Not for him. But, for him, what would be?

In “Understanding Bayesian Analysis, the Evolution Skeptic’s Friend” (Evolution News & Views, May 24, 2012), forensic analyst Stephen A. Batzer offers support for Bayesian analysis:

Jerry Coyne, in his polemic Why Evolution is True, scoffs at those 91 percent who find his analysis unconvincing. He writes, “True, breeders haven’t turned a cat into a dog, and laboratory studies haven’t turned a bacterium into an amoeba … but it is foolish to think that these are serious objections to natural selection.”

Of course these are, in fact, serious objections; Dr. Coyne doesn’t get to choose what data is and isn’t objectionable to others. Major speciation via undirected processes is the crux of the Darwinian narrative. If it can’t be replicated, this objection is an example of what logicians call a “defeater.” If you, an intelligent actor using skill, can’t breed a cat into a different genera, then presumably and reasonably nature can’t do this either.

Unless, of course, nature gets her a whiff of that ol’ Darwinian magic.

Know a way to improve this species? Keep it to yourself.

David Shormann of Dive into Math, a boost-your-math-marks site, was reading about Dawkins’ recent genetic fundamentalist rant and quotes him,

”Genes that happen to cause slight improvements in squirrel eyes or tails or behaviour patterns are passed on because individual squirrels bearing those improving genes survive at the expense of individuals lacking them. To say that genes improve the survival of groups of squirrels is a mighty stretch.”

And Shormann asks, in response,

I wonder if he could describe what a “slight improvement” in a squirrel’s tail would look like. Longer? Shorter? Fluffier? Less Fluffy? Maybe he will write a paper on the “evolution of the fluffy tail gene in squirrels.”

Those of us who live in zones where gray squirrels are a serious foe of gardens hope that Dawkins will refrain from offering any improvements whatever. Many residents of such regions would be far more interested in science developing a selfish gene (or meme) that causes most squirrels to chitter off into the trackless wilderness and teach all their offspring to do the same. There will still be plenty enough squirrels for the tourists. (Because lots of squirrels won’t get the message anyway.)

Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest-known musical instruments in the world.

The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans – Homo sapiens.

Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.

Speculation watch:

And some researchers have argued that music may have been one of a suite of behaviours displayed by our species which helped give them an edge over the Neanderthals – who went extinct in most parts of Europe 30,000 years ago.

Music could have played a role in the maintenance of larger social networks, which may have helped our species expand their territory at the expense of the more conservative Neanderthals.

This thesis will run until they find Neanderthal flutes.

The previous oldest instrument was dated to 35,000 years ago.

See also:

Cave art actually went downhill during the fabled ascent of man

Artists’ workshop from 100,000 years ago

Amazing religion site at Gobekli Tepe from 12,000 years ago

Oh and Michael Cremo is still wrong, right?

Excerpt: Over eighty years ago, debates began concerning what we should teach our schoolchildren regarding origins of life in their science classes. 1 The debate continues today, and even a new twist has been added: intelligent design. 2 But new twist or old, courts seem to fear offering any theory to schoolchildren that might have been part of the original creationism movement. Courts are concerned that the government not endorse or show any preference over a religions idea regarding the origin of life. 3

But each time we present a theory of life’s origin to our schoolchildren, we are showing preference. And by actually looking at the theories and what they represent, as well as looking at what religion provides for people, we can see that the government, even in limiting the teaching to only evolution, is endorsing a religious ideology. A message exists behind this endorsement – the same message people feared would exist if we allowed schools to teach biblical creationism theories or even intelligent design theory

You have to pay to read more, which may be well worth the price (US$15) if your local school board is fronting Haeckel’s embryo fraud because it is a “good explanation” of Darwin’s theory.

A couple of excerpts:

This Article argues that by endorsing the teaching of only evolution, the government is, in essence, endorsing a view on religion: that a higher power does not exist. In doing so, Part II first defines both religion and science and shows the overlap and crossover of the two. It next identifies and defines varying theories of life’s origin by using the fundamental understanding of each theory.

78% of evolutionary biologists do not believe that a higher power exists. Given how small a proportion of the public that is, in relation to their narrow discipline, It is short-sighted to believe that their view does not leak into the textbooks.

