Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 542

NYT: Beauty in nature acknowledged — but only as “Darwin’s neglected brainchild”

We’re told that ”nearly 150 years later, a new generation of biologists is reviving Darwin’s neglected brainchild.” However, there is more:

Beauty, they say, does not have to be a proxy for health or advantageous genes. Sometimes beauty is the glorious but meaningless flowering of arbitrary preference. Animals simply find certain features — a blush of red, a feathered flourish — to be appealing. And that innate sense of beauty itself can become an engine of evolution, pushing animals toward aesthetic extremes. In other cases, certain environmental or physiological constraints steer an animal toward an aesthetic preference that has nothing to do with survival whatsoever. Ferris Jabr, “NYT Magazine: How Beauty is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution” at New York Times Magazine

Well yes. But if it’s true that the average Darwinian now recognizes that fact, it’s a big change indeed. The New York Times article provides a lot of valuable information in a highly readable way. But one gets the feeling that on Monday, it’s back to the Same Old Same Old. The biologist profiled, Richard Prum, is clearly a maverick who makes others uncomfortable. If he’s right, that’s all the worse for him!

He’s quite right, of course, to dismiss nonsense like “costly fitness,” a sexual selection theory according to which a male proves his fitness by surviving despite a costly handicap like a peacock’s tale. In the world of Something-is-always-trying-to-eat-you, costly fitness is one hypothesis too far.

The biggest problem, which Jabr discusses, is whether beauty really exists or is it just an illusion that promotes our genes’ survival, as a naturalist (nature is all there is) must insist: “Prum’s indifference to the ultimate source of aesthetic taste leaves a conspicuous gap in his grand theory. Even if we were to accept that most beauty blooms from arbitrary preferences, we would still need to explain why such preferences exist at all.” Even in humans, if consciousness is an evolved user illusion, all the more our perception of beauty must be an illusion that serves Darwinian needs.

Yet, despite the stale “Darwin himself” creedal statements, the long piece ends on a curiously tolerant, ecumenical note:

Most of the scientists I spoke with said that the old dichotomy between adaptive adornment and arbitrary beauty, between “good genes” and Fisherian selection, is being replaced with a modern conceptual synthesis that emphasizes multiplicity. “Beauty is something that arises from a host of different mechanisms,” says Gil Rosenthal, an evolutionary biologist at Texas A&M University and the author of the new scholarly tome “Mate Choice.” “It’s an incredibly multilayered process.” Ferris Jabr, “NYT Magazine: How Beauty is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution” at New York Times Magazine

There is room for new ideas now, maybe. Also note this:

“The environment constrains a creature’s anatomy, which determines how it experiences the world, which generates adaptive and arbitrary preferences, which loop back to alter its biology, sometimes in maladaptive ways. Beauty reveals that evolution is neither an iterative chiseling of living organisms by a domineering landscape nor a frenzied collision of chance events. Rather, evolution is an intricate clockwork of physics, biology and perception in which every moving part influences another in both subtle and profound ways. Its gears are so innumerable and dynamic — so susceptible to serendipity and mishap — that even a single outcome of its ceaseless ticking can confound science for centuries.” Ferris Jabr, “NYT Magazine: How Beauty is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution” at New York Times Magazine

Huh? “Intricate clockwork of physics, biology and perception in which every moving part influences another in both subtle and profound ways”? A friend has written to ask if one of us will please go tell Bill Dembski that the design inference has gone mainstream.

Physicist: Is Darwinian natural selection a “force of nature” like gravity?

What, the “single best idea anyone ever had” (philosopher Daniel Dennett on Darwin ) is now comparable to gravity? Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon would take issue with that.

Yes, a psychologist seems to think Darwinian natural selection is indeed a force of nature like gravity:

Natural selection, one of the fundamental processes of evolution, has something in common with gravity: A public relations problem. At one level of analysis, natural selection, like gravity, looks like a chump. When you’re looking up close at the tiny bits of stuff that go into making humans—the sequences of DNA that constitute the human genome—and how they came to be arranged in the manner that they are, natural selection doesn’t seem to have done very much. Other evolutionary processes, such as mutation, migration, and drift, seem to have exerted far more powerful influences on our genomes. For that matter, distinctly non-evolutionary events—one-off famines, freezes, floods, and fires—can exert a far more powerful influence on the fate of a species at any given point in time than natural selection can. However, when you zoom out and look at evolution from a high-altitude vantage point, natural selection is the only evolutionary force that matters at all. Michael McCullough, “Evolution’s Gravity: A Paean to Natural Selection” at Nautilus

