival of those molecules better able to function in the network in order to self-replicate. This is, in short, evolution. Give it a few billion years and you might have something interesting.

Promoting the Secular Creation Narrative

Novella is a prominent atheist who jumped at the chance to promote the secular creation narrative of life’s origin. In his blog post, he even included a figure from an article published in the journal Cell depicting the RNA world hypothesis. The diagram includes a long RNA chain folded into an enzyme-like structure (aka ribozyme) that can perform biologically relevant functions such as replicating RNA templates. The diagram depicts the journey of the ribozyme and neighboring peptides into modern cellular machinery. 

However, Novella’s depiction of the experiment is completely inaccurate. The RNAs did not fold into ribozymes that replicated other RNAs or directly performed any other function. Instead, the investigators supplied all the cellular machinery to manufacture proteins. They also supplied the “host” RNA that encoded the information to generate proteins that replicated RNA templates.  The “translation-coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system” did not generate anything truly novel or grow in biologically relevant complexity. The RNAs solely acquired mutations that altered the translated replicase’s efficiency and accuracy.

Predicting the Future

Novella suggests that the system could over billions of years produce “something interesting.” But one does not need to guess its fate if it were transported back in time to the early earth. The researchers in a 2013 Nature Communications article describe exactly where the system heads if left on its own: 

Translation coupling increases the complexity of the replication scheme; therefore, the TcRR system becomes vulnerable to selfish or parasitic RNAs, which are continuously generated from genomic RNA by the deletion of the internal replicase-encoding region, while retaining the terminal region for replicase recognition. These small RNAs are selfish and parasitic in that they do not produce replicase but replicate rapidly because of their small size (typically 222 nucleotides), utilizing the already existing replicase, until genome replication is competitively inhibited (parasitic RNA replication in Fig. 1a).

The purported increase in complexity corresponds to the production of nonfunctional RNAs that provide no benefit to a developing cell. Instead, they eventually shut down host RNA replication. The researchers could only sustain replication by separating the host and parasitic RNAs into their own microscale compartments. The isolation required a highly sophisticated experimental protocol that would have had no parallel on the early earth. In an ancient environment, any RNA replication system would have quickly crashed, and the RNA and proteins would have irreversibly degraded into simpler molecules (here, here).

The Deep Irony

The irony of Novella’s pollyannish description of the research is that he is a host of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. He described the purpose of the podcast as follows:

…we challenge the audience to pick out the fake science news item from the real science news item. …But we deal with the paranormal or conspiracy theories, or health fraud, consumer protection type of issues. And our goal is to give our listeners the tools to look at science in the news, science in society and have some way of navigating through all of the claims and all of the hype and basically have the tools to figure things out for themselves more than anything else.

If Novella had consistently applied his hype-detection tools to the press release from the University of Tokyo, he would have described the research in dramatically different terms.  

 

True disciples of the true Christ and war.

1John3-11,12KJV"For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous."

The Lord JEHOVAH is not accepting any excuses for violating this clear prohibition including(but not limited to) "I was just following orders"

On the origin of life and the design debate.

The Origin of Life and the Information Enigma

Stephen C. Meyer

 

 

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. We are presenting Dr. Meyer’s chapter as a series, in which this is the second post. Find the full series so far here.

As I noted, Darwin attempted to explain the origin of new living forms starting from simpler preexisting forms of life. Nevertheless, his theory of evolution by natural selection did not attempt to explain the origin of life — the origin of the simplest living cell — in the first place. Yet there now is compelling evidence of intelligent design in the inner recesses of even the simplest living one-celled organisms. Moreover, a key feature of living cells — one that Darwin knew nothing about — has made the intelligent design of life scientifically detectable.

In 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions — the information — for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive.

A Famous Hypothesis

Francis Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis,” according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. Just as letters of the English alphabet may convey a particular message depending on their arrangement, so too do certain sequences of chemical bases along the spine of a DNA molecule convey precise instructions for building proteins. The arrangement of the chemical characters determines the function of the sequence as a whole. Thus, the DNA molecule has the same property of “sequence specificity” that characterizes codes and language. 

Moreover, DNA sequences do not just possess information in the strictly mathematical sense described by pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon. Shannon related the amount of information in a sequence of symbols to the improbability of the sequence (and the reduction of uncertainty associated with it). But DNA base sequences do not just exhibit a mathematically measurable degree of improbability. Instead, DNA contains information in the richer and more ordinary dictionary sense of alternative sequences or arrangements of characters that produce a specific effect. DNA base sequences convey instructions. They perform functions and produce specific effects. Thus, they not only possess “Shannon information,” but also what has been called specified or functional information. 

The Genetic Code

Like the precisely arranged zeros and ones in a computer program, the chemical bases in DNA convey instructions by virtue of their specificarrangement — and in accord with an independent symbol convention known as the genetic code. Thus, biologist Richard Dawkins notes that “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”¹ Similarly, Bill Gates observes that “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”² Biotechnologist Leroy Hood likewise describes the information in DNA as “digital code.”³

After the early 1960s, further discoveries revealed that the digital information in DNA and RNA is only part of a complex information processing system — an advanced form of nanotechnology that both mirrors and exceeds our own in its complexity, design logic, and information-storage density. 

