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.
This is just an advance notice: if you live in the Washington, D.C. area, on May 27 I’m doing a book event at Politics and Prose, a famous independent bookstore on Connecticut Avenue. The information is here, but I’ve put the screenshot below.
I’ll give a 20-minute talk on the book, answer questions, and then sign books. If you say the secret word (“Maru”), you’ll get a special moggie drawn in your book.
I’ll also be talking at the spiffy University Club of Chicago (a longer talk on the book) at noon on May 21 (76 E. Monroe St.), but they haven’t yet announced it formally. It’ll be open to the public as well as members, but I’m not sure if nonmembers have to get tickets. Stay tuned.
We have yet more reader activism: JBillie didn’t like what he heard on NPR (National Public Radio) on a show about the Armenian genocide (yes, President Obama, it was a genocide, even though you cowardly refuse to use that word), and so he sent a testy letter to the station (published with permission). Their response was not satisfactory.
Original Message:
This is a message for Steve Innskeep: This morning, when interviewing the scholar on the Armenian genocide by the Turks during WWI, you used the adjective “scientific” to describe the plan for murdering the Armenians.
This is the wrong adjective.
There were no scientists involved in this decision. There were no experiments, data, or results. These decisions were made by generals and politicians. This plan was managed, not scientific. It was calculated, not scientific.
Why is it that managed genocides somehow get marked up to the ledger of science, when science has nothing to do with them, even as a tool. The Armenian genocide was carried out by foot soldiers with small arms and death marches. Science isn’t needed and wasn’t used for it. These tools have been around since long before the word science was ever coined or the techniques ever used.
No, the adjective you were groping for was: Cold-blooded. Not scientific: Cold-blooded.
Can you please correct this in the repeats of this segment? Thanks,
Response:
Response to Message #957487:
Dear Billie,
Thank you for contacting NPR.
We appreciate you sharing your concerns with us. We strive to offer the highest quality of news and information available. Listener feedback helps us to accomplish this goal.
We welcome both criticism and praise, and your thoughts will be taken into consideration.
Thank you for listening, and for your continued support of public broadcasting. For the latest news and information, visit NPR.org.
Sincerely,
Ana
NPR Audience and Community Relations www.npr.org
That letter went right in the circular file. If they correct it in a rebroadcast, I’ll send a free copy of my new book to the reader that hears it and proves it.
And you know, I wouldn’t have thought twice about the use of the word “scientific,” even though, as the reader notes, it really is pejorative here.
Today seems to be shaping up as “Readers Weigh In Day,” for I want to post the content of two emails sent to me by readers, emails that I thought might be of more general interest. This one, and one I’ll post later, are reproduced with permission.
I’ve posted several times (and had one guest post) about the bigotry shown by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who refuse to sit next to women on planes (see here, here, and here, for instance). In some cases the airlines try to be “accommodating,” with flight attendants asking passengers if they wouldn’t move to accommodate these requests.
My readers, especially women, continue to be upset by both the religiously-based misogyny of the Jews as well as the desire of airlines to accommodate these requests. One woman emailed me with a strongly-felt objection to this “accommodationism,” pointing out, correctly, that while this biogtry is tolerated out of respect for religion, it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t connected with religion:
of respect for religion, it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t connected with religion:
As an example of how society ignores bigotry against women, imagine the same scenario on a plane if a white-supremacist religious wingnut said it was against his religion to sit next to someone who had dark skin. Would the airline personnel ask the black passenger if he would kindly move to another seat? Of course not, because the request would be seen for its true nature—pure bigotry combined with abject ignorance.
Airline personel who ask a woman to move in order to allow a fundamentalist bat-shit crazy mad-hatter to exercise his fear of the female sex should consider what it is they are doing. The airline should be sued for discrimination against women and against THEIR freedom of religion.
If the bastards are fearful of sitting next to a woman, let them buy three tickets for themselves so they can be certain their seat is empty.
I have to say that I agree. Bigotry in the guise of religious belief is still bigotry, as we’ve learned with all the recent “religious freedom restoration acts.” If a flight attendant wouldn’t accommodate a racist passenger, why would he or she accommodate a sexist one? Or is sexism somehow sanctified if it’s based on faith?
Curiously, Andrzej just posted a relevant video on his Facebook page:
I’ll never forget the first time I heard the classic rock song “Louie, Louie,” by the Kingsmen (it was actually written by Richard Berry and first recorded by him in 1957). It was 1963, and a friend and I had hiked from one Army base to another in Germany, where my dad was stationed. I had a transistor radio (remember them!) and heard the song whjile we were eating sandwiches at an impromptu picnic.
I couldn’t make out the words, but later everyone said they were FILTHY. And indeed, if you listened carefully, and kept your mind in the gutter, you could hear all kinds of smutty stuff. Have a listen:
Some of the older readers might remember the kerfuffle about this song. In reality, it wasn’t a dirty song at all; the lyrics are here, and, as Wikipedia notes, “It tells, in simple verse–chorus form, the first-person story of a Jamaican sailor returning to the island to see his lady love.”
