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July 14, 2021

Kirk Durston takes on Larry Krauss on whether the universe could come from nothing

Readers will remember Larry Krauss from a number of contexts. Here’s Kirk Durston:

Did “nothing” create the universe?

Could it?

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Published on July 14, 2021 19:05

Historian Richard Weikart on acceptance of Darwinian evolution and racism …

In connection with the Scientific American op-ed claiming that “denying evolution” is a form of white supremacy, Weikart, whose specialty is racist politics, notes, among other things,

Now what happens if we examine the real white supremacists today? Are they creationists? I have done a good deal of research on this topic, and as it turns out, the vast majority of white supremacists today embrace Darwinian evolution and use it as evidence for their white supremacy. In a 2017 article in his Radix journal, Richard Spencer, a leading figure on the white supremacist Alt-Right argued that “Group differences exist as consequences of evolution by natural selection” and “racial differences are a natural and normal consequence of human evolution.” This is a commonplace view among white supremacists, as you can easily discover by looking at white supremacist websites and print publications.

In sum, most people today who reject evolution, which includes many people of color, are not racists. On the other hand, most of the leading white supremacists today embrace evolutionary theory with alacrity. Hopper’s attempt to tar those who do not believe in evolution with racism may play well with the pro-evolution lobby, but unfortunately it is based on distortions and misrepresentations of those who reject evolution, as well as ignorance of the history of scientific racism and the ideology of contemporary white supremacists.

Richard Weikart, “Is “Denying Evolution” a Form of White Supremacy?” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 13, 2021)

Weikart also published a book review earlier this year in a European history publication, where he notes that the author attempts to imply Mendelian genetics, not Social Darwinism, is responsible for “scientific” racism. Weikart writes:

First, social Darwinism had an earlier and more formative effect on eugenics and racial anthropology than did Mendelism. Second, manyNazis stressed social Darwinist themes far more often than Mendelian ones (e. g., »Mein Kampf«). Third, while Mendelism did shape discourse related to eugenics and racial crossing, socialDarwinism influenced not only both of these arenas, but also many other features of Nazi ideology, such as racial inequality, racial struggle, military expansionism, living space (»Lebensraum«),an evolutionary view of morality, and others. I explain these in my book, »Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress« (2009), which Teicher did not consult.2021 | 219.–21. Jahrhundert – HistoirecontemporaineDOI:10.11588/frrec.2021.2.81999Seite | page 3Herausgegeben vom DeutschenHistorischen Institut Paris |publiée par l’Institut historiqueallemandPubliziert unter | publiée sousCC BY 4.0

Richard Weikart, “Amir Teicher, Social Mendelism. Genetics and thePolitics of Race in Germany, 1900–1948, Cambridge(Cambridge University Press) 2020,” at Francia recensio

Bottom line: For decades, Darwinians sidelined complaints about Darwinism and racism by simply stating that Darwin opposed slavery (“Darwin’s sacred cause”). And it worked.

Surely it was a mistake for the Scientific American editors to create a situation where we can actually start talking about explicitly Darwinian racism, chapter and verse, with centuries of references — for once. What on earth were the editors thinking?

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 14, 2021 18:31

Is panpsychism replacing materialism?

Proponents of two leading theories of consciousness are trying to develop tests for their models, in a hitherto baffling field:

Why does the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) model depend on panpsychism?

To understand why the IIT model entails panpsychism, observe that, at this point, conscious has become a technical term. To say that electrons are conscious does not mean that electrons have opinions, as is often assumed.

It only means that they can produce quantum collapses. On that view, human consciousness is a huge and immensely complicated system that can produce quantum collapses.

The model (and IIT in general) need panpsychism because they require consciousness, seen in this sense, to be a feature of most of the universe:

Previous attempts to solve the measurement problem by appealing to consciousness have run into a major problem: if classical reality requires the presence of conscious humans, how did the universe evolve classically to the point where human consciousness appeared? The new idea avoids this because IIT doesn’t limit consciousness to biological beings. The universe could have begun as a quantum system and continued evolving quantum mechanically until matter first became able to integrate information. This consciousness then started to collapse quantum reality, creating the sort of classical reality we experience today.

