Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Two more days remain in Laura Nyro Song Week (we’ve skipped a few days). Nyro had many good songs, and I’m just putting up my favorites. This one, Stoney End, was made famous not by Nyro, but by Barbra Steisand’s cover on her eponymous album. That version isn’t nearly as good as Nyro’s version—despite Streisand having one of the two great women’s voices of our time. (You should know the other by now.) Somehow Streisand’s version lacks the emotionality of Nyro’s.
Stoney End is #2 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “10 Essential Laura Nyro Songs“, which describes the song like this:
Written by Nyro when she was a teenager, “Stoney End” was a deceptively simple folk-pop cut that illustrated Nyro’s gift for complex vocal harmonies and melody. The song, initially released on More Than a New Discovery by the Folkways imprint, featured Nyro’s nuanced piano playing and lush production as the backdrop to a hard-worn, homespun narrative: I was born from love and my poor Mother worked the mines / I was raised on the good book Jesus / Till I read between the lines / Now I don’t believe I wanna see the morning. A precocious Nyro had developed a fondness for poetry, which imbued much of her work with a literary quality that belied her age. Barbra Streisand named her 1971 studio album after “Stoney End,” which included a cover of the title track that peaked at Number Six on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.
Don’t ask me what it’s about: you can find various interpretations on the Web. (I replaced an earlier version that wouldn’t play in the U.S.)
These posters are part of an official initiative at the University of Ontario, the RISE initiative. I checked all the boxes save two (I’m not a Canadian citizen or a Christian, and “able-bodied” mentally is questionable).
For some reason this bothered me. And then I realized that it’s because this kind of stuff is turning college into a place where you’re supposed to adopt a given set of social attitudes and ideology, not where you adjudicate ideas and decide how to behave. In other words, it’s propagandizing students, not exposing them to different ideas and received knowledge and allowing them to forge their own path.
Is that okay? I am sympathetic to the goals of such a program, of course, but something rankles when it’s forced down your throat. And perhaps the RISE workshops aren’t mandatory for all students, but these are sanctioned by the University, as are these posters.
By the way, the claim that privilege is not a “burden or source of guilt” is totally disingenuous. It is both, and that’s how it’s used.
If you look at the contents on Amazon, you’ll see six chapters by five authors, three of them listed as editors. The chapters are largely about the evidence for evolution, but there’s some stuff about religion, too. That’s because, as Naish notes, the book has a unique take on evolution (“YEC” is “young Earth creationism”):
It has been said many times in the battle against the lies and miseducation of the creationists that among the most important opponents of YEC are those who were once YECs themselves. And here’s the kicker, because all the contributing authors of God’s Word or Human Reason? (there are five) are exactly that. Testimonials provided by each explain what it was that led them to doubt, question and ultimately reject YEC. These personal stories are fascinating, in one case heartbreaking.
And there’s apparently some good stuff in there. Here’s an analysis I particularly like:
Kane’s review of what we currently think about the evolution of birds from among theropod dinosaurs, for example, is one of the best reviews of this area yet published, combining historical review with a tour of key taxa in the ‘theropod to bird’ transition (Kane 2016b). The fact that fossil discoveries repeatedly matched predictions made about the evolutionary history of this group of animals is rightly emphasised. And what, then, of the AiG claim that the existence of a discrete ‘dinosaur kind’ and ‘bird kind’ is consistent with creationism, not evolution? (creationists use the term ‘baramin’ for these discrete ‘created kinds’).
Here’s a cool figure showing (with the caption) that the morphologial “gap” between dinosaurs and birds is gradually disappearing as new fossils are found—one of the predictions that evolution makes and that the Templeton-funded dude S. Orestis Palermos said couldn’t make. Note that the multidimensional morphological gaps between dinos and birds are vanishing over a period of only nine years from 2000-2009. It’s an excellent way to test evolutionary predictions.
