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.
by Greg Mayer
As Christmas approaches, we have a Christmas tree related “Spot the…”
Given the heightened search image abilities of WEIT readers, this one won’t be very difficult (although, as first sent to me as a text, I had a bit of a hard time), but what it lacks in challenge it makes up for in indoor arboreality.
Here’s an exercise in critical thinking. First watch this performance of Reza Aslan on CNN. If you didn’t know better (and you will in a few minutes), you’d think he acquitted himself well, showing that Islam is not a harmful religion and turning back the critical questions by labeling their askers as bigots. But analyze his arguments as he speaks.
Well, you may take issue with Aslan’s contention that people can be motivated by politics and their social milieu to do bad things, but NEVER by Islam. You may also know of the Pew Poll’s finding that many Muslims throughout the world harbor views that are divisive, oppressive, bigoted, or misogynistic. But for the definitive refutation of the above, read the guest post on The Friendly Atheist site by ex-Muslims Muhammad Syed and Sarah Haider. Yes, it’s all from last year, but not much has changed since then, and the piece has nearly 3,000 comments.
Syed and Haider’s conclusion?
We believe that Islam badly needs to be reformed, and it is only Muslims who can truly make it into a modern religion. But it is the likes of Reza Aslan who act as a deterrent to change by refusing to acknowledge real complications within the scripture and by actively promoting half-truths. Bigotry against Muslims is a real and pressing problem, but one can criticize the Islamic ideology without treating Muslims as themselves problematic or incapable of reform.
There are true Muslim reformists who are willing to call a spade a spade while working for the true betterment of their peoples — but their voices are drowned out by the noise of apologists who are all-too-often aided by the Western left. Those who accept distortions in order to hold on to a comforting dream-world where Islamic fundamentalism is merely an aberration are harming reform by encouraging apologists.
I thought for sure that the McFarland Thistle was a Scottish newspaper, but it actually comes from McFarland, Wisconsin (population 7808), and don’t ask me why. Perhaps there are many of Scottish ancestry there. At any rate, reader Gregory James called my attention to a heartbreaking but also wonderful article in the paper, “McFarland’s Heather McManamy dies; leaves extraordinary letter to all.” McManamy died this week of metastatic breast cancer at only 35, leaving a four-year-old daughter, Brianna.
But before she died, she wrote 40 letters to her daughter to be read at various milestones in the future; these letters will apparently be published. And she left as well a final note to her friends and family, which was posted by her husband on Facebook. I reproduce it in full below. McManamy was an atheist, and her nonbelief is evident in this last message (especially in the second paragraph), as it is in the video at the end. She faced her death bravely, even with humor, and didn’t clutch at false superstitions.
So … I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, apparently, I’m dead. Good news, if you’re reading this, is that you are most definitely not (unless they have Wi-Fi in the afterlife). Yes, this sucks. It sucks beyond words, but I’m just so damn glad I lived a life so full of love, joy and amazing friends. I am lucky to honestly say that I have zero regrets and I spent every ounce of energy I had living life to the fullest. I love you all and thank you for this awesome life.
Whatever religion brings you comfort, I am happy that you have that. However, respect that we are not religious. Please, please, please do not tell Brianna that I am in heaven. In her mind, that means that I chose to be somewhere else and left her. In reality, I did everything I could to be here with her, as there is nowhere, NOWHERE, I would rather be than with her and Jeff. Please don’t confuse her and let her think for one second that is not true. Because I am not in heaven. I’m here. But no longer in the crappy body that turned against me. My energy, my love, my laughter, those incredible memories, it’s all here with you.
Please don’t think of me with pity or sadness. Smile, knowing that we had a blast together and that time was AMAZING. I (expletive) hate making people sad. More than anything, I love making people laugh and smile, so please, rather than dwelling on the tragic “Terms of Endearment” end of my story, laugh at the memories we made and the fun we had. Please tell Brianna stories, so she knows how much I love her and how proud of her I will always be (and make me sound way cooler than I am). Because I love nothing more than being her mommy. Nothing. Every moment with her was a happiness I couldn’t even imagine until she came crashing into our world.
And don’t say I lost to cancer. Because cancer may have taken almost everything from me, but it never took my love or my hope or my joy. It wasn’t a “battle” it was just life, which is often brutally random and unfair, and that’s simply how it goes sometimes. I didn’t lose, dammit. The way I lived for years with cancer is something I consider a pretty big victory. Please remember that.
