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.
Reader Historian, in a recent comment, called my attention to this 10-minute New York Times video, “Rising doubts about evolution. . . in Science class.” Click on the screenshot at bottom to see it.
It’s mostly about the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, which, embodying creationists’ and Republicans’ effort to sneak the Bible and climate-change denial into public-school science classrooms, calls for “critical thinking,” which is an excuse to “teach both sides” as if they had equal weight. One Louisiana science student says that it goes even further than that: in her class creationism is explicitly the preferred theory.
One of the criticisms of this video, as I recall, is that the report itself gives creationists and evolutionists equal weight, and you can’t deny that it gives both roughly equal time. We see Douglas Axe, John West, and Stephen Meyer from the Discovery Institute, Dr. Georgia Purdom from Answers in Genesis on the stupid and wrong creationist side, balanced by Ken Miller and Zack Kopplin on the evolution side. To my mind, Miller does a good job pointing out the weaknesses of these “critical science” bills, which have been proliferating since teaching creationism was time and again struck down by U.S. courts. But of course the Discovery Institute team makes the reasonable-sounding case, “Why not expose kids to both sides of the issue?” and asking for “airing the public discussion”.
The problem, of course, is that there isn’t really a scientific issue about the validity of evolution or anthropogenic global warming, except for those who have either Biblical or pecuniary interests that lead them to reject the science. One could, as I believe several readers did, make the case that in producing this video, the New York Times is allowing purveyors of nonsense to make their case—as if we had a similar video for dowsing (now being used by British water companies; more tomorrow on that) or flat-earth “theory.” In fact, there is no more evidence against evolution than there is against a round earth. A newspaper—or a university—need not give discredited science, or purveyors of lies, a public airing.
Having watched this video, I don’t find it too objectionable, but think it should have centered more on the nefarious purpose of these “teach-both -sides” bills rather than on the truth of evolution. (After all, Meyer gets to say that there is “very compelling evidence of design in the history of life” and that “neo-Darwinism. . . is increasingly obsolete.”)
But watch for yourself. Do you think this was a useful video? Is it invidious to allow creationism, or its sophisticated-sounding Intelligent Design incarnation, air time at the nation’s premier news site?
Sarah Silverman, every Jewish boy’s dream girl, has a new series premiering on Hulu, “I love you, America.” It started on October 12, and, according to the Guardian, is a kind of Clintonian “listening tour,” in which she meets and interacts with Americans of all stripes—including Trump supporters. (Silverman’s a diehard Democrat who initially supported Bernie Sanders before Clinton became the candidate). As the Guardian notes:
[Silverman] out to prove that patriotism transcends partisanship. The show, which premieres on 12 October, is being billed as a “social-politics sandwich”, stacked with the meaty perspectives of Americans across the ideological spectrum. As Silverman explained recently, it’s not quite sketch comedy, not quite standup, and not quite a talkshow.
The brief description, as well as the video below, doesn’t really get me excited:
Instead, it’s a kind of comic cross-country pilgrimage, reveling in awkward and often obstinate encounters between people who see eye-to-eye on practically nothing. In one episode, Silverman, who is Jewish, will dine with a family who have never met a Jew. In another, she’ll host Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist church. The comic’s inclination to engage with those who disagree with and even offend her materialized in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. As her sister, Susan, told the New York Times: “She was sobbing, beside herself, like her guts were coming out, but in that conversation, she said we have to start listening to each other and can’t go on like this in our own echo chambers.” Silverman, generally sarcastic and idiosyncratic, seems ennobled by the country’s intense polarization, too. “You’ve never changed someone’s mind by arguing,” she added.
The intent of the show sounds fine, but knowing Silverman she’ll turn it into a non-enlightening and not-so-funny comedy routine. The show’s “anthem”, described and shown below, puts her a bit over the line in her approbation of identity politics (even though she says she decries them):
I Love You, America comes with an official hymn, too, released on Monday ahead of the show’s premiere. In it, Silverman’s sings the country’s praises and its pitfalls, offering something of a mission statement for her new project. “I love you America, from sea to shining sea, from the east coast to the west coast, and whatever’s in between,” she sings in top-to-bottom denim, parroting the “coastal elite” persona by which many entertainment figures are characterized.