ANIL ANANTHASWAMY, “CAN PHYSICS EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS AND DOES IT CREATE REALITY?” AT NEW SCIENTIST JULY 7, 2021

That doesn’t mean that the universe is itself a conscious being, just as it doesn’t mean that electrons have opinions, only that consciousness is a non-material element in our universe, present to varying degrees in varying entities. — News, “Will we soon be able to test theories of consciousness?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Panpsychism, in the form of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), is a much more serious competitor to dualism and idealism than materialism could hope to be. Panpsychists are not trying to claim that consciousness is merely an illusion. They may be wrong but they aren’t ridiculous.

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Published on July 14, 2021 18:20

AnswersInAtheism Reviews Teleonomy Paper

I noticed that earlier this year, the AnswersInAtheism YouTube channel reviewed a paper of mine earlier this year. Video below for those interested.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get to the interesting parts of the paper, so I still don’t know what their reaction to its main points would be.

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Published on July 14, 2021 07:15

July 13, 2021

At Evolution News and Science Today: The casual racism of Charles Darwin

Responding to filmmaker Allison Hopper’s claim at Scientific American that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy,” Luther College religion prof Robert F. Shedinger quotes some very revealing extracts from Darwin’s personal letters, adding

Trying to remake Darwin into a champion of racial equality is a fruitless exercise. As an upper class Victorian gentleman, Darwin was fully socialized into the ideology of British imperial supremacy and to pretend otherwise is simply to refuse to accept the obvious. The father of modern evolutionary theory was a racist who gave birth to a theory unfortunately used by many others to advance their own racist agendas. Any fair assessment of the role of Darwinian evolution in history must wrestle with these basic facts.

Robert Shedinger, “The Casual Racism of Charles Darwin” at Evolution News and Science Today

He calls Allison Hopper’s piece in Scientific American, “startlingly vacuous,” which raises — once again — the question of why on earth the mag published it. It’s not as if there is no scholarship on the topic of Darwin and racism. Did the editors not want to address that scholarship? Well, we can’t read minds but we can make some reasonable guesses. How about: Create a big uproar and hope everyone will focus on that and not on the topic at hand?

Shedinger also notes perceptively, “One does not become racist because of the view one holds on human origins. One becomes racist for other complex reasons and then reads that racism back into whatever view on human origins you hold.”

Dr. Shedinger is the author of The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion

See also: At PJ Media: A response to religious claims made in Scientific American’s “denial of evolution is white supremacy” piece. Bolyard: “I’m not here to debate the hows and whys of creationism. I’ll point you to Answers in Genesis for that. But I want to point out a couple of shameless strawmen in Hopper’s piece that discredit everything else she writes in this piece.” Of course. Hopper was almost certainly making it up as she went along, trusting that few readers had spent much time on the relevant literature.

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.

and

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 13, 2021 18:46

At PJ Media: A response to religious claims made in Scientific American’s “denial of evolution is white supremacy” piece

Readers will recall that Scientific American recently published an op-ed by filmmaker Allison Hopper, offering the view that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy.” We’ve heard from various commentators on it, including Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who sees it as evidence that Scientific American is heading down the drain.

Now, at PJ Media, Paula Bolyard weighs in on some of Hopper’s explicitly religious claims:

I’m not here to debate the hows and whys of creationism. I’ll point you to Answers in Genesis for that. But I want to point out a couple of shameless strawmen in Hopper’s piece that discredit everything else she writes in this piece.

First, she says:

“At the heart of white evangelical creationism is the mythology of an unbroken white lineage that stretches back to a light-skinned Adam and Eve. In literal interpretations of the Christian Bible, white skin was created in God’s image. Dark skin has a different, more problematic origin.”