Where did the information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information processing system arise? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary origin-of-life research. Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And, as I show in extensive detail in my book Signature in the Cell, no theory of undirected chemical evolution explains the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell.⁴

Too Much Information

Why? There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone. And attempts to explain the origin of information as the consequence of prebiotic natural selection acting on random changes inevitably presuppose precisely what needs explaining — namely, reams of preexisting genetic information. The information in DNA also defies explanation by reference to the laws of chemistry. Saying otherwise is like saying a newspaper headline might arise from the chemical attraction between ink and paper. Clearly something more is at work. 

Yet the scientists who infer intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes — chance, laws, or their combination — have failed to explain the origin of the information and information-processing systems in cells. Instead, we think intelligent design is detectable in living systems because we know from experience that systems possessing large amounts of such information invariably arise from intelligent causes. The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer — from a mind. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”⁵

Information and Prior Intelligence

This connection between information and prior intelligence enables us to detect or infer intelligent activity even from unobservable sources in the distant past. Archeologists infer ancient scribes from hieroglyphic inscriptions. SETI’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposes that information embedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. Radio astronomers have not found any such signal from distant star systems. But closer to home, molecular biologists have discovered information in the cell, suggesting — by the same logic that underwrites the SETI program and ordinary scientific reasoning about other informational artifacts — an intelligent source.

DNA functions like a software program and contains specified information just as software does. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that specified information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal — always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of such information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring (or detecting) that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence.

Next, “The Logic of Design Detection.”

Notes

1. Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic, 1995), 17.
2. Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (New York: Viking, 1995), 188.
3. Leroy Hood and David Galas, “The digital code of DNA,” Nature 421 (2003), 444-448.
4. Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2009), 173-323.
5. Henry Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 16.

 

back to the future for the WWW?

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Democracy put in protective custody?

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Rehabilitation continues to elude OOL science.

Fact Check: Did University of Tokyo Researchers Explain the Origin of Life?

Brian Miller

 

 

The University of Tokyo offers a press release lauding research by a team of their scientists that purportedly helps explain the origin of life. The lead investigators recently published their experimental results in Nature Communications in an article titled “Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network.” They summarize the research as follows:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have for the first time been able to create an RNA molecule that replicates, diversifies and develops complexity, following Darwinian evolution. This has provided the first empirical evidence that simple biological molecules can lead to the emergence of complex lifelike systems.

They then quote the lead investigators:

The team was truly excited by what it saw. “We found that the single RNA species evolved into a complex replication system: a replicator network comprising five types of RNAs with diverse interactions, supporting the plausibility of a long-envisioned evolutionary transition scenario,” said [Ryo] Mizuuchi.

The research paper itself avers, “These results support the capability of molecular replicators to spontaneously develop complexity through Darwinian evolution, a critical step for the emergence of life.”

If the scientists had accomplished such an astonishing feat, the team leads would almost certainly receive a Nobel Prize. So, did they accomplish it? Unfortunately, these claims do not even remotely resemble the reported experimental results. 

The Actual Experiment

The investigators started with a 2125 nucleotide “host” RNA borrowed from a Qb virus. The host RNA encodes the amino acid sequence for one of the proteins in a complex called a Qb replicase. The replicase transcribes RNA meaning it uses RNA templates to create complementary RNA strands. The investigators also borrowed all the molecular machinery from modern cells required for translating RNA into proteins. The inventory of supplied translational components includes dozens of enzymes, 46 tRNAs, and ribosomes. 

The team encapsulated this “translation-coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system” in a cell-like compartment composed of a water-in-oil emulsion. The entire system had to be contained in a microscopic volume to ensure interaction between the translated replicase and the host RNA. 

The investigators implemented a meticulously orchestrated experimental protocol to drive RNA replication and protein translation for hundreds of cycles. The replicase transcribed the host RNA to create complementary strands. The replicase also transcribed the complementary strands to create copies of the host RNA. The translation system used the host RNA to manufacture the protein required to create the replicase. Transcription and translation were performed entirely by the supplied molecular machinery. 

During each round of replication, mutations altered the host RNA sequence, creating multiple variants. In addition, some replication events deleted regions that encoded the information for the replicase. The resulting RNA strands could no longer translate into replicases, so they were labeled parasitic RNAs since they performed no function. 

Over time, different host variants dominated the population, and they generated replicases that preferentially transcribed specific host variants and nonfunctional RNAs. In addition, the lengths of dominant nonfunctional RNAs changed with increasing replication cycles. The investigators mapped the relative efficiencies between different host variants replicating each other and between host variants replicating parasites. They described how this “replication network” changed with time.

The Implications of the Results

What did the research team accomplish? The answer is nothing of significance. The investigators provided the machinery required to externally drive replication. The RNAs did not replicate either themselves or each other. Nor did they directly perform any biologically relevant function. The acquired mutations solely tweaked the translated replicases to perform their pre-existent function with different speeds on different host variants and nonfunctional RNAs, or they disabled the replicases. Only the numbers of variant RNAs and the speed of replication changed. The functional complexity of the system did not increase, and nothing novel emerged. 

The experiment has no relevance to what could have transpired on the early earth (here, here, here). RNAs hundreds of nucleotides in length could not have formed. Even if they did, the probability that their sequences encoded a functional replicase is infinitesimal. And none of the components required for protein translation existed before the appearance of autonomous cells. 

An evolving RNA network could not have emerged even if the earth contained vast quantities of RNAs encoding replicases and numerous copies of all the required translational components. Replication and translation could only have initiated if the RNA, replicase, and the translational machinery migrated into a microscopic cellular container. The possibility of such a fortuitous occurrence is beyond remote. 