Of course, defining science too narrowly works for those who support teaching only evolution when considering the origin of life. [FN51] But this viewpoint actually will lead, eventually, to greater questions involving the constitutionality of teaching the origin of life. This narrow view of science discounts too much the other explanations for the origin of life and chooses one explanation – a nontheistic one – over others.

There is no good theory of the origin of life, and we are nowhere near one. It is unclear to some of us why origin of life is even on the curriculum in high schools – except as science projects or essay prizes – unless it is intended to inculcate the view that “science will find the answer someday” – in this particular case, that’s a dubious proposition, considering the issues.

“The newest theory among the many is intelligent design. [FN118] Contrary to the arguments promoted by many, intelligent design does not rely on a particular religious belief …

Nope. Any conclusion that order in the universe is real rather than an illusion of our evolved brains or the outcome of infinite failed multiverses is on the design side.

“In case after case, courts focus on the creationism theory and conclude that because of the historical debate that exists, reference to the theory, if nothing more, in the very least sets up a religious effect. [FN458] But what courts have missed is how evolution, at its fundamental core, likewise shows religious effect. By looking at the core concept of evolution and what the theory represents, a religious message – a theistic message – is being conveyed. Because repeatedly courts have allowed the teaching of evolution when they have not allowed the teaching of other theories, the government has shown a preference for one religious message over another, thereby endorsing a religious view. And that directly violates the First Amendment.

Like we said. Worth your US$15.

What Dawkins offers, in the age of epigenetics, is a long rant for genetic fundamentalism:

The essential point to grasp is that the gene doesn’t belong in the hierarchy I listed. It is on its own as a “replicator,” with its own unique status as a unit of Darwinian selection. Genes, but no other units in life’s hierarchy, make exact copies of themselves in a pool of such copies. It therefore makes a long-term difference which genes are good at surviving and which ones bad. You cannot say the same of individual organisms (they die after passing on their genes and never make copies of themselves). Nor does it apply to groups or species or ecosystems. None make copies of themselves. None are replicators. Genes have that unique status.

Evolution, then, results from the differential survival of genes in gene pools. “Good” genes become numerous at the expense of “bad.” But what is a gene “good” at? Here’s where the organism enters the stage. Genes flourish or fail in gene pools, but they don’t float freely in the pool like molecules of water. They are locked up in the bodies of individual organisms. The pool is stirred by the process of sexual reproduction, which changes a gene’s partners in every generation. A gene’s success depends on the survival and reproduction of the bodies in which it sits, and which it influences via “phenotypic” effects. This is why I have called the organism a “survival machine” or “vehicle” for the genes that ride inside it. Genes that happen to cause slight improvements in squirrel eyes or tails or behaviour patterns are passed on because individual squirrels bearing those improving genes survive at the expense of individuals lacking them. To say that genes improve the survival of groups of squirrels is a mighty stretch.

The remarkable thing is that readers are actually beginning to question the dogma. One says, in Wilson’s defense and contrary to Dawkins’ claim that his controversial retraction paper was not peer-reviewed,

Dawkins is no mathematician and doesn’t understand this but this seminal paper went through a completely rigorous peer review process (befitting the world’s top scientific journal) and although many biologists didn’t like the results no-one has ever refuted them.

See also: Is Richard Dawkins truly an “embarrassment” to new atheism? Or an accurate representation?

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) — Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen–the building blocks of all life on Earth–have been the targets of missions to Mars from Viking to the present day. While these molecules have previously been found in meteorites from Mars, scientists have disagreed about how this organic carbon was formed and whether or not it came from Mars.

A new paper led by Carnegie’s Andrew Steele provides strong evidence that this carbon did originate on Mars, although it is not biological.

There has been little agreement among scientists about the origin of the large carbon macromolecules detected in Martian meteorites. Theories about their origin include contamination from Earth or other meteorites, the results of chemical reactions on Mars, or that they are the remnants of ancient Martian biological life.

Possible life, of course, being the reason for public interest.

Although the release carefully avoids saying so, the finding that the product under dispute was not biological must surely be a setback for those hoping for demonstrable evidence of life on Mars.

Note: Did you know that you can Google Mars?

