Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 174

Apparently, some people have noticed the nonsense at Nature Communications about geology as not a safe field for persons of color

From the combox:

“The only possible justification I can see for the authors to vоmіt out this gагbаgе is because race is suddenly the hot-button topic, and they think they manage to sсаm some university or ‘wоkе’ geoscience company into giving them a research grant. It’s sad how science has been subvегtеd by social politics.”

“This is poor scholarship on the part of the authors and a grave oversight on the part of peer reviewers for Nature. Third, while the authors discuss diversity they imply strongly that they are most interested in diversity with respect to immutable characteristics, rather than viewpoint diversity or diversity of thought. Viewpoint diversity is critical to good research, and yet it goes ignored.”

and

“I am surprised at this level of scholarship in Nature”

About that third comment above: There is no reason to put “scholarship” and “Nature Communications” in the same sentence if this paper is supposed to be an example.

Read the comments before they are disallowed on some Woke ground or other, perhaps by Bret Weinstein’s former students, now Stormtroopers in positions of power. Rejoice that you are probably somehow paying for it all.

See also: We are informed at Nature Communications that geology is not a safe field for persons of color due to rock hammers. Is it significant that the same people who simply do not want to accept that Darwin had transparent white supremacy beliefs think that geologists’ rock hammers are a big problem?

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L&FP, 48: The conscience factor in consciousness

Conscience is a major aspect of our consciousness, one of the “first facts” of our embodiment in the world, thus part of the start-point for sound thinking. Hence, Cicero’s recognition that it was consensus even in his day that “[sound] conscience is a law”:

Given word games that may crop up, let us note a high quality dictionary:

con·science

(kŏn′shəns)n.1. a. An awareness of morality in regard to one’s behavior; a sense of right and wrong that urges one to act morally: Let your conscience be your guide.b. A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement: a document that serves as the nation’s conscience.c. Conformity to one’s own sense of right conduct: a person of unflagging conscience.

2. The part of the superego in psychoanalysis that judges the ethical nature of one’s actions and thoughts and then transmits such determinations to the ego for consideration.

3. Obsolete Consciousness or awareness of something. [–> A distinction was recognised some 300 years ago]

Idioms: in (all good) conscience In all fairness; by any reasonable standard. on (one’s) conscience Causing one to feel guilty or uneasy.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cōnscientia, from cōnsciēns, cōnscient-, present participle of cōnscīre, to be conscious of : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + scīre, to know; see skei- in Indo-European roots.]

con′science·less adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

SEP Observes:

Through our individual conscience, we become aware of our deeply held moral principles, we are motivated to act upon them, and we assess our character, our behavior and ultimately our self against those principles. Different philosophical, religious and common sense approaches to conscience have emphasized different aspects of this broad characterization. The resulting more specific understandings of conscience will be presented in the sections below. On any of these accounts, conscience is defined by its inward looking and subjective character, in the following sense: conscience is always knowledge of ourselves, or awareness of moral principles we have committed to, or assessment of ourselves, or motivation to act that comes from within us (as opposed to external impositions). This inward looking and subjective character of conscience is also reflected in the etymological relation between the notion of “conscience” and that of consciousness. Only after the 17th Century did “consciousness” start to be used with a distinct meaning referring to the psychological and phenomenal dimension of the mind, rather than to its moral dimension (for an account of the terminological shift, see Jorgensen 2014).

Clearly, conscience is an inner sense and sometimes a voice or even vision of witness that observes our behaviour and evaluates against an intuitive standard, a law written on our hearts, so to speak. It can become over-sensitive, or mo0re often, defective or crushed (just as can our sight or hearing), hence the matter of soundness. It can be instructed, and so it can be desensitised and warped, indeed, this is clearly related to what is now called grooming behaviour designed to dull the sensitivity of especially vulnerable young people to the wrongs involved in sexual, ideological or military indoctrination and exploitation.

