Oh Ida, Where Have Thee Gone!

Note: This is an update to the Ida Controversy. See here for my first article about it.

From Wednesday's Guardian, 'Eighth of the World' Ida Is Not Related to Humans, Claim Scientists ...

Her arrival was announced with unrestrained razzmatazz. She was the "eighth wonder of the world", "our Mona Lisa" and an evolutionary "Rosetta Stone", according to the researchers who unveiled her.

The female in question was Ida, a 47 million-year-old primate, whose exquisitely preserved fossil was touted as the remains of our earliest human ancestor. She was, they said, the "link" between us and the rest of the animal kingdom.

Writing in the journal, Nature, a team of palaeontologists from New York claim that Ida is not related to humans at all. Instead, they conclude, the $1m fossil looks more like a small lemur or maybe a loris...

"Our analysis and results have convinced us that Ida was not an ancestor of monkeys, apes, or humans, and if anything has more relevance for our understanding of lemur and loris origins," said Erik Seiffert, a fossil hunter at Stony Brook University in New York who led the Nature study…

The Ida fossil, which was found in the Messel Pit on the outskirts of Frankfurt, was revealed to the public in what amounted to the greatest publicity coup in modern science. The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, appeared alongside the fossil, wearing a T-shirt carrying the TV tie-in logo, "The link." A book about Ida was already coming off the presses.

Ida was an immediate media sensation. The fossil received blanket coverage around the world and newspapers hailed her as the "missing link" between humans and animals. The Guardian even gave away free wallcharts of "humanity's long lost ancestor..."

The controversy erupted after Seiffert's team unearthed the fossilised remnants of a similar, but much younger primate in northern Egypt... According to their study, neither Ida nor Afradapis have any living descendants, meaning they became extinct at the end of a sidebranch of the evolutionary tree.

**UPDATE, OCT. 25, 2009**

Casey Luskin recalls some of the outlandish media hype in The Evolution of “Ida”...

Ida was given quite a ride by the mainstream media, while it lasted.

Originally: Famed BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough got involved, making a documentary titled Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, to explain why Ida is “the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom.” Co-sponsored by both the BBC and the History Channel, the program attracted a massive audience. …

• Good Morning America and Nightline covered the fossil.
  

• National Geographic called her the “critical ‘missing link’ species.”

• ScienceDaily and a Discover magazine commentator praised Ida as our “47-million-year-old human ancestor.”

• Skynews told the public that “proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

With Google’s eager assistance, Ida went viral: One of the leading search terms that day was “missing link found.” Even the Drudge Report was reeled in by the media frenzy, briefly featuring Ida as the headline story…

The good news is that it seems that cooler heads are now prevailing regarding Ida. Wired notes that the current reporting about disagreements over Ida are an improvement, “the sort of dialogue that was missing from Darwinius’ overhyped debut.”

Why the Debate Over Darwinism Matters, Part 2

Note: The picture above is of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine Killers who murdered 12 of their classmates in 1999. They were heavily influenced by Darwinism and admired it. For more, click here.

Also, Part One of this series is here.


As I promised in Part One, I'd like to deconstruct Josh Sullivan's 18-page letter to his grandmother about why he abandoned Christianity and embraced atheism.

The 18-page letter is broken down into four sections: 1) Introduction, 2) Evolution, 3) Belief, and 4) Conclusion.

Leaving aside the “Introduction” and “Conclusion" (for obvious reasons) there are apparently only 2 issues that sparked Josh's religious rollback: “Evolution” and “Belief.” What does he mean by “Belief?” Well, we’ll get into that later. But first, evolution…

On P. 4, Josh writes…

Evolution is a scientific fact in the same way that the earth’s roundness is a scientific fact. There is absolutely zero dispute among credible scientists that all living things are evolved.

This is absurd. Laughably absurd. In fact, you can tell a lot about the honesty of a Darwinist by whether or not he would make a statement like that. An honest Darwinist would never say such a thing, and would criticize those who did.

Why is it absurd? For a variety of reasons. First of all, anyone who truly understands the debate over evolution knows that the concept of evolution itself - if by “evolution” we mean “change over time” - is NOT controversial. Everyone understands that things change over time. I’m taller than I was 15 years ago. My father has less hair than he did 15 years ago. You get the picture. And no one disputes that. What IS disputed is the larger philosophy of “Darwinism.” “Darwinism” is different from evolution; it takes evolution to an extreme. And it's Darwinism – not “evolution” – which concerns “Mama Murphy.” Darwinism takes a fairly innocent, understandable concept of “evolution” (“change over time”) and perverts it into an extreme, unproven ideology.