I won’t recount how I interpreted the garbled lyrics, but, according to the April 29 New York Times, reporting the death of the singer Jack Ely, the ambiguity came from the song’s poor quality:
Mr. Ely persuaded the Kingsmen and the band’s manager to record the song. They booked the Northwestern Inc. studio in Portland for an hour on April 6, 1963.
“It was more yelling than singing ’cause I was trying to be heard over all the instruments,” Mr. Ely recalled, according to Peter Blecha, a music historian, in his book “Sonic Boom! The History of Northwest Rock: From ‘Louie Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ ” (2009). He also began the third verse a few bars too soon and paused while the band caught up.
In an interview with the Oregon newspaper The Bend Bulletin in 1987, Mr. Ely recalled: “I stood there and yelled while the whole band was playing, and when it was over, we hated it. We thought it was a totally non-quality recording.”
Despite the song being completely innocuous, it was banned on many U.S. radio stations—even though it went to #2 on the charts— and was even subject to an FBI investigation. As the Times reports:
The F.B.I. began investigating after an Indiana parent wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1964: “My daughter brought home a record of ‘LOUIE LOUIE’ and I, after reading that the record had been banned on the air because it was obscene, proceeded to try to decipher the jumble of words. The lyrics are so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter.”
The F.B.I. Laboratory’s efforts at decryption were less fruitful. After more than two years and a 455-page report, the bureau concluded that “three governmental agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were, even after listening to the records at speeds ranging from 16 r.p.m. to 78 r.p.m.”
Mr. Berry’s words, with a first verse that begins, “Fine little girl she wait for me/Me catch the ship for ’cross the sea,” are in fact completely benign. Whatever obscenities people thought they heard, the Kingsmen’s version hewed closely to the original — lyrically if not musically.
There’s a slight religious angle here, too. The Times notes the cause of death as this:
Mr. Ely died on Tuesday at 71 at his home in Redmond, Ore. His son Sean said that Mr. Ely was a Christian Scientist and had not sought treatment, but that he believed the cause was skin cancer.
People keep on dying because of that faith’s ridiculous belief that disease is merely a manifestation of incorrect thinking.
(From the NYT): The Kingsmen, from left, Don Gallucci, Jack Ely, Lynn Easton, Mike Mitchell and Bob Nordby. Credit Gino Rossi.
A reader who doesn’t want to be identified wrote in with some information about how Mormons regard evolution (hint: not favorably). I’ll start with his/her “deconversion” story, which is short but emphasizes again the effectiveness of critiques of religion and paeans to reason on drawing people away from superstition.
I was raised a Mormon, but became an apostate at 17 and became an agnostic with religious yearnings until reading Harris, Dawkins and Pinker. Your WEIT book has been the best reference for discussions I’ve had with both Mormon and God believing ex-Mormons who reject evolution. The points you have made in the book makes their mental gears turn.
And now information about evolution (LDS stands for “Latter Day Saints,” part of the Church’s official name):
The LDS Church has been saying there is no conflict between science and religion for years, yet there are few Mormons who accept evolution, and those who do reject speciation in favor of micro-evolution. I have met only one Mormon who accepts that humans evolved from non-human animals.
The article describes the opening of a new Life Sciences Building at Brigham Young University (a Mormon college in Utah), and quotes Elder Russell M. Nelson, a former cardiothoracic surgeon and a member of one of the Church’s governing bodies, The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Nelson is quoted in the Deseret News: “This university is committed to search for truth, and teach the truth,” said Elder Nelson. “All truth is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether truth comes from a scientific laboratory or by revelation from the Lord, it is compatible.”
Really? After all, the Book of Mormon says that Jesus not only visited North America, but that the Native Americans migrated here from the Middle East. The latter claim is completely refuted by the genetic evidence (Native Americans are genetically related to Siberians, as we expect since they came to the New World over the Bering Strait.) Of course Mormon theologians are busily trying to comport the genetic data with the book of Mormon, an amusing exercise I discuss in Faith vs. Fact.
And what about evolution? My ex-Mormon correspondent added this:
In 1984, former LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinkley wrote the following in the church magazine Ensign:
“I remember when I was a college student there were great discussions on the question of organic evolution. I took classes in geology and biology and heard the whole story of Darwinism as it was then taught. I wondered about it. I thought much about it. But I did not let it throw me, for I read what the scriptures said about our origins and our relationship to God. Since then I have become acquainted with what to me is a far more important and wonderful kind of evolution. It is the evolution of men and women as the sons and daughters of God, and of our marvelous potential for growth as children of our Creator.”
(The full article is here.) Hinkley was quoted in an article published in 2004 in the same church magazine.
A Mormon colleague told me that he took a human evolution class at BYU. The professor spent some time trying to convince students that human evolution didn’t conflict with LDS beliefs and therefore wouldn’t harm faith.
