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.
The panel debate at the L.A. Secular Humanism conference, involving Chris Mooney, Eugenie Scott, Victor Stenger, and P.Z. Myers, is now up. If you didn’t see it live, here’s your chance.
Ernst Mayr was one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century, an architect of the evolutionary synthesis, and chief exponent of the biological species concept and geographic speciation. Jerry and I both had the privilege of knowing him. I was fortunate to be able to attend his 100th birthday party in 2004 (at the end of which he gave a brief impromptu talk on his life and achievements, which he summarized by saying “I’ve had a wonderful life.”), and Jerry wrote what I regard as the canonical obituary in Science (not open access, unfortunately) after his death in 2005. A biography of Mayr (the first, but probably not the last) by Jurgen Haffer was published in 2007
I was greatly pleased, therefore, to run across, more or less accidentally, Web of Stories, a website which features videos of long interviews with interesting people, including Ernst Mayr. The Mayr interview, conducted in 1997 by Mayr’s student Walter Bock, a famous biologist in his own right, consists of 150 high quality video segments, each a few minutes long, with their content identified by subject matter.
Besides the many comments on the USA Today site about my science-faith op-ed (they’ve now exceeded a thousand), I’ve also let some of the religious objectors post here. (I’ve spammed the ones that were either insane or contributed nothing to the discussion.). And of course I’ve received the requisite private emails damning me to hell, and conjuring up dire scenarios when I finally face Jesus (who said Christians weren’t strident or shrill?)
One comment that I didn’t allow through, but am posting here, is a unique response to my assertion that the Holocaust should certainly erode people’s faith in a loving and just God. The writer has an answer—which I’m sure is not just his—why the Holocaust was indeed part of God’s plan. Try to guess before you read this!
Dear Mr. Coyne
I just read your article in the USA Today Newspaper from October 11th, 2010. First, I just wanted to congratulate you on your use of the English vocabulary. Well done.
You wrote and I quote, “I’ve never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus.(I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.)” That is a section of your article which I thought very, very curiously interesting, objectively of course. Why you ask? Isn’t it obvious? Well, I thought it was common knowledge.
Everyone knows Hitler’s thought process was primarily responsible for the Holocaust and everyone knows Hitler was trying to start a master race that he hoped would rule the world; peacefully of course like good little atheists. Obviously, Jews don’t fit the bill (and for other reasons as well) and neither do gays, blacks, cripples, or any others who don’t fit his perfect description. I mean they obviously aren’t the “fittest” people or most evolved, right? I also thought we all knew that his greatest inspiration for the whole idea was evolution which as we all know was primarily thought up by Charles Darwin; which had to have been one of Hitler’s favorite people. We know evolution is the choice of belief for atheists since it caters so nicely to their thoughts on the world.
Therefore, Mr Jerry Coyne next time you make a list of violent religions why don’t you add the religion of evolution to it. Since as we all know, now, it was the primary driving force behind the eradication of all races not fitting the “perfect” description made by one of the most famous and intelligent atheists of all, Hitler. (I mean can you point out any other atheists who practically took over the modern world and did what some atheists wish, deep down in their scientific hearts, they had a chance to do; no). When I look back at the Holocaust it only makes me believe in God all the more. Just because a bunch of twisted people decided to murder a large group of people (yes, people did it) it’s not going to make me abandon my belief in God.
Also, Mr. Coyne, what was the result of the Holocaust? Yes, millions of people died. But think more. What else happened? Yes, your right…the Jews got Israel back as their own country. Since your such a big Bible fan you know the significance of that. Do you think that could have happened any other way. I would challenge you to devise another way that the entire world would feel so sorry for the Jews that they would decide to just hand over their country back to them. That is no coincidence. I don’t know God’s ways. How could I understand something that created the very organ I try to understand Him with.
Does that make sense. Lastly, dosn’t evolution have a certain measure of faith behind it. I mean are you really so certain that all that evolution stuff is really true or do you have to have a little faith in it? Maybe not, but it sure seems that way.
In case you don’t get the reference, the return of the Jews to Israel is taken by many lunatic evangelical Christians as a precondition for the return of the Messiah—the beginning of the End Times.
I suppose there are ways that an omnipotent and loving God could engineer the return of Jews to Israel in a way that didn’t involve unspeakable horrors and millions of deaths, but never mind. The religious mind bent on theodicy is endlessly creative.
We’ve had some recent discussions here at WEIT of global warming denialist David Koch’s funding of the USNM’s Hall of Human Origins and the tea party (see here, here and here), so I thought I’d pass on a link to a funny and sad commentary on global warming by Ryan Avent of The Economist. Money quote:
No GOP leader of consequence is able to make and sustain the argument that climate change is occurring as the scientists say it is. That’s remarkable! Imagine the world’s major powers sitting down in the early 20th century to negotiate a treaty on the law of the sea, only to have one of America’s major political parties vow to defeat any settlement, on the grounds that the world is in fact flat.
Over at Vanity Fair, Hitch continues his series on his cancer treatment in a piece called “Tumortown“. He describes all the helpful advice he’s gotten from concerned friends:
. . . somebody has written to me from a famous university to suggest that I have myself cryonically or cryogenically frozen against the day when the magic bullet, or whatever it is, has been devised. (When I failed to reply to this, I got a second missive, suggesting that I freeze at least my brain so that its cortex could be appreciated by posterity. Well, I mean to say, gosh, thanks awfully.)