Tests of the ‘baraminological’ claims of the YECs (which assert that ‘dinosaur kinds’ and ‘bird kinds’ are distinct and were surely created differently) have been falsified, repeatedly, even in the statistical tests devised by YECs themselves. Palaeontologist Phil Senter (who has critically examined and tested YEC claims in several published articles, and is assuredly not a YEC) used these multidimensional tests himself in a 2011 paper, and some of his diagrams are shown here. These images show taxa known to science in 2000 and 2009, the obvious fact being that any perceived distinctions between groups are increasingly filled by newly discovered taxa. Credit: Senter 2011
Now it’s sad that this book has gotten only five Amazon reviews (all have five stars, though), and I do want to get it except that it’s only in hardback, it’s out of stock, and I have absolutely no more room for books, either in my office or at home. Perhaps I can request it from the library. Regardless, it looks like a good companion book for WEIT, as it expressly addresses creationist claims from the viewpoint of former creationists. I mention religion only once in WEIT, although I do try to show the truth of evolution in contrast to the predictions of creationism.
As I learned from Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, people’s acceptance of evolution seems to be based not on knowing the evidence, but on adherence to a set of “tribal values” that identify you as a member of a group. (Presumably in this case it’s the group of rationalists and non-religious people.) As Pinker notes, the NSF once gave a test of scientific literacy on which the question “Humans evolved from other organisms” demanded an “agree or disagree.” It turned out that the answer to that had NO CORRELATION with performance on any other index of science literacy. It turned out that that question was really a test of religiosity and not scientific knowledge, and thus it was dropped from the test.
If that’s the case, then it’s more important than ever for people to really know what the theory of evolution really says, and what the evidence is for that theory. This book appears to help fill that gap.
I believe that among the names suggested by readers for my new ducks were “Trixie” and “Norton.” If you’re of a certain age (i.e., if you’re OLD), you’ll remember those names as belonging to the neighbors of Ralph and Alice Kramden in the famous “Honeymooners” television show, which ran for but a year (1955-1956). Ralph, a New York bus driver, was of course played by Jackie Gleason, and Alice, his take-no-nonsense wife, by Audrey Meadows. Their neighbors were Ed and Trixie Norton, played respectively by Art Carney and Joyce Randolph (Ed worked in the sewers).
Rather than “Ed” and “Trixie”, I decided to call the male “Norton” and the female “Trixie”. They’ve been around the last two days, and her are some photos. As I don’t have children, you’ll have to look at my ducky equivalents.
Their breakfast of corn. They’ve learned to hop out of the pond for their corn, and then plop back in for the second course of mealworms.
Norton is a very handsome lad. Look at those curly little pintail feathers!
Trixie is of course my favorite, and perhaps she’ll lay a clutch of eggs soon (the hatching time after laying is about four weeks):
I wouldn’t worry too much about what seems like a semantic question except that it bears on how respected scientists are viewed by the public. As we know, the term “atheist” is largely pejorative, even in the U.K., and so is avoided by public figures, who, if atheists, like to use soft euphemisms like “nonbeliever” or “agnostic”. But to a rationalist, as Robert G. Ingersoll realized, an “atheist” is pretty much the same as an “agnostic”, and Ingersoll applied those terms interchangeably to himself. Both connote rejections of the idea that there is a god, although to some (and to the Oxford English Dictionary below), “atheist” means “someone who absolutely denies there’s a god,” while agnostic means “someone who doesn’t know whether there’s a god or not.”
So, when you look at the OED definition of “atheist”, you get both senses of the word: denial (which could, but doesn’t have to, mean “absolute rejection”) or “lack of belief”.
But to a scientist, absolute denial of any empirical proposition isn’t kosher, and so all one can say about gods, if you don’t accept them, is this: “There is not the slightest evidence for a god, and therefore I don’t accept a god’s existence.”
Those are the sentiments of an “a-theist”, that is, someone who has removed the concept of gods from their thinking. True agnostics, who in my experience are few and far between, are those who think there might be some evidence for a god, but not enough to be convincing. (Most “agnostics” are really those who see no evidence for a god, but don’t want to use the word “atheist”.)
Scientists like Brian Cox and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who have rejected the label “atheist”, surely do not think there is any evidence for a god. They truly are atheists, but don’t like to use the word. I suspect, but can’t prove, that this refusal to call oneself an “atheist,” despite seeing no evidence for a god, is based on social acceptance: it’s not good for your image to say you’re an “atheist.” And although it’s fine to say you’re an a-Santa-ist or an a-fairy-ist, since you see no evidence for Santa or fairies, religion is a more widespread delusion, and you don’t want to buck public opinion so blatantly. No, best to say you just “don’t believe.”