Such an enterprise is bound to fail the test of historical accuracy in light of a simple reading of Wallace’s The World of Life; as was recently republished by — we can’t make this up — Forgotten Books. Using a modern style, the book is: The World of Life: a manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. That should tell us something, but evidently not enough to satisfy the enthusiasts and champions of evolutionary materialism.

(Cf. the earlier posts here and here (video) on the suppressed/”forgotten” history of Darwin’s Heretic.)

We could read the book, which substantiates the sub-title, with particular reference to the bird’s wings and feathers as key examples among many others.

But, that is a fairly lengthy book.

We could, of course, pause to look at the recent video, Darwin’s Heretic:

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That’s recommended, but it is not in Wallace’s own voice.

A simpler, more direct approach is to listen in, as Wallace writes to his friend, James Marchant, in a 1913 letter:

 The completely materialistic mind of my youth and early manhood has been slowly moulded into the socialistic, spiritualistic, and theistic mind I now exhibit – a mind which is, as my scientific friends think, so weak and credulous in its declining years, as to believe that fruit and flowers, domestic animals, glorious birds and insects, wool, cotton, sugar and rubber, metals and gems, were all foreseen and foreordained for the education and enjoyment of man. The whole cumulative argument of my ‘World of Life’ [published in 1910] is that in its every detail it calls for the agency of a mind or minds so enormously above and beyond any human minds, as to compel us to look upon it, or them as ‘God or Gods,’ and so-called ‘Laws of Nature’ as the action by will-power or otherwise of such superhuman or infinite beings. ‘Laws of Nature’ apart from the existence and agency of some such Being or Beings, are mere words, that explain nothing – are, in fact, unthinkable. That is my position! Whether this Unknown Reality is a single Being and acts everywhere in the universe as direct creator, organiser, and director of every minutest motion in the whole of our universe, and of all possible universes, or whether it acts through variously conditioned modes, as H Spencer suggested, or through ‘infinite grades of beings,’ as I suggest, comes to much the same thing. Mine seems a more clear and intelligible supposition as stated in the last paragraph of my ‘World of Life,’ and it is the teaching of the Bible, of Swedenborg, and of Milton. [Cf. Marchant, J. 1916. Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and reminiscences, 2 vols. London: Cassell & Co., and the review here.]

And, to cap off, here is his stinging rebuke to the anti-supernatural presumption that dominated the mindset of the elites in his own day (and of the so-called “brights” of our own), in his “An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, and Others, Against Miracles”:

It is now generally admitted, that those opinions and beliefs in which men have been educated generation after generation, and which have thus come to form part of their mental nature, are especially liable to be erroneous, because they keep alive and perpetuate the ideas and prejudices of a bygone and less enlightened age. It is therefore in the interest of truth, that every doctrine or belief, however well established or sacred they may appear to be, should at certain intervals be challenged to arm themselves with such facts and reasonings as they possess, to meet their opponents in the open field of controversy, and do battle for their right to live. Nor can any exemption be claimed in favour of those beliefs which are the product of modern civilisation, and which have for several generations been unquestioned by the great mass of the educated community; for the prejudice in their favour will be proportionately great, and, as was the case with the doctrines of Aristotle, and the dogmas of the schoolmen, they may live on by mere weight of authority and force of habit, long after they have been shown to be opposed alike to fact and to reason. There have been times when popular beliefs were defended by the terrors of the law, and when the sceptic could only attack them at the peril of his life. Now we all admit that truth can take care of itself, and that only error needs protection. But there is another mode of defence which equally implies a claim to certain and absolute truth, and which is therefore equally unworthy and unphilosophical–that of ridicule, misrepresentation, or a contemptuous refusal to discuss the question at all. This method is used among us even now, for there is one belief, or rather disbelief, whose advocates claim more than papal infallibility, by refusing to examine the evidence brought against it, and by alleging general arguments which have been in use for two centuries to prove that it cannot be erroneous. The belief to which I allude is, that all alleged miracles are false; that what is commonly understood by the term supernatural does not exist, or if it does, is incapable of proof by any amount of human testimony; that all the phenomena we can have cognizance of depend on ascertainable physical laws, and that no other intelligent beings than man and the inferior animals can or do act upon our material world. These views have been now held almost unquestioned for many generations; they are inculcated as an essential part of a liberal education; they are popular, and are held to be one of the indications of our intellectual advancement; and they have become so much a part of our mental nature, that all facts and arguments brought against them are either ignored as unworthy of serious consideration, or listened to with undisguised contempt. Now this frame of mind is certainly not one favourable to the discovery of truth, and strikingly resembles that by which, in former ages, systems of error have been fostered and maintained. [Read on here.]

