Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

Christian bookshops are keen to sell the Expelled DVD that is supposed to highlight the unfair favouring of evolution over the overtly religious creationism, now neatly re badged as Intelligent Design avoiding US Constitutional problems. The smart ideas of design are being expelled from the classroom by scientists and educators. Here’s an introduction by Christian Cinema.

Intelligent Design (ID), the ultimate oxymoron, keeps raising its ugly head. Instead of pontification about unsupported religious origin-beliefs, let’s see some real evidential support from the design supporters who want to be treated seriously. Evolution is one of most supported scientific theories of all time with numerous academic papers yearly in the most world’s most-respected scientific journals. Let the supporters of the ID achieve something similar and earn the right to be treated as scientific instead of being simply shouting about thinly disguised religious beliefs.

Mainstream scientists would welcome an alternate theory to evolution if it has stronger evidential support. There is nothing religious in science’s backing of evolution - it’s simply the best supported by a considerable margin. However we are yet to see the supporters of the various design beliefs present any sort of broad-based evidential support

Here’s an Expelled debunking site - Expelled Exposed.

Alex McCullie

A friend put me onto a Dutch creationist, Johan Huibers, who created a one-fifth size of the mythological Noah’s Ark (from the Hebrew Bible). Like the US creationist museum and glossy books by Islamic creationist, Harun Yahya, creationists love to use PR to convince and persuade rather than boring scientific research like evolutionists. Then they have the nerve to seek to be treated seriously as a genuine ’scientific’ alternative to the theory of evolution. Still there’s enough gullible people in the world to keep these guys in business.

Alex McCullie

Two articles on David Campbell’s struggle to teach evolution in the creationist state of Florida. (science blogs 24-Aug-2008) (NYT 23-Aug-2008)

Alex McCullie

link to Complete Works of Charles Darwin

To quote:

“Only this site contains Darwin’s complete publications, 20,000 private papers, the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue and hundreds of supplementary works: specimens, biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and much more.”

Alex McCullie

These are not true…

• A nasty, vicious lion stalks, attacks and murders a poor defenceless antelope on an ‘Animal Planet’ documentary.

• My cat loves me. He knows when I’m upset and will deliberately comfort me.

• Selfish genes behave immorally.

• The Earth is a living thing just like us.

Empathy is one of the great strengths to have evolved in humans. Our ability to see from someone else’s point of view forms the basis of social and moral behaviour. Wonderfully, this is all done subconsciously. Subsequent moral discussions are mostly rationalisations justifying these intuitive responses. (Steven Pinker http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html)

But here’s the rub. We apply this empathy to other things – living and non-living – in unhelpful ways. People believe they can see the world as a non-human would. Recently, a friend told me that he could genuinely imagine the world as seen by a bat. This belief has benefits, of course. We are more likely to respect other living and non-living things (Gaia, for example), if we see them as “like us”. Unfortunately, however, we also can moralise about animal behaviour, seeking to punish as if animals are free moral agents with responsibility. Again, all is done subconsciously. So, lions are not nasty; cute looking dears are not innocent; cats don’t love; genes are not morally selfish and Earth is not alive like us. As an aside, biologists, like Richard Dawkins, often refer to observed behaviour metaphorically. So behaviour can be described a selfish or altruistic without any moral implications.

The bottom line is we should be aware that living things (and non-living for that matter) have no natural or moral purposes. They just evolved to what they are today and will continue to do so. Evolutionary processes are blind and uncaring and putting chance aside, they reward (non-morally) characteristics leading to successful reproduction and punish (again, non-morally) those that don’t. As suggested in Pinker’s article, even our moral attitudes can be seen to have developed in a similar way.

Don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t use this awareness as an excuse to ignore the problems we create for all livings things and for the planet. Our capacity to see and remedy problems beyond conflicting immediate needs may be our true greatness.

© 2008 Alex McCullie

Evolution - The Experience 8-13 February 2009

Web site: http://www.evolution09.com.au

Speakers:

Prof Michael Ruse

Professor Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University. He obtained his Ph.D. (Philosophy) from the University of Bristol, and holds Honorary Doctoral Degrees from McMaster University (D. Litt.) and from the University of Bergen (D. Philos.). Prof. Ruse has held academic positions in Canada, USA, New Zealand, England, and Scotland among others. As one of the most prolific and well known philosophers and historians of Darwinism, he has authored and edited many classic books including: The Philosophy of Biology, Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense?, The Darwinian Revolution, Is Science Sexist?, Taking Darwin Seriously, Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry, Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?, Can a Darwinian be a Christian?, Cloning, Genetically Modified Foods, Stem Cell Research, Debating Design: Darwin to DNA, Darwin and Design: Does Evolution have a Purpose?, The Evolution/Creation Struggle, Charles Darwin. Prof. Ruse’s books have been translated into Spanish, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Korean and Dutch.

Dr Robert Bakker, Morrison Natural Museum

Prof Alan Dixson, School of Biological Sciences, Victoria U. of Wellington
Prof Tim Flannery, Division of Environmental and Life Sciences Macquarie Uni.

Prof Douglas Futuyma, Department of Ecology & Evolution, State U. of New York
Prof Jenny Graves, The Australian National University (ANU)

Prof Randolph Nesse, Research Centre for Group Dynamics, U. of Michigan
Prof Neil Shubin, Department of Organismal Biology U. of Chicago
Prof John H. Vandermeer, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan
Prof Margo Wilson & Prof Martin Daly, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster U. of Hamilton

Evolution

Introductions

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIntro.shtml

http://members.aol.com/darwinpage/intro1.htm

http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/~sabedon/biol1510.htm (course notes)

http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution/

Common myths

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Top10MythsEvol.HTM