Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 573

News: Anthropologist does not see chimpanzees as fuzzy humans

common chimpanzee and bonobo/Chandres William H. Calvin, CC

It’s great to see concern for primate apes taking a rational turn that can actually be in their interests:

In recent years, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation organizations, and animal rights groups have told the public to stop touching chimpanzees and other wild animals. National Geographic, PETA, and even Instagram draw explicit links between human touch and harm. They discourage wildlife enthusiasts from visiting “fake sanctuaries” that let tourists play with wild animals. Sanctuary accreditation organizations, such as the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), can refuse to accredit facilities that allow visitors to touch primates. They say that visitor illness, easily communicated through touch, can kill a young chimpanzee. Moreover, this touch—even if it is playful—can harm chimps and other wild animals by igniting a desire for human interaction.

These organizations are trying to educate a public that seems largely unaware of the link between playful touch and harm.

…

Rachel Hogan, a conservationist originally from the U.K., directs Ape Action Africa (AAA), the largest primate sanctuary in Cameroon. At the close of an interview, Hogan told me, “The truth is, we aren’t chimps. We aren’t really their mothers. We can’t give them what their mothers could have. Their mothers are gone.”

Hogan’s point gets to the heart of harm. Sanctuaries try to transition infants from human care to living with other chimpanzees as soon as possible, because human touch is not enough for a chimp. We give Gnala the best life we can. We use her vocalizations. We dig in the dirt next to her. We move through the forest with her on our backs. But our touch will always fall short. Amy Hanes, “For Chimps, Human Touch Can Hurt” at Sapiens

Good for them. If a well-to-do idler wants to pretend that his spaniel requires psychoanalysis, life’s rotten for that individual dog. But dogs are hardly going extinct. The fact that chimpanzees are an endangered species means that it’s important to understand them as animals who need a specific habitat, not as pre-humans entering the Stone Age.

Note: One big problem is that living in a human group does not prepare a chimpanzee for the everyday level of violence that is normal in a chimp group.

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See also:

Intelligence tests unfair to apes?

and

Are apes entering the Stone Age?

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Two Neanderthal children from 250 kya showed lead exposure, and much else

250,000-year-old Neanderthal child’s tooth/ Tanya Smith, Griffith University, Daniel Green, Harvard University

Based on an analysis of their teeth:

Two 250,000-year-old teeth from two Neanderthal children revealed that both of them were exposed to lead twice during their short lifetimes, the first known case of lead exposure in Neanderthals…

“Teeth record environmental variation based on the climate, even where you’re growing up,” said Tanya Smith, lead author of the study and associate professor at Griffith University. “That’s possible because when you’re growing, your teeth you actually lock in a record of the chemistry of the water and the food that you’re eating and drinking. Because teeth have these tiny timelines, we can relate the chemistry to the growth to calculate ancient climate records. We can’t do that with any other element of the body.”

the element lead/Royal Society of Chemistry

They were able to determine that one of the Neanderthal children was born in the spring and that both children were more likely to be sick during the colder winter seasons. They lived through more extreme seasons with a greater variation in temperature than the modern human child who was also studied.Ashley Strickland, “Earliest discovery of lead exposure found in Neanderthal children” at CNN

Neanderthals were not supposed to suffer from lead exposure. Were they trying to work with lead?: Lead is a highly lustrous, bluish-white element that makes up only about 0.0013 percent of the Earth’s crust, according to the Jefferson Lab. It is not considered rare, however, since it is fairly widespread and easy to extract.

Although lead has been phased out of many of its previous uses, this non-corrosive metal is actually quite useful in products that hold or touch highly acidic substances. For example, lead is used to line tanks that hold corrosive liquids, such as sulfuric acid. It is also used in lead-acid storage batteries, such as those found in automobiles. More.

The causes of the children’s deaths are unknown but one was nursed for two and a half years.

So much more information is coming to light about Neanderthals and other vanished peoples that

it’s getting harder than ever to find the missing link. In any good Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history. But stories, sure, there will be plenty more stories.