His rebuttal to Hume’s dismissal of the evidential value of testimony regarding miracles is interesting, following as it does, Wallace’s correction to Hume’s evidently erroneous definition, i.e. “Any act or event implying the existence and agency of superhuman intelligences”:

We now have to consider Hume’s arguments. The first is as follows:–

    A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable that all men must die; that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or, in other words a miracle, to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happened in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man seemingly [[p. 116]] in good health should die on a sudden; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be an uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

    This argument is radically fallacious, because if it were sound, no perfectly new fact could ever be proved, since the first and each succeeding witness would be assumed to have universal experience against him. Such a simple fact as the existence of flying fish could never be proved, if Hume’s argument is a good one; for the first man who saw and described one, would have the universal experience against him that fish do not fly, or make any approach to flying, and his evidence being rejected, the same argument would apply to the second, and to every subsequent witness, and thus no man at the present day who has not seen a flying fish ought to believe that such things exist.

In short, we only have a proper epistemic right to demand adequate evidence, and the testimony of ordinary, reasonable and truthful men — especially where the testimony is multiple and independent — to what they have seen or otherwise experienced (and which is logically possible), and beyond living memory record fair on the face and coming from good chain of custody/repository, ought to be viewed with respect rather than dismissive prejudice. Where, Wallace probably alluded to an incident where the case of fish that fly actually came up in the British Royal court. As I recall, the King, somewhat incredulous, asked a Marine Officer standing by, on account of the vast experience of his Majesty’s Marines. The officer readily affirmed that he had seen such fish many times off Barbados — and indeed, when I lived there, on passing by market vendors, I often heard: “Fish and Sea Aiggs, Flyin’ Fish and Sea Aiggs . . . “  The officer’s testimony was taken at due weight and accepted. Rightly so.

Just so, it seems in order for us to think soberly about our own times and the popular prejudices of our day, in light of the issue that the world of Carbon-chemistry, aqueous medium, cell-based life and the observed cosmos as a whole both exhibit such functionally specific, complex organisation as we habitually associate with the action of purposeful intelligence; the latter being so ordered as to facilitate the former. END

“There have been some very widely publicized cases of outright fraud,” says Leslie K. John of Harvard Business School. For example, a South Korean researcher achieved world-wide fame for cloning human stem cells—and infamy later when it turned out he had faked his data. “That’s very clear-cut. It’s an academic felony. But the focus of this paper isn’t on these clear-cut cases; it’s about the more subtle ways of manipulating the truth.” Along with her coauthors, George Loewenstein and Drazen Prelec, John designed a survey that was e-mailed to 5,964 psychological scientists. 2,155 responded. The researchers asked the questions using a method that attempts to make people more honest, in part by giving them an incentive to tell the truth.

They found that a surprising number of people had engaged in questionable research practices. For example, half the scientists admitted to having only reported the experiments that gave the results you wanted. This may not sound dramatic, and it’s not as bad as making up data, but it gives a skewed sense of the research; if scientists only report the results that support their hypotheses, they may leave out an important part of the picture. Other questionable practices include deciding whether to exclude data from a study after looking to see whether doing so affects the results (43.4 percent of respondents) and reporting an unexpected finding as if it had been expected all along (35 percent). And 1.7 percent of scientists admitted to having faked their data.

It’s impossible to tell from the study how often these things happened; they could be part of the day-to-day practice of science or people could be admitting to something they did once in college. “I think these are very high rates, but we don’t know whether this is people’s standard operating procedure or whether they’re one-off activities,” John says.

“Does this mean we can’t trust psychologists? No. No, this does not say that,” John says. “But there are clearly some problems.” One possibility might be for psychological scientists to consider instituting a system like that starting to be used in medical research, in which journals will only accept articles for publication if the study was registered before it began, with details about how it would be executed. “I think psychologists are motivated to do good science,” John says. “But these findings are disconcerting and signal the need for reform.”

