Monday’s class is an introduction to the logic of natural selection. As I usually do when presenting selection, I follow Ernst Mayr’s formulation of a series of facts and inferences from those facts. I then deal with some of the consequences of the idea and the prevalent misconceptions about evolution through natural selection. Some of the slides are going to be anything but self-evident, I’m afraid.
The next three lectures will be focused on the history of American anti-evolutionism and I will, of course, post those slides (starting on Wednesday).
I did a relatively unscientific poll among my Origins, Evolution & Creation class the other day, asking them (through a written assignment) to accept one of the three “standard” poll positions about human evolution: recent creation of humans, God-guided evolution, or naturalistic evolution. You may remember that the national support for these positions runs at about 47, 38 & 15 percent and that these figures have stayed fairly constant over the past thirty years.
The proportion of self-identified young earth creationists in the class was 6% whether one looked at the class as a whole, science majors, biology majors or non science majors. That’s noticeably less than the 47% national number. While education is (hopefully) playing a part in this, I think there might also be a slight under-reporting due to the question being asked in a classroom environment (a similar online poll last year in the same class gave an 11% YEC group although that poll didn’t ask explicitly about human evolution). I find it interesting that there appears to be no effect of major on whether one was a YEC or not. Looking at that 6%, many explicitly stated that they adopted that position in the face of the scientific evidence precisely because they felt their religious belief required them to. I wasn’t able to find any respondent who rejected human evolution because of evidential reasons.
Among science majors, 69% were naturalistic evolutionists and 25% held to god-guided evolution. There was no difference between biology and non-biology majors. I find this interesting as I would have, perhaps naively, expected biology majors to perhaps accept evolution at a higher rate.
When one looks at the non-science majors, the pattern changes significantly. Only 38% of this group hold to naturalistic evolution while 56% believe in god-guided evolution. Make of this what you will.
The issue of MN/PN came up in my class last week and in comments. I don’t really have time to adequately deal with the questions at the moment, but I do want to link to these two posts by Larry Moran and John Pieret on a talk given by Maarten Boudry, the abstract of which I give below:
In recent rounds of debate between evolutionists and supporters of Intelligent Design, the principle of methodological naturalism (MN) has been an important battleground. Creationists and intelligent design proponents have previously claimed that the commitment of evolutionists to naturalism and materialism constitutes a philosophical prejudice on their side, because it rules out any kind of supernatural causes by fiat. In response to these charges, some philosophers and scientists have argued that science is only committed to something they call methodological naturalism: Science does not deal with supernatural causes and explanations, but that does not mean that the latter do not exist. However, there has been some philosophical discussion about the correct understanding of MN. The principle of MN is often conceived of as an intrinsic and self-imposed limitation of science, as something that is part and parcel of the scientific enterprise by definition. According to this view (Intrinsic MN or IMN) – which is defended by people like Eugenie Scott, Michael Ruse and Robert Pennock and has been adopted in the ruling of Judge John E. Jones III in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case – science is simply not equipped to deal with the supernatural and therefore has no authority on the issue. It is clear that this depiction of science and MN offers some perspectives for reconciling science and religion. Not surprisingly, IMN is often embraced by those sympathetic to religion, or by those who wish to alleviate the sometimes heated opposition between the two.
However, we will argue that this view of MN does not offer a sound rationale for the rejection of supernatural explanations. Alternatively, we will defend MN as a provisory and empirically grounded commitment of scientists to naturalistic causes and explanations, which is in principle revocable by future scientific findings (Qualified MN or QMN). In this view, MN is justified as a methodological guideline by virtue of the dividends of naturalistic explanation and the consistent failure of supernatural explanations in the history of science.
We will discuss and reject four arguments in favour of IMN: the argument from the definition of science, the argument from lawful regularity, the science stopper argument, and the argument from procedural necessity. Moreover, we will argue that defining the supernatural out of science is a counterproductive strategy against ID creationism, and, for that matter, against any theory involving supernatural explanations. More specifically, IMN has been eagerly exploited by proponents of ID to bolster their false claims about the philosophical and metaphysical prejudices of evolutionists. As ID proponent Philip Johnson rhetorically noted, if science is about following the evidence wherever it leads, why should scientists exclude a priori the possibility of discovering evidence for the supernatural? Therefore, IMN is actually grist to the ID mill.
We conclude that IMN is philosophically artificial and that its attempt to reconcile science and religion is ill-conceived. QMN, alas, does not provide any such ready reconciliation either, but it does offer a sound rationale for the rejection of supernatural designers in modern science.
In a startling comeback, the American people have climbed back from last year’s #43 to reach #26 on the Beast’s “Most Loathsome Americans” list. In previous years, Discovery Institute flunkies such as Bruce Chapman and Ben Stein made the list but no ID supporter makes the list this year. I’m sure the DI is devastated.
Having said that, their take on Joe Wilson is on the money:
A former member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Wilson was one of only seven legislators who fought to keep ol’ Dixie flying in South Carolina. When his former employer, legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond, was revealed to be the father of his black maid’s daughter, Wilson said that she should have kept her trap shut. He’s pals with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, founded by a white nationalist and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Every president lies, of course, but we have a feeling there’s only one kind of president this cracker would disrespect enough to shout it at him in the middle of an address to both houses of congress—for the same reason he became a fundraising star for the GOP overnight.
Indeed.
And they get Obama right as well:
Obama campaigned for a “robust public option” and importing cheaper drugs, closing Gitmo, ending no-bid contracts and backroom deals with corporate lobbyists—and he was going to do it on CSPAN. But he’s done none of those things, and his policies on extraordinary rendition, illegal wiretapping and state secrets are pure Bush. Socialist? We should be so lucky.
Spirit – the little Mars rover that could – has been declared a “stationary research station” and is expected to last only until May before total shutdown occurs. Landing on Mars on January 4th 2004, it was expected to last 90 days. Six years later, this XKCD cartoon is surprisingly poignant.
Expelled is now available in the UK., so sayeth the Discovery Institute. And the link on ENV goes to …. a site called Christianvideos.co.uk. But ID has nothing to do with religion. Repeat after me …
You get these even before my class does. My slides for tomorrow’s class outlining what science is (and is not). No podcast will be coming … the software is acting up. Ah well.
If you are looking to avoid being invaded both by the British and the Germans, this is probably a good depiction to throw out there. More details here but you can also click for bigger version. Dissuasive it may be, but as anyone who has been to Ireland knows, it isn’t exactly too much of an exaggeration.
Some things to consider. I will not necessarily be responding to (or even reading) comments. I generally do not block comments unless they are off-topic, merely a soap-box for the individual, or clearly spam. I reserve the right to ban persistent offenders. Occasionally a comment will be held up for moderation because it triggers a filter; in particular comments with four or more links will be delayed. Do not resubmit the comment - it will be posted when I get an opportunity. Lastly, commenting get automatically shut down three weeks after the post first appears. Have fun!
Posted by John M. Lynch 