The notorious Rotherham case is a yardstick, where Wikipedia is forced to admit:

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consisted of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until the 2010s and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period.[8] Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the “biggest child protection scandal in UK history”.[9] Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers.[10] From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.[11] From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.[a]

The Times articles, along with the 2012 trial of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, prompted the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to conduct hearings.[14] Following this and further articles from Norfolk, Rotherham Council commissioned an independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay. In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that an estimated 1,400 children,[15] had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men (Kurdish and Kosovar men were also involved).[16][13] British Asian girls in Rotherham also suffered abuse, but a fear of shame and dishonour made them reluctant to report the abuse to authorities.[17] A “common thread” was that taxi drivers had been picking the children up for sex from care homes and schools.[b] The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, and trafficking them to other towns.[20] There were pregnancies—one at age 12—terminations, miscarriages, babies raised by their mothers, and babies removed, causing further trauma.[21][22][23][24]

We see here, how vulnerable girls were targetted, exploited, intimidated, manipulated into massive sexual abuse. It is clear, too, that authorities turning a blind eye to outrageous abuse were also in their own way groomed by fear of being accused of racist action as well as a sense of contempt towards troubled working class girls and other factors that contributed to desensitisation.

This is also a case of shocking the conscience, showing that a community can be woken up to an evil it somehow had hitherto managed to overlook or enable. The extreme cases have to do with the holocaust, the mass slaughters of communism and the like. One hopes, the same will eventually happen with mass Abortion, which has a death tool north of 800 millions since the early 1970’s.

A sobering lesson in and of itself.

The case of sound conscience also ties to first duties, drawing on a sense of duty to neighbour to point to the issues, fairness and justice. If we are outraged when treated unfairly or unjustly, we should be ashamed if we have done the same to neighbour of like morally governed nature.

Thus, we see a way to sound establishment and reform of law and government, society, culture and institutions. But of course, this also brings to bear issues of soundness, as we can also have manipulation and desensitisation to even gross evils as the Rotherham case manifestly demonstrates. Such, once more, draws out the inescapable, legitimate force of first duties of reason: to truth, to right reason, to prudence [including warrant], to sound conscience, to neighbour, so also to fairness and to justice etc. Justice, as noted so often, being the due balance of rights, freedoms and responsibilities. These are onward matters, with much evidence from history etc.

But of course, as the reference to the now waning Freudianism shows, there are ways to argue that conscience is a form of delusion, little more than the internalised voice of potty training. Others would point to class or cultural conditioning (traditional and neo-marxists), or to operant conditioning. And so forth.

These sorts of arguments boil down to forms of appeal to being in a Plato’s Cave, grand delusion, as conscience is pervasive in our rational life. There are no firewalls and such a delusion implies self-referential discredit: Sigmund, what was your potty training like, Karl, what was so about your class/cultural conditioning, Burrhus, are you little more than a rat in a maze? And so forth.

Things that suggest or invite inference that conscience is delusion are absurd. Errors in detail, open to correction on sound rethinking, are not to be confused with delusion.

So, we see the significance and power of sound conscience in framing a worldview and moving civilisation forward. On the whole (with room for errors) it cannot be across the board delusional. It is a first fact of consciousness, pervading our whole inner life, save for clear defects. It directly testifies to our being under rule of built in law, built in moral government.

That now becomes a fact to be accounted for without sawing off the branch on which we all must sit. END

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Bret Weinstein now smeared at Wikipedia?

Readers may well remember biology teacher Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, a progressive teacher couple at Evergreen State College, early victims of the very Woke they had themselves encouraged, without realizing where it must end.

Our Danish correspondent Karsten Pultz notes that Weinstein is now being smeared at Wikipedia as well:

Weinstein might as well have been an ID type like paleontologist Gunter Bechly who was erased from Wikipedia.

This is probably what always happens when you encourage progressives to be their sweet little selves:

See also: Fighting back against Cancel Culture with Douglas Murray: “When Evergreen State College turned hooligan in 2017, the shock was not that American universities contained students unsuited to any education outside a correctional facility. Nor, frankly, was it a surprise that the college president George Bridges was so supine that he ended up begging the student protesters to allow him to go to the bathroom to pee (‘Hold it’ was the advice given by one hoodlum). What was surprising was that even when the professor who had inadvertently caused the breakdown (leftwing, Bernie-supporting, lifetime Democrat Bret Weinstein) was physically threatened, repeatedly defamed and finally chased off campus for good, not one of his longstanding colleagues took any public stance in his defence. Solidarity — perhaps the noblest aspiration of the political left — was totally absent. And these academics and administrators were not living in 1930s Moscow, but in 21st-century Washington State.” — Douglas Murray

Oh well, it’s not mass murder yet.