As this 2-page paper by The Discovery Institute points out…

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, it was already known that existing species can change over time. This is the basis of artificial breeding, which had been practiced for thousands of years. Darwin and his contemporaries were also familiar enough with the fossil record to know that major changes in living things had occurred over geological time. Darwin's theory was that a process analogous to artificial breeding also occurs in nature; he called that process natural selection. Darwin's theory was also that changes in existing species due primarily to natural selection could, if given enough time, produce the major changes we see in the fossil record.

After Darwin, the first phenomenon (changes within an existing species or gene pool) was named "microevolution." There is abundant evidence that changes can occur within existing species, both domestic and wild, so microevolution is uncontroversial. The second phenomenon (large-scale changes over geological time) was named "macroevolution," and Darwin's theory that the processes of the former can account for the latter was controversial right from the start. Many biologists during and after Darwin's lifetime have questioned whether the natural counterpart of domestic breeding could do what domestic breeding has never done -- namely, produce new species, organs, and body plans. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, skepticism over this aspect of evolution was so strong that Darwin's theory went into eclipse. (See Chapter 9 of Peter Bowler's Evolution: The History of an Idea, University of California Press, revised edition, 1989).

In the 1930s, "neo-Darwinists" proposed that genetic mutations (of which Darwin was unaware) could solve the problem. Although the vast majority of mutations are harmful (and thus cannot be favored by natural selection), in rare instances one may benefit an organism. For example, genetic mutations account for some cases of antibiotic resistance in bacteria; if an organism is in the presence of the antibiotic, such a mutation is beneficial. All known beneficial mutations, however, affect only an organism's biochemistry; Darwinian evolution requires large-scale changes in morphology, or anatomy. Midway through the twentieth century, some Darwinian geneticists suggested that occasional "macromutations" might produce the large-scale morphological changes needed by Darwin's theory. Unfortunately, all known morphological mutations are harmful, and the larger their effects the more harmful they are. Scientific critics of - 2 - macromutations took to calling this the "hopeful monster" hypothesis. (See Chapter 12 of Bowler's book.)

The scientific controversy over whether processes observable within existing species and gene pools (microevolution) can account for large-scale changes over geological time (macroevolution) continues to this day. Here are a few examples of peerreviewed scientific articles that have referred to it just in the last few years:

David L. Stern, "Perspective: Evolutionary Developmental Biology and the Problem of Variation," Evolution 54 (2000): 1079-1091.

"One of the oldest problems in evolutionary biology remains largely unsolved… Historically, the neo-Darwinian synthesizers stressed the predominance of micromutations in evolution, whereas others noted the similarities between some dramatic mutations and evolutionary transitions to argue for macromutationism."

Robert L. Carroll, "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 15 (January, 2000): 27.

"Large-scale evolutionary phenomena cannot be understood solely on the basis of extrapolation from processes observed at the level of modern populations and species.”

Andrew M. Simons, "The continuity of microevolution and macroevolution," Journal of Evolutionary Biology 15 (2002): 688-701.

"A persistent debate in evolutionary biology is one over the continuity of microevolution and macroevolution -- whether macroevolutionary trends are governed by the principles of microevolution."

It should be noted that all of the scientists quoted above are believers in Darwinian evolution, and that all of them think the controversy will eventually be resolved within the framework of that theory. Stern, for example, believes that new developmental studies of gene function will provide "the current missing link." (p. 1079) The important point here is that the controversy has not yet been resolved, precisely because the evidence needed to resolve it is still lacking. It is important for students to know what the evidence does or does not show -- not just what some scientists hope the evidence will eventually show.

Since the controversy over microevolution and macroevolution is at the heart of Darwin's theory, and since evolutionary theory is so influential in modern biology, it is a disservice to students for biology curricula to ignore the controversy entirely. Furthermore, since the scientific evidence needed to settle the controversy is still lacking, it is inaccurate to give students the impression that the controversy has been resolved and that all scientists have reached a consensus on the issue.

