Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 175

July 27, 2021

Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne defies the transgender lobby

The author of Why Evolution Is True is clearly a brave man:


In November of 2018, I noted that, in an announcement, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) maintained that not only gender, but biological sex should be “more accurately viewed as a continuum.” That came as a shock to someone (me) who had spent his life sorting fruit flies into piles of males and females. (Once a year or so I’d find a “gynandromorph”, an individual having bits from both sexes, but that is not in itself a sex—and they’re extraordinarily rare.) …


Herzog recounts the downfall of Lisa Littman, who documented the rapid increase of female adolescents wanting to transition over the last decade (1000% in the US, 4000% in the UK), suggesting that this “rapid onset gender dyphoria” may have partly due to social contagion (approbation online as well as families and doctors too willing to affirm dysphoria and approve of transition without proper procedures. I’ve already discussed that…


Desistance is the reversal of either identification as a transsexual or of the medical transition itself. To even bring the topic up is taboo in the transsexual activist community. But look at the statistics and then judge whether doctors and parents should be so quick to affirm transsexuality and then begin risky medical procedures (my emphasis) …


Jerry Coyne, “Med school and the denial of biological sex” at Why Evolution Is True (July 27, 2021)

Much more at his post. It’s pretty brave today in the world of the Woke to raise any questions at all about what they do.

See also: Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne speaks out on a SciAm op-ed’s claims that denial of evolution stems from white supremacy It seems obvious, on reflection, that Hopper’s piece is a disastrously clumsy effort on the part of Scientific American to get Woke. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne thinks the mag is not just circling the drain but “approaching the drainhole.” To the extent that the editors couldn’t find someone who at least gets basic facts right, he has a point.

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Published on July 27, 2021 19:07

Sabine Hossenfelder’s op-ed not published at APS?

This is the kind of thing she was saying:


Multiverse research concerns itself with postulating the existence of entities that are unobservable in principle. This isn’t scientific and should have no place in physics. The origin of the problem seems to be that many physicists are Platonists – they believe that their math is real, rather than just a description of reality. But Platonism is a philosophy and shouldn’t be mistaken for science.


What about Avi Loeb’s claim that the interstellar object `Oumuamua was alien technology? Loeb has justified his speculation by pointing towards scientists who ponder multiverses and extra dimensions. He seems to think his argument is similar. But Loeb’s argument isn’t degenerative science. It’s just bad science. He jumped to conclusions from incomplete data. It isn’t hard to guess that many physicists will object to my assessments. That is fine – my intention here is not so much to argue this particular assessment is correct, but that this assessment must be done regularly, in collaboration between physicists and philosophers.


Yes, Imagination and creativity are the heart of science. They are also the heart of science fiction. And we shouldn’t conflate science with fiction.


Sabine Hossenfelder, “Can Physics Be Too Speculative?” at BackRe(Action) (July 24, 2021)

We love it. But we can sure see why a comfy establishment wouldn’t want it.

See also: NASA seeks standards for ET life claims Guidelines are certain to be disputed but they would at least provide a basis for reasonable discussion. That might lead to more and better public education on the issues.

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Published on July 27, 2021 18:36

What we have learned from ancient brains is that evolution did not happen to them

At one time, no one supposed that ancient brains would leave any evidence but it turns out that sometimes they do. And what did the researchers find?:


One of the challenges of interpreting ancient arthropod anatomy is the lack of close modern relatives available for comparison. But luckily for us, Euproops can be compared to the four species of living horseshoe crabs.


Even to the untrained eye, a comparison of the fossil’s nervous system with that of a modern horseshoe crab (below) leaves little question that the same structures are found in both species, despite them being separated by 310 million years.


The fossil and living nervous systems match up in their arrangements of nerves to the eyes and appendages, and show the same central opening for the oesophagus to pass through.


John Paterson et al., “Ancient brains: a look inside the extraordinary preservation of a 310-million-year-old nervous system” at The Conversation (July 26, 2021) The paper is open access.

So there was no significant evolution of the nervous system for 310 million years… That’s called stasis.