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Have we found the earliest evidence of animal life at 890 million years ago?

From The Scientist:

Scientists predict that sponges—among the most basic animals—arose a few hundred million years before the occurrence of the oldest confirmed fossil specimens, which date to about 500 million years ago. Now, in a study published today (July 28) in Nature, Elizabeth Turner, a geologist at Laurentian University in Canada, identified structures in 890-million-year-old fossils of organisms similar to modern bath sponges, potentially pushing back the emergence of the animals to at least that long ago.

Abby Olena, “890-Million-Year-Old Fossils Are Sponges, Oldest Animals: Study” at The Scientist (July 28, 2021)

The sponges, if confirmed, push the evidence back by 350 million years:

On Wednesday, in a study published in the journal Nature, Turner lays out her case for this hypothesis, suggesting the microstructures discovered in the ancient Little Dal reefs are indeed sponge microfossils, making them almost 350 million years older than the current oldest animal ever described.

It’s a big claim — and one that is sure to be debated — but Fritz Neuweiler, a geologist at Laval University in Quebec who wasn’t affiliated with the study, called the work “a good step forward,” noting the paper is “well-founded, courageous and provoking.”

Jackson Ryan, “‘Weird’ fossil from 890 million years ago could be evidence of earliest animal life” at C/Net

The paper is open access.

At the time, we are told, there was only one supercontinent, Rodinia.

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Michael Egnor: Materialist science is like driving with the parking brake on

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor did a recent podcast with Arjuna Das at Theology Unleashed, “where Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.” In this section, they talk about how we can know that the mind is real and how materialist philosophy has just plain gone bad:

Neuroscientist Michael Egnor explains:

Materialism and atheism are intellectually vacant, vapid, ways of looking at the world and the fact that they are believed by a fair number of leading scientists is an enormous indictment of the scientific profession …

None of the good philosophy being done today is being done by any materialist. That is that whatever good philosophy is being done, and there is some, is being done by people who at least in part reject materialism. The good part of their philosophy is the part that rejects materialism. (00:30:55)

Michael Egnor , “ How we can know mental states are real? ” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Mental states are always “about” something; physical states are not “about” anything

Here is a partial transcript and notes for the twenty to thirty-one minute mark:

Why neurosurgeon Mike Egnor stopped being a materialist atheist. He found that materialism is just not working out in science. Most propositions in basic science are based on mathematics and mathematics is not a material thing.

and

How science points to meaning in life. The earliest philosopher of science, Aristotle, pioneered a way of understanding it. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor talks about the four causes of the events in our world, from the material to the mind.

You may also wish to read: Why the universe itself can’t be the most fundamental thing. Atheist biology professor Jerry Coyne is mistaken in dismissing my observation that proofs of God’s existence follow the same logical structure as any other scientific theory. (Michael Egnor)

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KF on Proof

KF’s comment to a prior post deserves its own OP. If only people understood the simple, yet profound, point KF is making. KF writes:

Proof is a term too often used more for rhetorical impact than for humble acknowledgement of the achievements and limitations of human reasoning and deduction especially. As such, we must bear Godel in mind, truth and proof are very different, and axiomatic systems for complicated areas face incompleteness and/or possible incoherence. Even mathematics is not an absolutely certain discipline. Science cannot prove beyond such and such has so far passed certain empirical tests and may be taken as so far reliable, when it is at its best. Too often it is not and becomes a lab coat that gives unwarranted credibility to ideology. So, we end up at pisteis, rhetorical proof, where we seek to provide reasonable warrant for beliefs or opinions etc, and must reckon with the issues lurking behind pathos, ethos, logos. We are in the end, faith-driven reasoners, the issue is which faith, which set of first plausibles, why and why in light of comparative difficulties. But to get that far we must first make sure that we do not undermine the basic credibility of responsible reason through sawing off the branch on which we all must sit, the error of hyperskepticism. 

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Another reason not to teach Darwinism in the public school system

Think about it:

Editor’s note: Recently, Scientific American viciously smeared all critics of Darwinian theory with an article titled, “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy,” by Allison Hopper. As promised, we are presenting some of our extensive past coverage of the tight links between racism and evolution. This article was originally published on January 10, 2020.

A glance at the Wikipedia article on “scientific racism” makes it sound like the phenomenon is basically something out of the past: “Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific.” But four African American high school students in Suffolk County, NY, might beg to differ.