An Alternative Version

The writer of the press release is not fully to blame for greatly exaggerating the research results. As we saw, the authors of the original technical article overstated their accomplishments and the significance of their work. The writer simply amplified the exaggerated claims and couched the study in the context of the secular creation narrative of life’s origin. 

If the writer fully understood the research and prioritized scientific accuracy, the summary would have read more like the following:

Researchers further demonstrated the implausibility of life originating through undirected processes. Their experiment reinforces the conclusion that any form of molecular replication requires the highly sophisticated machinery that only exists in living cells. And the origin of any cellular component requires externally imparted information. The study also further discredits the claim that Darwinian evolution could have assisted life’s origin by showing that random mutations at best only slightly modify preexistent functions in proteins. Nothing novel ever emerges, and complexity never significantly increases.

 

The rise (and fall?) of the iron lady.

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How the reds stole the bomb.

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The fall of Rome II?

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Let them eat cake?

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Yet another fail for Christendom?

Lamarck's revenge? II

Paper Provides More Evidence that Mutations Aren’t Random

Casey Luskin

 

 

Earlier this year we covered a paper in Nature which found that mutations in the Arabidopsis genome were not occurring randomly. As that paper noted, “The random occurrence of mutations with respect to their consequences is an axiom upon which much of biology and evolutionary theory rests.” Yet the findings of the paper overturned these basic principles of modern evolutionary biology. Now another paper, this one published in Genome Research by biologists from Israel and Ghana, reports similar findings about the non-random nature of mutations. 

Mutation in Response to Need

A news release from the University of Haifa pulls no punches about the implications: “Groundbreaking study uncovers first evidence of long-term directionality in the origination of human mutation, fundamentally challenging Neo-Darwinism.” They report:

A new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the University of Haifa showed that the rate of generation of the HbS mutation, which protects against malaria, is higher in people from Africa, where malaria is endemic, than in people from Europe, where it is not. “For over a century, the leading theory of evolution has been based on random mutations. The results show that the HbS mutation is not generated at random but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance,” said Prof. Livnat. Unlike other findings on mutation origination, this mutation-specific response to a specific environmental pressure cannot be explained by traditional theories. “We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations,” said Livnat. [Emphasis added.]

If they are correct, then some groups of humans have evolved the ability to produce necessary mutations to lead to certain beneficial adaptations more frequently than those humans who lived in environments where those adaptations wouldn’t have been helpful. This suggests that mutations do not necessarily happen without regard to the needs of organisms — which, as they put it, “fundamentally challeng[es] Neo-Darwinism.”

“From the Hawk’s Sharp Eye to the Human Cardiovascular System”

Or does it? After all, they seem to propose that the ability to preferentially produce favorable mutations itself is an adaptation that arose by (presumably) unguided evolutionary mechanisms:

Ever since Darwin we have known that life arose by evolution. But how, exactly, does evolution — in all its grandeur, mystery and complexity — happen? For the past century scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident to the genome and that natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, favors beneficial accidents. The accumulation of these presumed genetic accidents under natural selection over the millennia leads in turn to adaptations, from the hawk’s sharp eye to the human cardiovascular system. … “Mutations defy traditional thinking. The results suggest that complex information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures,” said Prof. Livnat.

But how did this preferential tendency to produce useful mutations itself arise? Most materialists will say that it arose by chance mutations that became fixed in populations because they were beneficial to organisms. So you’re back to a neo-Darwinian view of mutations after all — random mutations produce beneficial traits even if neo-Darwinian mechanisms sometimes produce non-random biases towards beneficial mutations. 

A Vague Lamarckian Fashion

But is that the only explanation for the origin of such mutational biases? Could not intelligent design also explain the presence of mutational spectra that spike where there may be a benefit for an organism? Would that not be a good design strategy to build into living organisms? The technical paper ignores such possibilities — preferring to say that “epigenetic” mechanisms exist which allow these preferences to evolve in a vague long-term Lamarckian fashion. From the news release:

While widely held in the scientific community, this view has always left open fundamental questions, such as the problem of complexity. Can the sequential accumulation of small random changes, each beneficial on its own, lead within the timespan available to the evolution of such astonishingly complex and impressive adaptations as we see around us in nature, such as eyes, brains or wings, where complementary parts interweave into a complex whole? However, the only alternative at the fundamental level conceived of up until now consisted of variants of Lamarckism — the idea that organisms can somehow respond directly to their immediate environments with beneficial genetic change. Since Lamarckism has not worked in general, the notion of random mutation remained the prevailing view. … Previous studies, motivated by Lamarckism, only tested for an immediate mutational response to environmental pressures. “Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all, but not in the way previously conceived. We must study the internal information and how it affects mutation, as it opens the door to evolution being a far bigger process than previously conceived,” Livnat concluded.

These researchers have done innovative research to investigate rates of “de novo mutations — mutations that arise ‘out of the blue’ in offspring without being inherited from either parent.” Their findings are extremely important: mutations aren’t random and may occur in patterns that are designed to benefit an organism. How did this arise? Epigenetics may be the direct mechanism, but how did those epigenetic mechanisms arise? Their origin has obvious design implications. But if your only alternative to neo-Darwinism is Lamarckism or some hazy materialistic model of evolution, then you are going to miss the viable possibility of intelligent design.

 

Why we can't take OOL science seriously.

On the reset.