That’s simply not true. There’s no “literal interpretation of the Christian Bible” that discusses skin color or an unbroken white lineage. While it’s true that some racists have made that claim, it’s completely without merit. All we’re told is that God created man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, “in his image”—”Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Not in his physical image, of course, because God is spirit and not confined to a human body, but in a spiritual sense. God gives us intellect, the ability to love him and others, and free will to choose between good and evil. This has nothing to do with melanin.

Paula Bolyard, “Now Belief in Creationism Is ‘White Supremacy.’ News Flash: We Won’t Bow to Your Secular Idols” at PJ Media

Of course. Hopper was almost certainly making it up as she went along, trusting that few readers had spent much time on the relevant literature.

Incidentally, Bolyard quotes creationist leader Ken Ham saying “I defy Scientific American to find anything remotely resembling the nonsense claimed in this article on our websites, in our books, or in our presentations.” Spoiler: They won’t.

At his Facebook page, Ham Ken Ham adds, “Answers in Genesis is well known for teaching there are no “white” or “black” people, as all are shades of brown from the main skin pigment melanin. Also Adam and Eve were most likely middle brown with maximum genetic diversity.”

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.

and

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Published on July 13, 2021 18:15

Our Danish correspondent Karsten Pultz on how evo folk and ID folk think differently when arguing

Karsten Pultz:

A debate I’m currently involved in with some theistic evolutionists, has for me produced a realization. There is one huge difference in how evolutionists and ID folks can argue for their views.

ID has the benefit of being able to argue for design by comparing to objects we know for certain were intelligently designed. Evolution does not have this advantage.

I frequently compare the flagellum motor to the electric motor because they have so many parts in common that it is silly to consider one designed while the other a product of blind unguided evolution. The ATP synthase is another component from the living world you can compare to engineered machinery. It too has individual parts that are analogous to motor parts for instance a camshaft-like axle with an excentric that mechanically opens protein subunits during the shaft’s rotation, a feature also found in some pumps . Another comparable feature from nature is the cog operated synchronisation in grasshopper’s legs, – a system that is 100 % analogues to the synchronization of the throttles in some twin choke carburettors.

So ID supporters can substantiate their claims by comparing specific features in living organisms to objects we know for sure were designed. But what about evolutionists?

Bestil Exit Evolution på nettet. 198 kr.

Evolution by unguided processes is a phenomenon not observed anywhere. It is purely an abstract idea thought to be detected solely as the causal agent in nature. Evolution cannot be compared to anything because no thing but nature is assumed to be the product of this particular process. Evolutionists are therefore placed in a much worse situation when it comes to arguing for their view, because they can’t point to any other area for comparison, where evolution or an evolution-like process has produced complex functional systems and machinery.

Proponents of ID can point to actual design when making their case while evolutionists can point to nothing, because nothing has ever been produced by an evolution-by random mutation and natural selection-process.

Now think about it. Many investigative areas rely on us being able to compare. Because the universe is governed by laws, we expect similar effects to have been produced by similar causes. Any investigation which purpose is to try to establish a cause for an observed object, event or phenomenon will use comparison to already known causes and effects. ID can do that but evolution can’t. Evolution as a causal explanation for a phenomenon is yet to be established, it is an explanation which still needs to show up as a fact for the first time.

Intelligent design is a cause we already know exists and hence we can compare features in living things with for instance machinery that we know for certain is designed. Evolutionists are deprived this luxury, their point of reference is an abstraction not a comparison to an existing well known cause.

You only start looking for a new and previously unknown cause, when you have run out of all known causes as possible explanation. What has happened in the field of biology is that a well known causal explanation has been completely replaced by a new previously unknown and entirely theoretical one. This is kind of weird because the well known cause, namely design, could still be around and taken into consideration as plausible explanation for instance in the cases ID is pointing to. Instead design has been totally abandoned. I cannot imagine any other investigative discipline where you would discard a perfectly good causal explanation that is known to produce those phenomena you are observing.

If ID became the ruling hypothesis would evolution then be discarded? I don’t think so because certain properties of nature would still best be explained by evolutionary mechanisms.