They are suing their school district for $12 million after the teacher of their advanced zoology class showed slides of them juxtaposed with a gorilla with the caption “Monkey see, monkey do.” The photo of the four was taken on a field trip with their class to the Bronx Zoo, a place with a dismal history. There, in 1906, the African pygmy Ota Benga was displayed in a cage in the zoo’s Monkey House to educate the public about the insights of Darwinian theory. …

Let’s be fair. The instructor likely did not act from a specific intent to hurt black students.

David Klinghoffer, “Students Sue School District for $12 Million Over “Monkey See” Photos” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 28, 2021)

One rather hopes the students’ suit is settled by now and they can get on with their lives. Unfortunately, Benga never really got over his own experience and ended up committing suicide.

But we’ve been saying this practically forever: Quit teaching Darwinism in the public school system. There are ways of addressing evolution sensitively that don’t include teaching Darwinism.

Maybe insurance companies should quit insuring schools where Darwinism is taught against these specific types of incidents.

If I (O’Leary for News) were an insurance actuary, I’d be looking at that story with an eagle eye… I’d be thinking, we cost out our premiums based on stuff like: What happens if gym equipment collapses and a bunch of students are injured… What are we on the hook for? We can cost that out… there’s a big medical database on that kind of thing…

But now this stuff…? Look, it raises lots of issues and most of them are not even actuarial… Maybe a number of our insured school systems are charter schools that don’t even teach Darwinism. Why should every institutional policyholder be on the hook for raised costs due to this type of thing?

Possibly, Darwinism is becoming more vulnerable now.

See also: At Scientific American: “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy” Wow. Has the Darwin lobby hired itself a PR firm that recommended getting someone on board to accuse everyone who doubts Darwin of being a “white supremacist”? Quite simply, Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man is surely by far the most racist iconic document ever to be lauded by all the Right People! And getting someone to holler about “white supremacy” among Darwin doubters is, ahem, just a cheap shot, not a response to the stark raving racism in print of the actual document. Guys, try another one.

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Science journalist: Science IS political!

And, Philip Ball thinks, we shouldn’t trust people who doubt that. He takes issue with the concerns raised by Anna Krylov here: “I grew up in a city that in its short history (barely over 150 years) had its name changed three times.” Ball has no time for that:

The personal values held by scientists should influence the accolades they receive …

Krylov implies that any reconsideration of science’s practices in the light of Black Lives Matter and well-documented race-, gender- and class-based discrimination is a threat to democracy and the pursuit of truth equivalent to that of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Along with her citation of sources like the 2020 book Cynical Theories (coauthored by a rightwing provocateur), this exposes her article as deeply politicised. (Her frequent citation of Wikipedia as a historical source, meanwhile, exposes it as something else.) As with the recent notorious example in which a review of developments in organic synthesis included a condemnation of efforts to make science more inclusive, we could reasonably feel concerned here that politicised statements are being smuggled into the chemistry literature under the guise of objectivity.

This underscores the point made by historian of science Naomi Oreskes that when scientists argue that they are presenting their work in a value-neutral way, not only should we not believe them but we would be justified in not really trusting them either…

The contrast between Oreskes’ careful discussion of science and values in her recent book Why Trust Science? and Krylov’s simplistic analysis could not be more stark.

Philip Ball, “Science is political” at Chemistry World (July 16, 2021)

Hmm. Cynical Theories was authored by one of Peter Boghossian’s hoaxers, who showed up certain social science journals for the hogwash that they are. Someone needed to.

And we have heard very different evaluations of the work of Naomi Oreskes.

If it is admitted that “science is political,” Why Trust Science? is a very good question indeed.

A bigger question looms: Will frank assertions that science is political, accompanied by a demand for trust, be any good for science? Isn’t this more likely to to be the beginning of a highly politically charged but largely barren period?

We shall see.

See also: We are informed at Nature Communications that geology is not a safe field for persons of color due to rock hammers Is it significant that the same people who simply do not want to accept that Darwin had transparent white supremacy beliefs think that geologists’ rock hammers are a big problem?