Brian Cox (and Tyson) have long rejected the label “atheist”, as you see with Cox below. (As far as Cox being militant, no, he’s not, but that’s okay. He does say in public that he sees no evidence for god, and that’s good enough for me):
@destraudo I reject the label atheist, and I'm about as militant as the Vicar of Dibley.
Nevertheless, this two-minute clip of Cox discussing his “atheism” with Russell Brand disturbed me a bit (make sure you turn the sound up), as this is from Facebook:
First, Cox says “I reject the label because I think that it’s divisive.” That’s one clue that he doesn’t accept the monicker, at least in part, because people don’t like it, not because he thinks it’s inaccurate. What bothers me more is his expression of agnosticism parading under the banner of science:
“Science does not rule out the existence of a creator by definition because we don’t know how the universe began, full stop.”
and
“I don’t feel compelled to go further than the statement ‘I don’t know.'”
Well, there’s a difference between “I don’t know and there’s a decent probability of a god” and “I don’t know but there’s simply not an iota of evidence for a god.” After all, science doesn’t rule out the existence of anything: not the Loch Ness monster, not Santa Claus, not leprechauns, not fairies, not Bigfoot. Why wouldn’t Cox say the same thing about these?
Instead, he uses our ignorance of why the laws of nature are as they are, and about how the universe began, as a justification for some sort of agnosticism. What Bayesian probability, based on the complete lack of evidence for supernaturalism in physics, would Cox assign to the laws of nature, or the Universe, having been created by a god? He doesn’t know whether Bigfoot or Russell’s Teapot exists, either, but would he say that he’s comfortable asserting that “I just don’t know about these things”? After all, Cox has been an ardent opponent of flat-earthers and Moon-landing conspiracists, as well as other forms of pseudoscience. Why does religion alone get a pass?
This reminds me of a passage in Natalie Angier’s brilliant essay, “My God Problem“, where she notes the different way physicists treat religion versus other superstitions:
Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.”
How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something’s existence.”
Now I don’t think Cox leaves room for God, but I think he’s giving religion a pass; after all, saying one is an atheist is “divisive.” That’s not true of astrology—or of any form of unevidenced superstition beside religion.
Indeed, here’s an earlier clip in which Cox doesn’t say “I don’t know” about God, but expresses assurance that there is no God. He says this in Human Universe, episode 5 (clip below, my emphasis):
“We must also learn to value the human race and take responsibility for our own survival. Why? [Points up to the heavens] Because there’s nobody else out there to value us or to look after us. And finally, most important of all, we must educate the next generation in the great discoveries of science and we must teach them to use the light of reason to banish the darkness of superstition, because if we do that, then at least there’s a chance that this universe will remain a human one.”
That is not doubt; that is expressed assurance that “there’s nobody out there”, i.e. God. And that’s atheism: a confidence—not an absolute one, of course—that there’s no God.
So, even if Cox doesn’t want to call himself an atheist, he is one. It’s like a cat saying that it’s not a cat but a dog in order not to frighten the mice.
Let me be clear, though: I have enormous respect for Cox and feel that he’s one of the best science popularizers going. And, unlike, Tyson, he’s less timorous about his beliefs (Tyson had to be forced to admit he was an atheist, and did so petulantly.) And I do appreciate that it may hurt one’s scientific message among the faithful to forcefully express atheism when your job is to sell science. I’m not asking Cox to be an antitheist, of course—I wouldn’t demand that of anyone. But if you do talk about beliefs, then—at least, as a scientist—tell people that that some beliefs have a very low probability of being true based on prior evidence. Just because you “can’t disprove God” by science doesn’t mean that you can’t say that the probability that a god exists, based on the evidence, is very low. Getting the best conclusions based on what we know is, after all, the task of science, and applies to God as much as it applies to Bigfoot.
Why do I care? In the end, it’s only when respected and idolized people like Cox are willing to say, “Yes, I am an atheist” that the term will begin to lose its pejorative tint. And it would be a better explanation of how scientific confidence works to use some sort of Bayesian statement. After all, the question of God is an empirical one.