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See also: Study of baby diplodocus skull prompts new theories of dinosaur behavior Researcher: The babies most likely lived in forests in age-segregated herds, which could protect them both from predators and from being trampled by their own gigantic parents. That’s speculation of course, but the difference is that if evidence is in play, it’s no longer free-form speculation.

Soft tissue find shows dinosaurs had birdlike lungs

and

Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

 

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Study of baby Diplodocus skull prompts new theories of dinosaur behavior

Artist’s impression of adult and baby/Andrey Atuchin

We are starting to get so much more information now:

Andrew had a short narrow snout, whereas his parents had wide, square snouts. His snout was suited to forests, but his parents would be grazing the ground in open areas.

But if adults fed their babies, why would they need to have different teeth and snouts? The researchers believe that the babies fended for themselves and were separated from the adults.

The babies most likely lived in forests in age-segregated herds, which could protect them both from predators and from being trampled by their own gigantic parents.

skull remains/John P. Wilson

“I’ve been thinking of these roving bands of young Diplodocus in the forests akin to Peter Pan’s Lost Boys,” Woodruff said. “These age-segregated herds likely sought refuge in more forested areas where they could hide and be more concealed, opposed to being out in the open.”Ashley Strickland, “Rare baby dinosaur fossil is full of surprises” at CNN

That’s speculation of course, but the difference is that if evidence is in play, it’s no longer free-form speculation.

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See also: Soft tissue find shows dinosaurs had birdlike lungs

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Is SETI an “occult cult with money”?

Alien tripod by Alvim Corréa, 1906 French edition of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”

Much information is offered here:

Astronomer Jill Tarter discusses the search for intelligent life (Phys.org). Jill Tarter, one of the queens of SETI, was given royal treatment in a Harvard interview. The interviewer could have asked some hard questions, but one never treats royalty that way.

“For me, after millennia of asking priests and philosophers what we should believe, I just thought it was very exciting that right then in the middle of the 20th century we were beginning to have some tools—telescopes and computers—that allowed scientists and engineers to try to figure out what is, and not have to take somebody’s belief system. I thought that was really important and I got hooked.”

Without realizing, she was being treated as a priestess herself. She created a belief system with no evidence. The interviewer was now asking her what we should believe. Tarter had inspired a movie, but has produced not a single point of data to confirm her childhood imagination: “It just always seemed to me that probably walking along the beach on some other world there was some other creature with their father, looking and seeing our sun as a star in their sky.”

To Jjill Tarter, pretending to be a scientist but having no data doesn’t matter. “Even not finding it but trying to find it is important because it helps to give people a more cosmic perspective.” That’s a faith quest. It also ignores many theists who have a ‘cosmic perspective’ without ascribing to her cult based on her feelings about what “just always seemed to me.” David F. Coppedge, “SETI: A Fact-Free Occult Cult with Money” at Creation-Evolution Headlines

Some of us would say that calling SETI a cult is a bit harsh. It has always been given the red-carpet treatment by popular media, which means that its spokesfolks are heedless of criticism.

It’s not because media believe They’re Out There particularly. Rather, media pros know from experience that the topic boosts ratings. Viewers probably believe that they have kept up with science if they spend a bit of time watching stuff about extraterrestrial intelligences that is not clearly labelled science fiction. SETI provides the needed copy and footage.

As for the science community, Coppedge also tells us,

Case in point: at JPL, when my boss accused me of “pushing religion” with intelligent design DVDs I would occasionally share with co-workers, he shouted at me “Intelligent design is religion!” In response, I asked him point-blank about SETI. I asked him, “What about SETI? Aren’t they using intelligent design to infer intelligent causes from radio signals?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence before he interrupted me. He said, “That’s different. The scientific community has determined that SETI is science.”

Well, if they said SETI isn’t science (of course it isn’t, not in the sense that the Large Hadron Collider is science), they would be smacking pop media in the face. Wrecking The Narrative. They can’t afford to do that. First, no one is asking them to. Second, too many unopened closets, too many skeletons to risk that…

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See also: SETI finds more creative ways to keep looking

SETI reacts to the study that says not to wait up for the extraterrestrials

Researchers: We have dissolved the Fermi Paradox! (They’re Not Out There.)