An a priori exclusion of intelligent design as causal explanation is illogical, unreasonable and unscientific in the same way it would be if forensic scientists always concluded death by accident because they in advance had ruled out the possibility of death by design.

Pultz is the author of Exit Evolution.

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Published on July 13, 2021 06:15

July 12, 2021

Asked at Reason Magazine: How much science research is fraudulent?

A good deal of discouraging data is offered here:

The possibility that fraud may well be responsible for a significant proportion of the false positives reported in the scientific literature is suggested by a couple of new Dutch studies. Both studies are preprints that report the results of surveys of thousands of scientists in the Netherlands aiming to probe the prevalence of questionable research practices and scientific misconduct.

Summarizing their results, an article in Science notes, “More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature. And one in 12 [8 percent] admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results.” Daniele Fanelli, a research ethicist at the London School of Economics, tells Science that 51 percent of researchers admitting to questionable research practices “could still be an underestimate.”

In June, a meta-analysis of prior studies on questionable research practices and misconduct published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics reported that more than 15 percent of researchers had witnessed others who had committed at least one instance of research misconduct (falsification, fabrication, plagiarism), while nearly 40 percent were aware of others who had engaged in at least one questionable research practice.

Ronald Bailey, “How Much Scientific Research Is Actually Fraudulent?” at Reason (July 9, 2021)

Here’s the study in Science.

Let’s remember this when we hear science bureaucrats bellyaching that people don’t “trust the science.” In many cases, they just shouldn’t. Increasingly, it is the smarter public that doesn’t trust the science.

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Published on July 12, 2021 19:18

Why does it matter how many atoms there are in the observable universe?

Because it’s a figure we can work with to determine the probability of purely random events. Here’s a stab at it:

On average, a star weighs around 2.2×10^32 pounds (10^32 kilograms), according to Science ABC, which means that the mass of the universe is around 2.2×10^55 pounds (10^55 kilograms). Now that we know the mass, or amount of matter, we need to see how many atoms fit into it. On average, each gram of matter has around 10^24 protons, according to Fermilab, a national laboratory for particle physics in Illinois. That means it is the same as the number of hydrogen atoms, because each hydrogen atom has only one proton (hence why we made the earlier assumption about hydrogen atoms).

This gives us 10^82 atoms in the observable universe. To put that into context, that is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

This number is only a rough guess, based on a number of approximations and assumptions. But given our current understanding of the observable universe, it is unlikely to be too far off the mark.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 12:10 p.m. ET on July 12, 2021 to remove an extra zero from the 10^82 number.

Harry Baker, “How many atoms are in the observable universe?” at LiveScience

Baker’s article offers a number of preliminary calculations as well.

If this figure of 10^82 is reasonable, we could ask questions like the likelihood of throwing a billion heads in a row in coin tosses. If that’s out of range, what about the likelihood of similar feats created by natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism)?

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Published on July 12, 2021 18:30

Amazing! An evolution of religion study has actually been retracted

Some of us thought that researchers were allowed to talk whatever nonsense they liked about the evolution of religion and call it science but apparently there are exceptions:

It made a splash on March 20: a paper that showed a connection between the evolutionary rise of complex societies and the invention of “moralizing gods” who punish non-cooperators. The “letter to Nature” paper was peer reviewed and written by 13 academics, with all the fanfare of the world’s leading science journal. Three of the lead authors, Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, and Patrick E. Savage, are from the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion at Oxford University.

Well, you can forget about it. The paper has been retracted. Fifteen other scientists complained to Nature that the authors had played fast and loose with their data. …

Smarting from the loss of prestige by publishing in the world’s leading science journal, the group reworked their ‘data’ and sent new drafts as preprints in off-label journals.

Dave Coppedge, “Retraction Note: “Evolution of Religion” Study Pulled” at Creation-Evolution Headlines

Here’s the paywalled (and now retracted) paper. Here’s the paywalled complaint lodged.

If researchers are going to launch an attack on design in the universe, they could start by getting their data in shape.

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Published on July 12, 2021 17:49

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