A perfect item for Nautilus! Rob Sheldon replies:

—

Michael McCullough, a psychologist, seems to be in a state of what psychiatrists refer to as “physics envy” (a desire to pretend that what they do is some kind of physics). He tries to tell us that Darwinian evolution (aka natural selection) is a force of nature just like the other four elementary forces (strong force, weak force, electromagnetism, and gravity). Not only does he get the physics wrong, he gets the biology wrong. And to top it off, he also gets the physics-biology analogy completely upside-down! It is a good thing he’s an evolutionary psychologist writing for a mainstream blog.

Physics: It is true that the four elementary forces have a wide range of strengths, though Michael would be advised to learn the beauties of scientific notation. It is not true, however, that 100Mass => 10Force, as he states. The equation is F = GMm/r^2, so the force is directly proportional to the mass, not proportional to the square-root of the mass.

And biology? It is true that natural selection will remove non-viable mutations. It is not true, however, that natural selection will provide the slightest help in improving the genome. This job is traditionally assigned to random mutation, which unfortunately, has proven unequal to the task. (See, for example, Edge of Evolution.) So McCullough really should have entitled this piece “A Paeon to Random Mutation.”

Analogy: After these slight mistakes (which nonetheless typefy the carelessness characteristic of profession) we get the really big error. McCullough points out that on small scales, gravity is weak, but on large spatial scales, gravity is large.

He doesn’t know why, he just sees it as a symbolic relationship that can apply to evolution: On short timescales, evolution is weak, but on large timescales it is strong—like gravity. This is a mistake for several major reasons.

a) space is not time. (No, I don’t want to read McCullough’s take on Special Relativity, he’s already bombed his freshman class on Newtonian gravity.)

b) The reason gravity is weak at small scales and big at big scales, is that it can never be shielded. The first three forces (weak and strong forces, electromagnetism) are always shielded. We won’t get into the strong force and asymptotic freedom but electricity has + and – charges, so negative charges balance out the positive charges or “shield” them. Some would say it “must be shielded” because electrons on the other side of the galaxy would arrive to do the job if our local solar system didn’t have enough.

But gravity doesn’t have any “negative” mass particles; there is nothing known that can shield it. That means its strength just grows and grows as you add more mass. There is nothing magic or symbolic about gravity, it is the simple fact that anti-gravity (peace, cosmologists), doesn’t exist.

c) Evolution is supposedly a progressive ratchet that operates in only one direction in time. RM creates novelty, NS filters out the bad stuff, leaving only the good novelty. Rinse and repeat. Isn’t this a good analogy to gravity?

Actually, no. First, RM doesn’t produce any good novelty, only bad novelty. The ratchet does operate, but only downward. Admittedly, there is a lot of hairy math involved but “random” to a physicist means “entropy” and entropy can never produce progress. Never. (Granville Sewell offers mathematical analyses of this point.)

“Mutation,” to a biologist, means a nucleotide substitution in DNA or a peptide substitution in a protein. And given the 64 different possible 3-nucleotide DNA codons with 22 different meanings in protein production, mutations must explore a phase space of a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion options before finding a useful one (see Douglas Axe’s papers). Failure isn’t just an option, it’s guaranteed.

Given that mutations can be both good and bad, we are back to electricity with its positive and negative charges. Unlike gravity, where every step is positive, evolution is like electricity with an average over good and bad steps. But unlike electricity, the bad steps outnumber the good steps by a large margin. So rather than being the weakling on Particle Beach that becomes the Atlas of the solar system, evolution is the bully on Cellular Beach that becomes extinct in the ecosystem.

But don’t archaeology and geology demonstrate that evolution doesn’t become extinct?

No, archaeology demonstrates that life doesn’t become extinct, which proves that evolution cannot explain it. McCullough’s title should have been, “A Eulogy for Random Mutation.”

—

Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent.

See also: A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans

and

At Nautilus: Psychology needs evolutionary psychology

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Logic and First Principles, 7: The problem of fallacies vs credible warrant

When we deal with deeply polarised topics such as ID, we face the problem of well-grounded reasoning vs fallacies. A fallacy being a significantly persuasive but fundamentally misleading argument, often as an error of reasoning. (Cf. a classic collection here.) However, too often, fallacies are deliberately used by clever rhetors to mislead the unwary. Likewise we face the challenge of how much warrant is needed for an argument to be credible.

