evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-09--Origin of Life: Jeremy England’s Search for a Natural Explanation

Yesterday I began reviewing physicist Jeremy England ’ s new book , Every Life Is on Fire : How Thermodynamics Explains the Origin of Living Things .
The book , as I said , is a profound treatment of its subject .
Our views only diverge on the question of how the escalators/engines and the information required for life could have arisen .
England proposes that energy sources and natural processes on the early Earth caused escalators to spontaneously emerge that directed matter to coalesce into a nascent cell : The energy flowing from the driving force powers an exploration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the matter makes little local moves that change how its constituent parts are assembled relative to each other .
If the interactions among the particles give rise to enough novelty through combinations of collective physical properties , then each small rearrangement can lead to changes in how the external drive energy gets absorbed , both in terms of how much energy flows and in terms of the kinds of motion the energy flow activates .
As time passes , the system visits more and more states , and eventually it encounters an opportunity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good at allowing the matter to stay in the same shape despite the constant physical insults it sustains from the external drive .
This success at remaining stable in one particular shape or group of shapes is the result of energy absorption that is either sufficiently low , or powers motions that are exceptionally well matched to the assembled structure in ways that keep it from falling apart .
Either way , by subjecting inanimate matter to patterned external drives , we ultimately expect to see the spontaneous emergence of a structure with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special compared with those of a random rearrangement of the same building materials .
To summarize England ’ s proposal , the flow of the right energy through a chemical mixture on the early Earth could have caused the matter to rearrange itself in just the right configurations to harness and direct the driving energy in just the right manner as to organize and maintain cellular structures and biologically relevant reactions .
England supports his proposal by citing experiments and simulations that demonstrate systems self-organizing in response to supplied energy in ways that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Some of these behaviors even have similarities with the characteristics of life noted in my article yesterday .
One experiment immersed colloidal spheres in a solution and exposed the spheres to blue-violet light that drove self-propulsion .
The spheres were also subjected to a magnet field .
The combination of the light and the field directed the spheres to self-organize into dynamic crystalline arrays .
England is honoring the rules of the mainstream scientific academy , so he is only considering natural explanations for life ’ s origin .
Within this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In contrast , I have the freedom to consider explanations beyond solely natural processes .
Within this expanded philosophical framework , the conclusion that life is designed by an intelligent agent fits the evidence far better .
I have detailed previously how the experimental studies England cites to support his model all required carefully designed engines/energy converters and highly specified experimental design instructions ( i.e.
, information ) to achieve interesting results ( here , here ) .
Comparable energy sources and constraints would not have existed on the early Earth .
Equally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ natural processes directly connected to the physical and chemical properties of the objects under study , the constructed environments , and the energy sources .
For instance , in the aforementioned experiment the light and the magnetic field directly interacted with the spheres in such a manner as to steer the formation of the crystalline arrays .
In contrast , the energy sources on the early Earth have no direct connection via any natural law to nearly any life-relevant molecular structures , chemical reactions , or physical processes .
Candidate energy sources include @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proton gradients , moving mica sheets , shock waves , and high-energy chemicals ( here , here , here ) .
They will directly generate some higher-energy compounds such as formaldehyde and acetic acid , but the energy sources and their immediate products rarely if ever naturally couple with anything biologically useful .
The flow of these energy sources through an ancient pool of chemicals might self-organize the molecules into some interesting structures or demonstrate some intriguing dynamic behavior , but such products would have little resemblance to life .
As I mentioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available energy sources and then transform the energy into energy-currency molecules such as ATP .
Then , other machines direct the energy from the breakdown of these molecules to target reactions and processes .
The information in the proteins and DNA directs the mass and energy via machinery independently of the actions any natural process would otherwise perform .
Cellular operations are “ taken out of the hands of chemistry ” and instead directed according to engineering principles and constraints determined by the functions the cellular equipment was designed to accomplish ( here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ functions include information processing , error correction , sensory analysis , construction and assembly of complex machines , and many more .
This list demonstrates such clear evidence of foresight , coordination , and goal direction that the conclusion of design should be self-evident to anyone who truly desires to follow the evidence where it leads .
If I had written this book , I would have concluded with a final chapter that began with a verse from the book of Genesis : The study of biology does not represent a field of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It instead represents the study of the design masterpieces of a creator who shaped matter according to the words ( i.e.
, information ) he pronounced .
Those from a different philosophical framework might not connect the designer with the God of Jewish and Christian tradition , but they still should , based on the evidence , recognize that information is the foundation upon which life is built .
Only within this framework can biology be properly understood , and only with this understanding can research progress unhindered .

Image: Jeremy England lectures in Stockholm, via YouTube.
Yesterday I began reviewing physicist Jeremy England’s new book, Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origin of Living Things. The book, as I said, is a profound treatment of its subject. Our views only diverge on the question of how the escalators/engines and the information required for life could have arisen. England proposes that energy sources and natural processes on the early Earth caused escalators to spontaneously emerge that directed matter to coalesce into a nascent cell:
The energy flowing from the driving force powers an exploration of the space of possible configurations where the matter makes little local moves that change how its constituent parts are assembled relative to each other. If the interactions among the particles give rise to enough novelty through combinations of collective physical properties, then each small rearrangement can lead to changes in how the external drive energy gets absorbed, both in terms of how much energy flows and in terms of the kinds of motion the energy flow activates. As time passes, the system visits more and more states, and eventually it encounters an opportunity to settle into one that is exceptionally good at allowing the matter to stay in the same shape despite the constant physical insults it sustains from the external drive. This success at remaining stable in one particular shape or group of shapes is the result of energy absorption that is either sufficiently low, or powers motions that are exceptionally well matched to the assembled structure in ways that keep it from falling apart. Either way, by subjecting inanimate matter to patterned external drives, we ultimately expect to see the spontaneous emergence of a structure with energy flow properties that seem fine-tuned and special compared with those of a random rearrangement of the same building materials.
To summarize England’s proposal, the flow of the right energy through a chemical mixture on the early Earth could have caused the matter to rearrange itself in just the right configurations to harness and direct the driving energy in just the right manner as to organize and maintain cellular structures and biologically relevant reactions.
England supports his proposal by citing experiments and simulations that demonstrate systems self-organizing in response to supplied energy in ways that exhibit interesting behaviors (here, here). Some of these behaviors even have similarities with the characteristics of life noted in my article yesterday. One experiment immersed colloidal spheres in a solution and exposed the spheres to blue-violet light that drove self-propulsion. The spheres were also subjected to a magnet field. The combination of the light and the field directed the spheres to self-organize into dynamic crystalline arrays.
The Design Inference
England is honoring the rules of the mainstream scientific academy, so he is only considering natural explanations for life’s origin. Within this constraint his proposal is quite reasonable. In contrast, I have the freedom to consider explanations beyond solely natural processes. Within this expanded philosophical framework, the conclusion that life is designed by an intelligent agent fits the evidence far better.
I have detailed previously how the experimental studies England cites to support his model all required carefully designed engines/energy converters and highly specified experimental design instructions (i.e., information) to achieve interesting results (here, here). Comparable energy sources and constraints would not have existed on the early Earth. Equally problematic, the interesting behaviors resulted from natural processes directly connected to the physical and chemical properties of the objects under study, the constructed environments, and the energy sources. For instance, in the aforementioned experiment the light and the magnetic field directly interacted with the spheres in such a manner as to steer the formation of the crystalline arrays.
In contrast, the energy sources on the early Earth have no direct connection via any natural law to nearly any life-relevant molecular structures, chemical reactions, or physical processes. Candidate energy sources include electrical discharges, heat, radiation, proton gradients, moving mica sheets, shock waves, and high-energy chemicals (here, here, here). They will directly generate some higher-energy compounds such as formaldehyde and acetic acid, but the energy sources and their immediate products rarely if ever naturally couple with anything biologically useful. The flow of these energy sources through an ancient pool of chemicals might self-organize the molecules into some interesting structures or demonstrate some intriguing dynamic behavior, but such products would have little resemblance to life.
As I mentioned, in life complex molecular machines harvest available energy sources and then transform the energy into energy-currency molecules such as ATP. Then, other machines direct the energy from the breakdown of these molecules to target reactions and processes. The information in the proteins and DNA directs the mass and energy via machinery independently of the actions any natural process would otherwise perform.
Cellular operations are “taken out of the hands of chemistry” and instead directed according to engineering principles and constraints determined by the functions the cellular equipment was designed to accomplish (here, here, here). These functions include information processing, error correction, sensory analysis, construction and assembly of complex machines, and many more. This list demonstrates such clear evidence of foresight, coordination, and goal direction that the conclusion of design should be self-evident to anyone who truly desires to follow the evidence where it leads.
A Final Chapter
If I had written this book, I would have concluded with a final chapter that began with a verse from the book of Genesis:
And God said: “Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.” And it was so. Genesis 1:11 (JPS)
The study of biology does not represent a field of science comparable to organic chemistry or geology. It instead represents the study of the design masterpieces of a creator who shaped matter according to the words (i.e., information) he pronounced. Those from a different philosophical framework might not connect the designer with the God of Jewish and Christian tradition, but they still should, based on the evidence, recognize that information is the foundation upon which life is built. Only within this framework can biology be properly understood, and only with this understanding can research progress unhindered.