After listing all the ethnicities and religions she loves, Silverman pauses for some introspection: “Wait a minute, what am I doing? I’m listing kinds of people. I’m categorizing human beings and putting them into little individual boxes. Whether I mean it or not, I’m part of the problem.”
Yes, Ms. Silverman checks her privilege, and does so below in a particularly cringworthy way:
Well, I didn’t find that very funny or intriguing, and I don’t watch Hulu anyway. I’m hoping the show is better than this prelude. If anybody’s watched the beginning of the series, weigh in below.
We have some nice Aussie bird shots today from reader Damon Williford of Texas. His notes and IDs are indented:
Attached are bird photos that I’ve taken in Centennial Park, Sydney, NSW on Nov 10th and 11th. Australia has been on my bucket list of places to visit for a long time, and I decided to do it now rather than putting if off for another 2-3 years. I will have more photos to send in soon.
Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides). The calls of these ravens are very different from North American ravens and crows. The call of an Australian raven sounds like a plaintive croak. It makes me chuckle every time I hear these birds calling.
JAC: Here are some sounds of that raven, though they sound like a cross between a crying baby and a howling cat:
White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae). The first photo shows an adult and the second is a immature bird based on the faded coloration:
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galeritta). To someone who has lived most of his life in the Northern Hemisphere, seeing cockatoos flying around a modern city is an unusual sight.
Good morning on Thanksgiving Thursday in America: November 23, 2017. Today most Americans, save me, will stuff themselves until they’re insensate, then falling asleep in a food coma in front of a television football game. It’s also National Espresso Day, and Foodimentary informs us that it takes about 42 coffee beans to make one serving of espresso. And, of course, because it’s Thanksgiving (Fastgiving for me), there’s a Google Doodle of a turkey fleeing its preordained fate.
So far this is the thinnest day of the year, eventwise. Almost nothing happened on November 23 and few notables either were born or died. On November 23, 1644, John Milton published a pamphlet that Christopher Hitchens always recommended as required reading for free speech advocates: Areopagitica, a work that decried censorship. (His other recommendations included Mills’s On Liberty.) On this day in 1992, the first smartphone, the IBM Simon, was introduced in a convention in Las Vegas. Finally, on November 23, 2015, Blue Origin‘s New Shepard spacecraft became the first vehicle to return from space and land safely on Earth in a controlled vertical descent. Here’s a video of the takeoff and landing. What a clever species we are!
Notables born on November 23 include Franklin Pierce (1804), José Clemente Orozco (1883), Harpo Marx (1888), Susan Anspach (1942), Bruce Hornsby (1954), and Miley Cyrus (1992). Only one person of note died on this day, jazz singer Anita O’Day (1992).
Hili seems to be suffering from existential angst today; Malgorzata explained that she drank too much last night!
Hili: I doubt.
A: What do you doubt?
Hili: Today I think I doubt everything.
In Polish
Hili: Wątpię.
Ja: W co wątpisz?
Hili: Dziś chyba we wszystko.
Some tweets from Dr. Cobb. I’m mad at this fishmonger, who should have given the seal some fish! Matthew said that he didn’t “cos the seal would come back and want more”. My response: “So what’s the problem?”
Just witnessed this giant seal being chased out the door of a fishmongers shop in Wicklow town. pic.twitter.com/WGlGxlAWfs
"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." – Marcus Aurelius. #WednesdayWisdompic.twitter.com/UazCSxRr2C
Coming back from lunch at the Lutheran Theological Seminary’s refectory (a great lunch spot I just discovered, and no tax!), I had a second religious encounter. Walking back to work, I passed the University Church, a Protestant Christian church with pronounced Left-wing beliefs (there’s a gay pride flag outside, as well as a Black Lives Matter banner), located only a block from my office. On one side of the church hung this banner with a quote from Gracie Allen (yes, the comedian), with the addition, “God is still speaking.”
I was intrigued by the quote, and thought it meant this: “There’s precious little evidence for God these days [i.e., the comma], but be assured—he’s still around [no period yet].” But that’s an admission that there’s not much evidence for God, which isn’t palatable for the religious. So I called a friend of mine, who used to be religious but is now a nonbeliever, and before I could even give him the quote, he told me what it was. (He still goes to a similar liberal church for social reasons and to be part of a group that does indeed effect substantive and positive social change).
So I asked my pal, “What do these quotes mean?”