See also: Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Published on July 27, 2021 18:08

ID theorists were right about junk DNA. Now here is an ID prediction about CRISPR gene editing

William Dembski points out, chapter and verse, how the ID theorists were right and the Darwinians were wrong about “junk DNA.” Now here is a predictin he offers for CRISPR gene editing:


Given the human impulse to control nature with technology (an impulse especially evident in our age), it’s hard to imagine CRISPR not being used to produce enhancements in humans (consider militaries who want more effective soldiers, parents who want more beautiful and smarter children, governments who want more pliable citizens, etc.). One also sees the language of “taking charge of evolution” everywhere in discussions of CRISPR gene editing. Thus, we are told that CRISPR gene editing will for the first time give humans the power to take control of the evolutionary process.


Most who use such language see this newfound genetic power of CRISPR gene editing as a way to accelerate evolutionary change, making us bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, prettier, etc., and doing so much more quickly than the pokey pace of evolution by natural selection would allow. This is an interesting attitude because pokey-paced Darwinian evolution is also said to have produced the CRISPR gene editing system in the first place. So is natural selection smarter than we are, able to move evolution forward more effectively than we can (whatever it may mean for an undirected form of evolution, which is not supposed to have any telos, to move us forward)? Or are we, if not smarter than evolution as a whole, in a position to take a handoff from evolution and now, with CRISPR gene editing, do a better job than natural selection, at least from our place in natural history?


As it is, intelligent design has always regarded the creative potential of natural selection as minimal. At the same time, CRISPR gene editing, because it is a genetic technology used by human biologists to achieve specific ends, will always be an example of intelligent design. The big question, then, is whether CRISPR gene editing will allow for huge improvements of human and other animal forms via genetic enhancements. My prediction is that it won’t. Specifically, I predict that attempted enhancements of the human germ line using CRISPR gene editing will (1) quickly hit an “enhancement boundary” beyond which enhancements are no longer feasible and (2) prove self-canceling in the sense that intended benefits will be undone by unintended deficits.


William Dembski, “An ID Prediction for CRISPR Gene Editing” at BillDembski.com (July 27, 2021)

He goes on to explain the reasoning.

Note: The whole thing reminds me (O’Leary for News) of something that happened in Canada over thirty years ago. There was a Royal Commission to look into the bioethics of gene and other manipulation and I was asked for testimony. A Commissioner asked me, why did I think that gene manipulation would be a bad thing.

I said it would be used to enforce social prejudices.

By way of explanation, I noted a comment made to me by a medical doctor who dealt in hormones. The doctor often saw children whose parents were worried about their growth patterns. But he never saw boys who were thought to be too tall or girls who were thought to be too short. He always seemed to be seeing boys who were thought by their parents to be too short or girls who were thought to be too tall.

Whatever else happens, anyone who doesn’t see where that must lead needs a short course in reality-based thinking.

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Published on July 27, 2021 07:21

July 26, 2021

At Mind Matters News: NASA seeks standards for ET life claims

The agency wants to develop a credibility scale so we know what to pay attention to:


Such a standard might help guide decisions. What about the people who have insisted that the White House is hiding space aliens? They doubtless sound less credible than the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who insisted that Oumuamua is an extra-terrestrial solar sail. But on what are we basing that decision? Social class? If not, what? For that matter, what about the Pentagon’s recent admission that there are phenomena out there that we just can’t explain?


Guidelines are certain to be disputed but they would at least provide a basis for reasonable discussion. That might lead to more and better public education on the issues.


News, “NASA seeks standards for ET life claims ” at Mind Matters News

Now that looking for ET is a serious business, we need standards for evaluating what counts as evidence. As it happens, Avi Loeb comments here on the “Galileo Project,” as it is called:


The Galileo Project follows three major avenues of research. The first involves obtaining high-resolution images of UAP using an array of dedicated small-aperture telescope at various geographical locations. Extensive artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) and algorithmic approaches are needed to differentiate atmospheric phenomena from birds, balloons, commercial aircraft or drones, and from potential technological objects of terrestrial or other origin surveying our planet, such as satellites.


For the purpose of high-contrast imaging, each telescope will be part of a detector array of complementary capabilities from radar systems to optical and infrared cameras on telescopes. Parallax could also help to map the motion of objects in three dimensions. For example, two telescopes separated by three feet would see an object at a distance as large as 10 miles with a resolvable angular separation of ten arcseconds.


Avi Loeb, Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena at Scientific American (July 26, 2021)

Okay but never overlook the possibility that they are space cows.