We’ll see. Sometimes reforms must go deeper than that proposal.

They need to become the people who would not take those shortcuts in the first place. And accept that they might not end up with data sets that confirm fashionable views. And detect people who are gaming the system earlier and more often. If that’s not what they want, they don’t want science.

Curious how little help peer review has been.

Note: One wonders what would happen, under rigorous examination, to all those studies of primate apes, claiming that they mourn their dead, suffer self-doubt, make dolls, have police, go to war, and use “innovative, foresighted methods.” The obvious question is, then why are they still screaming in the trees? Something doesn’t smell right. But that field may be protected much longer from scrutiny because of the emotional investment in Darwinism.

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1. “The Earth is an open system, tornados derive their energy from the sun, and while turning rubble into houses and cars represents a decrease in entropy, the increase in entropy outside the Earth far exceeds the decrease seen in this video.”

   This is the traditional argument used by Asimov, Dawkins and many others, it is the one I have been primarily criticizing, particularly in my AML paper, “A Second Look at the Second Law” . My arguments seem to have been effective, because I rarely hear this silly argument any more, critics seem to have been forced more and more to fall back on secondary objections now.

2. “The second law only applies to thermal entropy, and what is happening in this video does not result in a net decrease in thermal entropy, so there’s no conflict with the second law.”

   In fact, it is universally recognized that the second law of thermodynamics applies to more than thermal entropy, it applies to other types of entropy, for example, the “X-entropy” associated with any other diffusing component X: as pointed out in my AML paper, these types of entropy are defined by the same equations as thermal entropy, and are equally quantifiable. And it is widely applied in physics texts to less quantifiable types of “entropy.”

3. “What is happening in this video is too ill-defined and too difficult to quantify for the second law to apply.”

   Some things are obvious even if they are difficult to quantify!

4. “Sure, tornados turning rubble into houses and cars is extremely improbable, but natural forces do extremely improbable things all the time; every time we flip a billion coins, the exact outcome is extremely improbable.”

   What the second law prevents is not extremely improbable things, but
   macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view.

5. “There is no conflict with the second law in this video, because the second law only applies to isolated systems, period.”

   If atoms rearranging themselves into computers and jet airplanes would be forbidden by the second law on an isolated planet, because they are macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view, then they are still forbidden, if not by the same human-formulated law, at least by the same natural principle, if the only thing entering the system is solar energy, for the same reason: they are still extremely improbable.

So, if we saw a video of a tornado, running backward, would we conclude that the second law was being violated by what was happening or not? According to many physics textbooks, such as the Ford text quoted in my video “Evolution is a Natural Process Running Backward” below, the answer is YES. It is true that it would not violate the first formulations of the second law, which were all about heat, and even the more general formulations, stated in terms of “order” and “disorder,” all begin with “in an isolated system,” so it can be argued that, technically, it would not violate these formulations either. But if Isaac Newton had never generalized his law of gravity beyond “the Earth attracts apples”, would we say that the law of gravity does not apply to oranges, technically?

If we actually saw a video of a tornado, running backward, it would certainly not occur to us to make any of the above arguments to claim that what we were seeing did not technically violate the second law, as formulated in physics textbooks. We would immediately recognize that what we were seeing violated a fundamental natural principle, one at least very closely related to the second law of thermodynamics. Even if we were told that what actually happened took a long time and the video had been speeded up, we would still not be interested in anyone’s “scientific” explanation for what we were seeing in the video, we would immediately recognize that the video must be running backward, because what we were seeing was completely unnatural.

So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation?

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In “Crisis averted: Dark matter was there all along” (New Scientist, 23 May 2012), Lisa Grossman reports,

Fans of dark matter can rest easy. A study published last month raised eyebrows by suggesting that our cosmic neighbourhood is empty of the extra mass needed to hold the galaxy together. But a re-analysis shows that the dark matter was there all along.

… the team made a subtle error, say Jo Bovy and Scott Tremaine of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

So if you insist on doing the universe’s bookkeeping, you will not spend the summer at the cottage fretting about this … for now.