Month: February 2009

Freedom of expression?

February 13, 2009 • 4:03 pm

Just when I settle down to write in this venue about some real biology, somebody calls my attention to another example of creationists acting up. This time it’s the Discovery Intitute’s Casey Luskin, who has been given the prestigious platform of the U.S. News and World Report to attack evolution (see here). Darwin Day, says Luskin, is evolutionists’s “holy day,” which they use to brutally suppress the freedom of expression of creationists.

His example is P.Z. Myer’s protest to the University of Vermont about their selection of Ben Stein (creator of the egregious creationist movie “Expelled”) as a graduation speaker. Stein subsequently withdrew for reasons that are unclear. Luskin is incensed; he claims that the president of the University of Vermont was guilty of “discriminating against scholars who hold a minority scientific viewpoint.” To complete his tirade, Luskin throws in the usual irreducible complexity arguments for intelligent-design creationism.

Let’s be clear: creationism is not a “minority scientific viewpoint.” It is not a scientific viewpoint at all. Protesting creeping creationism is not suppression, it is our duty as scientists. And we’re not helped by “reputable” venues such as Forbes and U.S. News and World Report, who are eroding their reputation by giving creationists some credibility by providing a platform for their lies.

Meanwhile, over at The Independent, columnist Johann Hari describes all the flak he has taken for defending the right to criticize religious views. It’s a very good column, but a scary one.

Finally, a friend sent me the following:

The BBC America broadcast last night had 10 minutes on Darwin’s birthday. Matt Frei spent the time interviewing Francis Collins who said God, who is out of time, is behind all of it [evolution]. Frei nodded in agreement. Frei also noted that there are exremists on both sides of the question, and in the middle are the sensible centrists like Francis Collins, who believe in God and science. (I gather that rationality is now an extremist view.)

So, on Darwin Day three respected news sources, Forbes, U.S. News, and now the BBChave bruised journalistic integrity in the name of “balance.” Shame on them.

On re-reading The Origin

February 13, 2009 • 6:44 am

The journal Current Biology asked a group of us to re-read Darwin’s great book and write a few paragraphs of response; the collection, which is quite intriguing, is here. Besides my take (which is, as I’ve already mentioned, a defense of the term “Darwinism”), there are pieces by Bob May, Matt Ridley, Peter Lawrence, Matthew Cobb, Christine Nüsslein-Volhard, Mark Ptashne, Simon Conway Morris, Marlene Zuk, Andrew Berry, and Hopi Hoekstra.

It’s particularly interesting to contrast the ending of Matthew Cobb’s piece (he is an evolutionary biologist at Manchester) with that of Conway Morris’s (he is a paleontologist at Cambridge). Conway Morris, who is of course religious, contends that the human mind is not explainable by evolution, while Cobb thinks that our minds are on an evolutionary continnum with those of animals. (This of course parallels a famous disagreement between Darwin and Wallace, who had the views of Cobb and Conway Morris respectively).

Conway Morris of course wrote Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, a very large book which, by presenting hundreds of pages of examples of evolutionary convergence (a worthwhile task, with lots of good stuff), argued that the evolution of humans was inevitable. I have argued against this view, asserting that our complex intelligence arose only once, and so is neither an example of evolutionary convergence nor inevitable.

In which I am forced to take on Forbes magazine

February 12, 2009 • 9:56 pm

A few days ago, Forbes magazine published an online “Darwin issue,” containing a number of pieces by eminent philosophers and evolutionists, including Sean Carroll, Michael Ruse, and Adrian Desmond. For some strange reason—presumably a misguided attempt to achieve journalistic “balance”—Forbes also gave room to the creationist lucubrations of evangelist Ken Ham (founder of Kentucky’s bizarre Creation Museum), the Discovery Institute’s own resident Moonie, Jon Wells, and Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon at SUNY Stony Brook who has apparently been a public opponent of evolution for some time. In his article, called “A neurosurgeon, not a Darwinist,” Egnor makes the usual ID claims that there are no transitional fossils, that biochemical complexity is incomprehensible without an intelligent creator, etc.

What bothered me more than these creationist assertions, which I see all the time, was that a magazine of the caliber of Forbes saw fit to publish them. I wrote a reply attempting to dismantle the specious claims of Dr. Egnor, using web links to the evidence so that readers could see for themselves. Forbes was gracious enough to publish it, complete with my rather strong criticisms of the online magazine.

The one lesson we should draw from Egnor’s assertions is that a medical degree is not simultaneously a license to speak authoritatively about evolution. And the lesson that journalists should draw from Forbes‘ crazy decision to publish creationist blather is that one does not achieve “balance”  by giving a say to opponents of established fact.