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The realignment.

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"Man to man is a wolf"

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Headed for a fall?

The civil war rages on.

War continues to be good business.

Censorship on the march?

On the foundation of reason.

 

Faith in God Is the Only Coherent Basis for Reason

Michael Egnor

 

 

Atheists commonly assert that there is a profound dichotomy between faith and reason. This is exemplified by atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s book Faith vs. Fact. He implies that we can have faith in the truth of something or we can have factual knowledge of the truth but we cannot have both. Faith and fact are, in his view, mutually exclusive. But that is not true.

Faith in God provides an indispensable foundation for the power of human reason. In the perspective proposed by medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), we must accept radical skepticism about the veracity of our perceptions and our concepts.

One may ask: How do we know that what we perceive or what we believe corresponds to reality? The answer is that we can’t know, in the sense that we can’t use our perceptive or intellectual abilities to prove the validity of our perceptions or concepts. To do so would be to reason in a circle. If our perceptions and our concepts are not reliable, then how could we use them to validate their reliability?

That’s Radical Enough

The skepticism Thomas requires is radical indeed. For example, even Descartes’s assertion, “I think therefore I am,” is not something we can prove without faith. The problem lies in the “therefore.” We must tacitly assume the validity of logic — specifically the logic of non-contradiction — to link “I think” to “I am.”

If we do not have faith in logic, then it would be possible to think but not to exist. Of course we find this possibility absurd, but it is only absurd because of our profound faith in the validity of logic — in this case, the validity of the logical principle of non-contradiction. That is the principle inherent in the belief that thinking presupposes the existence of the thinker. If logic were not reliable, there would be no logical connection between thinking and existence. Thinkers could think without existing.

So we are left with radical skepticism — theists and atheists alike. We can conclusively prove nothing about our knowledge of the world. It might all be a delusion and we have no certain way to be sure that it is not.

But of course sane people believe that — at least to some extent — we have access to truth. But this access is always a matter of faith — the validity of reason cannot be validated by reason itself. The process of this faith differs between those who believe in an omniscient and omnibenevolent God and those who do not.

I will speak here from the Christian perspective as it is the one with which I am the most familiar. 

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

How Darwinism's ministry of truth warps the origins debate II.

Do Non-Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?

John G. West

 

 

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. See also Dr. West’s article from last week, “Do Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?”

Even nonscientists can face problems for suggesting that there might be a serious intellectual debate over Darwinism. At Baylor University, philosopher and legal scholar Francis Beckwith was initially denied tenure despite an outstanding record of academic research and publications.¹ Although Professor Beckwith was well known for his prolife views, he was most controversial for his law review articles and an academic book defending the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism.² It is important to note that Beckwith did not advocate that intelligent design should be taught in public schools — only that it was constitutional to teach it in an appropriate manner. But that nuanced position was too much for some of his colleagues, who were defenders of Darwin’s theory. Fortunately for Beckwith, after a public outcry, the president of Baylor later granted him tenure.³

A Dissertation in Limbo

College professors are not the only targets in academia who face discrimination because of their skepticism of Darwinism. Students can be even more vulnerable. Ohio State University doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard had his dissertation defense put in limbo after three pro-Darwin professors filed a spurious complaint attacking Leonard’s dissertation research as “unethical human subject experimentation.” Leonard’s dissertation project looked at how student beliefs changed after students were taught scientific evidence for and against modern evolutionary theory. The complaining professors admitted that they had not actually read Leonard’s dissertation. But they were sure it must be unethical. Why? According to them, there is no valid evidence against evolutionary theory. Thus — by definition — Leonard’s research must be tantamount to child abuse.⁴

Outside of academia, there have been similar cases of discrimination in government-funded science organizations. David Coppedge was a senior computer systems administrator for the Cassini Mission to Saturn at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He faced demotion and discharge after he offended his supervisor by occasionally offering to loan colleagues DVDs about intelligent design.⁵ No one had ever complained to Coppedge about his offers of DVDs, but when the supervisor found out, Coppedge faced a punitive investigation. His employment evaluations, which had been outstanding, suddenly became negative, and ultimately he lost his job. Coppedge’s dismissal was justified as a budgetary reduction unrelated to his views on intelligent design, but that explanation was questionable given the facts of the case.

The Sternberg Case

Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg faced similar retaliation by officials at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) after accepting for publication a peer-reviewed article supportive of intelligent design in a biology journal he edited. A research associate at the museum, Sternberg said that after the article was published, he was told to vacate his office space and was shunned and vilified by colleagues. Efforts were also made by administrators to discover Sternberg’s personal religious and political beliefs.⁶ Investigators for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that “it is…clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing [Dr. Sternberg]…out of the [Smithsonian].”⁷

Smithsonian officials denied any wrongdoing, but Sternberg was demoted from a research associate to a research collaborator without explanation.⁸ A 17-month investigation by subcommittee staff of the House Committee on Government Reform subsequently confirmed and elaborated on the previous findings of the US Office of Special Counsel. In a detailed report released to the public, subcommittee investigators concluded that they had uncovered “substantial, credible evidence of efforts to abuse and harass Dr. Sternberg, including punitively targeting him for investigation in order to supply a pretext for dismissing him, and applying to him regulations and restrictions not imposed on other researchers.”⁹