See also: What if the unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs) are much simpler than we think? Why assume, if the unexplained phenomena are ET, that they are more advanced than we are? What if the opposite is true?

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Published on July 26, 2021 19:37

Steven Weinberg 1933–2021

From CERN:


Steven Weinberg, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time, passed away on 23 July, aged 88. He revolutionised particle physics, quantum field theory and cosmology with conceptual breakthroughs which still form the foundation of our understanding of physical reality …


Steven Weinberg is among the very few individuals who, during the course of the history of civilisation, have radically changed the way we look at the universe.


Gian Giudice, “Steven Weinberg 1933–2021” at CERNCourier (July 26, 2021)

Indeed. Quotes from Steven Weinberg:

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“Science doesn’t make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God” – Church and State

“I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization” Steven Weinberg” – (Beyond belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival. 5 November 2006)

Question: Will this kind of obvious hostility to religion be more or less common in science in the future?

Note: We left the comments on to accommodate thoughtful comments (we often don’t do so for obits).

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Published on July 26, 2021 18:59

Vox Popoli on COVID and loss of trust in science

Further to Matt Ridley’s recent comments at the Wall Street Journal,


‘Science” has become a political catchword. “I believe in science,” Joe Bidentweeted six days before he was elected president. “Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks.”


But what does it mean to believe in science? The British science writer Matt Ridley draws a pointed distinction between “science as a philosophy” and “science as an institution.” The former grows out of the Enlightenment, which Mr. Ridley defines as “the primacy of rational and objective reasoning.” The latter, like all human institutions, is erratic, prone to falling well short of its stated principles. Mr. Ridley says the Covid pandemic has “thrown into sharp relief the disconnect between science as a philosophy and science as an institution.”


Tunku Varadarajan, “How Science Lost the Public’s Trust” at Wall Street Journal (July 23, 2021)

Vox Popoli adds, re COVID-19:


Scientists, by and large, are relatively stupid. Even worse, they’re accustomed to being more or less unaccountable. They’re high-level midwits, for the most part, which is why so many epidemiologists failed to note the obvious: if you make an incorrect prediction that costs people a considerable amount of time, money, or freedom, you will not get a second chance to tell them what to do.


Vox Popoli, “Why people don’t “believe in” science” at Vox Day (July 26, 2021)

In Canada — just for example — schools were shut in Ontario but open in BC (without incident). Churches were shut in BC but bars were open. As if the virus cares whether you pray or booze. Any number of similarly inane restrictions were put in place in many places which did nothing but convince the more intelligent members of the public that the “science” behind it all was nonsense.

That raises an uncomfortable question. How much science is educated nonsense?

Most people want to believe in science. For example, if a loved one has cancer, we totally, definitely want to believe that science has answers that work.

But when witless bureaucrats turn it all into a very costly and painful nonsense panic, it’s precisely the smarter part of the public that they are alienating.

On the bright side, there should be a market for adult ed in philosophy of science! Let’s see what we can do to help people understand what science is and isn’t.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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Published on July 26, 2021 15:18

July 25, 2021

John West tries once again to get YouTube to accept a documentary about scientific racism

Of course, if those YouTube (“Don’t Be Evil”) people stood for anything like they claim, they’d welcome it. But let him tell it:


In 2013, I included the story of the Namibian genocide as part of my award-winning documentary The Biology of the Second Reich, which examined the impact of Darwinism on German ideology leading up to the First World War. After receiving nearly 90,000 views on YouTube, the documentary was effectively shut down by YouTube through the imposition of an “age restriction.” This meant that after late 2018, only adults logging into YouTube were allowed to see it. I appealed the age restriction, but YouTube is the land of faceless decisions by algorithms, and the repeal was summarily rejected without any personal interaction.


My documentary did include historical photos that were disturbing, especially some of the photos from World War I. But a quick search of YouTube at the time turned up many videos that employed far more graphic historical visuals without being “age restricted.”


I considered trying to protest YouTube’s double standard, especially since YouTube was effectively censoring a story about scientific racism and African genocide, but I decided that YouTube probably would be impervious to further complaints, and so I dropped the matter.


A few days ago, I decided it might be time to re-edit my video:


John West, “African Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 20, 2021)


… But in our current cultural moment, it may finally be time to tell the story of Darwinian racism. I’ve removed some (but not all) of the disturbing imagery from the original film, and I’ve made it shorter. I hope it now passes YouTube’s censorship and more people will be able to see it for the first time. 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.