Most importantly, I was unbelievably lucky to spend over a decade with the love of my life and my best friend, Jeff. True love and soulmates do exist. Every day was full of hilarity and love with Jeff by my side. He is genuinely the best husband in the universe. Through all my cancer crap, he never wavered when so many people would want to run. Even on the worst days you could imagine, we found a way to laugh together. I love him more than life itself and I truly believe that a love like that is so special it will live forever. Time is the most precious thing in this world and to have shared my life for so long with Jeff is something I am incredibly grateful for. I love you, Jeff. I believe that the awesomeness that is Brianna is our love brought to life, which is pretty beautiful.
It absolutely breaks my heart to have to say goodbye. If it’s half as sad for you as it is for me, it breaks my heart over again because the last thing I ever want to do is make you sad. I hope that with time, you can think of me and smile and laugh, because, holy (expletive), did we have a breathtaking life. Go google “Physicist’s Eulogy” and know that it is a scientific fact I will always be with you both in some way. I know that if you just stop and look hard enough, I’ll be with there (in as non-creepy a way as possible). You’re my world and I loved every second we had together more than words.
Friends, I love you all and thank you for the most wonderfully awe-inspiring life. And thank you to all of my amazing doctors and nurses who have taken such incredible care of me. I don’t doubt that my team gave me every possible good day that they could. From the bottom of my heart, I wish all my friends long, healthy lives and I hope you can experience the same appreciation for the gift of each day that I did.
If you go to my funeral, please run up a bar tab that would make me proud. Heck, blast “Keg on My Coffin” and dance on the bar for me (because there had better be a dance party at some point). Celebrate the beauty of life with a kick-ass party because you know that’s what I want and I believe that in a weird way I will find a way to be there too. (You know how much I hate missing out on fun.)
I look forward to haunting each one of you, so this isn’t so much a goodbye as it is see you later. Please do me a favor and take a few minutes each day to acknowledge the fragile adventure that is this crazy life. Don’t ever forget: every day matters.
Here’s a news report on Heather’s struggle and death ; it gives me a bad case of the sniffles, as it did the reporter at the end. I defy you to read the above, or watch the below, without some tears:
A few photos from the Daily Mail:
Every day matters.
Just a reminder that I’ll be giving the annual Darwin Day Lecture for the British Humanist Association at 7:30 p.m. on February 12 in London. The details are here, and the topic is below. You might have heard of the other atheist/evolutionist who will be be chairing the talk:
I’ve just finished writing this talk, and am excited about giving it; the premise is that both the facts and implications of evolution ineluctably pull one towards nonbelief. But there are many aspects of the problem, including accommodationism and the failures thereof, the incompatibility between science and faith (with special emphasis on evolution), why theistic evolution is a nonstarter, and so on.
While there’s a modest ticket charge, let me emphasize that the money goes entirely to support the BHA: I am not making a penny. But I think they will have a sale and signing of both of my trade books after the talk, which might enrich me slightly, and there will be a secret word to get a cat drawn in your book (stay tuned). So, as Hitchens said, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades: I’ll see you in London.
Even a conservative can be right sometimes, including George Will. Although I long thought of him as a Catholic, he’s now declared himself a “low-voltage atheist”, which of course shows that he has some discriminatory power. In a piece at the Washington Post called “American higher education is a house divided,” he lauds the University of Chicago’s free-speech standards (I am SO proud of these), standards that have now been copied by six other schools, including Purdue.
Will also maintains, and I’d like to think he’s right, that scientists on academic faculties are less likely to buy into reflexive internet accusations, and more likely to promote free speech, than are their colleagues in the humanities. Admittedly, the data he gives are anecdotal, but I think that scientists’ instilled habits of doubt and questioning do put them on a straighter path than those who think that all viewpoints are equally “privileged”:
Scientists and engineers live lives governed by the reality principle: Get the variables wrong, the experiment will fail, even if this seems insensitive; do the math wrong, the equation will tell you, even if that hurts your feelings. Reality does not similarly regulate the production of Marxist interpretations of “Middlemarch” or turgid monographs on the false consciousness of Parisian street sweepers in 1714. Literature professors “deconstructing” Herman Melville cause nothing worse than excruciating boredom in their students. If engineers ignore reality, reality deconstructs their bridges.
. . . In their scalding 2007 book “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case,” Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson plausibly argue that Duke’s disgrace — a fictional rape; hysterical academics trashing due process — was driven by the faculty Group of 88. Signatories of its manifesto included “only two professors in math, just one in the hard sciences, and zero in law. . . . More than 84 percent described their research interests as related to race, class or gender (or all three). The Group of 88 was disproportionately concentrated in the humanities and some social science departments. Fully 80 percent of the African-American studies faculty members signed the statement, followed by women’s studies (72.2 percent) and cultural anthropology (60 percent).”