He explained that this is a reaction to those fundamentalists and Biblical literalists who think that all morality is already in the Bible, can be derived from the Bible, and is unchanging. In other words, it’s a rebuke to those who say, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” The lack of a period, and the “God is still speaking” part means that God is still, through the church, helping us find a better way to live.
I welcome a religious view that morality is changing, but I think that’s shortsighted. If God didn’t get it right in the Bible, why not? Why didn’t he tell us from the outset that it’s wrong to kill gays, wrong to enslave people, wrong to commit genocide? What’s the purpose of God’s continued speech?
Well, we all know the answer to that one: liberal religion is simply a way to filter a secular morality through a religious strainer. Morality evolves, and it’s not because religion evolves, for religion is always playing catch-up. And so we have churches like this one opposing bigotry and racism, but pretending to rely on religious and Biblical justifications to do that. I admire their mission and values, but why not cut out the middleman? Why not just admit that your view of what’s right doesn’t come from God, but that you’re simply putting it in the mouth of God, perhaps as a way to inspire people to do what they see as God’s bidding?
Indeed, my friend told me that even though he’s not religious, he sees interfaith activism as a powerful way to change society for the better. And it may well be. I just find it sad that you have to accept fairy tales to make society better. And indeed, you don’t really have to. In many ways the largely atheist countries of Scandinavia and northern Europe have societies more moral than ours, yet they’re largely composed of atheists. As atheists often say, “You don’t need God to be good.” I’ll add that “You don’t need a religious society for that society to be good.”
Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, until last year biology faculty at The Evergreen State College—otherwise known as The People’s Democratic College of Evergreen State, or TPDCES—have long departed, hounded out of Olympia, Washington for refusing to comply with black racism, and the school is back to its regressive ways. But, according to a reader who wishes to remain unnamed, there’s a new course in store for the students, one that has the potential to enlighten them. But I’m betting it won’t.
You can click on the title above, or simply read the course description below. I’ve bolded the important parts, especially the last sentence!
“The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind” – John Stuart Mill
One purpose of a liberal education is to free or liberate students from narrow perspectives, limited thinking, partisanship, and categorical rhetoric in order to obtain knowledge. Affirmations of absolutes should give way to identification and clarification of ambiguities of complex topics. This can best be achieved in an environment where we are confronted with our preconceived notions of the world and are encouraged to engage in the dialectic: the rational exchange of conflicting ideas in a common pursuit of truth. This demanding work can be challenging in a setting where diverse viewpoints are absent. Lecture, and seminar topics will address the questions of how, when, and why the human mind can be resistant to realities that run counter to strongly held convictions. We will explore how the values that bind us into cohesive groups of like minded people can also blind us to our weaknesses. This interdisciplinary course will draw upon such diverse fields as moral psychology, social science, statistics, and philosophy. We will extensively consult with leading national experts on these topics while using Evergreen as a case study on how colleges and universities might address contentious issues of political diversity, free speech, freedom of thought, and censorship. Students and faculty will begin the quarter by identifying their own personal intuitions on relevant contentious issues. We will then independently examine a controversial question which we feel most certain and passionate about, but from the opposite perspective than we currently possess. In addition, students will individually engage with communities who have identities, values and opinions dissimilar to their own, while reflecting upon these experiences through writing. Through weekly readings, critical thinking skills will be refined through careful quantitative and qualitative examination of evidence while analyzing underlying assumptions and biases. Students will learn to distinguish between conceptual, empirical, and value claims while becoming adept at identifying logical fallacies. As a class we will cultivate virtues of intellectual humility with the primary aim of pursuing knowledge and truth ahead of social and political action. All perspectives on issues are not only welcome, but strongly encouraged. However, students who require “ideological safe spaces” where particular viewpoints are considered offensive may want to seek a different program.
How could such a course get into the curriculum at TPDCES? Who on Earth is teaching it?
Well, the listed professor happens to be none other than Dr. Michael Paros, who teaches biology, just like Weinstein and Heying. And he happens to be, as I noted months ago, the only Evergreen faculty member who issued a statement in support of Bret Weinstein (see more here, though the statement isn’t reproduced). Paros said he expected to be called a bigot for supporting Weinstein, but I haven’t followed up on whether that happened.
