Have you ever read Natural Theology
************************************************* Darwin
* Paley
where being over to the right is more interesting. And that could be ANYTHING by Darwin.
I have a small story to tell you (which you may have heard before) and then a recommendation of something to click on.
Continue reading "But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground…"
North American Geology. It’s complicated. I’m pretty sure Amanda and I were abducted by aliens this morning. This is not the first time for me. I was abducted with two others about 20 years ago in Southern Maine while looking for antiques, back when you could still get them cheap even in antique stores (inexpensive antiques, not aliens). You can tell you were abducted because one moment it is a certain time and the next moment is it much later in time and you have no memory whatsoever of he ensuing span of minutes or hours. Since that is essentially impossible, alien abduction is pretty much the best possible explanation.
Back in Maine, it caused us to miss a critical turn just by the Big Red Barn antique store. This morning, it caused Amanda to go rushing out of the house only half ready for a day of teaching Life Science and me to sit here wondering, “Why did I just spend 20 minutes reading pages in this creationist web site called Answers in Genesis?”
Well, I’m not sure how Amanda’s day is going to go, but I’m going to make use of this abduction and talk about the Grand Canyon.
Continue reading Abducted by Aliens…and Dropped Off at the Grand Canyon
Click Here to get tickets while they last!
Here’s a review: ‘Inherit the Wind’ airs current creationism debate
Last month Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a top candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, remarked, “Evolution is just a theory out there.” He also claimed Texas schools teach both evolution and creationism.
Perry was mistaken: In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled public teaching of Bible-based creationism (or “intelligent design”) unconstitutional.
The creationism vs. evolution in schools debate has reared back into our national political dialogue, which may be reason enough to revive “Inherit the Wind,” a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
We don’t see many revivals of this sturdy courtroom drama…
One of those really cool and useful “evolution stories” gets verified and illuminated by actual research. And blogging!
Continue reading The Oystercatcher and the Clam
I have about ten favorite species of tree, and one of them is the corotú. Why? Because of one of the most interesting plant-animal interaction stories of recent times. The story, complete with extinct elephant-like creatures and a real Sherlock Holmes science theme can be read, along with some great images, at A Neotropical Savanna: The Corotú and the Gomphothere.
Continue reading The best of the best in plant biology, conservation, photography, and evolution
Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:
Continue reading Science proves that God created everything out of nothing.
The Bloggingheads with David Dobbs and Moi is now up at Blogginheads, and embedded here:
Continue reading Bloggingheads with Sblings David Dobbs and Greg Laden
Today’s falsehood is the idea that individual animals act for the benefit of their own species.
Continue reading Acting for the survival of the species (a falsehood)
..that even when you try diligently to separate the politics of religion vs. creationism and to say again and again that religion can go along its merry way as long as it stays out of the science classroom, people like Casey Luskin will still find the words in your rhetoric to accuse you of attacking religion.
Back in May, Genie Scott appeared with me and Lynn Fellman on Atheist Talk Radio, where we discussed science education. Genie is the director of the National Center for Science Education.
In a recent posting on the Discovery Institute web site, Casey Luskin makes the contrast between the National Center for Science Education’s stance, and thus of Genie Scott’s philosophy (she’s the director of the NCSE) on one hand vs. what she said in this radio interview.
Luskin specifically contrasts Genie’s statement that the NCSE’s goals are “not to promote disbelief” but rather to “help people understand evolution and hopefully accept it.” Hey, folks, that is is indeed what Genie pushes, and what the NCSE promotes, and it is classic middle-ground nice-guy science education. This is as good as it gets from the point of view of “appeasement” because it says let the religion go its own way, as long at it does not go into the classroom (see this: Accommodationists and New Atheists Sail in the Same Boat)
Luskin then contrasts that position with this quote from the same interview:
“Evolution is the scientific explanation that has the most repercussions, shall we say, for people’s worldview and religious perspective. Evolution tells you that humans share kinship with all other creatures. For some, that’s a very liberating and exciting idea, and it makes them feel one with nature and it’s empowering and so forth. For others, it’s threatening. If your view is a human exceptionalism kind of view, that humans are separate from nature and special — especially if they are special to God as in some Christian traditions, then evolution is going to be threatening to you.”
This quote was Genie’s answer to Lynn Fellman‘s question: “[A caller has asked] Why is it always evolution that seems to be under siege?”
Genie’s answer is correctly quoted above but with the last part of the quote bolded to emphasize the “threat” language, and Luskin further emphasizes the part about evolution being threatening:
Did you catch that? She just stated that evolution is “threatening to you” if you believe that humans “are special to God as in some Christian traditions.”
And, I should mention, the title of Luskin’s essay is: Eugenie Scott Claims Evolution Is Threatening to Certain Christian Traditions
OK folks, listen. There is no significant national organization involved in the evolution-creation debate that bends over backwards more to be “nice” to religion than the National Center for Science Education. But here, in Luskin’s critique, we see two important things:
1) It is not good enough. In order for Genie’s philosophy or the position of the NCSE to be considered “ok” by the Discovery Institute, the contrast that Genie talks about in her quote would have to go away. Human exceptionalism would have to be incorporated into the science or the science teaching. Evolution would have to be taught along side creationism in the classroom.