All of these are logical challenges.

Let us note IEP, as just linked:

A fallacy is a kind of error in reasoning. The list of fallacies below contains 224 names of the most common fallacies, and it provides brief explanations and examples of each of them. Fallacies should not be persuasive, but they often are. Fallacies may be created unintentionally, or they may be created intentionally in order to deceive other people. The vast majority of the commonly identified fallacies involve arguments, although some involve explanations, or definitions, or other products of reasoning. Sometimes the term “fallacy” is used even more broadly to indicate any false belief or cause of a false belief. The list below includes some fallacies of these sorts, but most are fallacies that involve kinds of errors made while arguing informally in natural language.
An informal fallacy is fallacious because of both its form and its content. The formal fallacies are fallacious only because of their logical form. For example, the Slippery Slope Fallacy has the following form: Step 1 often leads to step 2. Step 2 often leads to step 3. Step 3 often leads to … until we reach an obviously unacceptable step, so step 1 is not acceptable. That form occurs in both good arguments and fallacious arguments. The quality of an argument of this form depends crucially on the probabilities. Notice that the probabilities involve the argument’s content, not merely its form.

This focus on probabilistic aspects of informal fallacies brings out several aspects of the problem, for we often deal with empirical evidence and inductive reasoning rather than direct chained deductions. For deductive arguments, a chain is no stronger than the weak link, and if that link cannot be fixed, the whole argument fails to support the conclusion.

However, inductive arguments work on a different principle. Probability estimates, in a controversial context, will always be hotly contested. So, we must apply the rope principle: short, relatively weak individual fibres can be twisted together and then counter twisted as strands of a rope, giving a whole that is both long and strong.

Of chains, ropes and cumulative cases

For example, suppose that a given point has a 1% chance of being an error. Now, bring together ten mutually supportive points that sufficiently independently sustain the same conclusion. Odds that all ten are wrong in the same way are a lot lower. A simple calculation would be ([1 – 0.99]^10) ~10^-21. This is the basis of the classic observation that in the mouth of two or three independent witnesses, a word is established.

However, many will be inclined to set up a double-standard of warrant, an arbitrarily high one for conclusions they wish to reject vs a much softer one for those they are inclined to accept. Nowadays, this is often presented as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

In fact, any claim simply requires adequate evidence.

Any demand for more than this cometh of evil.

This is of course the fallacy of selective hyperskepticism, a bane of discussions on ID topics. (The strength of will to reject can reach the level of dismissing logical-mathematical demonstration, often by finding some excuse to studiously ignore and side step as if it were not on the table.)

Of course, an objection will be: you are overly credulous. That is a claim, one that requires adequate warrant. Where, in fact, if one disbelieves what one should (per adequate warrant), that is as a rule because one also believes what one should not (per, lack of adequate warrant), which serves as a controlling belief. Where, if falsity is made the standard for accepting or rejecting claims, then the truth cannot ever be accepted, as it will run counter to the false.

All of this is seriously compounded by the tendency in a relativistic age to reduce truth to opinion, thence to personalise and polarise, often by implying fairly serious ad hominems. This can then be compounded by the “he hit back first” tactic.

this also raises the issue of the so-called concern troll. That is one who claims to support side A, but will always be found undermining it without adequate warrant, often using the tactics just noted. Such a persona in fact is enabling B by undermining A. This is a notorious agit prop tactic that works because it exploits passive aggressive behaviour patterns.

The answer to all of this is to understand how arguments work and ho=w they fail to work, recognising the possibility of error and of participants who are in error (or are in worse than error) then focussing the merits of the case.

So, as we proceed, let us bear in mind the significance of adequate warrant, and the problem of selective hyperskepticism. END

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Darwinian Jerry Coyne as free speech warrior

Retired biologist Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution Is True, has begun to understand what it means to say that university campuses are no longer a home for ideas, but for grievances:

Many universities, including public ones, have created “bias response teams,” in which speech considered hateful or offensive is reported to University authorities and dealt with promptly. The number of these teams is growing.