If anything is tinder for another conflagration at TPDCES, it’s this course. It’s not a science course, so it will be taken by humanities students—the Regressive types. The last sentence is a direct slap in the faces of Regressives, as is the one about how tribal values can blind one to one’s weaknesses! How can the Cultural Revolutionaries stand it? Will Paros be forced to sit in class wearing a paper cone-hat and with a sign of shame around his neck?
More questions: whom will the students seek out having “identities, values, and opinions dissimilar to their own”? Republicans? Poor people? White people? And who will the “national experts” on these topics be? I can think of some: Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, Jonathan Haidt, Nicholas or Erika Christakis from Yale, Jordan Peterson, Weinstein himself or, Ceiling Cat help us, hard-ass conservatives like Ben Shapiro. (I doubt the students could listen to a whole talk by Shapiro without losing it.)
Yes, this could be a great course and an eye-opener for the students, and Paros is clearly offering it because he’s distressed at the thuggery, regressiveness, and close-mindedness of both the faculty and students at TPDCES. I wish him luck, but I have little hope that the students won’t picket this course or try to shut it down. I fear that Paros’s effort is doomed, but I sure hope not.
Wilfred Laurier University is a public university in Waterloo, Ontario, and has just become the target of international opprobrium after its persecution of a graduate teaching assistant became public this week. The teaching assistant, 22 year old Lindsay Shepherd, is now one of my heroes for standing up for the principles of free speech and pushing back against the bullying of her professors and the University who want Suppressed Speech. Here she is:
Lindsay Shepherd. Photo by David Bebee
What happened? Well, as reported by several sources, including the Globe and Mail,Shepherd, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in cultural analysis and social theory, was teaching a tutorial on language to first year students when the subject of personal pronouns arose. As you may have heard, this year Canada passed a federal law that added “gender identity and gender expression” to the Canadian Human Rights Act (“Bill C-16″). It’s not completely clear whether this law criminalizes those who refuse to use a person’s chosen pronoun—”him”, “her”, “zir”, “it”, “they”, and so on—but the paper reports that this seems likely, at least in one province:
The Ontario Human Rights Commission states clearly on its website that refusing to refer to a person by their preferred name and pronoun “will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”
I think it’s a matter of civility to use whatever pronoun a student wants. But should one be forced to do that? Isn’t that a violation of freedom of speech? Well, repeated refusal to use a preferred pronoun seems to me to be harassment, and that shouldn’t be tolerated. Others may differ, and at any rate this matter is not an open and shut case.
The most famous opponent of the forced use of preferred pronouns is Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. As I’ve said before, he’s all over the Internet, but I haven’t had time to examine his views carefully; and what I have seen suggests that he’s both very smart and somewhat unhinged. Be that as it may, he engaged in a debate about pronoun usage and transgender people on Steve Paikin’s “The Agenda” show last October. Here’s the 54-minute video in which Peterson debates other people, including another professor from UT, Nicholas Matte from the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. You needn’t watch the whole show (I did soon after it aired), but if you have time I’d recommend it:
Shepherd apparently showed her students a three-minute clip from this show, featuring Peterson vs. Matte, to demonstrate the controversy about pronoun use. She herself claims that she’s on Matte’s side, but wanted to inspire discussion in her class. That seems fair enough.
But several students (who, of course, remained anonymous) complained to the University, and Shepherd was called in for a private shaming and criticism session by faculty and University officials. Fortunately, she was savvy enough to record the whole 43-minute interrogation on her computer rather than taking notes. You can find the full recording and some of the transcript at The National Post,but below is a 10-minute excerpt that gives an idea of what was going on. Shepherd’s interrogators/shamers were her own supervisor, professor Nathan Rambukkana; another professor, Herbert Pimlott; and Adria Joel, Laurer University’s manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support. Do listen to this ten minutes. Here’s a brief summary from the G&M:
During the interrogation, Ms. Shepherd is told repeatedly that she is guilty of spreading transphobia – in violation of the university’s policy and also, most likely, of Ontario’s human-rights code. At one point her supervisor, Nathan Rambukkana, compares her actions to endorsing white supremacy. “This is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler,” he tells her.
What did Ms. Shepherd do? She played a three-minute video clip from a TV program that had been broadcast on TVO. It featured a debate over transgender pronouns. The role of Hitler was played by Jordan Peterson, the notorious University of Toronto professor who has thrown the entire academic world into conniption fits with his alleged hate thoughts. Among other things, Prof. Peterson argues that Ontario’s human-rights code could compel people to use non-gendered artificial pronouns – a position that Ms. Shepherd’s superiors at WLU evidently share. [JAC: Shepherd apparently agrees with them, too!]