Congressional investigators further accused NMNH officials of conspiring “on government time and using government emails…with the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education (NCSE)…to publicly smear and discredit Dr. Sternberg with false and defamatory information.”¹⁰ The NCSE even provided a set of “‘talking points’ to…NMNH officials on how to discredit both Sternberg and the Meyer article.” In addition, the NCSE was asked by senior museum administrator Dr. Hans Sues “to monitor Sternberg’s outside activities…The clear purpose of having the NCSE monitor Dr. Sternberg’s outside activities was to find a way to dismiss him.”¹¹ Congressional investigators concluded that “the extent to which NMNH officials colluded on government time and with government resources with the NCSE to publicly discredit Dr. Sternberg’s scientific and professional integrity and investigate opportunities to dismiss him is alarming.”¹²

When asked about Sternberg’s plight by the Washington Post, Eugenie Scott of the NCSE seemed to suggest that Sternberg was lucky more was not done to get rid of him: “If this was a corporation, and an employee did something that really embarrassed the administration, really blew it, how long do you think that person would be employed?”¹³

Teachers at Risk

Science teachers in K-12 schools also face challenges if they criticize Darwinian theory. In Minnesota, high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing doubts about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”¹⁴

In Washington State, longtime high school biology teacher Roger DeHart faced continuing harassment from pro-Darwin activists, who succeeded in getting his school district to prohibit him from discussing scientific criticisms of modern Darwinian theory with his students. DeHart was even banned from sharing mainstream science publications with students that corrected textbook errors about evolution. Although DeHart complied with his district’s gag order, ultimately, he was removed from teaching biology. When he took a job in an adjoining school district so that he could continue to teach biology, the harassment continued. He was eventually reassigned from teaching biology in that district as well, even though there were no allegations by his new district that he was not following the prescribed curriculum. DeHart finally was driven from public education altogether.¹⁵

Notes

1. John West, “Scandal Brewing At Baylor University? Denial of Tenure to Francis Beckwith Raises Serious Questions About Fairness and Academic Freedom,” Evolution News and Views (March 28, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/03/scandal_at_baylor_university_d/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
2. See, for example, Francis J. Beckwith, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Francis J. Beckwith, “Science and Religion Twenty Years After McLean v. Arkansas: Evolution, Public Education, and the New Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 26 (Spring 2003), 455-499; Francis J. Beckwith, “Public Education, Religious Establishment, and the Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy 17 (2003), 461-519; Francis J. Beckwith, “A Liberty Not Fully Evolved?: The Case of Rodney LeVake and the Right of Public School Teachers to Criticize Darwinism,” San Diego Law Review 39 (November/December 2002), 1311-1325.
3. Robert Crowther, “Welcome News as Scholar Francis Beckwith Is Granted Tenure At Baylor,” Evolution News & Views (September 27, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/09/welcome_news_as_scholar_franci/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
4. For information about the Bryan Leonard case, see Catherine Candinsky, “Evolution debate re-emerges: Doctoral student’s work was possibly unethical, OSU professors argue,” The Columbus Dispatch (June 9, 2005); “Attack on OSU Graduate Student Endangers Academic Freedom,” Discovery Institute (April 18, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2661/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Professors Defend Ohio Grad Student Under Attack by Darwinists,” Discovery Institute (July 11, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2715/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
5. For information and documentation about the Coppedge case, see Robert Crowther, “Trial to Begin in Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit against NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab,” Evolution News and Views (March 5, 2012), https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/trial_to_begin_/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Facts of the Coppedge Lawsuit Contradict the Spin from Jet Propulsion Lab and National Center for Science Education,” Evolution News and Views, March 12, 2012, https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/facts_of_the_co/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Why Did NASA’s JPL Discriminate Against David Coppedge and Why Does It Matter?” Evolution News and Views (November 22, 2011), https://evolutionnews.org/2011/11/what_happened_t/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
6. See David Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2005, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110687499948738917 (accessed November 24, 2020). For more information about the controversy surrounding the publication of the journal article supportive of intelligent design, see “Sternberg, Smithsonian, Meyer, and the Paper That Started It All,” https://www.discovery.org/a/2399/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Richard Sternberg, “Smithsonian Controversy,” http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php (accessed November 24, 2020).
7. Letter to Richard Sternberg from the US Office of Special Counsel, August 5, 2005, available at http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php?page=letter (accessed November 24, 2020). Also see Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic.”
8. Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian: Smithsonian’s Top Officials Permit the Demotion and Harassment of Scientist Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution, Staff Report Prepared for the Hon. Mark Souder, Chairman, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources (Washington, DC: US House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, December 11, 2006), 3, 20-21, https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2020/11/IntoleranceandthePoliticizationofScienceattheSmithsonian.pdf (accessed November 26, 2020).
9. Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 4.
10. Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 5-6.
11. Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 22, emphasis in original. The congressional report further explained, “Dr. Sues hoped that the NCSE could unearth evidence that Dr. Sternberg had misrepresented himself as a Smithsonian employee, which would have been grounds for his dismissal as a Research Associate: ‘As a Research Associate, Sternberg is not allowed to represent himself as an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, and, if he were to do so, he would forfeit his appointment.’”
12. Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian, 23, emphasis in original.
13. Quoted in Michael Powell, “Editor Explains Reasons for ‘Intelligent Design’ Article,” The Washington Post (August 19, 2005), A19.
14. Quoted in Rodney LeVake vs. Independent School District #656, State of Minnesota Court of Appeals, C8-00-1613 (May 8, 2001); https://web.archive.org/web/20130314100547/http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/0105/c8001613.htm (accessed November 24, 2020). Additional information on the LeVake case can be found in James Kilpatrick, “Case of Scientific Heresy is Doomed,” Augusta Chronicle (December 23, 2001), A4. The Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the school district’s interest in maintaining its curriculum overrode LeVake’s First Amendment interest in teaching material critical of Darwinian evolution.
15. John G. West, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 231-232, 234-238.