While universities are perfectly free to recommend standards of civil discourse, public schools must adhere to the First Amendment and thus have no right to police speech unless it falls into the Amendment’s exceptions: speech that’s a clear and present danger, that is libelous, that creates a climate of harassment that impedes education, and so on. …

As if that weren’t enough, UI outlines what it considers “bias-motivated incidents”, all of which, when they involve speech, are perfectly legal under First Amendment. Of course it’s illegal to deny someone their rights based on age, gender, ethnicity, and so on, but it’s not illegal to issue “expressions” of them, odious though they may be. And “religion/spirituality” is also included in the list: no criticizing Judaism, Islam, or Methodism! Jerry Coyne, “The University of Illinois Police stifle free speech by participating in “bias response”“ at Why Evolution Is True (blog)

Yes, Jerry, many progressives consider the First Amendment a problem and try to legislate around it. Their actions are intended to stifle free speech. They was never intended any other way.

If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up with Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Bret Weinstein on the dark internet, where Cool people can say or imply anything they like about you and hordes of the angry aggrieved can feel good about shouting you down. Good for you if it happens but count the cost.

The trouble is, as Rob Sheldon has pointed out, “ Despite the pain they feel, Darwinists don’t seem to realize it is their own hands that have torn down the edifice of knowledge. They still think that discrimination is valid when they are in charge, that courtesy is only for friends, that objectivity is their personal possession.”

If they do not accept a diagnosis that includes the way their own actions contribute to the problem, their efforts at a cure will not amount to much.

See also: Evolutionary biologist tries to gather shards of truth

Maybe The “March For” Fad Will Die Out Before The Anti-Semitism Hits Science

and

Jerry Coyne is learning, but not fast enough (about anti-Semitism among the social justice warriors (SJWs, the marching Woke) (Update based on the story above: He could be starting to learn faster.)

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Green darner dragonflies migrate over several generations

female green darner dragonfly, Anax junius /Bruce Marlin  (CC BY 3.0 )

Like monarch butterflies. Apparently, the shimmering dragonfly migrates like the Monarch butterfly, taking three generations to loop across North America:

At least three generations make up the annual migration of common green darner dragonflies. The first generation emerges in the southern United States, Mexico and the Caribbean starting around February and flies north. There, those insects lay eggs and die, giving rise to second generation that migrates south until late October. (Some in that second generation don’t fly south until the next year, after overwintering as nymphs.) A third generation, hatched in the south, overwinters there before laying eggs that will start the entire process over again. (from the chart) …

An adult darner, regardless of where it was born, is “a green piece of lightning,” says McFarland, of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies in White River Junction. Darners maneuver fast enough to snap insect prey out of the air around ponds across North America. The front of an adult’s large head is “all eye,” he says, and trying to catch samples for the study was “like hitting a knuckleball.”

Susan Milius, “Green darner dragonflies migrate a bit like monarch butterflies” at ScienceNews

The question that it raises is, how do the insects “know” that they should migrate over several generations? When a larva becomes a pupa, the body completely dissolves and is reconstituted as an adult. Where and how exactly does the information survive? Reside? Some work done on molecular clocks is providing some hints.

See also: Why Some People Think That Monarch Butterflies Show Evidence Of Design

and

Honest Recognition Of The Monarch Butterfly Migration Puzzle Leaps From ID Confabs To Mainstream

Also, if we are talking about dragonflies anyway: Fossil Dragonfly Named In Mike Behe’s Honor

and

Dragonfly Both Perfect At First AND “The Perfected Result” Of 300 Mya Of Evolution?

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Physicists: A mirror universe might explain dark matter

Says a team of three Canadian physicists:

The Big Bang didn’t just result in our familiar universe, according to a mind-bending new theory – it also generated a second “anti-universe” that extended backwards in time, like a mirror image of our own…

This new theory is compelling, according to a news release about the new theory, because it would mean that the universe is filled with “very massive sterile neutrinos” that could explain dark matter, a mysterious material that is believed to make up much of the universe. By the researchers’ own admission, according to Physics World, many details of the new theory still need to be hammered out. Jon Christian, “New Paper: A ‘Mirror Image’ of Our Universe Existed Before The Big Bang” at ScienceAlert

The theory is “compelling” because a mirror universe is an entirely natural idea, perhaps an old one. It’s neater and cleaner than the multiverse and does not entail absurdity. On the contrary, it creates symmetry where before there was asymmetry. But if a mirror universe is not something we can determine or study in this universe, it’s not science. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea but we need to be careful how we invoke it.