It’s time for me to importune readers to send in your good photos. To put up a wildlife post nearly every day does require the assistance of photographers! And your photos will get an appreciative audience of nearly 55,000. Today we have some photographs from Mark Sturtevant, sent in mid-February. This continues the developmental cycle whose first stages were presented here.
Here is the final stretch of pictures from last summer where I raised several hickory horned devils, which are the giant larvae of the royal moth (Citheronia regalis) . The first two pictures show where we left off last time, which was at feeding 4th instar larvae. They were pretty big by then, but soon they would get a lot bigger.
I had been trying to get pictures of a 4th instar larva molting to the final (5th) instar, and here at last I had success! Commitment to molting starts when the larva stops feeding and assumes a distinctive ‘premolt’ position. I can then set them up in our dining room in front of the camera, and they will not leave the perch for up to several days until they molt. In the second premolt picture the cuticle is visibly wrinkled, meaning they have separated their old cuticle from the new one which is underneath. I was pretty much freaking out at that time since I was not about to let this one slip past!
The next several pictures show the full molt process, with the old cuticle splitting, and emergence of the 5th instar. The additional broad white stripes that appear down the sides are the old cuticle that had lined the system of tracheal tubes through which the insect breathes. They too are being stripped out. In the final pictures of this sequence the larva pulls free, and then comes to a rest. The whole sequence, once begun, only took several minutes. Post-molt larvae will sit like this for several hours as their new cuticle hardens, then they start to move again and their first act is to eat some of the old cuticle. Note that by then the horns are well pigmented.
At about this time I stumbled across a simple method to make gif animations in Gimp, which is the free photo editing program that I use to process pictures. So next is an impromptu gif animation of the complete sequence of a hickory horned devil molting. Not many people get to see this!
At first, the newly molted 5th instar larvae were the predominantly brown color that dominated their earlier instars. It must be admitted, however reluctantly, that they are not terribly attractive through that extended time. But that soon changed dramatically as the 5th instars resumed their feeding and took on their characteristic green color. As a bonus, before taking on their final color many of them temporarily turned bright yellow. That is actually my favorite ‘look’ for these larvae, and the picture of the yellow 5th instar is actually one of my favorite buggy pictures from last summer.
Next are pictures of green 5th instars. Their increased appetites at this time meant they were more demanding. The large bundles of leaves that I could collect from local black walnut trees used to be sufficient for several days, but now they were barely sufficient for one day. The poo also accumulated at an impressive rate, and their audible ‘announcements’ were hard to ignore. The caterpillars were kept in a series of large plastic containers, each stuffed with a bouquet of leaves. Every few minutes anyone in the vicinity of the dining room area would hear a “Plink!” or “Plunk!” as kidney bean sized droppings hit the bottom. It was… a subject of some conversations during dinner.
The larvae attained their maximal size after a bit more than a week. I never measured them, but they are described as getting to 6 inches and I can well believe it. During sessions when I extracted a couple giants from their container to photograph, I could generally rely on them eating during the entire time. They were pretty intent on packing it in.
Then it all started to change. One by one, the larvae would lose interest in eating as they began to prepare for metamorphosis. The sign of this new phase was when a larva would descend from the leaves to wander around the bottom of their container. As the days passed I would generally find one or two that had reached that point. The wandering larvae would also turn a pretty blue color, which is an optical effect from the brown pupal cuticle developing underneath their larval cuticle. This is shown in the next picture with a bunch of blue and green larvae in my hand. This is actually an old picture from some years ago when I had first raised a batch of devils.
Hickory horned devils do not spin cocoons. Instead, they burrow in the ground and later pupate there. I had learned from prior experience that trying to get a large number of giant larvae to pupate naturally in the dirt was just not workable because they would invariably interfere with one another under ground. The procedure that worked for me was to first let the wandering larvae just walk in endless circles in a large bucket in a dark basement for several days. Their muscles would gradually break down, immobilizing them, and they would dramatically shrink in size as shown in the next picture.
Once a larva could crawl no longer (and disturb other pupating larvae), it was then buried in a ‘grave’ in a large tub of dirt, next to other immobile larva. The caretaking demands declined as more larvae went into the ‘pet cemetery’. I have always experienced a feeling of ennui at these times when my task of raising Saturniids was coming to an end. My children were growing up and I was no longer needed.