 

The bravest newest world yet?

Our Looming Procreative Anarchy

Wesley J. Smith

 

It is no secret that the traditional family is under unprecedented assault. But we haven’t seen anything yet. A time is coming — I would say, within the next twenty years — when there will be no limits to the creation of novel family structures enabled by biotechnology.

We get a hint of that coming dystopia (from my perspective) in an article published in the Reproduction and Fertility medical journal. A bioethicist claims there are no moral reasons for disallowing skin cells to be turned into ova and sperm (in vitro gametogenesis, IVG) — already done in mice — so as to allow open-ended means of having children. When coupled with other emerging biotechnologies, there would be few impossibilities! From, “Is There a Valid Ethical Objection to the Clinical Use of In Vitro-Derived Gametes?”:

IVG affords biological parenthood to more family constructions than does natural conception. Concerns regarding this fact constitute a large proportion of those found in the literature. Biological parenthood could conceivably be made accessible to the deceased; postmenopausal women; single individuals; same-sex couples; groups of more than two individuals; children, fetuses and embryos.

Well Beyond Merely Radical

Embryos as fathers, mothers, or whatever, would go well beyond merely radical, to the socially destabilizing. But other than safety concerns, the author sees no reason not to charge full speed ahead into this biotechnologically enabled social anarchy:

Ethicists discourage objections based on natural law as they have been illustrated to be flawed and morally prejudiced. Even if this were not the case, an attack on the unnatural is a prima facie move which targets the entire medical profession, including medicines, vaccines and other ARTs. This is something that, one must assume, is not the intention of proponents of such a view.

Therefore, one may say instead that reproductive IVG somehow crosses a line and is more unnatural than other medical interventions but even this is difficult to justify. When one is less accustomed to a certain practice, it may attract more distrust or criticism than is warranted; this is a manifestation of the mere-exposure effect, a cognitive bias that renders individuals more averse to the unfamiliar. Such a belief does not reflect the moral value of the practice in question. As an example, IVF was initially regarded as morally suspect for many years – it is only as its practice has become commonplace that public opinion has shifted in its favour. Therefore, while ethical policy should recognise pluralism, it should be developed from rational arguments that are accepted as valid from the perspective of all stakeholders

Which means that moral objections will never be deemed valid. Think about it. People will always be found who want what they want with regard to having children — no matter the moral threats that their desires pose to cultural stability or to the social well-being of future children.

The Bottom Line

That’s clearly the author’s bottom line:

In light of the arguments presented in this review, I conclude that there is no coherent and justifiable in-principle ethical objection to the use of IVG as an ART [assisted reproductive technology] for those who cannot, by any other means, parent offspring with whom they share genetic material. Although both practical and safety concerns currently prevent its application in humans, the approval of reproductive IVG ought to be enacted upon their resolution.

The West is engaged in the most radical remaking of the basic structure of the family in human history — enabled by the most powerful technologies ever devised — methods that can literally change our genomes down the generations and erase fundamental family definitions.

And we are inert in the face of the chaos that could (would, in my view) result therefrom. Not only are we not creating reasonable boundaries; we aren’t even talking about it.

 

 

The fossil record v. Darwin once more.

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Digital currency: The future of money?

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Analog is back in the game?

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Darwinian occultism produces yet another Zombie.

Zombie Science: Miller-Urey Experiment Is Back from the Dead, Barely

David Coppedge

 

 

With the flasks, tubes, and sparks, the Miller-Urey experiment of 1953 was too good a propaganda visual to let die. This story of what biologist Jonathan Wells calls zombie science should have died the year it went viral, because Harold Urey and Stanley Miller, both well-informed biochemists, knew well that the formation of a few simple amino acids was a far, far cry from a living cell. 

They observed the tar of toxic byproducts that formed in the flask. By trapping out the products they wanted, they committed investigator interference. Scientifically speaking, the Miller experiment was a non-starter. Then later, when the atmosphere they used was called into question, the evolutionary icon was doubly dead. 

Now It’s Back

But only twitching on the table. Three geophysicists from the Technical University of Denmark, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, simulated the requirements to light sparks in the assumed prebiotic atmosphere. They used Miller’s original mixture and the revised mixture by Kasting (1993) that was more weakly reducing than Miller’s mixture of hydrogen, methane, and water vapor. The results were not encouraging. The possibility of spark generation is too doubtful to raise the Miller-Urey zombie to walking position.

In the 1950s Miller and Urey performed discharge experiments in a gas mixture resembling the atmosphere of Ancient Earth and showed that a significant amount of prebiotic material was produced, possibly laying the foundation for the further synthesis of the first biomolecules. We perform numerical computer simulations of electron avalanches in the gas mixture used by Miller and Urey as well as in a mixture suggested more recently for the composition of Ancient Earth’s atmosphere 3.8 Ga ago and study the conditions needed for the inception of filamentary discharges. We calculate electron and discharge properties and compare them with results for discharges on Modern Earth…. Our simulations show that discharges in the Miller-Urey mixture incept at lower fields than in Kasting’s mixture and partly on Modern Earth which implies that discharges in the atmosphere of Ancient Earth might have been more challenging to incept than previously thought. [Emphasis added.]