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If scientists get elected, will they confront the war on STEM education?

pi in mosaic, Berlin/Holger Motzkau

Some scientists hope to influence society by running for office:

On the verge of Election Day in the U.S. a political movement focused on getting scientists into public office is hoping that results at the polls will lead to more scenes like this one at state houses, city councils and school boards across the country, not just at a federal level. At least 70 scientist–candidates launched bids for office at the state and local level this election cycle, most of them first-time campaigners and part of a record wave of scientists bucking a long-established penchant to avoid the political arena. Organizers hope this will become a deep bench of up-and-coming policy makers with science and technology backgrounds who might contest for higher office in years to come. Or many may stay local, because those jobs are usually part-time and allow researchers to maintain careers that were their first passion.

…

For Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist and lecturer at Emory University competing for a state house seat in a district about 30 minutes northeast of Atlanta, the decision to run for office was not difficult. But she says there has been a steep learning curve, including figuring out how to craft a message to sell herself to voters. On the campaign trail, though her flyers include a drawing of an atom, she says some people “could care less that I’m a scientist, so most of the time I don’t harp too much on the science part. But when I say things like we need to get back to facts, they all agree with that.” David S. Rauf, “Scientist-Politicians Go Local: From Lab Bench to a Deep Bench” at Scientific American

It’s good to hear that candidate Clark finds that the public still cares about facts because, as has often been pointed out here, among educrats, there is currently a culture war against science disciplines that still care about such things:

Science, we are told by one source, is “inherently discriminatory to women and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging, a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women.” (Laura Parson, dissertation, University of North Dakota).

Parson is not a lone voice. We hear that objectivity, along with “scientific,” “valid,” “reliable,” and “rationality,” is racist and sexist, a mere veneer for white male power (P.L. Thomas. “White Men Of Academia Have An ‘Objectivity’ Problem,” HuffPost June 14, 2017). Darwinian atheist Jerry Coyne complains, “These misguided people argue not only that there is no objective reality, but that attempts to find and teach it are sexist: that such endeavors are masculine ones, and that the methods of science themselves make the discipline sexist and patriarchal.”

Yes, Dr. Coyne, they do argue that and they are dead serious. Their cause includes citational politics, which means avoiding the citation of research by white male academics like himself. Would the fact that he is considered an expert in his field (evolutionary biology) make any difference? Not if objective reality is sexist.

Some progressives also tag science as a form of colonialism. Here again, as atheist neurologist Steven Novella makes clear, science’s core values, not individual scientists’ cultural failings, are under assault. Unfortunately, Dr. Novella responds by arguing that science is inherently anti-colonial because “the very essence of science is to seek objective truth that is separate from the assumptions of any particular culture.” Does he not grasp that “objective truth” is precisely what is under assault? More.

The scientists in office can pretend these people aren’t in positions of influence in education but that would be bad news for their constituents.

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See also: Enemies of science? The current war on objectivity is a genuine enemy

Professor: Maths should be a movement against “objects, truths, and knowledge”

and

Education prof: Upend science to benefit the oppressed

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Michael Denton on why the Sun is remarkably fit for life

Michael Denton, author of Children of Light: The astonishing properties of sunlight that made us possible, explains,

We should feel very lucky. The sun is a giant fusion bomb, converting hydrogen to helium in an ongoing chain reaction in its dense, ultra-hot core. But fortunately for us, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by this runaway fusion bomb (and that of most other stars) is almost entirely light and heat (or infrared). These have precisely the characteristics needed for advanced life to thrive on the Earth’s surface.

No matter how unfashionable the notion may be in some intellectual circles, the evidence is unequivocal: Ours is a cosmos whose laws appear finely tuned for our type of life.

The crucial visual band, which has the right energy levels for photochemistry, occupies only a tiny part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. To grasp just how small, picture just a few playing cards in a stack stretching from here to beyond the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is more than 2.5 million light years away. This playing card illustration, then, represents a fraction so small as to be beyond ordinary human comprehension.