Here’s the 2009 Pew graph showing acceptance of evolution among various faiths in America (the question asked is at the top). As usual, the question deals only with human evolution; I suspect that the numbers would be higher if people were asked about evolution of nonhuman life. But, as you see, Mormons, while above Jehovah’s Witnesses, who adamantly and explicitly reject evolution, are below Evangelical Protestants and have only half the evolution acceptance of Muslims. That’s pretty low for a faith in which religious truth is fully compatible with scientific truth!
There are 6.5 million Mormons in the U.S., and many of them are prosperous, upper-middle-class citizens. They are hardly the toothless Bible-thumping fundamentalists that come to mind when you think of creationists. The official position of the Mormon Church on evolution is that it takes no stand one way or the other on the process, but does affirm that humans came through Adam and Eve and did not evolve from other creatures. As far as I can see, the ongoing position of the Church, first articulated by the “First Presidency” in 1909, is still in force, and was reaffirmed as late as 1988 (my emphasis):
All [men] who have inhabited the earth since Adam have taken bodies and become souls in like manner. It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declares that Adam was “the first man of all men” (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of the race … all men were created in the beginning after the image of God; and whether we take this to mean the spirit or the body, or both, it commits us to the same conclusion: Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our heavenly Father.
True it is that the body of man enters upon its career as a tiny germ or embryo, which becomes an infant, quickened at a certain stage by the spirit whose tabernacle it is, and the child, after being born, develops into a man. There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man.
I wonder what the position of accommodationist organizations like the National Center for Science Education would be about churches that might accept evolution but not human evolution. At any rate, they’re going to have a hard slog convincing 5 million Mormons (the 78% that deny human evolution) that our own species evolved. (I wonder how successful that BYU biology professor was!) What they’ll have to do is to show those Mormons that the explicit statements about Adam and Even shown above are really just metaphors, and that humans evolved from earlier primates. Good luck!
First off are a northern harrier (Circus cyaneus) and a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) from Stephen Barnard of Idaho (I lost the email, so correct me if the IDs are wrong):
Reader Ed Kroc from the Vancouver area sent a picture-story of nature red in tooth, claw, and beak:
I thought I’d send along a series of photos from a recent episode I witnessed between a young Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) and her reluctant meal. It was an interesting opportunity to watch a young gull grow up a little.
The first photo shows the gull trying to pick at some inedible scrap of a more successful predator’s lunch. I watched her poke and prod this item for several minutes. She dragged it through the surf and tried to bite it, making pitiful, begging mew sounds the whole time. This gull is about nine and a half months old and can catch some of her own food, but she is still partially dependent on her parents for survival.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, her dad (I’m inferring that relation) was nearby in the water, paddling around the dock looking for food. I only noticed him when he walked quickly up on shore with a fresh crab dangling from his bill, and the juvenile started running with her scrap straight toward him, mewing desperately. He jogged up to the high tide line, dropped the crab on the rocky shore, and took a few steps back to watch the juvenile. In the second photo you can see she has just reached the crab, picking it up tentatively by a kicking leg. The now discarded piece of inedible flotsam is visible just beneath the crab.
The next two photos show the the young gull learning the wrong way to handle a live crab. I’m sorry to say I don’t know the identity of the mighty crustacean, but he refused to resign himself to his fate. The battle went on for a couple minutes, with the gull flipping the crab every which way and the crab flailing his legs and snapping his claws as menacingly as possible. It was somewhere in the heat of battle that the parent gull lost interest and walked back into the water to peruse the docks again.
Eventually, the gull realized (or maybe just chanced upon the fact) that the crab’s belly was soft and permeable. She got a good grip and bit down in the fifth picture. However awkwardly, bill had triumphed over claw.
The sixth photo shows her extracting the succulent noms. No more than a few seconds after the battle ended, these two Northwestern Crows (Corvus caurinus) showed up on the shore. My guess is they were watching the dirty work from the trees.
And finally, just like a human child, the young gull made a complete mess of her meal and the beach. In the last photo, legs and other body parts are strewn unceremoniously around her feet. She seems to be unsure of what to do with her scraps. There’s also a lot of meat that’s left! The crows quickly took care of that though once the gull wandered off to go investigate something in the water.
I wonder what the gull learned from this experience, if anything? I wonder if her next battle with a crab will go any smoother? I wonder just how little she knows about life as a gull yet? All part of growing up, I guess.
But in Dobrzyn the cherry trees are blooming (good news for my pie aspirations this fall!), and the Princess is celebrating a holiday. Isn’t she fetching? (I don’t mean mice.)
Hili: I’m not hunting mice today, it’s Labor Day in Europe.
A: So what are you going to eat?
Hili: Veal.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie łowię dziś myszy, święto pracy.
Ja: To co będziesz jadła?
Hili: Cielęcinę.
And lagniappe: Here is the Princess in her realm, or, as Malgorzata says, “And another picture documenting the state of the orchard – day 5 of blooming.”