No sparks; no amino acids. No amino acids, no life. Perhaps some molecules would form from UV light or cosmic rays, but those energy sources lack the pizzazz of sparks. The textbook cartoons would be boring without those blue sparks in the flask. Everybody seems to have assumed that sparks in the flask were a good proxy for sparks in a prebiotic atmosphere. One should never assume such a key piece of the story without evidence. These authors believe it “might have been more challenging… than previously thought.”

What Did the Team Accomplish?

It’s not clear what the team accomplished if anything. They didn’t operate a Miller-type setup. They didn’t try instigating discharges in Miller’s strongly reducing atmosphere, nor in the weakly reducing atmosphere revised by Kasting in 1993 to be more plausible for the prebiotic Earth. That atmosphere eliminated the methane and hydrogen from the mix and relied primarily on nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Neither did they try getting sparks to start in a modern Earth atmosphere, although lightning is a common observation to us all. In fact, they admit that they don’t even know how lightning starts in our modern atmosphere.

Since it is known for Modern Earth that the large-scale electric fields in thunderstorms are in the order of 0.1E_k, hence seemingly too low for streamers and subsequently for lightning to occur, it is still an enigma how lightning can occur on Modern Earth (Dubinova et al., 2015; Gurevich & Karashtin, 2013). Thus, although the difference in the streamer inception electric field is rather small, it could potentially make a big difference on how efficiently streamers incept. Nonetheless, it is more difficult to incept streamers as precursors of lightning in the weakly reducing Kasting mixture than in the mixture used by Miller and Urey or in modern day air. On the contrary, in local environments, with a significant contribution of methane and ammonia, it might be easier to incept streamers, to observe discharges and maybe even create prebiotic molecules.

Might? Maybe? 

All they did was create a computer model of the requirements for streamer formation that might initiate the avalanche of electrons we call lightning. Once again, they say it was probably more challenging than thought: 

We provide a table summarizing the electric fields needed for discharge inception in these different atmospheres. Our simulations show that discharges in the Miller-Urey mixture incept at lower fields than in Kasting’s mixture and partly on Modern Earth which implies that discharges in the atmosphere of Ancient Earth might have been more challenging to incept than previously thought.

Without performing experiments, and without calibrating the conditions required for spark inception, their model is basically useless. So, what did their paper achieve? 

PR for Their Work

The only motivation that seems apparent was to get some PR for their work by tying it to the Miller-Urey experiment. In Icons of Evolution (2000), Jonathan Wells summarily executed the Miller-Urey experiment as having any relevance to the origin of life, but it didn’t stay dead. He slew it again in Zombie Science (2017). Now, again, the dead theory makes another appearance in the academic literature of the American Geophysical Union. It’s too popular to let go. Google search on “Miller-Urey” and scroll through dozens of illustrations. The focal point of them all is the spark in the flask.

Use of the wrong atmosphere is just one of an array of showstoppers that kill the Miller-Urey experiment. Others include chirality, probability, damaging cross-reactions, lack of most of the amino acid species that exist in life, and the lack of other requirements for life: a membrane, metabolism, and genetics. As if overkill were needed, this paper removes the assumption that sparks were available to get the celebrated “building blocks of life” in the first place. 

The Miller-Urey experiment is dead, dead, dead. Its promoters keep it walking with special effects, not science.

For more on problems with the Miller-Urey experiment, see also:

• Thaxton et al., The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy (2020)
• Intelligent Design in a Nutshell (2020), Chapter 2
• Meyer, Signature in the Cell (2009)
• Evolution News, “A New Flaw in the Miller-Urey Experiment, and a Few Old Ones” (2022)
• Documentary film, Origin: How Did Life on Earth Begin? by Illustra Media (2016)
• Video, Long Story Short: Origin of Life (2021)
  

 

Darwin:Prophet of the Alt-wrong?

Ties that Bind: The Alt-Right’s Connections to Social Darwinist Madison Grant and Eugenics

Gary Varner

 

In his new book Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism, historian Richard Weikart devotes a chapter to explaining the continuing influence of Darwinian racism in American society today, including its connection to the “Alt-Right.” It’s a topic that we’ve covered before at Evolution News, but it deserves more attention. 

Unfortunately, in recent years the term Alt-Right has been misused as something of a catch-all for “conservatism.” That’s a slander. Most conservatives have nothing to do with the actual Alt-Right. In reality, the Alt-Right has an ideology of its own, a mix of both left-leaning and right-leaning elements. But their various positions are united by one belief: that the white race is genetically superior. And as Weikart points, they draw toxic inspiration from the claims of Darwinian biology.

Understanding the Alt-Right

In claiming that the white race is superior, Alt-Right articles and podcasts cite certain early 20th-century social Darwinists. Three of these thinkers are Madison Grant, Sir Francis Galton, and Lothrop Stoddard. The last of these three, perhaps a less familiar name, served as a director for Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood. 

The ideas of the social Darwinists permeate the Alt-Right ideology. Some years ago Richard Spencer, an Alt-Right writer — most notably recognized for his role in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” demonstration in 2017 — interviewed thinker and painter Jonathan Bowden on Spencer’s podcast Vanguard. The episode is titled “The E Word: Eugenics & Environmentalism, Madison Grant & Lothrop Stoddard.” During their interview, Spencer and Bowden not only detail the history of the eugenics movement, they defend it, even attempting to connect eugenics with both abortion and environmentalism, using Grant as their justification. They argue that if the Left could only embrace the notion that some men and women are genetically inferior, then they could deal with the environment effectively.