I don’t know whether Josh is ignorant of the difference between “macroevolution” and “microevolution” or if he is deliberately trying to confuse his grandma. But either way, he’s already lost a ton of credibility just 4 pages into the document.

In any case, the unsettled issue of “macroevolution vs. microevolution” is just one of several problems with the neo-Darwinian paradigm. On March 23, I wrote…

I've broken down neo-Darwinism into four main ideas: (1) life can be produced "by chance" in a soup of chemicals, 2) life can come from non-living matter, 3) random genetic mutations and environmental pressures can explain the creation of new species, and 4) there is a logical evolutionary continuum (known as "common descent") between apes and humans.

Literally 150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, there is still ZERO evidence for the first 3 tenets, and surprisingly little evidence for the final one. We should stop making excuses and admit that Darwinism isn't a science anymore; it's an ideology.

Josh is a nice boy, though. Later on, he pats his grandma on the head and basically says, “You – as a Christian – can’t help your disbelief in evolution. After all, your brain is hardwired for faith! And why? Through evolution, of course!"

Josh writes…

Ideas are selected for fitness by humans through a non-random process akin to Darwinian natural selection in the same way that Cordyceps has managed to survive and reproduce. Ideas, including religious beliefs, either fade into extinction over time or evolve and are selected to live on in the minds of humans. Ideas that are transmitted from one mind to another are called memes…

By analogy with “gene” especially with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion...

I have good reason to believe that the particular brands of Christianity that I am most familiar with, fundamentalism and evangelicalism, contain particularly harmful meme complexes that cause meme carriers to deny reality in favor of adhering to a context-free literal interpretation of scripture.

Ah, so Mama Murphy is infected with a "parasitic meme," and Josh is coming to the rescue with a new and better "meme." I'm tempted to ask, though: Do "memes" actually exist?

According to science journalist, Denyse O'Leary, the answer is "no."

As she wrote in 2 blog posts:

Do not bother to ask whether neuroscience has discovered any correlate of a meme. Of course not…

Are memes or memeplexes testable? Could we know if they were not a correct explanation? Not likely…We know that genes exist and we have even mapped the genome, but the meme is too vague a concept to generate anything except speculation, good graphics, culture vignettes - and hoaxes.

At Neuroanthropology.net, Greg Downey (who favors Darwinism) states…

I think ‘memetics’ is one of the bigger crocks hatched in recent decades, hiding in the shadow of respectable evolutionary theory’… What’s hard for me to understand is that I LIKE some of Daniel Dennett’s work, and I can’t cite Dennett’s other work confidently when he has picked up a ‘meme franchise…’

It’s one thing to reify a concept, it’s another thing to start attributing it a whole complex personality, drives, desires, and levels of different reification. If defining gene as ’self-replicating’ is playing a little free with the details, defining meme, as ’self-replicating’ beggars the imagination it’s so stupid….

Arguing this reveals so little understanding of how brains work, especially how hard it is for ANY pattern to repeat completely. That is, even repetitive action typically involves constant changes in patterns of neural activation; maintaining consistency requires constantly shifting neural resources, even slightly, to take account to changes even in the organism itself…

Has anyone, ever, anywhere, seen an idea ‘replicate’ itSELF? Although this may seem like a semantic point, I think it’s a bigger logical problem with reifying culture as ‘memes’ and then attributing agentive power to the memes.

For me, the problem with memes is two-fold: theoretical and observational.

On a theoretical level, the problem with memes is the same as the one with “selfish genes.” It assumes intent for something that – by definition – cannot have intent. Ideas are not conscious. They have no purpose…They have no desire to “replicate”…They are just, um, ideas!...You would think the Darwinists would understand that, but apparently not. They want to explain all facets of human behavior with their theory. Seriously.

Then, there’s the problem on an “observational level,” which is just a fancy way of saying “common sense.” To say that religion itself is a meme is absurd. Religious ideas are not “analogous to biological evolution.” And how do we know that? Because there is so much variety, diversity, and innovation in religious thinking! Think about it: Catholics require their leaders to be celibate. How is that ‘analogous to biological evolution?” Jews require their men to be circumcised. Muslims require a month of fasting (Ramadan). Many ancient cultures – like the Mayans – required human sacrifice, even by members of their own tribe. These religious practices (among many others) might be “good” or “bad,” but to say they’re required by a process “analogous to biological evolution” doesn’t pass the “common sense” test.