And here is the key point: It’s thanks only to the fine tuning of the laws and constants of nature that we live in a universe awash in radiation from this tiny swath of the EM spectrum — the life-permitting swath.Michael Denton, “NASA’s Parker Probe Kisses the Sun — and Rightly So” at The Stream

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See also: Michael Denton: Every major science advance for 200 years shows unique fitness of Earth for life

 

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Mimus Pulls Himself Up By His Bootstraps

Kinda like this:

In a comment to my last post A-Mat subjectivist Mimus demonstrates how he would argue to a Saudi that executing homosexuals is wrong.

I would argue that moral codes should balance the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness and thrive in their own lives with the detrimental effects of selfish or antisocial behavior. That leaves no grounds for discrimination against gay people at all, let alone their murder.

The problem with Mimus’ argument is that it is based on an equivocation.  Let’s see how.

Mimus’ argument boils down to this:

Major premise:  Killing someone for no reason other than that they are pursuing happiness and thriving in their own lives is evil.

Minor premise:  Homosexuals are pursuing happiness and thriving in their own lives.

Conclusion:  Therefore, killing homosexuals is evil.

The argument’s conclusion certainly follows from its premises.  So, what is wrong with it?

The problem with the argument is that as a materialist, when Mimus uses the word “evil” he cannot mean “evil” in any objective sense of that word which the Saudi is bound to recognize.  He can only mean “that which, though I have no free will, evolutionary processes have determined I do not prefer.”  When Mimus’ equivocation is exposed, his real argument comes to fore:

Major premise:  Killing someone for no reason other than that they are pursuing happiness and thriving in their own lives is something which, though I have no free will, evolutionary processes have determined I not prefer.

Minor premise:  Homosexuals are pursuing happiness and thriving in their own lives.

Conclusion:  Therefore, killing homosexuals is something which, though I have no free will, evolutionary processes have determined I not prefer.

To which the Saudi would understandably object, why should I care what evolutionary processes have determined that you not prefer?

All materialist moral arguments – without exception – are based on an identical equivocation.  And when the equivocation is exposed, it is always revealed that the materialist is trying to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

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Misleading the public about AI, science, and religion

concept illustration/©M-SUR, Fotolia

Researchers tried modeling intergroup anxiety but look what the public heard about the results, instead of the facts:

In fact, nearly every claim about the paper seems to misunderstand how computer models work generally and how they worked in this paper in particular. First, there is nothing particularly “religious” about the criteria used in the model. In computer models, you can name the pieces of the model however you wish. The authors of the software simply happened to assign religious names to the components of the model. There was hardly anything religious about it apart from that.

According to the BBC article, the study shows that “The most risky situations are when the difference in the size of two different religious groups is similar and people encounter ‘out-group members’ more regularly, perceiving them as dangerous.”

Did the study show that? Let’s look at it … More.

Jonathan Bartlett, “Did AI show that we are “a peaceful species” triggered by religion?” at Mind Matters

A useful primer for what to expect if people pay attention to these media dinosaurs and their enablers.

Jonathan Bartlett

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See also: Also by Jonathan Bartlett: Self-driving vehicles are just around the corner On the other side of a vast chasm…

and

Guess what?: You already own a self-driving car. Tech hype hits the stratosphere

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Who knew that Bret Weinstein would be a bigger Darwinist than Richard Dawkins?

Paul Nelson

Not Paul Nelson, if you go by his account of the discussion between Weinstein, the biology prof driven by “woke” students from Evergreen State University and iconic Darwinist Richard Dawkins:

I witnessed something last week that I never thought I’d see. Richard Dawkins, pressed to affirm the explanatory power of Darwinian reasoning for human life, backed off, expressing great caution. In fact, he said that talking about human behavior in Darwinian terms was “not helpful” and “not Darwinian.” Pressing Dawkins was evolutionary biologist (and atheist) Bret Weinstein, who, as the evening progressed, out-Darwined Dawkins — if I may coin a neologism — on several fronts. Dawkins, come to discover, turns out to be a rather reluctant Darwinian, at least where human institutions such as religion are concerned.