Higher education is increasingly a house divided. In the sciences and even the humanities, actual scholars maintain the high standards of their noble calling. But in the humanities, especially, and elsewhere, faux scholars representing specious disciplines exploit academia as a jobs program for otherwise unemployable propagandists hostile to freedom of expression.
Them’s fighting words, and humanities scholars will object, but there’s food for thought there. And no, not all humanities scholars oppose freedom of expression; that’s a bit of an exaggeration!
I love the humanities—or at least the objects they study—but the way I was taught literature and art was to try to understand it as an aesthetic object rather than to deconstruct it in a postmodern way, relating it to various ideological viewpoints or social movements. One of my friends, in fact, resigned as head of an English department in a major university because the faculty, rather than teaching literature in a way that would get students to both enjoy it and develop the habit of reading it, regarded it as a corpse to be dissected with Marxist tools, postmodern tools, Darwinian tools, and so on. Give me the New Criticism any day!
h/t: Diane G.
The Dodo has the heartwarming (and catwarming) story of Lazurus, a tiny kitten found frozen beneath the snow in Utah, apparently lifeless. Brought inside, warmed by the fire, and given some CPR, Lazarus revived and is now fine. The cooling must have saved him from brain death:
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Below we have Kagonekoshiro, the famous “White basket cat,” who, along with his minions, is famous for being so chill that one can balance anything on his head or paws. Kago lives on a farm in Japan, and has a swell blog and a YouTube channel that will give you many LOLs.
I don’t know how they trained the cats to do this, but they do it repeatedly, with things like turnips and tangerines placed on their head and paws. Kagonekoshiro, head of the clan, is the white cat with red markings, third from the left. Notice how remains unperturbed (and asleep) while his minions, not fully trained, are following an object with their eyes.
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Meet Tribble the rescue cat, described by Hello Giggles as having “the cutest cat purr in the known cosmos. It’s something like a cross between a bird and a cartoon character.” Well, I’m not so sure about that, but it’s pretty adorable.
If you’re a science-fiction ignoramus like me, you’d have to look up the source of the name. As I found out, the cat was named after the furry Tribbles from Star Trek, one of the fakiest “species” to ever to appear on that show, but a species whose members made a cooing sound. First, Tribbles the cat:
And if you want to hear “real” tribbles making cooes, you can find a video here.
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Finally, as lagniappe, we have an ancient artistic cat that’s very old, carved about the time that humans were first crossing the Bering Strait to colonize the Americas:
Lioness carved on bone from the last glacial, 12,000-14,000 yrs ago, Grotte de la Vache, Ariege, Midi-Pyrénées #art pic.twitter.com/mjqqtF3oxi
— The Ice Age ❄️🌞 (@Jamie_Woodward_) December 6, 2015
h/t: Cindy, jsp, Grania
Reader Mark Sturtevant is busy with his experiment, and we get the results:
Here is the second installment of pictures that I have taken of insects in flight. In these pictures, I used my main kit, which is a 50mm lens on extension tubes. The first two are of the Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica).
This last picture is of a Clearwing sphinx moth (Hemaris definis). This moth visited our Butterfly bush over several consecutive days in the mornings.
Reader Roger Atkin sent some unidentified arthropods; perhaps readers could help with the ID:
The first picture could be Argiope jinghongensis as I believe it is native to Thailand whereas I don’t know if versicolor is. Anyway it is a St. Andrew’s cross spider with 4 thickened parts to the web. The butterflies and orchids could be anything as their profusion makes it difficult for an amateur to find them on the web.
It’s one week till Boxing Day, and six days until the beginning of Coynezaa. Hyde Park is a desert, as all the students have gone home for Christmas, and it’s below freezing, so that I have to put warm water in my squirrels’ water dish (they do so love their water!). Today the squirrels will get their Coynezaa present: a ten-pound bag of black oil sunflower seeds and a goodly selection of walnuts and hazelnuts. On this day in history, Emily Bronte died in 1848 and Marcello Mastroianni died in 1996; neither made it to Christmas. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to be conducting her own War on Christmas. Either that, or she thinks she’s the Savior.
A: Why are you looking back?
Hili: I’m checking whether a star of Bethlehem is wobbling along behind me.
Ja: Czemu się tak oglądasz?
Hili: Sprawdzam, czy jakaś gwiazda betlejemska za mną nie lezie.
Mister Squirrel told me today:You may be dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones you used to know… but green is a color that suits me!