Abstract:We propose that the state of the Universe does not spontaneously violate CPT. Instead, the Universe after the big bang is the CPT image of the Universe before it, both classically and quantum mechanically. The pre- and postbang epochs comprise a universe-antiuniverse pair, emerging from nothing directly into a hot, radiation-dominated era.
CPT symmetry selects a unique QFT vacuum state on such a spacetime, providing a new interpretation of the cosmological baryon asymmetry, as well as a remarkably economical explanation for the cosmological dark matter. Requiring only the standard three-generation model of particle physics (with right-handed neutrinos), a Z2 symmetry suffices to render one of the right-handed neutrinos stable. We calculate its abundance from first principles: matching the observed dark matter density requires its mass to be 4.8×108GeV. Several other testable predictions follow: (i) the three light neutrinos are Majorana particles and allow neutrinoless double β decay; (ii) the lightest neutrino is massless; and (iii) there are no primordial long-wavelength gravitational waves. We mention connections to the strong CP problem and the arrow of time. (open access) – Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn, and Neil Turok
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 251301 – Published 20 December 2018 More.

See also: Did Stephen Hawking Discover A Means Of Detecting Parallel Universes Just Before He Died?

Claim: Evidence, maybe, for parallel universes

Cosmologist: Parallel universes are pushing physics too far?

New Scientist: How Far Away Are Our Parallel Selves?

and on time travel:

Would backwards time travel unravel spacetime?

Economist: Can time go backwards?

Astrobiologist: Why time travel can’t really work

Carlo Rovelli: Future time travel only a technological problem, not a scientific one. Rovelli: A starship could wait [near a black hole ] for half an hour and then move away from the black hole, and find itself millennia in the future.

Rob Sheldon’s thoughts on physicists’ “warped” view of time An attempt to force complete symmetry on a universe that does ot want to be completely symmetrical

At the BBC: Still working on that ol’ time machine… BBC: “But using wormholes for time travel won’t be straightforward.” Indeed not. Unless everything is absolutely determined, some wise person from the future has already gone back through a wormhole and altered the present so that we can’t go anywhere.

Is time travel a science-based idea? (2017)

Apparently, a wormhole is our best bet for a time machine (2013)

and

Does a Time Travel Simulation Resolve the “Grandfather Paradox”?

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The multiverse has become a talking point on Capitol Hill

You can’t ground a discussion in basic reality, says one commentator, “without somebody, sooner rather than later, confidently pronouncing something like “our universe is just one of many universes that are constantly evolving and forever changing.” He offers a response, courtesy Regis Nicoll:

Everett imagined that each split created a parallel universe in which particles existed as mirror images of themselves. The result is that every possible state of a particle is realized somewhere.

“Taking many-worlds to its logical conclusion, cosmology consultant Marcus Chown quipped, ‘Elvis didn’t die on that loo eating a burger but is still alive in an infinite number of places.’

“The problems with many-worlds are many, including where all of these parallel universes exist, how an entire universe can be created by an infinitesimal change in a particle’s state, and the endless stream of universes created by every object in the cosmos at every moment in time. Mark Tapscott, “So You Think That Neat ‘Multiverse’ Theory Explains It All …” at HillFaith Blog

Well, you’ve got to hand it to many-worlds (multiverse) theory. It does explain the world of the tabloids, where Elvis lives. And always will.

.

Regis Nicoll is a retired nuclear engineer and a fellow of the Colson Center who writes commentary on faith and culture.

See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: The Multiverse Is “A Fringe Idea”

and

The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide

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Steve Meyer on the future of ID research: ID 3.0

Starting at the 38-minute mark:

Steve Meyer is the author of Darwin’s Doubt

See also: StTeve Meyer on the information enigma in evolution

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Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Some hatching mechanisms unchanged from 130 mya

Four complete Tragychrysa ovoruptora newborns preserved together with egg shell remains and one visible egg burster (right inset) /Paleontology

Amber is as close as paleontology comes to video. It can almost capture actions. From ScienceDaily:

Trapped together inside 130 million-year-old Lebanese amber, or fossilised resin, researchers found several green lacewing newborn larvae, the split egg shells from where they hatched, and the minute structures the hatchlings used to crack the egg, known as egg bursters. The discovery is remarkable because no definitive evidence of these specialised structures had been reported from the fossil record of egg-laying animals, until now.

The fossil newborns have been described as the new species Tragichrysa ovoruptora, meaning ‘egg breaking’ and ‘tragic green lacewing’, after the fact that multiple specimens were ensnared and entombed in the resin simultaneously.