A very strange review of WEIT on Huffington Post

February 12, 2009 • 9:38 pm

Stuart Whatley has reviewed the book on Huffington Post, here. It is favorable, but is strange in one respect: Whatley seems to require that if the fact of evolution dismantles some peoples’ consoling religious or spiritual beliefs, then the onus is on evolutionists to provide for those people a substitute belief system. Whatley get into this point by talking about creationist arguments:

Though a majority of biologists have refuted these arguments from a scientific standpoint, what matters to rejecters of Darwinism is not that it is bad science, but that it gets away with adopting the appellation of “science” at all–they require no further confirmation to be satisfied. It is for this reason that Coyne’s book may have little effect on those who hold such concrete beliefs.

Tragically, this is even admitted in his Preface, when Coyne writes that, “for those who oppose Darwinism purely as a matter of faith, no amount of evidence will do–theirs is a belief that is not based on reason.” And while Coyne and his colleagues have been forced to address Intelligent Design’s scientific claims head on, they are also obliged to offer commensurate psychological/spiritual rewards for accepting Darwinism over creationism. (My emphasis)

This is undoubtedly their most daunting challenge. Belief in a designer has all the appeal to mystery and security and lazy axiomatic explanation that gave rise to religion in the first place. Darwinism offers the beauty of nature and the pursuit of knowledge. But in the fight for many peoples’ visceral convictions, it is abjectly outgunned. Naturalists can attempt to substitute for their inherent metaphysical bankruptcy until they turn blue, it surely will not satisfy the truly faithful.

Nevertheless, Coyne concludes with a plea to his reader to not give in to the misconception that “accepting evolution will somehow sunder our society, wreck our morality, impel us to behave like beasts, and spawn a new generation of Hitlers and Stalins.” This may be demonstrably true on a broad societal basis, but it is difficult to see how most individual believers, who just aren’t satisfied by the beauty of nature alone, will ever embrace Darwinism entirely–even if it is an indisputable fact. This is unfortunate, but it is certainly no fault of Coyne’s.

This is a common reaction, but I really don’t get it. My job in that book was convincing people that evolution is a scientific fact, not to devise a way to make Darwinism itself satisfy peoples’ “psychological and spiritual needs”. I recognize that this may undermine or dispel peoples’ psychological comfort. But am I then obliged to tell people how Darwinism itself offers commensurate rewards? I can’t, because for those not caught up in the wonder and majesty of evolution, it won’t give much consolation. I hoped to offer a taste of this wonder, but I am not foolish enough to say that The Origin will replace the Bible. Were Galileo and Copernicus obliged to show people how accepting a heliocentric solar system would give them spiritual comfort?

We find our comfort where we may. All I aimed to do was tell people what is true. Presumably people would prefer to construct their ideology and psychology around the plain facts of the world, but maybe I am wrong.

Darwin Day in Philly

February 12, 2009 • 9:17 pm

Lots to talk about today, but no time. Some really interesting talks here at the Penn Museum: one of the best series of seminars I’ve been to in a while. Tomorrow I’ll describe some high points, and also discuss Ken Miller’s keynote presentation, which was excellent until he brought in the deity in the last ten minutes.

Radio show Friday

February 11, 2009 • 7:14 pm

On Friday, Feb. 13 (!), I’m scheduled to appear on WHYY-FM in Philadelphia (the local NPR station) from 11 a.m. to noon EST on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, who is supposed to be a great interviewer. I will, of course, be talking about evolution, Darwin Day, etc. (and of course a plug for the book). You can listen live here.

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In Philly for Darwin Day

February 11, 2009 • 6:59 pm

I haven’t been in Philadelphia since 1989, when the Philadelphia Academy had its speciation symposium (the one that produced the Otte & Endler volume), but I’m back again for Darwin Day–or rather two days. The University of Pennsylvania is presenting a symposium on Darwin’s Legacy in 21st Century Biology (program here), held at the Harrison Auditorium at the Penn Museum.

A lot of diverse talks on tap. Tomorrow, after some introductory remarks by the redoubtable Warren Ewens, I’ll be talking about what we’ve learned about speciation since The Origin of Species. Then an old friend, Deborah Charlesworth, on Darwin and The Importance of Plant Mating Systems in Evolutionary Biology, another old friend, Rick Grosberg, on Does Life Evolve Differently in the Seas?, Dorothy Cheney on The Evolution of Our Social Minds, John Doebley on Evolution Under Domestication, and Ottoline Leyser on Auxin: The Molecular Behind the Power. The evening’s talk will be my evolutionary friend and religious nemesis, Ken Miller, giving the keynote address with the same title as his book, “Only a Theory? Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul”. Concluding remarks by yet another old friend, Paul Sniegowski. Report on first day’s talk follows tomorrow.

This evening Grosberg and I went in search of The Great Philadelphia Pork Sandwich (two Jewish boys seeking pork!), but failed, and had to be satisfied with another local non-kosher delicacy, the cheesesteak. Washed down with a Yuengling Porter, it was an epicurean delight.

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photo courtesy of icanhascheezeburger.com