On Delaying Puberty

Author ’ s note : This is Part Four of a seven-part series about transgenderism .
Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person , any gender non-conforming person , or any person attracted to members of the same sex .
I write as a developmental biologist ( Berkeley PhD ) , and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children .
WARNING : Parts of this series contain explicit language .
Reader discretion is advised .
Currently , in the U.S. and the Netherlands , about 95 percent of girls start puberty between 8 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boys begin puberty between 9 and 14 .
But about 5 percent of healthy girls and boys start puberty a little sooner or a little later .
In girls , the first noticeable sign of puberty is an increase in the size of the breasts .
In boys , it is an increase in the size of the testicles .
Pubic hair usually starts to grow , as well .
In the mid 20th century , British pediatrician James Tanner divided puberty into five stages .
Tanner stage 1 is pre-puberty .
Stage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And stage 5 is sexual maturity .
Puberty begins when the base of the brain starts producing gonadotropin-releasing hormone ( GnRH ) .
This stimulates the pituitary gland just below the brain .
The pituitary then produces hormones that stimulate the ovaries in girls and the testicles in boys .
Some girls reach Tanner stage 2 before the age of 8 .
Some boys reach Tanner stage 2 before the age of 9 .
They might be among the few children who start normal puberty slightly earlier than most .
Or they may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puberty.
” This pathological condition can cause significant medical and emotional problems .
The most common cause of precocious puberty is premature production of GnRH .
In 1981 , American physician William Crowley pioneered the treatment of precocious puberty .
Paradoxically , he administered GnRH to children suffering from it .
The excess GnRH over-stimulates the pituitary gland .
The pituitary then becomes de-sensitized and stops producing gonadotropins .
As a result , the ovaries and testicles stop developing .
They may even revert to their pre-puberty state .
When affected children reach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start , the GnRH treatment is stopped .
Their development resumes , and puberty proceeds pretty much as though nothing had happened .
So in cases of precocious puberty , GnRH appears to be a fully reversible “ puberty blocker.
” From 1993 to 1996 , a controlled experiment in the Netherlands focused on normal children with short stature .
Before puberty , growth hormone ( GH ) can help such children .
But once puberty begins the ends of their long bones begin to fuse .
This reduces the final gain in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artificial GnRH analog ( GnRHa ) was administered to delay puberty .
It was hoped that GH could then continue to work .
With parental consent 24 girls and 12 boys were enrolled .
All the children were experiencing early ( but not precocious ) puberty .
All had reached Tanner stage 2 .
All the girls were eleven or under , and all the boys were twelve or under .
Half of the 36 children were randomly assigned to receive treatment .
The other half received no treatment .
Children in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and monthly injections of GnRHa .
Treatment was stopped after three years .
The research team did long-term follow-up on 32 of the 36 participants .
After treatment stopped , all of the treated children went through normal puberty .
By the time the girls were 18 or the boys were 19 they had all reached sexual maturity .
Treated children experienced an average height gain of about two inches .
But they suffered through three years of frequent injections with very expensive drugs .
The research team concluded in 2007 that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We therefore do not recommend this treatment regimen in general.
” Note that none of the children in this study wanted to transition to the other sex .
All stopped taking GnRHa within ( or close to ) the normal range of puberty onset .
At that point they were probably no further behind in their sexual development than some of their untreated peers .
So puberty blockers in this experiment were fully reversible .
In 1960 , John Money and sexologist Richard Green described five young boys with feminine behavior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incongruous gender role.
” The term has now been largely replaced by “ gender dysphoria.
” The 2013 edition of the defines gender dysphoria in children ( 302.6 ) .
It is “ a marked incongruence between one ’ s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender , of at least 6 months ’ duration.
” It is accompanied by “ a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.
” And , “ the condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment.
” Note @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental disorder .
Ironically , “ Brenda ” Reimer fit this description , because “ her ” assigned sex was different from “ her ” biological sex .
But in most cases , “ assigned sex ” means biological sex .
Among transgender advocates , the gold standard for treating gender dysphoria is the Dutch Protocol .
The Protocol has four stages .
The first is beginning the transition to the other sex psychologically and socially .
The second is receiving a puberty blocker upon reaching Tanner stage 2 .
The third is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fourth is undergoing transgender surgery after reaching the age of 18 .
In other words , the Dutch Protocol for treating a mental disorder is social and physical .
Stage 4 is irreversible .
Stage 3 is also irreversible , since ( among other things ) boys will develop breasts and girls will develop facial hair and deeper voices .
But the Protocol emphasizes that stage 2 ( puberty suppression ) is fully reversible .
“ The suppression of puberty using GnRHa is a reversible phase of treatment… It can be considered as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an open exploration of the [ sex reassignment ] wish.
” An excellent resource on this topic is a 2017 article by pediatrician Paul Hruz and psychiatrists Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh .
The article is “ Growing Pains , ” and it was published online by The New Atlantis .
In 2017 the Endocrine Society recommended puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria .
The Society claimed its authors “ used the best available evidence ” to arrive at their recommendations .
The “ best available evidence ” is the focus of @ @ @ @ @ @

Photo: Pituitary gland, by Athikhun.suw, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.
Author’s note: This is Part Four of a seven-part series about transgenderism. Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person, any gender non-conforming person, or any person attracted to members of the same sex. I write as a developmental biologist (Berkeley PhD), and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children.
WARNING: Parts of this series contain explicit language. Reader discretion is advised.
Currently, in the U.S. and the Netherlands, about 95 percent of girls start puberty between 8 and 13. About 95 percent of boys begin puberty between 9 and 14. But about 5 percent of healthy girls and boys start puberty a little sooner or a little later.
In girls, the first noticeable sign of puberty is an increase in the size of the breasts. In boys, it is an increase in the size of the testicles. Pubic hair usually starts to grow, as well. In the mid 20th century, British pediatrician James Tanner divided puberty into five stages. Tanner stage 1 is pre-puberty. Stage 2 is the start of puberty. And stage 5 is sexual maturity.
Puberty begins when the base of the brain starts producing gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). This stimulates the pituitary gland just below the brain. The pituitary then produces hormones that stimulate the ovaries in girls and the testicles in boys.
Precocious Puberty
Some girls reach Tanner stage 2 before the age of 8. Some boys reach Tanner stage 2 before the age of 9. They might be among the few children who start normal puberty slightly earlier than most. Or they may start much sooner because of “precocious puberty.” This pathological condition can cause significant medical and emotional problems.
The most common cause of precocious puberty is premature production of GnRH. In 1981, American physician William Crowley pioneered the treatment of precocious puberty. Paradoxically, he administered GnRH to children suffering from it. The excess GnRH over-stimulates the pituitary gland. The pituitary then becomes de-sensitized and stops producing gonadotropins. As a result, the ovaries and testicles stop developing. They may even revert to their pre-puberty state.
When affected children reach the age at which normal puberty would start, the GnRH treatment is stopped. Their development resumes, and puberty proceeds pretty much as though nothing had happened. So in cases of precocious puberty, GnRH appears to be a fully reversible “puberty blocker.”
Puberty Blockers and Short Stature
From 1993 to 1996, a controlled experiment in the Netherlands focused on normal children with short stature. Before puberty, growth hormone (GH) can help such children. But once puberty begins the ends of their long bones begin to fuse. This reduces the final gain in height. In the experiment, an artificial GnRH analog (GnRHa) was administered to delay puberty. It was hoped that GH could then continue to work.
With parental consent 24 girls and 12 boys were enrolled. All the children were experiencing early (but not precocious) puberty. All had reached Tanner stage 2. All the girls were eleven or under, and all the boys were twelve or under.
Half of the 36 children were randomly assigned to receive treatment. The other half received no treatment. Children in the treatment group received daily injections of GH and monthly injections of GnRHa. Treatment was stopped after three years.
The research team did long-term follow-up on 32 of the 36 participants. After treatment stopped, all of the treated children went through normal puberty. By the time the girls were 18 or the boys were 19 they had all reached sexual maturity.
Treated children experienced an average height gain of about two inches. But they suffered through three years of frequent injections with very expensive drugs. The research team concluded in 2007 that the suffering and expense were not worth it. “We therefore do not recommend this treatment regimen in general.”
Note that none of the children in this study wanted to transition to the other sex. All stopped taking GnRHa within (or close to) the normal range of puberty onset. At that point they were probably no further behind in their sexual development than some of their untreated peers.
So puberty blockers in this experiment were fully reversible.
Gender Dysphoria and Puberty Blockers
In 1960, John Money and sexologist Richard Green described five young boys with feminine behavior. Money and Green called this “incongruous gender role.” The term has now been largely replaced by “gender dysphoria.”
The 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) defines gender dysphoria in children (302.6). It is “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration.” It is accompanied by “a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.” And, “the condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment.” Note that gender dysphoria is listed as a mental disorder.
Ironically, “Brenda” Reimer fit this description, because “her” assigned sex was different from “her” biological sex. But in most cases, “assigned sex” means biological sex.
Among transgender advocates, the gold standard for treating gender dysphoria is the Dutch Protocol. The Protocol has four stages. The first is beginning the transition to the other sex psychologically and socially. The second is receiving a puberty blocker upon reaching Tanner stage 2. The third is receiving cross-sex hormones at 16. The fourth is undergoing transgender surgery after reaching the age of 18. In other words, the Dutch Protocol for treating a mental disorder is social and physical.
Stage 4 is irreversible. Stage 3 is also irreversible, since (among other things) boys will develop breasts and girls will develop facial hair and deeper voices. But the Protocol emphasizes that stage 2 (puberty suppression) is fully reversible. “The suppression of puberty using GnRHa is a reversible phase of treatment… It can be considered as ‘buying time’ to allow for an open exploration of the [sex reassignment] wish.”
An excellent resource on this topic is a 2017 article by pediatrician Paul Hruz and psychiatrists Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh. The article is “Growing Pains,” and it was published online by The New Atlantis.
In 2017 the Endocrine Society recommended puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. The Society claimed its authors “used the best available evidence” to arrive at their recommendations.
The “best available evidence” is the focus of Part Five in this series.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-10--Michael Behe: Battle of the Mousetraps

Michael Behe: Battle of the Mousetraps

On a new episode of ID the Future , Michael Behe responds to the attacks on … his mousetrap .
@ @ @ @ @ to illustrate the idea of irreducible complexity , showing how various mechanical contrivances need all @ @ @ @ @ function , and to show how irreducible complexity poses a major challenge to Darwinism ’ @ @ @ @ @ step-by-step evolution of some biological machines .
Download the podcast or listen to it here @ @ @ @ @ on Behe ’ s argument have focused on the irreducibly complex biological systems he spotlighted @ @ @ @ @ motor known as the bacterial flagellum .
But some of his critics fixated on the @ @ @ @ @ that the mousetrap wasn ’ t actually irreducibly complex .
Behe rebuts these counterarguments and @ @ @ @ @ convinced they fail .
The discussion is just a brief sampling of the deeper look @ @ @ @ @ newest book , A Mousetrap for Darwin .

Photo: Mousetraps, by Tom, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.
On a new episode of ID the Future, Michael Behe responds to the attacks on … his mousetrap. Behe used the common mousetrap to illustrate the idea of irreducible complexity, showing how various mechanical contrivances need all of their main parts to function, and to show how irreducible complexity poses a major challenge to Darwinism’s idea of gradual, step-by-step evolution of some biological machines. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Most of the attacks on Behe’s argument have focused on the irreducibly complex biological systems he spotlighted, such as the outboard motor known as the bacterial flagellum. But some of his critics fixated on the mousetrap itself, and argued that the mousetrap wasn’t actually irreducibly complex. Behe rebuts these counterarguments and explains why he’s convinced they fail. The discussion is just a brief sampling of the deeper look that Behe offers in his newest book, A Mousetrap for Darwin.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-11--Excerpt: A Reply to Michael Ruse

Excerpt: A Reply to Michael Ruse

Editor ’ s note : We are delighted to celebrate the publication of the new book A Mousetrap for Darwin : Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics .
What follows is an excerpt : “ A Reply to Michael Ruse , ” Research News & Opportunity in Science and Theology ( July/August 2002 ) .
Authors ’ note : This article appeared in a discussion of intelligent design published in Research News & Opportunity in Science and Theology ( now discontinued ) .
Other contributors included Karl Giberson , Michael Ruse , Eugenie Scott , William Dembski , Robert Pennock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unwisely stepped out of his area of expertise to weigh in on a scientific dispute between Russell Doolittle and myself .
If nothing else , Michael Ruse has chutzpah .
Let me tell a little story about blood clotting , Russell Doolittle , and Michael Ruse .
In 1996 , in Darwin ’ s Black Box , I argued ( “ notoriously ” ) that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex ( that is , if a part is removed the cascade doesn ’ t work ) , and so is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explained by intelligent design .
However , Russell Doolittle — professor of biochemistry at the University of California , San Diego , member of the National Academy of Sciences , and lifelong student of the blood clotting system — disagreed .
Writing in 1997 in Boston Review , a publication of MIT , Doolittle pointed to a then-recent report which , he claimed , showed that several parts of the clotting system — plasminogen and fibrinogen — could be “ knocked out ” of mice without ill effect .
( Fibrinogen is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clots once healing is complete . )
According to Professor Doolittle , if one component is removed , the mice are in bad shape , but if two components are removed , the mice were normal.1 While that would be an interesting result , it ’ s incorrect .
Doolittle misread the report .
The authors of the paper wrote in their abstract that “ Mice deficient in plasminogen and fibrinogen are phenotypically indistinguishable from fibrinogen-deficient mice.
” 2 In other words , mice lacking both components have all the problems that mice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ include failure to clot , hemorrhage , and death of females during pregnancy .
The mice are very far from “ normal.
” They are decidedly not promising evolutionary intermediates .
A year later , apparently unaware of Doolittle ’ s mistake , Ruse instructed the readers of Free Inquiry on why intelligent design proponents are scorned .
For example , Behe is a real scientist , but this case for the impossibility of a small-step natural origin of biological complexity has been trampled upon contemptuously by the scientists working in the field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pertinent science is weak and his knowledge of the literature curiously ( although conveniently ) outdated .
For example , far from the evolution of clotting being a mystery , the past three decades of work by Russell Doolittle and others has thrown significant light on the ways in which clotting came into being .
More than this , it can be shown that the clotting mechanism does not have to be a one-step phenomenon with everything already in place and functioning .
One step in the cascade involves fibrinogen , required for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sic ] , required for clearing clots away.3 And Ruse went on to quote the passage from Doolittle I quoted above .
Ruse was so impressed with Doolittle ’ s work that he even copied his typo/misspelling , “ plaminogen.
” Let me state clearly what this means .
Ruse is a prominent academic Darwinian philosopher .
Yet he apparently didn ’ t even bother to look up and understand the original paper on the hemorrhaging mice before deciding Doolittle was right and I was contemptibly wrong .
To this day he takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no signs of understanding .
But perchance Ruse is so confident because “ the rest of the scientific community agrees ” with Doolittle ( how does Ruse know this ? )
that I ’ m “ simply not up to date.
” Well , maybe many scientists do agree with Doolittle .
But those who do are as wrong as he was .
In my travels I ’ ve had quite a few scientists sneeringly throw his erroneous Boston Review argument at me .
Just recently Neil S. Greenspan , a professor of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote in The Scientist , “ The Design advocates also ignore the accumulating examples of the reducibility of biological systems .
As Russell Doolittle has noted in commenting on the writings of one ID advocate… ” 4 and Greenspan goes on to approvingly cite Doolittle ’ s mistaken argument in Boston Review .
Then with innocent irony Greenspan continues , “ These results cast doubt on the claim by proponents of ID that they know which systems exhibit irreducible complexity and which do not.
” But since the results of the hemorrhaging-mice study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ along with Ruse , Greenspan , and other copycats thought , the shoe is on the other foot .
The Doolittle incident shows that Darwinists in fact don ’ t know how natural selection could assemble complex biochemical systems .
Worse , it shows that they either can not or will not recognize problems for their theory .
I ’ ll bet a philosopher like Ruse could think of some other reasons why a lot of the scientific community is up in arms over intelligent design besides spurious claims that we “ fail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Thomas H. Bugge et al.
, “ Loss of Fibrinogen Rescues Mice from the Pleiotropic Effects of Plasminogen Deficiency , ” Cell 87 , no .
4 ( November 15 , 1996 ) : 709-719 .
• Michael Ruse , “ Answering the Creationists : Where They Go Wrong and What They ’ re Afraid of , ” Free Inquiry 18 , no .
2 ( Spring 1998 ) : 28 .

Photo: Michael Behe speaking at the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, by Chris Morgan.
Editor’s note: We are delighted to celebrate the publication of the new book A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics. What follows is an excerpt: “A Reply to Michael Ruse,” Research News & Opportunity in Science and Theology (July/August 2002).
Authors’ note: This article appeared in a discussion of intelligent design published in Research News & Opportunity in Science and Theology (now discontinued). Other contributors included Karl Giberson, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott, William Dembski, Robert Pennock, and Jonathan Wells. Philosopher Ruse unwisely stepped out of his area of expertise to weigh in on a scientific dispute between Russell Doolittle and myself.
If nothing else, Michael Ruse has chutzpah.
Let me tell a little story about blood clotting, Russell Doolittle, and Michael Ruse. In 1996, in Darwin’s Black Box, I argued (“notoriously”) that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex (that is, if a part is removed the cascade doesn’t work), and so is a problem for Darwinian evolution and is better explained by intelligent design. However, Russell Doolittle — professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and lifelong student of the blood clotting system — disagreed. Writing in 1997 in Boston Review, a publication of MIT, Doolittle pointed to a then-recent report which, he claimed, showed that several parts of the clotting system — plasminogen and fibrinogen — could be “knocked out” of mice without ill effect. (Fibrinogen is the fabric of the clot. Plasminogen removes clots once healing is complete.) According to Professor Doolittle, if one component is removed, the mice are in bad shape, but if two components are removed, the mice were normal.1 While that would be an interesting result, it’s incorrect. Doolittle misread the report.
The authors of the paper wrote in their abstract that “Mice deficient in plasminogen and fibrinogen are phenotypically indistinguishable from fibrinogen-deficient mice.”2 In other words, mice lacking both components have all the problems that mice lacking just fibrinogen have. Those problems include failure to clot, hemorrhage, and death of females during pregnancy. The mice are very far from “normal.” They are decidedly not promising evolutionary intermediates.
Why ID Is Scorned?
A year later, apparently unaware of Doolittle’s mistake, Ruse instructed the readers of Free Inquiry on why intelligent design proponents are scorned.
For example, Behe is a real scientist, but this case for the impossibility of a small-step natural origin of biological complexity has been trampled upon contemptuously by the scientists working in the field. They think his grasp of the pertinent science is weak and his knowledge of the literature curiously (although conveniently) outdated. For example, far from the evolution of clotting being a mystery, the past three decades of work by Russell Doolittle and others has thrown significant light on the ways in which clotting came into being. More than this, it can be shown that the clotting mechanism does not have to be a one-step phenomenon with everything already in place and functioning. One step in the cascade involves fibrinogen, required for clotting, and another, plaminogen [sic], required for clearing clots away.3
And Ruse went on to quote the passage from Doolittle I quoted above. Ruse was so impressed with Doolittle’s work that he even copied his typo/misspelling, “plaminogen.” Let me state clearly what this means. Ruse is a prominent academic Darwinian philosopher. Yet he apparently didn’t even bother to look up and understand the original paper on the hemorrhaging mice before deciding Doolittle was right and I was contemptibly wrong. To this day he takes sides in a scientific dispute he shows no signs of understanding.
Why Ruse Is Confident
But perchance Ruse is so confident because “the rest of the scientific community agrees” with Doolittle (how does Ruse know this?) that I’m “simply not up to date.” Well, maybe many scientists do agree with Doolittle. But those who do are as wrong as he was. In my travels I’ve had quite a few scientists sneeringly throw his erroneous Boston Review argument at me. Just recently Neil S. Greenspan, a professor of pathology at Case Western Reserve University, wrote in The Scientist, “The Design advocates also ignore the accumulating examples of the reducibility of biological systems. As Russell Doolittle has noted in commenting on the writings of one ID advocate…”4 and Greenspan goes on to approvingly cite Doolittle’s mistaken argument in Boston Review.
Then with innocent irony Greenspan continues, “These results cast doubt on the claim by proponents of ID that they know which systems exhibit irreducible complexity and which do not.” But since the results of the hemorrhaging-mice study were precisely the opposite of what Doolittle along with Ruse, Greenspan, and other copycats thought, the shoe is on the other foot. The Doolittle incident shows that Darwinists in fact don’t know how natural selection could assemble complex biochemical systems. Worse, it shows that they either cannot or will not recognize problems for their theory.
I’ll bet a philosopher like Ruse could think of some other reasons why a lot of the scientific community is up in arms over intelligent design besides spurious claims that we “fail to understand the workings of evolution.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-10--See It Now: James Tour and Brian Miller on Explaining the Origin of Life

I will say this about the distinguished Rice University chemist James Tour : if you can find a more intense personality out there , well , I ’ d be curious to know of it .
I have not met him , but apart from being brilliant , his video presence is remarkable .
He had an online conversation with our always incisive physicist colleague Brian Miller about “ Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life ” : examining the ways that materialists seek to get around that particular conundrum .
Dr. Miller is research coordinator for Discovery Institute ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think he typically does , since this a Science & Faith , Dr. Tour asks for a statement of faith .
He also offers to meet with any “ unbeliever ” by Zoom .
Then they are off to the races on a range of relevant technical and scientific issues — thermodynamics and the origin of the first cell , abiogenesis and “ Natural Selection of the Gaps , ” systems biology , design triangulation , whether life could arise anywhere , including on other planets , without design , and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier and now it ’ s available to see in its entirety at your convenience : Looking to the future , here ’ s something I ’ d love to see on the Science & Faith podcast : Dr. Tour in conversation with one of those famous and abrasive scientific atheists , who have a faith of their own which they also see as being grounded in both science and experience .
Invite on Jerry Coyne , or Lawrence Krauss ?
That I would pay to watch , if Dr. Coyne or Dr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right , were willing .

Photo: James Tour in a scene from Science Uprising, via Discovery Institute.
I will say this about the distinguished Rice University chemist James Tour: if you can find a more intense personality out there, well, I’d be curious to know of it. I have not met him, but apart from being brilliant, his video presence is remarkable. He had an online conversation with our always incisive physicist colleague Brian Miller about “Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life”: examining the ways that materialists seek to get around that particular conundrum. Dr. Miller is research coordinator for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
As I think he typically does, since this a Science & Faith, Dr. Tour asks for a statement of faith. He also offers to meet with any “unbeliever” by Zoom. Then they are off to the races on a range of relevant technical and scientific issues — thermodynamics and the origin of the first cell, abiogenesis and “Natural Selection of the Gaps,” systems biology, design triangulation, whether life could arise anywhere, including on other planets, without design, and more. I had previewed the conversation here earlier and now it’s available to see in its entirety at your convenience:
Looking to the future, here’s something I’d love to see on the Science & Faith podcast: Dr. Tour in conversation with one of those famous and abrasive scientific atheists, who have a faith of their own which they also see as being grounded in both science and experience. Invite on Jerry Coyne, or Lawrence Krauss? That I would pay to watch, if Dr. Coyne or Dr. Krauss, memorable personalities in their own right, were willing.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-10--Delaying Puberty, or Destroying It?

Delaying Puberty, or Destroying It?

Author ’ s note : This is Part Five of a seven-part series about transgenderism .
Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person , any gender non-conforming person , or any person attracted to members of the same sex .
I write as a developmental biologist ( Berkeley PhD ) , and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children .
WARNING : Parts of this series contain explicit language .
Reader discretion is advised .
A gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analog ( GrNHa ) is a “ puberty blocker.
” In Part Four I pointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treat precocious puberty .
In those cases , puberty starts well before the age of eight in girls or the age of nine in boys .
When the blockers are stopped , normal puberty resumes .
In other words , puberty blockers are fully reversible when used to treat precocious puberty .
Part Four also described an experiment in which healthy children with short stature were given puberty blockers .
The children were receiving growth hormone , but puberty reduces its effect .
Three dozen children who had started puberty early ( though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to extend the effect of growth hormone .
The treatment was stopped after three years , and normal puberty resumed .
So puberty blockers are completely reversible when administered for a limited time to normal , healthy children in early puberty .
What about puberty blockers used to treat gender dysphoria ?
According to transgender advocates , “ The suppression of puberty using GnRHa is a reversible phase of treatment.
” Thus “ it can be considered as ‘ buying time ’ to allow for an open exploration of the SR [ sex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Endocrine Society claimed that “ the best available evidence ” supported this treatment .
What Is the Evidence ?
Those who start “ transitioning ” to the other sex may “ persist ” or “ desist.
” Persisters go on to transition .
Desisters choose to stop and accept their biological sex .
A 2013 article cited studies of 246 children with gender dysphoria .
Of those , 207 desisted before being treated with puberty blockers .
The same article reported a more recent study of 127 children .
Of those , 80 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So 287 ( 77 percent ) of 373 children desisted before treatment .
Reversibility was not an issue for them .
What about after starting treatment ?
A 2018 study at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam reported 333 adolescents who started on puberty blockers .
All except 6 ( 1.9 percent ) went on to take cross-sex hormones .
The study did not report the ages at which the 6 desisted .
Were they still within the normal range of puberty onset ?
What were their lives like afterwards ?
We simply don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at 269 children and adolescents registered at the Curium-Leiden University gender clinic in the Netherlands .
Of these , 143 ( 38 boys and 105 girls ) started treatment with GnRHa .
The youngest boy to start was 11 .
The youngest girl was 10 .
Of the original 143 , 125 ( 87 percent ) later moved directly from GnRHa to cross-sex hormones .
According to the study , the high rate of persisters might have been “ due to eligibility criteria that select those highly likely to pursue further gender-affirming treatment.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ due to the observational character of the study , it is not possible to say if GnRHa treatment itself influenced the outcome.
” The 2020 study did follow up on those who did not move directly from GnRHa to cross-sex hormones .
Most of them were not really desisters .
Instead , they pursued alternate routes to transition .
Only five ( 4 girls and 1 boy ) no longer wanted cross-sex treatment .
Combining the numbers from 2018 and 2020 , there were 11 desisters out of 476 children who started on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Why is the rate of desistence among those who start on puberty blockers so much smaller than those who never started — 2 percent versus 77 percent ?
Perhaps it has to do with the selective effect of “ eligibility criteria , ” as the Leiden report suggested .
Perhaps it has to do with the transgender-supportive counseling received by children undergoing puberty suppression for gender dysphoria .
Or perhaps it has to do with the social effects of delaying normal development .
Imagine being a 16-year-old boy with the voice and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 16-year-old girl with no breasts or pubic hair .
Would you prefer to hang out with a transgender-friendly peer-support group ?
Or would you choose to rejoin your non-transgendering contemporaries ?
Given the lack of evidence , British pediatrician Christopher Richards and two others wrote in 2019 that puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children are a “ momentous step in the dark.
” Since almost all children who start on them go on to take cross-sex hormones , it seems that the “ completely reversible ” claim is exaggerated .
Critics argue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are not capable of making life-transforming decisions .
But even if they are , it is misleading to tell them that puberty blockers are just “ buying time ” for them to explore their gender identity .
It would be far more truthful to tell them — and their parents — something like the following : “ We can give you medicine that will block changes in puberty that you might find disturbing .
According to the evidence , if you don ’ t take the medicine there is at least a three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grow up happy with the body you have .
On the other hand , once you start taking the medicine there is a 98 percent chance that you will go on to take cross-sex hormones .
Those hormones will probably make you sterile , and you may have to take them for the rest of your life.
” In October 2020 , a British High Court agreed that “ the vast majority ” of children receiving puberty blockers “ proceed to the use of cross-sex hormones.
” These have “ potential life changing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent.
” It is also “ doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences.
” The British National Health Service immediately stopped offering puberty blockers to children under 16 .
The bottom line is that , in practice , puberty blockers do not delay the momentous decision to transition to the other sex .
In almost every case , they are the momentous decision .
For children with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just buying time .
It is more like a point of no return .

Photo credit: Delia Giandeini on Unsplash.
Author’s note: This is Part Five of a seven-part series about transgenderism. Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person, any gender non-conforming person, or any person attracted to members of the same sex. I write as a developmental biologist (Berkeley PhD), and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children.
WARNING: Parts of this series contain explicit language. Reader discretion is advised.
A gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analog (GrNHa) is a “puberty blocker.” In Part Four I pointed out that puberty blockers are used to treat precocious puberty. In those cases, puberty starts well before the age of eight in girls or the age of nine in boys. When the blockers are stopped, normal puberty resumes. In other words, puberty blockers are fully reversible when used to treat precocious puberty.
Part Four also described an experiment in which healthy children with short stature were given puberty blockers. The children were receiving growth hormone, but puberty reduces its effect. Three dozen children who had started puberty early (though not precociously) were given puberty blockers to extend the effect of growth hormone. The treatment was stopped after three years, and normal puberty resumed. So puberty blockers are completely reversible when administered for a limited time to normal, healthy children in early puberty.
What about puberty blockers used to treat gender dysphoria?
According to transgender advocates, “The suppression of puberty using GnRHa is a reversible phase of treatment.” Thus “it can be considered as ‘buying time’ to allow for an open exploration of the SR [sex reassignment] wish.” In 2017 the Endocrine Society claimed that “the best available evidence” supported this treatment.
What Is the Evidence?
Those who start “transitioning” to the other sex may “persist” or “desist.” Persisters go on to transition. Desisters choose to stop and accept their biological sex. A 2013 article cited studies of 246 children with gender dysphoria. Of those, 207 desisted before being treated with puberty blockers. The same article reported a more recent study of 127 children. Of those, 80 chose not to begin puberty blockers. So 287 (77 percent) of 373 children desisted before treatment. Reversibility was not an issue for them.
What about after starting treatment? A 2018 study at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam reported 333 adolescents who started on puberty blockers. All except 6 (1.9 percent) went on to take cross-sex hormones. The study did not report the ages at which the 6 desisted. Were they still within the normal range of puberty onset? What were their lives like afterwards? We simply don’t know.
A More Recent Study
A 2020 study looked at 269 children and adolescents registered at the Curium-Leiden University gender clinic in the Netherlands. Of these, 143 (38 boys and 105 girls) started treatment with GnRHa. The youngest boy to start was 11. The youngest girl was 10. Of the original 143, 125 (87 percent) later moved directly from GnRHa to cross-sex hormones.
According to the study, the high rate of persisters might have been “due to eligibility criteria that select those highly likely to pursue further gender-affirming treatment.” The authors also noted that “due to the observational character of the study, it is not possible to say if GnRHa treatment itself influenced the outcome.”
The 2020 study did follow up on those who did not move directly from GnRHa to cross-sex hormones. Most of them were not really desisters. Instead, they pursued alternate routes to transition. Only five (4 girls and 1 boy) no longer wanted cross-sex treatment. Combining the numbers from 2018 and 2020, there were 11 desisters out of 476 children who started on puberty blockers (about 2 percent).
Why is the rate of desistence among those who start on puberty blockers so much smaller than those who never started — 2 percent versus 77 percent? Perhaps it has to do with the selective effect of “eligibility criteria,” as the Leiden report suggested. Perhaps it has to do with the transgender-supportive counseling received by children undergoing puberty suppression for gender dysphoria.
Or perhaps it has to do with the social effects of delaying normal development. Imagine being a 16-year-old boy with the voice and genitals of an 11-year-old. Or being a 16-year-old girl with no breasts or pubic hair. Would you prefer to hang out with a transgender-friendly peer-support group? Or would you choose to rejoin your non-transgendering contemporaries?
A Point of No Return?
Given the lack of evidence, British pediatrician Christopher Richards and two others wrote in 2019 that puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children are a “momentous step in the dark.” Since almost all children who start on them go on to take cross-sex hormones, it seems that the “completely reversible” claim is exaggerated.
Critics argue that children below the age of 18 are not capable of making life-transforming decisions. But even if they are, it is misleading to tell them that puberty blockers are just “buying time” for them to explore their gender identity. It would be far more truthful to tell them — and their parents — something like the following:
“We can give you medicine that will block changes in puberty that you might find disturbing. According to the evidence, if you don’t take the medicine there is at least a three out of four chance that you will grow up happy with the body you have. On the other hand, once you start taking the medicine there is a 98 percent chance that you will go on to take cross-sex hormones. Those hormones will probably make you sterile, and you may have to take them for the rest of your life.”
In October 2020, a British High Court agreed that “the vast majority” of children receiving puberty blockers “proceed to the use of cross-sex hormones.” These have “potential life changing consequences for a child.” So “it is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent.” It is also “doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences.” The British National Health Service immediately stopped offering puberty blockers to children under 16.
The bottom line is that, in practice, puberty blockers do not delay the momentous decision to transition to the other sex. In almost every case, they are the momentous decision. For children with gender dysphoria, blocking puberty is not just buying time. It is more like a point of no return.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-11--Darwin and the Devolution of Story

Darwin and the Devolution of Story

Think about great movies , novels , and plays .
They probe the physical world of flesh and blood and , at the same time , draw us into things spiritual and immaterial : the sublime and the ridiculous ; love , heroism , envy and prejudice ; good and evil .
But a strain of modern thought says that those immaterial things aren ’ t real .
Darwinian materialism holds that all species evolved from the first tiny cell in a process without guidance or design .
And the human mind is no exception .
Harvard evolutionist E. O.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the physical brain , and the brain as “ the product of genetic evolution by natural selection.
” On this view , if fiction reaches toward a higher plane , then it reaches toward an illusion , since matter and energy are the only fundamental reality .
Free will , good and evil , love and heroism , all are a mirage .
As for our favorite movies , novels , and plays , along with our favorite songs and paintings , all of these artistic creations , according to Wilson , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evolution of our nervous and sensory tissues.
” He ’ s serious .
“ To treat them as other than objects of biological inquiry , ” he says , “ is simply to aim too low.
” 1 Wilson is suggesting that his approach to the arts is nobler than the traditional view .
But treating art as a mere byproduct of Darwinian evolution doesn ’ t ennoble our understanding of art .
It undermines the very foundation for saying that art or anything else can be noble or low or wicked .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ few of our ancestors had a mutation that led them to imagine there is a spiritual dimension and that things like nobility actually exist .
This illusion supposedly helped them survive , reproduce , and pass the mutation along from one generation to the next in a growing population of deluded but successful ancestors .
These creatures eventually worked out their delusion in everything from religion to art .
Darwinian materialism suggests , more specifically , that the impulse toward artistic creation is merely the human songbird attracting a mate — great art @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thus does modern evolutionary thinking impoverish our understanding of art and the artist .
It also impoverishes the content of particular works of art .
Works shaped by the Darwinian outlook tend to present humans as mere animals , or as hapless cogs in a pitiless meat grinder .
They present the material world as the only reality , and life as ultimately meaningless .
This is an impoverishment because life is ultimately meaningful , not meaningless ; the material world isn ’ t the only reality ; and humans are animals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ image of God , with stewardship capacity and a high calling .
True , there are great and gifted artists who embrace Darwinian materialism , and yet whose work retains much goodness , beauty , and truth , including insights into human nature and the human struggle .
I ’ m not arguing that faith in Darwinian materialism utterly bankrupts art .
I ’ m arguing that it compromises , mars , or to a significant degree impoverishes artistic creations .
I will say more tomorrow about these effects .
Editor ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salvo Magazine as “ Art for Nothing ” and is republished here with permission .

Photo: Detail of Darwin statue, Natural History Museum, London, by Rept0n1x (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Think about great movies, novels, and plays. They probe the physical world of flesh and blood and, at the same time, draw us into things spiritual and immaterial: the sublime and the ridiculous; love, heroism, envy and prejudice; good and evil.
But a strain of modern thought says that those immaterial things aren’t real. Darwinian materialism holds that all species evolved from the first tiny cell in a process without guidance or design. And the human mind is no exception. Harvard evolutionist E. O. Wilson describes it as just a byproduct of the physical brain, and the brain as “the product of genetic evolution by natural selection.”
On this view, if fiction reaches toward a higher plane, then it reaches toward an illusion, since matter and energy are the only fundamental reality. Free will, good and evil, love and heroism, all are a mirage.
As for our favorite movies, novels, and plays, along with our favorite songs and paintings, all of these artistic creations, according to Wilson, have “been produced by the genetic evolution of our nervous and sensory tissues.”
He’s serious. “To treat them as other than objects of biological inquiry,” he says, “is simply to aim too low.”1
Impoverishing Art and Artists
Wilson is suggesting that his approach to the arts is nobler than the traditional view. But treating art as a mere byproduct of Darwinian evolution doesn’t ennoble our understanding of art. It undermines the very foundation for saying that art or anything else can be noble or low or wicked.
If Darwinian materialism is right, a few of our ancestors had a mutation that led them to imagine there is a spiritual dimension and that things like nobility actually exist. This illusion supposedly helped them survive, reproduce, and pass the mutation along from one generation to the next in a growing population of deluded but successful ancestors. These creatures eventually worked out their delusion in everything from religion to art.
Darwinian materialism suggests, more specifically, that the impulse toward artistic creation is merely the human songbird attracting a mate — great art as the byproduct of sexual selection.
Thus does modern evolutionary thinking impoverish our understanding of art and the artist.
It also impoverishes the content of particular works of art. Works shaped by the Darwinian outlook tend to present humans as mere animals, or as hapless cogs in a pitiless meat grinder. They present the material world as the only reality, and life as ultimately meaningless.
This is an impoverishment because life is ultimately meaningful, not meaningless; the material world isn’t the only reality; and humans are animals, yes, but ones made in the image of God, with stewardship capacity and a high calling.
True, there are great and gifted artists who embrace Darwinian materialism, and yet whose work retains much goodness, beauty, and truth, including insights into human nature and the human struggle. I’m not arguing that faith in Darwinian materialism utterly bankrupts art. I’m arguing that it compromises, mars, or to a significant degree impoverishes artistic creations. I will say more tomorrow about these effects.
Notes
E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Harvard UP, 1978), pp. 195, 204.
Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in Salvo Magazine as “Art for Nothing” and is republished here with permission.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-11--Has Neuroscience “Proved” that the Mind Is Just the Brain?

Last month , materialist neurologist Steven Novella ( at Yale University School of Medicine ) made a rather astonishing claim in a post at his Neurologica blog : A recent open-access study of learning and decision-making in mice shows that the human mind is merely what the human brain does .
That ’ s a lot for mice to prove .
In the study , the mice were trained to choose holes from which food is provided .
Their brain activity was measured as they learned and decided which holes were best .
The research looks specifically at quick and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and involves analysis of the situation .
The investigators found that analysis-based decisions in the mice involve brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex , which is a region of the brain in the fissure between the hemispheres .
From the standpoint of understanding the mind-brain relationship , this study is unremarkable .
There is no doubt that thinking usually involves brain activity of some sort .
Dualists ( who think that the human mind uses the brain but is not identical with it ) and materialists ( who think that the mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have no disagreement here .
This study details the correlative brain activity in mice , which is nice to know .
But Dr. Novella takes this mundane study and draws a ludicrous conclusion : I also feel obligated to point out that research like this completely destroys any notion of dualism — that mental function exists somehow outside of or separate from the biological functioning of the brain .
So far , the “ neuroscience ” hypothesis , that mental function is brain function , is working quite well .
The brain is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can figure out how it works by studying it .
Even the most sophisticated cognitive processes , such as analytical decision-making , are demonstrably happening in the brain .
Further , not only is there zero evidence for the dualist hypothesis , it is completely unnecessary , which is a fate in science even worse than being wrong .
Nonsense .
Novella has been trying to sell his materialist ideology in the guise of neuroscience for more than a decade .
This is only the most recent in a host of his bizarre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The materialist hypothesis — that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions , and every single prediction has been validated.
” That ’ s a beautiful example of the Dunning-Kruger effect ( people overestimate their mastery of a situation they don ’ t understand ) .
In neuroscience , materialism is the answer only if you don ’ t understand the questions .
Read the rest at Mind Matters , published by Discovery Institute ’ s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence .

Photo credit: Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR , via Wikimedia Commons.
Last month, materialist neurologist Steven Novella (at Yale University School of Medicine) made a rather astonishing claim in a post at his Neurologica blog: A recent open-access study of learning and decision-making in mice shows that the human mind is merely what the human brain does. That’s a lot for mice to prove.
In the study, the mice were trained to choose holes from which food is provided. Their brain activity was measured as they learned and decided which holes were best. The research looks specifically at quick and intuitive decision-making vs. decision-making that is slower and involves analysis of the situation. The investigators found that analysis-based decisions in the mice involve brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is a region of the brain in the fissure between the hemispheres.
Understanding the Mind-Brain Relationship
From the standpoint of understanding the mind-brain relationship, this study is unremarkable. There is no doubt that thinking usually involves brain activity of some sort. Dualists (who think that the human mind uses the brain but is not identical with it) and materialists (who think that the mind is just what the brain does) have no disagreement here. This study details the correlative brain activity in mice, which is nice to know. But Dr. Novella takes this mundane study and draws a ludicrous conclusion:
I also feel obligated to point out that research like this completely destroys any notion of dualism — that mental function exists somehow outside of or separate from the biological functioning of the brain. So far, the “neuroscience” hypothesis, that mental function is brain function, is working quite well. The brain is a complex biological computer, and we can figure out how it works by studying it. Even the most sophisticated cognitive processes, such as analytical decision-making, are demonstrably happening in the brain. Further, not only is there zero evidence for the dualist hypothesis, it is completely unnecessary, which is a fate in science even worse than being wrong.
Nonsense. Novella has been trying to sell his materialist ideology in the guise of neuroscience for more than a decade. This is only the most recent in a host of his bizarre claims, including his 2008 assertion that “The materialist hypothesis — that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated.”
That’s a beautiful example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (people overestimate their mastery of a situation they don’t understand). In neuroscience, materialism is the answer only if you don’t understand the questions.
Read the rest at Mind Matters, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-11--Examining Causes of Gender Dysphoria

Examining Causes of Gender Dysphoria

Author ’ s note : This is Part Six of a seven-part series about transgenderism .
Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person , any gender non-conforming person , or any person attracted to members of the same sex .
I write as a developmental biologist ( Berkeley PhD ) , and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children .
WARNING : Parts of this series contain explicit language .
Reader discretion is advised .
I ’ ve spent most of my career as a biologist writing about embryos and evolution .
Transgenderism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read a news story in October 2019 .
The story reported that a Texas court had granted sole custody of a seven-year-old boy to his surrogate mother .
She planned to transition him to a girl by starting him on a puberty blocker as early as age nine .
But his father , who until October shared joint custody of the child , opposed the plan .
The couple had divorced when the boy was three .
According to the surrogate mother , the boy had decided at that time that he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a girl ’ s name and had him wear dresses .
When he was old enough , she sent him to school as a girl .
But the father and others reported that when the child was with him he behaved happily like a boy .
Until October 2019 , I had no idea that the movement to transgender children had become so powerful .
I also had no idea of the extent to which the government was condoning it .
For example , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But it looks the other way when the drugs are prescribed “ off-label.
” I continued to read about the Texas case .
Then a cell phone video surfaced of the boy talking to his father soon after the parents divorced .
“ You ’ re a boy , right ?
” the father asks his three-year-old son .
“ No , ” the child responds , “ I ’ m a girl.
” What Are the Causes of Gender Dysphoria ?
Not all cases are like the one described above .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 2020 , HBO released “ Transhood , ” a documentary about four children .
One of the children is a boy named Phoenix .
The documentary shows his mother telling him at age four that he ’ s a girl .
Yet there are also children who start insisting as early as age three that they ’ re in a body of the wrong sex .
No one knows the cause ( s ) of such cases of childhood gender dysphoria .
Part One of this series pointed out that neuroscience has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsible .
Differences in child-rearing and parental attitudes have not been well studied .
Nor has the possible effect of sexual abuse .
What about spiritual influences ?
Many people , even in the modern world , are convinced that spirits can influence our thoughts .
This includes the thoughts of young children .
But modern science , dominated as it is by materialistic philosophy , does not acknowledge such influences .
So modern science has not developed methods to study them .
In recent years , there has been increased interest in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autism .
Autism is not a discrete phenomenon , but a range of behaviors called “ autism spectrum disorder ” ( ASD ) .
A 2019 survey of parental reports of children from 6 to 12 years old found “ associations ” between ASD and variant gender attitudes and behavior .
A 2020 review of the literature about adults suggested “ a prevalence of 6-26 % [ of ASD ] in transgender populations , higher than the general population , but no different from individuals attending psychiatry clinics.
” Thus , “ Low-level @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between ASD and gender dysphoria ( GD ) .
But correlation does not imply causation .
ASD and GD might be due to a third unidentified cause .
So these studies bring us no closer to understanding the cause ( s ) of childhood gender dysphoria .
In 2018 physician Lisa Littman reported a recent dramatic increase in what she called “ rapid onset gender dysphoria ” ( ROGD ) .
ROGD affects adolescents and young adults , about 83 percent of whom are female .
According to Littman , “ parents have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria.
” This appears “ for the first time during puberty or even after its completion.
” Parents have also reported that ROGD “ seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one , multiple , or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric ” around the same time .
So according to Littman , ROGD tends to appear in “ clusters ” of individuals in close contact with each other .
The contact can be direct or through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peer contagion , ” though she emphasized that the term “ is not meant in any way to characterize [ ROGD ] as a disease or disease-like state , or to convey any value judgment.
” Doctoral student Arjee Restar criticized Littman ’ s article for “ methodological flaws in the conceptualization and design of the study.
” According to Restar , research on transgender people should be “ non-stigmatizing ” and “ non-pathologizing.
” In response , Littman made some corrections to her original article .
But her results and conclusions remained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalist Abigail Shrier published Irreversible Damage : The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters .
Shrier interviewed numerous parents and their daughters .
She also interviewed educators and medical professionals .
Some affirmed what Shrier called the “ dogged ideology ” that promotes irreversible transgender treatments .
Some opposed it .
But Shrier emphasized that “ the social contagion captivating teens has nothing to do with those who have suffered gender dysphoria since childhood.
” So ROGD does not help us to understand the cause ( s ) of the latter .
Understanding the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is relevant to deciding on the best treatment .
Yet we remain profoundly ignorant of the cause ( s ) of childhood gender dysphoria .
As we saw in Part Four of this series , gender dysphoria is officially a “ mental disorder.
” But it is routinely treated socially , hormonally , and surgically ( the Dutch Protocol ) .
Given our ignorance , it seems that such treatments are a “ momentous step in the dark.
” Sadly , children with gender dysphoria suffer .
They may even contemplate or commit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reduces the risk of suicide .
But does it ?
Part Seven in this series begins by examining the evidence for this .

Photo credit: Kyle via Unsplash.
Author’s note: This is Part Six of a seven-part series about transgenderism. Nothing in the series is intended to disparage any transgender person, any gender non-conforming person, or any person attracted to members of the same sex. I write as a developmental biologist (Berkeley PhD), and I focus on evidence pertaining to transgender treatments for children.
WARNING: Parts of this series contain explicit language. Reader discretion is advised.
I’ve spent most of my career as a biologist writing about embryos and evolution. Transgenderism was not on my radar until I read a news story in October 2019. The story reported that a Texas court had granted sole custody of a seven-year-old boy to his surrogate mother. She planned to transition him to a girl by starting him on a puberty blocker as early as age nine. But his father, who until October shared joint custody of the child, opposed the plan.
The couple had divorced when the boy was three. According to the surrogate mother, the boy had decided at that time that he was a girl. So she gave him a girl’s name and had him wear dresses. When he was old enough, she sent him to school as a girl. But the father and others reported that when the child was with him he behaved happily like a boy.
Until October 2019, I had no idea that the movement to transgender children had become so powerful. I also had no idea of the extent to which the government was condoning it. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. But it looks the other way when the drugs are prescribed “off-label.”
I continued to read about the Texas case. Then a cell phone video surfaced of the boy talking to his father soon after the parents divorced. “You’re a boy, right?” the father asks his three-year-old son. “No,” the child responds, “I’m a girl.”
“Who told you you’re a girl?” the father asks.
“Mommy,” the child answers.
What Are the Causes of Gender Dysphoria?
Not all cases are like the one described above. But some are. On November 12, 2020, HBO released “Transhood,” a documentary about four children. One of the children is a boy named Phoenix. The documentary shows his mother telling him at age four that he’s a girl.
Yet there are also children who start insisting as early as age three that they’re in a body of the wrong sex. No one knows the cause(s) of such cases of childhood gender dysphoria. Part One of this series pointed out that neuroscience has not settled whether brain differences might be responsible. Differences in child-rearing and parental attitudes have not been well studied. Nor has the possible effect of sexual abuse.
What about spiritual influences? Many people, even in the modern world, are convinced that spirits can influence our thoughts. This includes the thoughts of young children. But modern science, dominated as it is by materialistic philosophy, does not acknowledge such influences. So modern science has not developed methods to study them.
In recent years, there has been increased interest in a possible connection between gender dysphoria and autism. Autism is not a discrete phenomenon, but a range of behaviors called “autism spectrum disorder” (ASD). A 2019 survey of parental reports of children from 6 to 12 years old found “associations” between ASD and variant gender attitudes and behavior.
A 2020 review of the literature about adults suggested “a prevalence of 6-26% [of ASD] in transgender populations, higher than the general population, but no different from individuals attending psychiatry clinics.” Thus, “Low-level evidence exists to suggest a link” between ASD and gender dysphoria (GD).
But correlation does not imply causation. ASD and GD might be due to a third unidentified cause. So these studies bring us no closer to understanding the cause(s) of childhood gender dysphoria.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria
In 2018 physician Lisa Littman reported a recent dramatic increase in what she called “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD). ROGD affects adolescents and young adults, about 83 percent of whom are female. According to Littman, “parents have reported that their children seemed to experience a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria.” This appears “for the first time during puberty or even after its completion.” Parents have also reported that ROGD “seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric” around the same time.
So according to Littman, ROGD tends to appear in “clusters” of individuals in close contact with each other. The contact can be direct or through the Internet. Littman called this “peer contagion,” though she emphasized that the term “is not meant in any way to characterize [ROGD] as a disease or disease-like state, or to convey any value judgment.”
Doctoral student Arjee Restar criticized Littman’s article for “methodological flaws in the conceptualization and design of the study.” According to Restar, research on transgender people should be “non-stigmatizing” and “non-pathologizing.” In response, Littman made some corrections to her original article. But her results and conclusions remained essentially unchanged.
In 2020, investigative journalist Abigail Shrier published Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Shrier interviewed numerous parents and their daughters. She also interviewed educators and medical professionals. Some affirmed what Shrier called the “dogged ideology” that promotes irreversible transgender treatments. Some opposed it. But Shrier emphasized that “the social contagion captivating teens has nothing to do with those who have suffered gender dysphoria since childhood.” So ROGD does not help us to understand the cause(s) of the latter.
A Momentous Step in the Dark
Understanding the cause(s) of a condition is relevant to deciding on the best treatment. Yet we remain profoundly ignorant of the cause(s) of childhood gender dysphoria. As we saw in Part Four of this series, gender dysphoria is officially a “mental disorder.” But it is routinely treated socially, hormonally, and surgically (the Dutch Protocol). Given our ignorance, it seems that such treatments are a “momentous step in the dark.”
Sadly, children with gender dysphoria suffer. They may even contemplate or commit suicide. Transgender advocates claim that transitioning reduces the risk of suicide. But does it? Part Seven in this series begins by examining the evidence for this.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-12--Literary Naturalism and a Time Machine

