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Whitewashing Darwinism’s Ongoing Moral Legacy
Is it somehow petty, offensive, exploitative, and beyond the pale to point out how the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter, who murdered a guard on Wednesday, writes about evolution in his sick manifesto? Should it be considered beneath one’s dignity to quote the man and let his words speak for themselves? James von Brunn, the suspect in question, is a white supremacist, a bitter anti-Semite, a Holocaust-denier, a wacked out conspiracy theorist, who served more than 6 years in a federal prison for attempted kidnapping. All this is fair game to report. Everyone agrees to that. But the fact that he writes of “Natural Law: the species are improved through in-breeding, natural selection and mutation. Only the strong survive. Cross-breeding Whites Read More ›
Darwin Versus His Colleagues
This is the second part of a review of The Darwin Myth by Benjamin Wiker. Part one is available here. An element of the Darwin story that may surprise many readers of Benjamin Wiker’s fine new biography The Darwin Myth is the ultimate disconnect between Darwin and many of his colleagues. Wiker points out that many of Darwin’s avid supporters, who accepted and helped popularize his theory, rejected Darwin’s materialistic reductionism. They argued, indeed, that the evidence did not support Darwin’s materialistic understanding of evolution. Biologist Asa Gray at Harvard was Darwin’s strongest champion in America. However, as Wiker tells us, “Gray believed that the human mind could not be explained as the material result of natural selection.” He did Read More ›
Moving the Goalpost: How Darwin’s Theory Survives
“Folks, this is one of the most exciting games in Super Bowl history! In case you just tuned in, here’s what’s happening: With only 8 seconds to go, the Buffalo Bills are trailing the New York Giants 20-19, but in the past two minutes Bills quarterback Jim Kelley has moved his team to the Giants’ 29-yard line, setting up kicker Scott Norwood for a field goal attempt. If Norwood makes it, the Buffalo Bills will win 22-20.” Watched by tens of thousands in Tampa Stadium and millions more on TV, the Buffalo Bills line up for what will probably be their last play. “OK, there’s the snap, and the kick. The ball is going, going–but it’s drifting wide to the Read More ›
Epigenetic Inheritance: Can Evolution Adapt?
Given how routinely evolution fails to explain biology, it is remarkable that scientists still believe in the nineteenth century idea. One of the many problem areas is adaptation. Evolution holds that populations adapt to environmental pressures via the natural selection of blind variations. If more fur is needed, and some individuals accidentally are endowed with mutations that confer a thicker coat of fur, then those individuals will have greater survival and reproduction rates. The thicker fur mutation will then become common in the population. This is the evolutionary notion of change. It is not what we find in biology. Under the hood, biology reveals far more complex and intelligent mechanisms for change, collectively referred to as epigenetic inheritance. You can Read More ›
New Book Uncovers “the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin”
According to Benjamin Wiker’s provocative new biography, The Darwin Myth: the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin was an honorable and likable man, a family man. He loved his siblings; he was devoted to his wife; he loved his children and grieved deeply over his daughter’s death. But Darwin was also someone who presented to the public an elaborate and even deceptive story about himself and his work to advance a philosophical agenda. While there are many biographies of Charles Darwin, Wiker’s deserves attention because of its fascinating account of the complex interaction between Charles Darwin, the man, and Darwinism, the theory he advocated and popularized. Wiker’s presentation of Darwin’s human contradictions is a valuable contribution to this Read More ›