Ms. Shepherd attempted to explain that she doesn’t even agree with Prof. Peterson. She simply used the clip to help frame a class discussion – an explanation that her interrogators ignored. When she asked which students had complained and how many, she was told that information was confidential. When she pointed out that the pronoun controversy has already been widely aired in public, she was told that some ideas are too “problematic” to be introduced into the classroom. When she voiced her opinion that universities should be places for debate, she was told that she’s created a toxic environment for students. When she said she had remained neutral and not tried to impose her own views, her supervisor, Prof. Rambukkana, told her, “That’s kind of part of the problem.”
You can hear this below.What a bunch of sanctimonious twits and bullies those three interrogators are! I’m so proud of Shepherd for standing up for herself in the face of these head-thumpers, even though she was brought to tears several times.
Here are the two professors who went after her:
Wilfrid Laurier University professors Nathan Rambukkana, left, and Herbert Pimlott, right. From National Post.
And here’s Adria Joel:
Now had Shepherd not recorded this session, and then decided to release it to the news, she undoubtedly would have been sanctioned, or even removed from teaching that class. But her interrogation was so nasty, so insensitive, so oblivious to the purposes of free discussion in a college education, that its release proved completely embarrassing for the university. There was a public uproar, and President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy was forced to issue a public apology to Shepherd. Fine, but the apology was hedged, for it includes this (my emphasis):
Through the media, we have now had the opportunity to hear the full recording of the meeting that took place at Wilfrid Laurier University.
After listening to this recording, an apology is in order. The conversation I heard does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires. I am sorry it occurred in the way that it did and I regret the impact it had on Lindsay Shepherd. I will convey my apology to her directly. Professor Rambukkana has also chosen to apologize to Lindsay Shepherd about the way the meeting was conducted.
I remain troubled by the way faculty, staff and students involved in this situation have been targeted with extreme vitriol. Supports are in place at the university to support them through this situation.
She’s troubled not just by how Shepherd was treated, but by the way “the faculty, staff, and students involved in this situation” were “targeted with extreme vitriol”. Well, they should have been! So long as they were criticized for their sniveling cowardice and snowflake-ness, as well for bullying Shepherd, and not threatened personally, vitriol is the appropriate response. What MacLatchy is trying to do is apologize to everybody so she doesn’t have to take a stand. Her cowardice is also reflected in what she’s doing to “fix” the situation:
The university has engaged an independent party to assess the facts of the matter including a review of related processes going forward. The review is intended to support improvement in our processes. The university is committed to ensuring that the vitally important role of Teaching Assistant supports an enriched learning environment for all students.
Let me be clear by stating that Laurier is committed to the abiding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
Yeah, right! They surely weren’t espousing those principles in the meeting with Shepherd. MacLatchy has also convened a “task force” to “delve into these issues.” Seriously? Why can’t she just adopt the University of Chicago’s free speech principles and be done with it?
Professor Rambukkana has also issued an apology to Shepherd, and it’s more or less the craven, insincere document you’d expect. All of a sudden he’s backed off hectoring of his own student and has completely rethought his principles—in only a few days. What really happened is that he’s simply embarrassed at being the butt of public anger.
I suppose all this has ended well, though I’m not keen on President MacLatchy’s blanket apology to everyone. What we see here, though, is what happens all the time in American and Canadian universities; we simply don’t know about it because it isn’t recorded. This is what happens in Title IX inquiries, where accusations and accusers remain anonymous and those accused aren’t allowed to confront the accusers or even have a lawyer. While the U.S. is succumbing to a lunatic, right-wing President, our universities are succumbing to a Regressive Leftism that gives lip service to free speech but suppresses it when such speech becomes ideologically inconvenient.
I’ll give the last word to Ms. Shepherd, and I wish her well. We have here a brave young woman who stands up for her principles under enormous pressure, and I hope she achieves great things. She seems to know more about what education is about than either of the bullying professors or the University President herself.
Moral of the story: A university must be repeatedly publicly shamed, internationally, in order to apologize (oh, but keep the task force & investigation). Even then, ambiguous about free speech. Also, make sure to secretly record all meetings or they won't take you seriously.