The occasion was a conversation on Tuesday 23 October between Dawkins and Weinstein at the Chicago Theatre, sponsored by the promoter Travis Pangburn…

Why is it, Weinstein challenged Dawkins, that Roman Catholicism persists, and by standard Darwinian metrics (such as population growth), appears highly successful, when so many aspects of Catholic doctrine and practice look frankly crazy to both of us, and very costly to fitness?

“Well, Catholicism is a mind virus,” replied Dawkins — a meme replicating itself from brain to brain without regard to its truth or falsehood. But that is simply telling one’s Catholic interlocutor, answered Weinstein, that he or she is mentally ill, to which Dawkins said (eliciting much audience laughter), “But they are mentally ill.”

That won’t do, replied Weinstein. Why not say, instead, that Catholicism is what — in proper Darwinian terms — it appears to be, namely, an adaptation. If Darwinian principles are correct, Weinstein insisted, religions should not flourish globally, or even exist, unless they conferred some genuine selective advantage on their followers. Follow the logic. Paul Nelson, “Richard Dawkins as Reluctant Darwinian” at Evolution News and Science Today:

The trouble is, Weinstein is treating Darwinism as if it was a serious theory that should make testable predictions but it was never meant to be anything more than virtue signaling and career positioning for the science elite.

Note: If you ask a traditional Catholic about the persistence of the Church, he will likely tell you this. It depends on whether you think that the speaker is reliable.

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See also: Bret Weinstein on Jordan Peterson vs. Sam Harris

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Terror of Existence: Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer loved, then loathed, Darwinism

Last Sunday we noted a new book by psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, and writer Ken Francis, The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd. They tackle the same topics in twin essays, as a Christian and an agnostic. Francis kindly sends us an excerpt from one of his essays featuring Jeffrey Dahmer (1960-1994), murderer and cannibal:

One of the worst terrors of existence is the fear of being murdered or badly tortured. We read endless stories of homicide, both fact and fictional, and the ones that spook us most are those carried out by the psychopath. The Moors Murders in the UK during the 1960s were perhaps the most disturbing story of the slaying of innocent children by a couple of deranged ‘lovers’(more like partners in murder), Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, but the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (1960-1994), is not for the fainthearted. Dahmer was a sex killer who not only murdered his 17 victims, but also dismembered their corpses and cannibalised some of them. Before being killed in prison by a fellow inmate, during an MSNBC interview in 1994, Dahmer claimed that Darwinian unguided evolution, which was taught in school, made him believe humans were insignificant animals.

Thanking his father who was present during the interview, Dahmer thanked his dad for sending him scientific material on theism. He said: ‘I always believed the lie that evolution is truth, the theory of evolution is truth, that we all just came from the slime, and when we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing – so the whole theory cheapens life. I started reading books that show how evolution is just a complete lie. There’s no basis in science to uphold it. And I’ve since come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the true Creator of the heavens and the earth, that it didn’t just happen. I’ve accepted him as my Lord and Saviour, and I believe that I, as well as everyone else will be accountable to him. . . . If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point in trying to modify your behaviour to keep it in acceptable ranges?’[1]

[1] ‘Remember serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer? Darwinism played a role in his crimes too’, Uncommon Descent website, June 28, 2012.

One thinks of the role Darwinism played as a motivator in the Columbine murders as well. As a theory in science, it seems uniquely able to captivate violent people.

Has anyone ever founded a children’s hospital or an old age home for the poor on behalf of Darwinism?

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See also: Remember serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer? Darwinism played a role in his crimes too. Many may remember serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (1960-1994), who killed and mutilated at least 17 men and boys and was killed in prison by a fellow inmate. Less well known is the struggle he had (or claims to have had) over the issue of unguided evolution, whose most popular form is Darwinism. (2012)

and

Theodore Dalrymple and Ken Francis on the terror of a materialist atheist’s existence

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