As usual, it’s honest and sad:
. . . this is both an exhilarating and a melancholy time to have a cancer like mine. Exhilarating, because my calm and scholarly oncologist, Dr. Frederick Smith, can design a chemo-cocktail that has already shrunk some of my secondary tumors, and can “tweak” said cocktail to minimize certain nasty side effects. That wouldn’t have been possible when Updike was writing his book or when Nixon was proclaiming his “war.” But melancholy too, because new peaks of medicine are rising and new treatments beginning to be glimpsed, and they have probably come too late for me.
Hitchens winds up discussing the treatment advice he gets from Francis Collins, which segues into an issue that partially divides them: stem-cell research.
As a believing Christian, Francis is squeamish about the creation for research purposes of these nonsentient cell clumps (as, if you care, am I), but he was hoping for good work to result from the use of already existing embryos, originally created for in-vitro fertilization. These embryos are going nowhere as it is. But now religious maniacs strive to forbid even their use, which would help what the same maniacs regard as the unformed embryo’s fellow humans! The politicized sponsors of this pseudo-scientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the “war” against cancer, and other terrible maladies too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity.
Madagascar continues to live up to its reputation as a biodiversity hotspot with the discovery of this critter:
Durrell's vontsira - mind those teeth!
It is a new carnivorous mammal, Salanoia durrelli, or Durrell’s vontsira. (“Durrell” is after Gerald Durrell, author of My Family & Other Animals and many other popular naturalist books, and founder of the Durrell Trust, which has a zoo devoted entirely to saving endangered species, on Jersey island. He was also the brother of author Lawrence Durrell.) A vontsira is a Malagasy mongoose, of which, until the present report, there were thought to be five species.
According to the BBC website, the animal was first spotted in 2004, swimming in Lac Alaotra on Madagascar. In 2005 one of the animals was caught and another dead specimen was found. They seemed to be similar to the brown-tailed vontsira, which is found in the eastern forests of Madagascar, but there were also differences in the shape of the pads on its paws, and in its skull and teeth. These two specimens are the only ones known to science (assuming that the one seen in 2004 was not a different individual).
The dead animal and the samples were taken to the Natural History Museum in London, and the full description is published in Systematics and Biodiversity. According to the abstract, written in the usual impenetrable prose of science:
Evidence is presented from morphological observations, multivariate and molecular analyses on the taxonomic status of specimens of Salanoia newly discovered at Lac Alaotra, Madagascar, which resemble but are phenotypically highly divergent from the monotypic species S. concolor. A detailed comparative description is provided, together with information on the ecology of the region. Principal Component and Canonical Variate Analyses of craniodental morphometrics revealed high divergence supporting the status of a new species. Conversely, genetic distances from S. concolor based on the mitochondrial cytochrome b locus are small, not supporting new species status. A literature review indicates that some accepted species also exhibit low genetic distances at cytochrome b, which might be caused by rapid recent evolution, hybridization or introgression of mtDNA between lineages that otherwise might be genetically more distinct. Conflicting information from the analyses is discussed. Adaptation to highly divergent habitats might account for phenotypic plasticity, but the observed morphological difference is sufficiently great that the formal description as a new species is warranted. The biodiversity of Lac Alaotra and the importance of conservation issues are highlighted in relation to this discovery.
In other words, it has a different shaped head/teeth from its close relative Salanoia concolor, but some of its genes seem very similar. However, those particular genetic differences may not be relevant in indicating interspecies infertility (one of the main ways we define a species as a species – Jerry’s Big Book Speciation, written with Allen Orr, discusses eight different definitions…). The authors conclude that because it doesn’t look like S. concolor, it really is a different species. I can’t tell you any more than that as my prestigious university does not appear to have access to the journal… If you want to know more (in particular on mongoose evolution), I suggest you head over to Darren Naish’s excellent Tetrapod Zoology blog, who has more on this.
On the left, the skulls of the two vontsira species. On the right, Gerald Durrell
Finding a new species of arthropod is relatively straightforward – finding a new mammal is a relatively rare event. However, if that’s what you want to do, Madagascar is the place to go: ins 2006 the island has seen the discovery of three new species of mouse lemur (Microcebus jollyae, M. mittermeieri and M. simmoni) and a bat (Scotophilus marovaza).
h/t: Geoff North
Joanna Durbin; Stephan M. Funk; Frank Hawkins; Daphne M. Hills; Paulina D. Jenkins; Clive B. Moncrieff; Fidimalala Bruno Ralainasolo Investigations into the status of a new taxon of Salanoia (Mammalia: Carnivora: Eupleridae) from the marshes of Lac Alaotra, Madagascar.
Systematics and Biodiversity, 1478-0933, Volume 8, Issue 3, 01 September 2010, Pages 341 – 355
Today’s New York Times reports the discovery of a previously unknown language, Koro, in northeastern India. But the new language is offset by extinction: according to the article, every two weeks one of the world’s 7000 languages becomes extinct. National Geographic has put up a short film about the search for new tongues; it shows Koro being spoken.
In “The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Endangered Languages,” published last month by National Geographic Books, Dr. Harrison noted that Koro speakers “are thoroughly mixed in with other local peoples and number perhaps no more than 800.”
Moreover, linguists are not sure how Koro has survived this long as a viable language. Dr. Harrison wrote: “The Koro do not dominate a single village or even an extended family. This leads to curious speech patterns not commonly found in a stable state elsewhere.”