Academic Language and a Harsh Message

During the podcast, Bowden states: 

…if one eschews the politics of human rights in a grandstanding and universalist way and sees human identity and glory in very much an individual or localized manner then deep green and ecological ideas have a lot to say to all forms of conservativism that wish to preserve and restore as against that which is transitory and that which is to our end and which is purely and only concerned with human life to the detriment of the ecology without which mankind couldn’t subsist. 

These men have a habit of using academic language to mask their harsh message. What he’s basically saying is that if we’d just get rid of this troublesome notion of human rights, we could deal with overpopulation and save the environment. 

When it comes to abortion, both Bowden and Spencer consider it a backwards form of eugenics. As Spencer explains, “they [the elites] are in some ways pursuing negative eugenics in the sense that they are certainly much more willing to abort a child with Down syndrome or so on, and that, of course, can be discovered in the womb. In some ways, one could also suggest that eugenics is still living on.” 

Bowden adds:

I also think it’s important to realize that essentially what’s happened is that two concepts have been conflated into one another in order to summarily dispatch both. This is the idea of eugenics as against dysgenics. Dysgenics, which is, if you like, the negative side of eugenics whereby you act though as to prevent harm, but you also act as to, in some senses, prevent life through abortion or through selective contraceptive use or through sterilization. The proactive and yet sort of snip-oriented and negative side of eugenics is its really controversial feature. The wholesome side, the building people up, the tonics for the brave sort of side, is one which only the most… nihilistic and sordid Left-winger would be opposed to, because they find nauseous the idea of happy, athletic, intellectually precocious families beaming for the camera in an Osmonds-like way, you know.  

Both Bowden and Spencer blame the public’s rejection of eugenics on the move away from Galton’s understanding of Darwinism after the Second World War. Spencer says, “…you were talking about the academic side of this issue and the fact that so many of these researchers who were quite predisposed to Galton, Darwinism, eugenics that switched. Is that part of the so-called Boasian revolution in anthropology? What I mean by that is, of course, Franz Boas, who was a sworn enemy of Madison Grant.”

Bowden affirms Spencer’s suspicion and then adds a revealing statement about the motives behind this switch. He comments, “Yes, I do think it happened in a certain context though. I think that people who supported eugenics found that unless they found a different vocabulary for it their support couldn’t be sustained in polite society.”

Eugenics as a Worthy Practice

Regarding this switch, the two conclude their conversation when Spencer says, “When you had baby boomers and our generation, you were essentially having people who were influenced by Boasian anthropology. They did not think in terms of Galton and let’s call it classical Darwinism. Really those people lost the battle, and this is the reason why eugenics kind of vanished after the Second World War.”   

These two think eugenics was a worthy practice and they lament that it is no longer openly used. Spencer summarizes his thoughts on the subject:

What do you think about our unique ability to reclaim conservationism or naturalism and how, much like Grant, that should be a major cause for us, which is to keep the world green and beautiful and to fight things like the terrible overpopulation that you see in some kind of horrifying city like Mexico City or São Paulo? We want quality over quantity, and we want to live on a beautiful Earth. 

While venerating Galton and Stoddard, the conversation mostly centers on the legacy of Madison Grant, a New York lawyer who popularized the eugenics movement with his books, including The Passing of the Great Race and The Conquest of a Continent. Here are some samples of his thought:

• “…the intelligence and ability of a colored person are in pretty direct proportion to the amount of white blood he has, and…most of the positions of leadership, influence, and prominence in the Negro race are held not by real negroes but by Mulattoes, many of whom have very little Negro blood.” (The Conquest of a Continent)
• “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.” (The Passing of the Great Race)
• “Where the environment is too soft and luxurious and no strife is required for survival, not only are weak strains and individuals allowed to survive and encouraged to breed but the strong types also grow fat mentally and physically.” (The Passing of the Great Race)

Clearly, Grant has been an influence on Spencer’s thinking. In that connection, Spencer has a book to recommend, historian Jonathan Spiro’s Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant: “He [Spiro] offers a very useful and rich biography of Grant, which has really influenced my interest in Grant, and one of his major themes is that if you tell someone that Grant is an early environmentalist that’ll usually bring a smile to their face, but if you tell someone he’s also an early eugenicist, that will usually inspire shock and horror. But as Spiro points out, there was no contradiction in Grant’s mind between saving the redwoods and saving the White race.”  

Confused Terms

It’s a strange thing to hear these individuals claim they are on the Right while simultaneously affirming abortion, an act considered a form of murder by many conservatives. The reason for this confusion of terms is that Spencer, Bowden, and others on the Alt-Right regard themselves as the Right in the same way Mussolini or Hitler might be considered on the “Right” today. That, however, ignores that Hitler’s platform was, after all, “national socialism.” Conservatism today is not only defined by social issues but by a belief in limited government, and there can be nothing more invasive than eugenics.

It’s important to understand what the Alt-Right believes. They are not just an extreme offshoot of either the Right or the Left. Instead, they have their own ideology based on antiquated ideas from the early 20th century, an ideology heavily influenced by eugenics, which was inspired in turn by — as Spencer puts it, not incorrectly — classical Darwinism.