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We are informed at Nature Communications that geology is not a safe field for persons of color due to rock hammers

Because “BIPOC and other marginalized geoscientists are not always safe in geoscience spaces. For example, holding objects (e.g., a rock hammer) has been viewed as “suspicious” and, continues to be, used as a reason to call the police on Black people, which can lead to the death of Black individuals, entirely because of racial profiling and an unjustified fear of Black people”

Access implies that individuals can obtain the resources they need to safely pursue their science endeavors; regardless of location, instrumentation, site accessibility, and their identity. Historically, access has been limited to mostly able-bodied, white, cisgender, heterosexual men. As the geosciences strive to be more accessible, the community must recognize that BIPOC and other marginalized geoscientists are not always safe in geoscience spaces. For example, holding objects (e.g., a rock hammer) has been viewed as “suspicious” and, continues to be, used as a reason to call the police on Black people, which can lead to the death of Black individuals, entirely because of racial profiling and an unjustified fear of Black people17,22. Organizations can lead by requiring and disseminating best practices that make all programs safe for, and accessible to, everyone (ACTION #7). This requirement includes incorporating anti-racism into all spaces where geoscience happens23—in the field, in laboratories, virtually, at events and in classrooms—by encouraging the reevaluation of training requirements for learners and aspiring geoscientists, and invest in spaces like HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities)24, TCUs (Tribal Colleges and Universities), and HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions)25, that serve BIPOC and other marginalized geoscientists (ACTION #8). In this effort, scientific societies, DEI non-profit organizations, and funding agencies can individually, or in partnerships, leverage their influence to incentivize, encourage, and induce academic institutions, departments, research labs, and field stations and camps within their disciplines to adopt norms and practices that foster inclusion, collaboration with, and the safety of minoritized individuals. For example, collaborative partnerships like the National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCEGeo Partnerships (https://serc.carleton.edu/advancegeo/), between the Earth Science Women’s Network, Association for Women Geoscientists, and the American Geophysical Union, empowers scientists at societies and institutions to transform their workplace climate through tailored trainings, workshops, and expected outcome assessments.

Ali, H.N., Sheffield, S.L., Bauer, J.E. et al. An actionable anti-racism plan for geoscience organizations. Nat Commun 12, 3794 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23...

Is it significant that the same people who simply do not want to accept that Darwin had transparent white supremacy beliefs think that geologists’ rock hammers are a big problem?

Rock hammers?

See also: John West tries once again to get YouTube to accept a documentary about scientific racism West: My documentary only tells one part of the story of racism, and it also only tells a part of the story of the influence of Social Darwinism on Western imperialism, which certainly extended to other nations besides Germany. Yet I hope my revised film will add something to the current conversation.

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Will the Tokyo Olympics be a “super-evolutionary” COVID-19 event?

That’s the question at Wired:

This is the worst worst-case scenario. “There are plenty of eco-evolutionary scenarios where this isn’t a traditional super-spreader event, but a ‘super-evolutionary event,’” Scarpino says, “where a critical mass of vaccinated individuals are selecting for variants that have increased transmissibility in vaccinated individuals.” All those people with differing immune statuses and different exposures to different strains of the virus could create a terrifying genetic parody of Olympism’s international cooperation: a free and open exchange of viral ideas on how to be more infectious, maybe even more deadly or more vaccine-evasive. And then it’d travel back to everyone’s home country under the cover of asymptomatic spread.

There are two extremes on the scale of probability. The best outcome anyone can hope for at this point is that with the screening program in place, only a few people will get infected or ill. A few Olympic stories will end badly. That’s already happening—athletes and the people who work with them have been denied a chance to compete in Tokyo because testing shows they’re infected. And on the far side of the scale is a super-evolutionary event that allows the development of an even more potent form of the virus and then puts it on hundreds of jet planes headed to every corner of the planet. For everyone wondering what the most likely outcome is, it’s like the Olympics, except only in the most terrifying way possible: It’s unpredictable.

Adam Rogers, “The Olympics Could Be a Covid-19 ‘Super-Evolutionary Event’” at Wired (July 22, 2021)

Just a thought: A hypothesis in science can be confuted by evidence. If it can’t, it is not a hypothesis in science. It may be a fine scare story but that’s a wholly different matter and we will let the publishers and filmmakers deal with it.

So: If there is no “super-evolutionary event” as a result of the Tokyo Olympics, is there anything that we can reasonably conclude? Could we conclude, for example, that natural selection is not necessarily the terrifying creative force that some have claimed?

No hurry. Just wondering.

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