2) Luskin practices out of context interpretation and quote mining here. Strangely, he is providing the fuller context and the quote mined in the same place, so we see Genie’s de facto statement of the relationship between religion and science being converted before our very eyes as “Religious people, Evolution is threatening to you!!!”
It is hard to say that one can win under these circumstances. It is hard to support a be nice to the creationists philosophy under these circumstances. Genie Scott must be some kind of saint.
It is not usually the case that I write a blog post for a carnival. I usually just write for the blog, then now and then sit down and figure out which posts should go to with carnivals. That is not the case with this post.
Some time ago I thought, while writing a Peer Reviewed Research post, that it would be interesting to write up older papers, classics, or more recent papers that were of great interest for one reason or another but maybe a few years old. Just around that time, this idea of a classic carnival … a carnival of classic science papers … came around (details here and here), and I thought that was a very cool idea.
I have a plan to write a couple of different series of posts, one with Bob Trivers’ papers (see this for a taste), which will come along very easily, as I have taught a course based primarily on his work. Another would be on papers regarding Race and Racism. Again, this would draw heavily on my course on Race and Gender. A third stream of posts may come from the Bioanthropology tutorial I taught at Harvard. That was some years ago, so even the ‘current’ papers from that effort may now be classics (Tim Caro’s work with hyenas springs instantly to mind). Thinking about that approach led me to consider the first paper I usually assigned in that tutorial, and in fact, ‘the’ first paper in the field of evolutionary biology (perhaps, depending on your perspective).
That paper, I thought, is what this post should be about. Darwin and Wallace’s first composite paper on Natural Selection.
The only question remains: How many other people are going to do the same thing? Probably scads of them. So, I’ll have to make this a little different…..
Dear MSNBC,
I know it is appropriate to have a range of opinions among the talking heads representing a news agency, and MSNBC certainly does have a range. Pat Buchanan, regular commentator on two or three MSNBC news shows, probably serves at the most conservative individual in the MSNBC panoply.
But he has to go now.
Continue reading MSNBC: Time to retire Buchanan (an open letter)
Birdwatching might be a casual activity, a hobby, an avocation, or even a profession (often, perhaps, an obsession) depending on the bird watcher, but there is always a science to it, in at least two ways. First, there is the science of how to do it. In this sense, the term “science” means something vernacular. We as easily say “birdwatching is an art” as we could say “there is a science to it” and here we are using both terms( “art” and “science”) in their older sense where science is how we approach things with our minds, and art is how we approach things with our hands.
Continue reading The Science of Birdwatching
This was mysteriously sent to me. I think maybe by god.
Diatoms are algae with hard parts. They make up a major part of the plankton found in fresh and salt water environments. Usually, diatoms exist as single celled free floating organisms, but they can also be colonies of several single cells. Their tiny little ‘shells’ are made up of silica (these shells are called “fustules”).
Continue reading Diatoms Large and Small
So, yesterday Afternoon, there was a meeting of the Minnesota Atheists that included a one hour panel discussion of evolution, creationism, science education, and so on. The panel was moderated by Lynn Fellman, and included (in order from right to left as the audience gazed on) Randy Moore, Sehoya Cotner, Jane Phillips, Greg Laden, and PZ Myers.
There were several ways in which this discussion was interesting, and I’ll tell you a few of them here. Presumably PZ will have something as well. (UPDATE: PZ has this.)
To begin with, this was a pretty full room (a hundred or so?) and almost everyone in this room was an atheist, agnostic, rationalist, or some such thing, so the kinds of questions one gets are different than in other contexts. This did not obviate some of the common sorts of misunderstandings about human evolution, somewhat conservative/libertarian welfare stigmata, or even the occasional notation that “well we don’t call it a soul but there is a soul.”
One of the most interesting things that came out, I thought, was when PZ Myers, preparing to follow up on a comment I made, admitted publicly (and this was recorded on audio tape and at least two video camera, and there were plenty of witnesses) that I am meaner than he is.
An important theme that came up was how we teach evolution in classrooms that include dyed in the wool creationist student. Randy talked about being very straight up with the students about the fact that this is a science class. Sehoya talked about an experiment she is doing with her students, in which she does not mention Darwin the whole time but still teaches evolution.
Jane and I are not currently teaching at this level in UG college, so we did not have as much to say, but I noted my technique of yore: I make an explicit statement on day one that creationism would not be mentioned ever in this classroom. Then, for the rest of the semester, I mention creationism, always as an aside, always snarkily, always with disdain, always with humor, so an increasingly large number of students join in with uproarious laughter at the expense of the increasingly smaller and smaller number of “out” creationist. In other words, I invoke the ugly Weapon of Mass Destruction known as peer pressure.
PZ probably has the best method, which is to teach a course in the history of scientific thought with creationism/evolution as a theme, and then eventually get to the details of the biology. Even if that does not leave as much time as one might like to do the details of the biology itself, this would be a very valuable experience for the students.
I’m teaching a more advanced evo course next year. Maybe I’ll try something like that.
I just want to mention one point that I made that I feel is very important: There is a big difference between what can and should happen in a college classroom and a high school classroom, owing to the difference in relationship between instructor and administration, instructor and student, and instructor and parents. And school boards (colleges, we don’t have ’em!). These differences need to be kept in mind when discussing strategies. For example, PZ’s strategy and my strategy would not work in a high school. For long.