So once again, Josh is trying to pass crackpot theories onto a person who probably doesn’t know any better, and isn’t informed enough to rebut them. I’m almost tempted to say Josh is trying to pass on his own “parasitic meme” (atheism) onto his Mama Murphy, but I’ll bite my tongue.

What Josh is trying to do, though, is very common about Reductionists. Indeed, it sounds like Josh is a graduate of the “Frankfurt School of Reductionism.”

On May 29, I wrote…

In the same way that the Frankfurt School reacted to the failure of Marxism (by blaming the “distortions, errors, and blind spots in the consciousness of the underclass”), the Reductionists are reacting to their failure to earn the conviction of the American people (see these polls) by reveling in the idea that people themselves CAN'T make rational convictions – that “people often have little or no information about the real causes of their own behavior” and that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior…”

Subtly, this new “Frankfurt School” of Reductionism is hoping to pick up where the old cultural Marxists left off – by keeping the game going a little while longer – not by waging an objective battle for truth, but by denying Man’s ability to know Truth altogether.

Josh concludes…

The memes that I was able to put off looking into for so long are the memes that ultimately did my faith in. These memes, when I addressed their claims, simply couldn’t stand up. It bears pointing out that, in the beginning, I sought to strengthen my faith by supporting my beliefs with Christian literature, prayer, scripture reading, and meetings with pastors. Needless to say, that kind of confirmation bias worked for a while, but, as Valerie Tarico puts it, my hopper did eventually fill up. When I really laid my beliefs out on the table for examination in light of all the evidence I realized that the available evidence is woefully impoverished. It was then that I applied the same rules of reason to my personal beliefs that I do to the rest of my life. Slowly, as Christoper Hitchens says, what had been asserted without evidence was dismissed without evidence.

Eh, whatever. I’m not sure how to respond to all that except to repeat what I said on Jun. 10 about folks (like Josh) who were raised in oppressive Christian households and then discovered – later in life – that Christian fundamentalism…how can I put this nicely?… "sucks."

I think they’ve incorporated society’s overarching flawed assumption that there are only 2 possible sources of truth: 1) Christian Revelation, or 2) nihilistic atheism. And if the first choice is so obviously untrue, then the second choice is all that remains.

Could there be a third choice? A third way? [Short answer: Yes]

And with that, my analysis of Josh's letter comes to a close. Of course, I still haven’t answered the question I asked in my headline: “Why Does The Debate Over Darwinism Matter?”

Hey, I’m building up to that! Patience, patience. Part 3 is coming soon…

An Alternative to Materialism's Funeral?: The Frankfurt School Option

After the critical setbacks of World War One, the international Marxist community experienced a crisis - an existential crisis that forced them to confront the validity of their entire worldview, and which sounds ominously like the crisis materialism is experiencing today)…

To quote Pat Buchanan in his book, The Death of the West:

“Nothing the Marxists had predicted had come to pass. Their hour had come and gone. The workers of the West, the mythical proletariat, had refused to play the role history had assigned them. How could Marx have been so wrong?”

To address that question, “In 1923, [Georg] Lukacs and members of the German Communist party set up, at Frankfurt University, an Institute for Marxism…It would soon come to be known simply as the Frankfurt School….The Frankfurt School began to retranslate Marxism into cultural terms….And their ideas have triumphed.”

What was their main idea?

You may have heard of it.

“False consciousness.”

Before explaining “false consciousness” (and what it means for materialism), here's some background…

In the 19th century, Karl Marx “offered an objective theory of class, based on an analysis of the objective features of the system of economic relations that constitute the social order. A person's social class is determined by his or her position within the system of property relations that constitutes a given economic society…. People also have subjective characteristics: thoughts, mental frameworks, and identities. These mental constructs give the person a cognitive framework in terms of which the person understands his or her role in the world and the forces that govern his or her life.

Social mechanisms emerge in class society that systematically create distortions, errors, and blind spots in the consciousness of the underclass. If these consciousness-shaping mechanisms did not exist, then the underclass, always a majority, would quickly overthrow the system of their domination. So the institutions that shape the person’s thoughts, ideas, and frameworks develop in such a way as to generate false consciousness and ideology.”

While it’s true that Marx invented the overall concept of “false consciousness,” he didn’t invent that exact term (his partner, Frederic Engels, deserves the credit for that), and neither Marx nor Engels gave the idea of "false consciousness" much importance.