Where things stand now is that I have several devil pupae in the dirt, in a large cage that is kept at room temperature. The last time I tried this I made the mistake of refrigerating the pupae so that they might emerge next Spring. This is what I would do with other Saturniids, but none of the devil pupae from that batch survived. That actually makes sense (in hindsight) since they are a warmer-climate species. The last picture shows the pupae from that ill-fated batch, tastefully displayed in a dessert dish.
If I get any moths, I will of course take more pictures. Fingers crossed!
Monday is with us again: it’s March 26, 2018, and National Nougat Day, one of the few confections I don’t like. And it’s Purple Day in Canada and the U.S., designed to raise awareness of epilepsy. For those of you who haven’t yet demonized Richard Dawkins, he’s 77 today (see below).
In this day in 1484, William Caxton, who had the first printing press in England and was the first Brit to sell printed books, printed his own translation of Aesop’s Fables. Here’s a rare version of that book from the Bodleian Library at Oxford. You might recognize at least one of the fables:
On this day in 1812, the political cartoon shown below appeared in the Boston Gazette, giving rise to the term “gerrymander” to describe oddly-shaped political districts designed to help a certain party or candidate win elections. The description from Wikipedia is under the cartoon:
Printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was drawn in reaction to the newly drawn state senate election district of South Essex created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the Democratic-Republican Party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists. The caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts, as a dragon-like “monster”. Federalist newspaper editors and others at the time likened the district shape to a salamander, and the word gerrymander was a blend of that word and Governor Gerry’s last name.
On March 26, 1830, the Book of Mormon was first printed, in Palmyra, New York. And on this day in 1934, the UK driving test was instituted to get a driver’s license. Licenses had been issued since 1903, but no driving test had been required. On this day in 1942, the first female prisoners arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. On March 26, 1971, East Pakistan declared independence from Pakistan, forming Bangladesh; and the Bangladeshi wars of liberation began. On this day in 1979, Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty at the White House in Washington, D. C. Finally, on March 26, 1997, the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found in Southern California, all having committed suicide expecting the next “stage of life.” Wikipedia offers this bizarre description, and I’ve put in a not-too-gruesome photo:
The members took phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce and washed down with vodka. Additionally, they secured plastic bags around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square purple cloth. Each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets: the five dollar bill was to cover vagrancy fines while members were out on jobs, while the quarters were to make phone calls. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” (one of many instances of the group’s use of the Star Trek fictional universe’s nomenclature). The adherents, between the ages of 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups over three successive days, with remaining participants cleaning up after each prior group’s deaths. Fifteen members died on March 24, fifteen more on March 25, and nine on March 26. Leader Applewhite was the third to last member to die; two people remained after him and were the only ones found without bags over their heads. Among the dead was Thomas Nichols, brother of the actress Nichelle Nichols, who is best known for her role as Uhura in the original Star Trek television series.
It’s beyond me how people can believe in this stuff!
Notables born on this day include A. E Houseman (1859), Joseph Campbell (1904), Tennessee Williams (1911), Sandra Day O’Connor (1930), Gregory Corso (1930; I once saw him in San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore), Leonard Nimoy (1931), Richard Dawkins (1941), Erica Jong (1942), Diana Ross (1944), Steven Tyler (1948), and Keira Knightley (1985). Those who fell from their perch on this day include John Winthrop (1649), Walt Whitman (1892), Cecil Rhodes (1902), Sarah Bernhardt (1923), Edmund Muskie (1996), Daniel Patrick Moynihan (2003), and Geraldine Ferraro (2011).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the weather has improved, and Hili has issued an order about Listy:
Hili: From today on, editorial meetings will be conducted in the fresh air.
Cyrus: I agree.
In Polish:
Hili: Od dziś zebrania redakcyjne będą na świeżym powietrzu.
Cyrus: Akceptuję.
And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon is out taking Spring hikes:
Leon: I’m going to rest a bit. These Sunday treks are long. (In Polish: “Odpocznę, długie są te niedzielne szlaki.”)
A cool tweet sent by Matthew, showing ice patches on a comet!:
Grania calls our attention to a new policy of Skype, which appears to ban not only offensive language, but the erotic purposes for which many separated paramours use the application:
