Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 461

Have 99% of All Species Gone Extinct?

Dear readers,

It has been far too long since my last post, occasioned by the fact that I have entirely too many irons in the fire.

I hope you will forgive this brief “drive-by” post, with a request for some help and information.

One of the common refrains that comes up regarding the fossil record, or regarding claims about biodiversity and the evolution of species more generally, is that the vast majority of species that have ever lived on the Earth have gone extinct. This is often phrased as “99% of species that have ever lived have gone extinct” or similar wording. (Occasionally someone will temper the number to 98% or 95% or some other nearby figure, but 99% seems to be the most common claim.)

I am trying to track down a credible source for this incredible claim.

With the help of, yes, Wikipedia, I’ve managed to make a little bit of progress.

Apparently, in 1991, University of Chicago paleontologist, David Raup, estimated that there might have been anywhere from 5 to 50 billion species that had existed during the history of the Earth.Given then-current estimates of existing species, Michael McKinney calculated that “well over 99% of earth’s species” had gone extinct. As near as I can tell, this was presented by McKinney at a symposium and published in 1997 along with other symposium papers and presentations in a book titled, “The Biology of Rarity: Causes and consequences of rare-common differences”.

No doubt this is not the only source for this claim, as many other biologists would have quite readily drawn similar conclusions based on Raup’s estimate.

I would be most grateful for any additional, or more solid, sources for the idea that “99% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct.”

Incidentally, it is worth noting that the actual number of known (not estimated or projected or inferred) species is quite different. Compared with some 1-2M known species currently living, there are about 250K identified fossil species. Obviously these numbers are also subject to some margin of error, but at least they deal with known, identified organisms, rather than projections and estimates. Even allowing for lots of gray area due to the ever-elusive definition of “species” and the fact that observable fossils will obviously tend toward larger creatures (e.g., one suspects it will be tough to get a decent count of bacteria in the fossil record!), it will still not be lost on the reader that these numbers flip the common claim on its head, with the fossil record count making up but a minor percentage of currently-living species, rather than vastly dwarfing the latter.

This leads to a couple of important follow-up questions:

Is the fossil record truly so poor that many billions of species have come and gone without leaving a discernable trace? Not thousands, not millions, but billions? Were Gould and Eldridge wrong to suggest that the fossil record, albeit imperfect, is generally reliable and tells a largely accurate story of the history of life on Earth, at least as it relates to the larger animals?Or is the “99% extinct” claim serving some other role — perhaps something of a modern incarnation of Darwin’s proposal that the number of long-dead intermediates must be “innumerable” and that the fossil record is not to be trusted, because it reflects but a miniscule part of the Earth’s actual biological history?

I would like to know one way or another.

Any help you can give in either (a) tracking down good sources for the 99% extinct claim, or (b) spelling out why the claim should be accepted, despite the actual physical data, would be most helpful.

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Atheism’s problem of warrant

Atheism seems to be on the table these days here at UD and a few points need clarification.

First up, what is Atheism?

The usual dictionaries are consistent:

atheism
n. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
[French athéisme, from athée, atheist, from Greek atheos, godless : a-, without; see a-1 + theos, god; see dh?s- in Indo-European roots.]

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.

atheism
n (Philosophy) rejection of belief in God or gods
[C16: from French athéisme, from Greek atheos godless, from a-1 + theos god]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

a•the•ism
n. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
[1580–90]
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

atheism
the absolute denial of the existence of God or any other gods.
-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

However, from at least the 1880’s, there has been a claim by some advocates of the same, that what is meant is someone without faith in God.

(This tends to serve the rhetorical purpose of claiming that nothing is asserted and it can be taken as default, demanding that theists provide “compelling” warrant for faith in God. Where, often, this then leads to selectively hyperskeptical dismissals, sometimes to the degree of claiming that “there is no evidence” that supports the existence of God. [Of course, the no evidence gambit should usually be taken as implying ” there is no evidence [that I am willing to acknowledge].” Through that loophole, as fair comment, a lot of clearly question-beggingly closed minded hyperskepticism can be driven.)

There are many varieties of atheists, including idealistic ones that reject the reality of matter. However at this juncture in our civilisation, the relevant form is evolutionary materialistic, often associated with the scientism that holds that big-S Science effectively monopolises credible knowledge. (Never mind that such a view is an epistemological [thus philosophical and self-refuting] view. Evolutionary materialism is also self-refuting by way of undermining the credibility of mind.)

A key take-home point is that atheism is not an isolated view or belief, it is part of a wider worldview, where every worldview needs to be responsible before the bar of comparative difficulties: factual adequacy, coherence, balanced explanatory power. Likewise, given the tendency of modern atheism to dress up in a lab coat, we must also reckon with fellow travellers who do not explicitly avow atheism but clearly enable it.

So, already, we can see that atheism is best understood as disbelief in the existence of God, claimed or implied to be a well warranted view; not merely having doubts about God’s existence or thinking one does not know enough to hold a strong opinion. It inevitably exists as a part of a broader philosophical scheme, a worldview, and will imply therefore a cultural agenda.

We can go further.

For, we all have intellectual duties of care in general and as regards worldviews and linked cultural agendas. There are particular, inescapable associated duties to truth, right reason, prudence (including warrant), sound conscience, fairness, justice, etc. To see why such are inescapable, consider the consequences of a widespread rejection of such duties: ruinous chaos that would undermine rationality itself. Reason is morally governed.

Also, given that post Godel, not even sufficiently complex mathematical systems are subject to proof beyond doubt, that one cannot provide absolute demonstration is not at all the same as that one does not have adequate warrant to hold responsible certainty about key points of knowledge. In this context, the issue is reasonable, responsible faith in a credible worldview. Where, the claim one has “absence of belief in” God is often patently evasive. Why such a strange lack?

Could it be that one knows enough to realise that trying to disprove
the reality of God is an almost impossible task, once there is no
demonstrable incoherence in the theistic concept of God? (Where, we
note, that the old attempt to use the problem of evil to lead to such a
contradiction has failed; a failure that is particularly evident,
post-Plantinga.)

Now, such is significant, especially given point 7 from the recently cited six-country study on atheists:

7. Also perhaps challenging common suppositions: with

only a few exceptions, atheists and agnostics endorse

the realities of objective moral values, human dignity and

attendant rights, and the ‘deep value’ of nature, at similar

rates to the general populations in their countries. (3.1)

A key to this, is the already mentioned point that our mental lives are inescapably under moral government, through undeniably known duties to “truth, right reason, prudence (including warrant), sound conscience, fairness, justice, etc.” The attempt to deny such rapidly undercuts rational discussion and the credibility of thought and communication, much as is implicit in what would happen were lying to be the norm. So, one who rejects the objectivity of such duties discredits himself.

However, it is also possible to hold an inconsistency; accepting objective morality but placing it in a framework that undermines it.

A start-point is to see that our rationality is morally governed through said duties. This means, our life of reason operates on both sides of the IS-OUGHT gap, requiring that it be bridged. That can only be done in the root of reality, on pain of ungrounded ought. And no, indoctrination, socialisation and even conscience do not ground ought. We need that the root of reality is inherently and essentially good and wise, a serious bill to fill.

You may dispute this (so, as a phil exercise, provide an alternative
_____ and justify it _____ ), but it is easy to show that after many
centuries of debates there is just one serious candidate: the
inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally
great being. One, worthy of loyalty and of the reasonable, responsible
service of doing the good that accords with our evident nature. This is the heart of ethical theism.

There is another angle. How much of reality do we know, how much of what is knowable do we actually hold, and how much of that is certain beyond future correction? The ratio is obviously trending infinitesimal; even dismissing Boltzmann brain scenarios, Matrix worlds and Plato’s cave worlds etc.

So, what if what is required to know God is, is beyond what one happens to know, or what one is willing to acknowledge?

In short, the positive affirmation that there is no God is arguably an act of intellectual irresponsibility, given our inability to show that being God is incoherent and our effectively infinitesimal grasp of what is knowable.

Let me add a table, as a reminder on logic of being:

Indeed, as it is easy to see that reality has a necessary being root (something of independent existence that therefore has neither beginning nor end), given that traversal of the transfinite in finite temporal-causal steps is a supertask and given that were there ever utter non-being, as such has no causal powers that would forever obtain, if a world now is, something thus always was. Thus, too, the question is: what that necessary being is, and that is further shaped by our being under moral government starting with our rationality.

Where also, a serious candidate to be a necessary being either is, or is impossible of being as a square circle is impossible of being. Where, a necessary being is a world-framework entity: a component of what is necessary for there to be any world. God as historically understood through theism is clearly such a serious candidate (if you doubt, kindly justify: ____ ), and so the one who poses as knowing that God is not implies having warrant to hold God impossible of being. Where, given the centrality of root of reality, ducking the question is clearly irresponsible.

In short, asserting or implying atheism requires a serious — and unmet — burden of warrant. END

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Why do secularism and scientism coincide with a huge rise in superstition?

You knew this had to be at least one book. And here is one, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (2017) by in the department of religion at Williams College in New England.

He asks, why do people accept both scientism and superstition?:

But as I argued in my book The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (2017), the common notion of disenchantment as an extirpation of animism rests on a mistaken premise. Several large-scale surveys suggest that the vast majority of Americans believe in some sort of paranormal phenomena. Indeed, a surprising 83.3 per cent of Americans believe in either guardian angels, demonic possession or ghosts, and there is evidence for similar belief patterns in western Europe. (I should note that disenchantment should not be confused with secularisation. The sociological evidence suggests that de-Christianisation, while usually equated with secularisation, often correlates with an increase in belief in spirits, ghosts and magic – not the reverse.) Nor are sociological surveys the only evidence. If one views Europe and North America through the same sort of anthropological lens that European and American anthropologists are used to directing abroad, it seems hard to defend the notion that the ‘modern West’ is straightforwardly disenchanted. There are plenty of examples.

Walmart sells ‘Sage Spirit-Smudge Wands’ and clothing chains such as Urban Outfitters sell ‘healing crystals’ and tarot cards. You can go on eBay right now and pay an Australian ‘white witch’ to perform a ritual to summon a djinn and bind it to an object of your choice. Celebrities such as Anna Nicole Smith and Bobby Brown have publicly described having sex with ghosts. Coffee shops and co-ops throughout the US and much of western Europe display flyers advertising ‘palm readers’, ‘energy balancing’ and ‘chakra work’. Even if you ignore the Harry Potter craze and other fictionalised depictions of wizards, ghosts and witches, studies of American reading habits suggest that ‘New Age’ print culture is incredibly lucrative, with ‘non-fiction books’ about magic, guardian angels and near-death experiences frequently appearing in the upper echelons of Amazon’s bestseller lists. And the past 15 years have seen a proliferation of ‘reality’ television series that claim to report evidence for ghosts, psychics, extraterrestrials, monsters, curses and even miracles. At the very least, it would seem that contemporary consumers are willing to flirt with the existence of spirits and psychical powers.

Jason Josephson Storm, “Against Disenchantment” at Aeon

Storm goes on to say that thinks that neither superstition nor secularism liberate people.

Come to think of it, believing in artificial intelligence or space aliens as god-like makes as much sense as believing in lucky numbers and charms.

See also: Tales of an invented god

and

Sceptic asks, why do people who abandon religion embrace superstition? Belief in God is declining and belief in ghosts and witches is rising

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The astonishing rise of junk science

What’s hot? What’s not?/Niklas Bildhauer, Wikimedia

Made easier by digital methods in publishing:

These companies have become so successful, Franco says, that for the first time in history, scientists and scholars worldwide are publishing more fraudulent and flawed studies than legitimate research—maybe ten times more. Approximately 10,000 bogus journals run rackets around the world, with thousands more under investigation, according to Cabell’s International, a publishing-services company. “We’re publishing mainly noise now,” Franco laments. “It’s nearly impossible to hear real signals, to discover real findings.”

Outside of university departments, very few people know about the scale of the problem; Franco is one of a few scholars in North America who are sounding the alarm. In 2017, two engineers in the US, Marc A. Edwards and Siddhartha Roy, published a paper (in a reputable journal) about how researchers are implicated in junk-publishing scams: otherwise honest scholars cut corners and engage in junk publishing to further their careers without paying mind to the detrimental and sometimes dangerous effects on their fields of research. “If a critical mass of scientists become untrustworthy,” Edwards and Roy concluded, “a tipping point is possible in which the scientific enterprise itself becomes inherently corrupt and public trust is lost, risking a new dark age with devastating consequences to humanity.”

Alex Gillis, “The Rise of Junk Science” at The Walrus

This article offers a lot of valuable information and should be read carefully. A couple of caveats though: He assumes that there is a “respectable science media” out there but actually, they are becoming corrupt too. Consider:

When medical journals get woke, they fight racism, not cancer. Will your doctor sound like a self-absorbed neurotic?

New England Journal of Medicine, seeking new editor, urged to get woke. Journal editor: “The main job of journals will not be to disseminate science but to ‘speak truth to power,’ encourage debate, campaign, investigate and agenda-set — the same job as the mass media.

Lancet: Why has a historic medical publication gone weird?

Gillis’s overly respectful view of Correct science media stems from one key problem with his assumptions: He assumes that the rise of junk science is mainly due to new publishing technology.

No. Not every field of endeavor went off the rails due to new technology. The roots of science decline go more to changes in value systems that separate righteousness from truth and truth from fact. In a word, naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism.”

In any event, remember what you read here, the next time you see a writeup of a taxpayer-funded study on why people don’t trust science that treats the lack of trust solely as a psychological problem with the non-trusters. And never strays into the heresy of enquiring as to evidence-based reasons for lack of trust.

Note: The article leans heavily on Canadian examples because it is from Canada.

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See also: A study of the causes of science skepticism sails right by the most obvious cause of skepticism: Repeated untrustworthiness

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Historian Richard Weikart on how Darwinism eroded the value of human life

Along with other ideologies:

Since the Enlightenment many secular ideologies have contributed to the devaluing of human life by arguing that human life is the product of chance processes. This has led to the erosion of the Judeo-Christian sanctity-of-life ethic, spawning the present “culture of death,” where many intellectuals accept abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Peter Saunders, Chief Executive, International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA), interviews Richard Weikart, Professor of Modern European History, California State University Stanislaus, on these ideologies and a Christian response to them. (2018)

Richard Weikart, “Darwin, Hitler, and the Modern Devaluation of Human Life” at Forum of Christian Leaders

Darwinism situated human beings firmly as animals, which meant what it must mean.

See also: Richard Weikart: Is life a cosmic accident

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Researchers: Comatose people do show self-awareness

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Researchers found mental activity in response to verbal commands even in some “completely unresponsive” patients:

This work is relevant to the question of the relationship between the mind and the brain. It is another piece of evidence in a long line of evidence that some aspects of mental activity, most notably abstract thought, are to a significant degree dissociated from the material function of the brain.

It also highlights a significant limitation we face in evaluating the capacity for abstract thought in people who have severe brain damage: severe brain damage causes physical immobility and severely compromises behavioral responses. That makes the assessment of the capacity for abstract thought very difficult. How can we know if somebody who has severe brain damage and is in a deep coma can understand what we are saying if the brain damage prevents the patient from expressing thoughts by physical movement?

This study is consistent with the work of Wilder Penfield, who showed that higher-level abstract thought did not seem to arise from the brain in a material way.

Michael Egnor, “New edviencethat some comatose people really do understand” at Mind Matters News

Also by Michael Egnor: Science Points To An Immaterial Mind. If one did not start with a materialist bias, materialism would not be invoked as an explanation for a whole range of experiments in neuroscience

and

Can buzzwords about “neural networks” save materialist neuroscience? No. Experiments that support an immaterial consciousness often involve split or massively damaged neural networks

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Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, gives lessons in being a troll for science

Courtesy Salvo 49:

Last fall, Dilbert creator Scott Adams held his first online “Troll College.” Sitting in front of a wonky whiteboard, the satirist extraordinaire and sarcastic poker-of-fun at all things pompous, taught seven rules for would-be internet trolls. One capitalized on the straw man fallacy, which involves misstating your target’s argument, then criticizing the misstatement. Others focused on rhetorical strategy: always issue a “halfpinion,” for example, which reduces a complex issue to one variable, rather than a real opinion, which would require taking all factors into account.