In the 20th century, however, the Frankfurt School elevated “false consciousness” to the penthouse of Marxist doctrine.

Even today – 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – the idea of “false consciousness” permeates our culture. Political leftists continue to insist that people who disagree with them but SHOULD AGREE with them (for example, white working class families) have been blinded to their true class interests by “superstructures” such as Christianity, capitalism, etc.

In other words, YOU (the “common people”) are NOT rational, because if you were, you would agree with us, and since you don’t agree with us, we must explain to you WHY you are irrational. Once we do that, we will neutralize your credibility to wage an argument, and finally, defeat you by default.

For a fuller explanation of this theory and strategy, see Thomas Frank’s best-selling book What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.

To quote Pat Buchanan again: “America’s elites, who may not even know today who the Frankfurt thinkers were, have taken to their ideas like catnip.”

Still with me?

Sorry for all the retro Marxist mumbo-jumbo.

Now to the main event…

As I’ve mentioned before (here, here, and here), the reductionists aren’t just aggressively protecting their turf when it comes to Darwinism (using the courts to squelch Intelligent Design, for example), they are also going on offense when it comes to neurobiology – using the media to champion the idea that free will is an “illusion” and that our behavior is determined by a proper mix of genes and environmental factors.

There’s a lot of reasons for this new offensive, but it’s probably likely that on some level – at least beneath the surface – one of those reasons is to deflect attention away from the compelling logic of Intelligent Design by…wait for it…denying the power of logic itself!

In the same that the Frankfurt School reacted to the failure of Marxism (by blaming the “distortions, errors, and blind spots in the consciousness of the underclass”), the Reductionists are reacting to their failure to earn the conviction of the American people (see these polls), by reveling in the idea that people themselves CAN'T make rational convictions – that “people often have little or no information about the real causes of their own behavior” and that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior.”

In other words, if you don’t agree with the Reductionists, it’s because your rational capacities are really a disguise created by your emotions, and you suffer from “false consciousness.”

On an intellectual level, the Frankfurt School kept the spirit of Marxism alive for decades after it became clear that the economic underpinning of Marxism (which was the original inspiration of Marxism) had been proven false by their undisputed failure in the Communist Bloc.

Subtly, this new “Frankfurt School” of Reductionism is hoping to pick up where the old cultural Marxists left off – by keeping the game going a little while longer – not by waging an objective battle for truth, but by denying Man’s ability to know Truth altogether.

-Todd

**UPDATE, JUNE 2, 2009**

In case you thought I was exaggerating, take a look at this article, Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science. This piece gives new meaning to the term "reductionism."

From the abstract:

"Resistance to certain scientific ideas derives in large part from assumptions and biases that can be demonstrated experimentally in young children and that may persist into adulthood.

In particular, both adults and children resist acquiring scientific information that clashes with common-sense intuitions about the physical and psychological domains.

Additionally, when learning information from other people, both adults and children are sensitive to the trustworthiness of the source of that information.

Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources."

Ah...so from the Darwinist perspective, people who disagree with the "reductionist paradigm" are stuck in childish ways of thinking...how mature!

-Todd

**UPDATE, JUNE 3, 2009**

As the old saying goes, “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” According to this article, scientists have to overcome their own “childish” mindsets.

Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics

Abstract: The religiosity of scientists is a persistent topic of interest and debate among both popular and academic commentators. Researchers look to this population as a case study for understanding the intellectual tensions between religion and science and the possible secularizing effects of education…

Using data from a recent survey of academic scientists at twenty-one elite U.S. research universities, we compare the religious beliefs and practices of natural and social scientists within seven disciplines as well as academic scientists to the general population.

We find that field-specific and interdisciplinary differences are not as significant in predicting religiosity as other research suggests. Instead, demographic factors such as age, marital status, and presence of children in the household are the strongest predictors of religious difference among scientists. In particular, religiosity in the home as a child is the most important predictor of present religiosity among this group of scientists.

So...if both scientists AND believers are prisoners of their “childish” mindsets, who then is qualified to discuss these critical questions of existence? Apparently, no one.

Luckily, we have an alternative: We can stop psychoanalyzing our opponents, recommit to logic, and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Of course, the Darwinbots might oppose that idea too - because they know the evidence does not lead in their direction.

-Todd