John West, “African Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 20, 2021)

Briefly, Darwinism made racism “science.” At one time, it was simply mythology. “My folks were gods. Yours were mud,” etc. Now, along comes Darwin’s The Descent of Man and people thought they had science-based “Tree of Life” types of reasons for their beliefs.

For how John West’s doc got dumped at YouTube, see:

YouTube Places Restriction On Vid On Scientific Racism On the part of the Second Reich in German Southwest Africa: Apparently, it was considered too awful for a general audience so John G. West, the producer, has edited it, in the hope of keeping it up. (July 7, 2020) [That apparently didn’t work so he has had to edit it further.]

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Published on July 25, 2021 10:21

Lancet accused of sitting on important COVID-19 study, maybe costing lives

The reason COVID-19 matters in our discussion of issues at UD News is that it may be the first time many people begin to understand one of the things we have been trying to talk about here for years: The way “science” can just become a club of people who front (and maybe even believe) certain things and suppress others irrespective of evidence, misusing their authority. The story:


The world’s most famous medical journal, The Lancet, sat on vital information being suppressed by China proving that the Covid virus could jump from human to human and was spreading outside of Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic.


Its editors also failed to share critical evidence – given to them by brave Chinese scientists trying to alert the world to the danger of the new disease – that showed the new coronavirus could be spread by people who were not displaying symptoms.


The revelation has emerged in a new book by Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust.


He was shocked by the behaviour of the journal, since speedy action is vital to deal with any emerging virus outbreak.


It adds to concern over The Lancet, which is at the centre of a controversy over the role of influential scientific media in appeasing the Chinese authorities and stifling debate about suggestions that Covid could have leaked from a Wuhan lab.


Ian Birell, “Now the world’s most famous medical journal the Lancet is accused of costing lives by sitting on a study showing human transmission of Covid-19 that was suppressed by China” at Daily Mail (July 24, 2021)

About the brave Chinese scientists,


China’s disappeared: At least one is dead and the rest haven’t been heard from in months, so why isn’t the world asking what happened to the brave souls who dared to speak up about the coronavirus outbreak after Beijing lied to the world?


George Knowles,” at Daily Mail (April 18, 2020)

Welcome to the New World of “Trust the Science!”

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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Published on July 25, 2021 09:28

The Science is Settled — now just SHUT Up. Except, we aren’t shutting up. We can’t.

What seems to be happening here is a seismic shift. People are beginning to understand that “Science!”, loosed from its moorings, can be just plain corrupt.

That’s what makes the lab leak story important. Some of us remember being dismayed by the science news claiming the lab leak theory of the origin of COVID-19 was “misinformation” when there was every reason to think it a valid assumption.


Over the last few years, the phrase “the science is settled” has become a euphemism for “shut up.” This year, the various social media platforms have been deleting what they declare to be Covid “misinformation.” The truth, as far as Facebook, Twitter, and others are concerned, is now whatever the government’s line is at the moment. Disgracefully, the Biden administration has been encouraging social media platforms to increase this censorship.


If the Centers for Disease Control has made a pronouncement regarding the pandemic, not even a highly credentialed epidemiologist is allowed to disagree, at least until the CDC changes its mind. Last year, to suggest that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan virology lab was “misinformation.” Today, it is the leading theory.


Obviously, the powers that be on social media have no idea how science operates. Science, almost by definition, is never settled. Scientists argue in order to find the truth (unlike lawyers, who argue in order to win the argument). Indeed, disagreement is the very engine that drives scientific advancement. That’s why scientific conferences are often contentious, even raucous affairs.


John Steele Gordon, “The New Censorship” at City Journal

Gordon goes on to an interesting discussion of how it is usually younger scientists who make breakthroughs but older ones who enforce orthodoxies.

Of course, there are orthodoxies and then there are smelly orthodoxies. COVID-19 created a situation where many more people than otherwise would have discovered a really smelly orthodoxy in science.

Prediction: More people will start asking more questions.

See also: The slow descent of “Science!” As in “Trust the Science!” Varadarajan: The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020.

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Published on July 25, 2021 08:36

Michael J. Behe's Blog

Michael J. Behe
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