“You should also pretend,” Adams said, moving on to rule number five, “that you as a troll [do] something called ‘understanding science.’ . . . Just make the assumption that you know more about science than other people.” And like a good teacher, he modeled how it should be done. “Ah huh huh huh,” he guffawed, demonstrating the condescending, arrogant, mocking tone you should assume. “You don’t know anything about science, ah ha ha. . . .” A troll should never give reasons for what he “understands.” What matters is the attitude.

Terrell Clemmons, “When Darwin’s Foundations Are Crumbling, What Will the Faithful Do?” at Salvo

They seem to have followed the script, Clemmons reports, with Michael Behe’s Darwin Devolves.

You can sit on the observation deck here.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

See also: Dilbert’s Scott Adams And The Reproductively Effective Delusion Evolutionary Thesis

and

Schrodinger’s cat applies for a job

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People are more honest than expected. Social scientists struggle to explain

The experiment involved a lost wallet:

A team of economists found recently that, in a massive global study of 17,000 “lost wallets” in forty countries, people were more likely to return a wallet if it contained a large amount of cash. This finding “defied the expectations of both professional economists and 2,500 respondents to a survey, who predicted that people would act in self-interest.” (The Guardian) …

A variety of sources struggle to account for the high level of honesty in a “selfish gene”/“hairless ape” paradigm

“The lost wallet returns—and experts are baffled” at Mind Matters News

The puzzlement makes for fun reading.

See also: Can AI make us better human beings? Helping us believe that is a promising new business area for some

and

Putting a respectable face on persecuting the social justice science hoaxers

Embattled “Social Sciences Hoax” Prof Is Not A Hero, He’s A Canary

Social Science Hoaxer’s Job At Risk For Revealing “Bias”

Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Exposing gender studies as a Sokal hoax

Social Science Hoax Papers Is One Of RealClearScience’s Top Junk Science Stories Of 2018

and

Alan Sokal, Buy Yourself A Latte: “Star Wars” Biology Paper Accepted

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Vegetarianism arose three times in extinct crocodiles. Maybe six.

[image error]
American alligator/© Mark Kostich, Adobe Stock

From ScienceDaily:

Based on careful study of fossilized teeth, scientists have found that multiple ancient groups of crocodyliforms — the group including living and extinct relatives of crocodiles and alligators — were not the carnivores we know today. Evidence suggests that a veggie diet arose in the distant cousins of modern crocodylians at least three times.

We’ll leave it to a reader to draw a conclusion about that.

The war on knowledge seems quite serious at Cornell University

If you go by one of their summer courses:

If that question appears, well, worrisome, consider the following which “decolonial work in epistemology” must address (in addition to the questions about rationality and reason):

— Do social identities matter for knowledge claims? How, exactly?

— How is ignorance socially produced, and what is the solution?

— How can science be done in a decolonial way?

— How do we empower traditional and indigenous knowledges?

In order to “advance” the concept of decolonizing epistemology, the description continues, one must “explor[e] the ways in which the disenfranchised have been epistemically discredited [in order to] develop new insights and theories about the general nature of knowledge and of knowers.”

Knowledge itself must be questioned … in order to effect social change.

Dave Huber, “Cornell summer seminar asks: Should we still use concepts like ‘rationality’ and ‘reason’?” at The College Fix

Here. Search on: Alcoff

One driver might be an awareness of post-truth. But one suspects that it’s not really knowledge that is the enemy here, so much as rationality.

The purveyors of the course want to make acceptance of fact claims depend on their origin rather than their relationship with evidence. As for science, well, you can’t get there from here.

Views from what’s happening: Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? They need to re-evaluate their alliance with progressivism, which is doing science no favours.

Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself

and

Panpsychism: You are conscious but so is your coffee mug

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