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Making Hash of Evolutionary Psychology
Stuart Derbyshire, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Birmingham, has an absolutely scathing review (at Spiked) of the latest nonsense emanating from evolutionary psychologists. As Derbyshire has it in the first line: Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World is an unbearably stupid book. The authors, Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden, ‘explain’ war and violence by treating human beings as machines programmed by evolution to grab resources, form in-groups and pass on their genes. Women, according to the authors, are naturally more passive because they must invest more effort into rearing offspring, and men are naturally more aggressive because they can produce lots of offspring by being dominant. Read More ›
An Open Letter to The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) has announced its decision to boycott the State of Louisiana in retaliation for Louisiana Science Education Act passed last year by the Louisiana Legislature and signed by Governor Jindal. The effect of the new law is to allow teachers in Louisiana to use supplementary materials to teach controversial scientific theories without threat of recrimination. In a letter to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, SICB president Dr. Richard Satterlie has announced that his organization will hold its 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City, rather than in New Orleans as had been planned. Dr. Satterlie wrote: We will not hold the Society’s 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans…the Executive Committee voted to hold the 2011 Read More ›
“Geologists on Intelligent Design” Book Botches Attempts to Demonize Intelligent Design
The latest anti-intelligent design book to hit the shelves is a 2009 collection published by University of California Press, For the Rock Record: Geologists On Intelligent Design. Many of the contributors seem stuck in a timewarp, as if the last time they checked into the debate was 1980 when evolutionary geologists were fighting against young earth creationists. The book thus opens with a comparison of intelligent design (ID) to young earth creationism, proclaiming the “enormous joy and relief” (p. 1) that came when the authors read the Kitzmiller ruling that declared ID “a particularly pernicious variant of creationism we had hoped was banished a quarter-century before.” (p. 1) If you haven’t already guessed, the book reads more like a polemic Read More ›
Associated Press Corrects Misreporting on Iowa Evolution Academic Freedom Bill
The Associated Press has corrected an inaccurate article about the Iowa Academic Freedom bill which had stated that “The bill asserts that teaching religious theories of evolution falls under academic freedom. It would let teachers at all education levels teach religious theories as science and forbid them from discounting non-science based answers from students.” The bill, of course, says precisely the opposite, as it expressly states: “This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.” Thankfully, after being shown the actual text of the bill, the AP realized that it was erroneous to claim that the bill allows Read More ›
My Reply to Jerry Coyne: Why Darwinism is False
In his essay for Forbes.com, Jerry Coyne takes me to task for my dissent from Darwinism. According to Coyne, “The tenets of evolutionary theory are simple: Life evolved, largely under the influence of natural selection; this evolution took a rather long time; and species alive and dead can be organized on the basis of shared similarities into a tree whose branching pattern implies that every pair of living species has a common ancestor. Among genuine scientists, there is not the slightest doubt about the truth of these ideas.” Coyne writes that I am “decades out of date” and show “no sign of knowing anything at all about evolutionary biology in the 21st century.” Indeed, “there is so much evidence” for Read More ›