Not long ago I was asked by Jason Flores-Williams to contribute to his online/free paper newsletter Alma Asfalto, a Mexican publication (translation: “asphalt soul”) that has English translation. Flores-Williams wanted me to answer a few questions about evolution, and I agreed for two reasons. First, I wanted to help promote the understanding and acceptance of evolution among our southern neighbors. Second, if you click on the first link (to Wikipedia), you’ll see that Flores-Williams is a guy worth helping:
Jason Flores-Williams (born 1969, Los Angeles, CA) is an author, political activist, and civil rights attorney. He is best known for his legal work on behalf of death row clients, political protesters, the homeless population of Denver, and his suit to have the Colorado River recognized as a legal person. Flores-Williams is an acknowledged expert in conspiracy law and First Amendment cases whose views are frequently sought by media organizations, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He was also a lead organizer of the protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
Here are the questions I was asked. Again, see the answers at the site.
- In the simplest terms, what is evolution—and what do people most often get wrong about it?
- Why does evolution still make some people uncomfortable, even though it’s one of the most well-supported ideas in all of science?
- Does accepting evolution make human life feel less meaningful—or, in your view, more remarkable?
- People sometimes say that evolution promotes selfishness or brutality. What does evolution actually tell us about cooperation, empathy, and morality?
- If you could change one thing about how evolution is taught or talked about in public life, what would it be—and why does it matter right now?
Here are the contents:
Mexico City
March 2026Reality is being branded.
Truth manipulated.
Disengagement marketed.
But something real is gathering.Across science, philosophy, art, and film, the real is now contested ground.
https://almaasfalto.com/marzo/
REALITY
Sasha Sagan
— The Integrity of UncertaintyZona Maco
— Art Week, Mexico CityJerry Coyne
— Evolution and MeaningVlatko Vedral
— The Universe Owes You No CertaintyAsya Geisberg
— Necessary FrictionFranco “Bifo” Berardi
— Desertion from the FutureKevin Anderson
— Against the IllusionMariana Rondón
— It Is Still Night in CaracasSarah Martinez
— Alchemist of Nothingness (FR/ES)Printed in Mexico City.
Alma Asfalto circulates in Roma, in the Historic Center, and underground, on Metro platforms.
It is very good you expend time and effort for these projects to keep the ball rolling when it comes to public understanding of evolution!
D.A.
NYC
Recommend that folks click on the Flores-Williams link; very interesting bio, and not a great closing paragraph.
And ditto to DA – thanks to JAC for continuing to teach folks about evolution.
I did not even see that; I did not get to the end. Shoot me now!
😊. I’ll hold off on the shooting!!
“Reality is being branded.
Truth manipulated.
Disengagement marketed.
But something real is gathering.
Across science, philosophy, art, and film, the real is now contested ground.”
Dialectical negation of the real is the means by which esoteric religions – e.g. New Age, Hermetic, etc. – hollow out shared reality, drain its authority, and take control of that space with its own models of reality.
The process is similar to apophatic theology, used internally within theology – e.g. arguing ‘God is not wise’, to illustrate how remote God is from any human understanding of e.g. of wisdom.
Well done! Evolution is a fact of nature.
“Why does evolution still make some people uncomfortable, even though it’s one of the most well-supported ideas in all of science?”
For the same reason Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo made people uncomfortable, as their insights took humans down a major peg – from being the very center of the entire Universe to existing on a tiny planet orbiting an average star that is just one of hundreds of billions in this galaxy alone, with an almost infinite number of other galaxies out there. In the case of evolution, humans were demoted further, from exceptional beings uniquely created in the image of God (and thus uniquely conscious by virtue of having a “soul”) to just another sentient animal that evolved from other animals to fill various niches, and ultimately from nonsentient bacteria in the distant past.
I’ve been engaging with creationists on a Facebook site called “Human evolution” (Small e in evolution). One would think, from the title, that this would be a site for discussing palaeoanthropology, but not a bit of it. The site is continually bombarded by creationists and has descended into an evolution/creationist debating site. Why would a creationist be drawn to a science site when there are other groups dedicated to the evolution/creation debate? I know that the creationist scam industry is very well funded, sophisticated and organised, so my first thought was that these people were activists planted, or even paid by, the creationist hierarchy to subvert useful discussion about evolutionary ideas. But then I realised that each of these people had their own agenda and reasons for their science denial; they did not seem to be working from a prepared script.
My experience of one FB site is, of course, entirely unscientific, but I’ve found the sheer scope of their misunderstanding and their determination to spread disinformation deeply shocking.
What is worse, is that you can tell them what the evidence says and how evolutionary theory works but they don’t listen. Their false beliefs are so well entrenched that they can’t, or won’t, learn from people who do understand the evidence, what the theory is, and how it works.
Keep up the good work, Jerry, there is a massive problem out there.