“Egg-laying animals such as many arthropods and vertebrates use egg bursters to break the egg surface during hatching; a famous example is the ‘egg tooth’ on the beak of newborn chicks,” explains Dr Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, a researcher at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and lead author of the work. “Egg bursters are diverse in shape and location. Modern green lacewing hatchlings split the egg with a ‘mask’ bearing a jagged blade. Once used, this ‘mask’ is shed and left attached to the empty egg shell, which is exactly what we found in the amber together with the newborns.”

Green lacewing larvae are small hunters which often carry debris as camouflage, and use sickle-shaped jaws to pierce and suck the fluids of their prey. Although the larvae trapped in amber differ significantly from modern-day relatives, in that they possess long tubes instead of clubs or bumps for holding debris, the studied egg shells and egg bursters are remarkably similar to those of today’s green lacewings. Altogether, they provide the full picture of how these fossil insects hatched like their extant counterparts, about 130 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous. Paper. (open access) – Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, Michael S. Engel, Dany Azar, Enrique Peñalver. The hatching mechanism of 130-million-year-old insects: an association of neonates, egg shells and egg bursters in Lebanese amber. Palaeontology, 2018; DOI: 10.1111/pala.12414 More.

One wonders whether the larval tubes (as opposed to clubs or bumps) relates to different plant species providing the camouflage, hence different portage methods used. Otherwise, this is a lovely example of stasis (for very long periods of time, evolution doesn’t seem to happen), trapped in amber.

See also: Millipedes Found In 100 Mya Amber Comprise 13 Of 16 Known Groups

and

Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Embattled “social sciences hoax” prof is not a hero, he’s a canary

Feeling dizzy in the coal mine. Yesterday, we looked at the fallout from the Sokal hoax. recently perpetrated on social science journals, wherein concerned academics got the journals to publish intentional rubbish that passed Political Correctness standards. A reader writes to say that hoaxer Peter Boghossian’s 2013 book, A Manual For Creating Atheists popularized “street epistemology.” This is an atheist tactic where the evangelist for atheism repeatedly asks non-expert Christians why they believe what they believe: ““Express empathy,” but expect resistance: “Street Epistemologists should prepare for anger, tears, and hostility.”*

In his Manual, he critiques ID:

Currently, intelligent design (ID) is a type of God of the gaps argument. The idea behind ID is basically, “You don’t know how life was formed and sustained, so it was God that formed life and sustains life.” Questions about origin of life present another God of the gaps-type argument, “You don’t know the process by which living organisms naturally arise from non-living matter; therefore the cause was God.” (p. 172)

The reader notes that the criticism bears no resemblance to actual ID work (cf Biologic Institute).

No, it doesn’t. And it also bears no relation to the reasons why Boghossian’s job is at risk, a situation which the reader who wrote to us firmly opposes, of course. But we need to keep the file up to date.

Some of us wish more people in the middle understood: Boghossian’s job is at risk because, so it would seem, social justice warriors (SJWs) are people with degrees but little serious scholarship. They need the right to propound rubbish in accepted venues, in support of their current objectives—whatever they happen to be. Once they have started, or parasitized, an academic journal, they, of course, defend it against all comers.

The fact that Boghossian is an evangelistic atheist banging the drum for “science,” won’t save him. Did he help make fun of the idea that humans impose “heteronormativity” on dogs? Drive him from his job! He defiled a (current*) sacred cause! More, he damaged the reputation of journals the SJWs started or captured.

Religion in the traditional sense is of no concern to SJWs. You can be a witch or an astrologer and be right at home in their circles. The only thing you can’t believe in is intellectual freedom, due process, rationality, evidence, or any other ideas that SJWs associate with the threat of not getting what they want. Some of us call them the raging Woke, and not without reason.

*If you, reader, think that all this won’t affect you in your comfy job somewhere, remember that the raging Woke differ from most fanatics in one important way: Their causes have comparatively early sell-by dates and change often. They don’t concern you now? May later. Any aid you give them today by tolerating their concerns, however apparently well-meaning, could come back to haunt you. And you will have that many fewer allies.

*Note: Jonathan McLatchie, often featured here, addresses that sort of street epistemology here.

See also: Social science hoaxer’s job at risk for revealing “bias” If science of any kind survives, the question will be not “Why are the journals allowed to be so debased?” but “Why is this field publicly funded?” Oh, and, “Why do degrees in the subject matter?”

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