Literary Naturalism and a Time Machine

Yesterday I noted the effects of Darwinian materialism on literature .
The first place we can see that is in the literary movement known as naturalism .
Émile Zola , Thomas Hardy , George Eliot , Theodore Dreiser , Jack London , and Stephen Crane are examples of authors who wrote in this vein .
Some , such as Hardy , began as literary realists and , in the wake of Darwin ’ s theory of evolution , were drawn into the naturalist mode .
As the Encyclopedia Britannica succinctly explains , naturalism “ was inspired by adaptation of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ especially the Darwinian view of nature , ” and it emphasized man ’ s accidental , physiological nature rather than his moral or rational qualities .
Individual characters were seen as helpless products of heredity and environment , motivated by strong instinctual drives from within and harassed by social and economic pressures from without .
As such , they had little will or responsibility for their fates , and the prognosis for their “ cases ” was pessimistic at the outset .
There were also authors influenced by Darwinism who wrote in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s science fiction classic The Time Machine ( 1895 ) , the protagonist travels hundreds of thousands of years into the future only to discover that humans have evolved — devolved really — into two separate races .
One is a thuggish underworld group .
The other lives above ground and is hardly more ambitious than a flock of sheep .
The inventor-protagonist then travels further forward in time and finds that all traces of humanity have disappeared .
The sun is burning out , and life on Earth is heading for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s vision of a meaningless universe grinding pointlessly toward a meaningless end .
In a similarly cheerless vein , Paul Bowles ’ s 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky depicts the blue sky as a façade protecting us from the reality of a dark , meaningless universe , with human civilization serving a similar function .
In an interview with The Paris Review , Bowles commented : If I ’ m persuaded that our life is predicated upon violence , that the entire structure of what we call civilization , the scaffolding that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millennia , can collapse at any moment , then whatever I write is going to be affected by that assumption .
The process of life presupposes violence , in the plant world the same as the animal world .
Why assume that life is ultimately meaningless and life predicated on violence ?
Likely because those are tenets of Darwinian materialism : matter is ultimately all there is , and humans and other creatures evolved in a pitiless , dog-eat-dog process of mutation and natural selection — the survival of the fittest .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hollywood in this direction , not through his screenplays but through two of his books , African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative .
Ardrey pressed the idea that humans evolved to be violent — that we ’ re the vicious descendants of vicious apes .
Two filmmakers influenced by him are Sam Peckinpah , director of the 1969 western The Wild Bunch , and Stanley Kubrick , director of Spartacus , A Clockwork Orange , and the science fiction classic 2001 : A Space Odyssey .
I will say more about the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ note : This essay originally appeared in Salvo Magazine as “ Art for Nothing ” and is republished here with permission .

Photo: H. G. Wells, c. 1918, via Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday I noted the effects of Darwinian materialism on literature. The first place we can see that is in the literary movement known as naturalism. Émile Zola, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and Stephen Crane are examples of authors who wrote in this vein. Some, such as Hardy, began as literary realists and, in the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution, were drawn into the naturalist mode.
As the Encyclopedia Britannica succinctly explains, naturalism “was inspired by adaptation of the principles and methods of natural science, especially the Darwinian view of nature,” and it emphasized
man’s accidental, physiological nature rather than his moral or rational qualities. Individual characters were seen as helpless products of heredity and environment, motivated by strong instinctual drives from within and harassed by social and economic pressures from without. As such, they had little will or responsibility for their fates, and the prognosis for their “cases” was pessimistic at the outset.
There were also authors influenced by Darwinism who wrote in a fantastical mode. In H. G. Wells’s science fiction classic The Time Machine (1895), the protagonist travels hundreds of thousands of years into the future only to discover that humans have evolved — devolved really — into two separate races. One is a thuggish underworld group. The other lives above ground and is hardly more ambitious than a flock of sheep. The inventor-protagonist then travels further forward in time and finds that all traces of humanity have disappeared. The sun is burning out, and life on Earth is heading for extinction. This aptly conveys Darwinian materialism’s vision of a meaningless universe grinding pointlessly toward a meaningless end.
Beyond the Sheltering Sky
In a similarly cheerless vein, Paul Bowles’s 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky depicts the blue sky as a façade protecting us from the reality of a dark, meaningless universe, with human civilization serving a similar function. In an interview with The Paris Review, Bowles commented:
If I’m persuaded that our life is predicated upon violence, that the entire structure of what we call civilization, the scaffolding that we’ve built up over the millennia, can collapse at any moment, then whatever I write is going to be affected by that assumption. The process of life presupposes violence, in the plant world the same as the animal world.
Why assume that life is ultimately meaningless and life predicated on violence? Likely because those are tenets of Darwinian materialism: matter is ultimately all there is, and humans and other creatures evolved in a pitiless, dog-eat-dog process of mutation and natural selection — the survival of the fittest.
In the 1960s, screenwriter Robert Ardrey influenced Hollywood in this direction, not through his screenplays but through two of his books, African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative. Ardrey pressed the idea that humans evolved to be violent — that we’re the vicious descendants of vicious apes. Two filmmakers influenced by him are Sam Peckinpah, director of the 1969 western The Wild Bunch, and Stanley Kubrick, director of Spartacus, A Clockwork Orange, and the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I will say more about the last of these tomorrow.
Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in Salvo Magazine as “Art for Nothing” and is republished here with permission.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-12-13--Darwinism, Storytelling, and the Futurist ET Myth

The classic science fiction movie 2001 : A Space Odyssey , which I referred to here yesterday , doesn ’ t begin in space but in the prehistoric past , with a little tribe of pre-human hominids .
The opening scene shows an African landscape where water is scarce .
The words appear on screen , “ The Dawn of Man.
” This little ape-like tribe lacks the mental capacity even to use animal bones as weapons , and they ’ ve been driven from their watering hole by another little tribe .
The next day , a strange , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , shaped roughly like a domino , but perfectly smooth and geometrical .
It emits a strange noise .
The ape-like creatures draw near , terrified but also fascinated .
Eventually one of them touches the monolith .
His fellow tribesmen follow suit .
A bit later our protagonist is toying with some animal bones and thinking .
Suddenly , he gets an idea .
He picks up one of the longer bones and tentatively strikes the ground with it .
He grows a little bolder .
He tries striking some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , thrilled by the idea now dawning on him : the bone can be used as a tool .
.
.
as a weapon .
He raises his arm and brings the bone crashing down on an animal skull , which smashes to bits .
The implication is clear : the alien monolith has somehow bequeathed to him and his little tribe a sudden quantum leap in brain power .
In the next scene they use the animal bones to drive away the tribe that earlier drove them away from their watering hole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the enemy hominids lies battered and motionless at their feet , our protagonist tosses the bone up into the air in ecstatic triumph .
At this point the film drops into slow motion and , as the bone spins through the air , the scene switches to a scene in space , with the bone suddenly replaced by another human tool of a similar shape , though far larger : a space vessel in the near future of the modern age .
These opening minutes of the film convey several themes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Darwinian idea that humans descended from ape-like ancestors .
There is also here the central premise of Robert Ardrey ’ s Territorial Imperative — man as a violent territorial animal , programmed by millions of years of evolution to kill and conquer .
And lastly , the film provides an explanation , if only fictional , for the great gap between apes and humans : an alien monolith came down and , upon being touched , bequeathed our ancient ancestors with a major brain boost , setting us on a trajectory stretching from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ space travel .
Both in this opening scene and later in the story , the film epitomizes a futurist ET myth that Michael Keas excavates and describes in his excellent recent book Unbelievable : 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion .
To grasp what Keas means by a futurist ET myth , some additional background is helpful .
Darwinian materialism , taken at face value , strips life and the world of higher meaning and purpose .
( H. G. Wells deserves credit for facing those implications in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who accept Darwinism don ’ t want to go there .
One escape hatch is the idea of humanity rescued and exalted by a race of wise and advanced extra-terrestrials — a substitute god to replace the God of the Bible Darwin is said to have killed with his theory of evolution .
This is the ET myth that Kubrick reenacts in 2001 : A Space Odyssey .
It ’ s the artist whose vision of reality has been impoverished by Darwinism grasping for meaning and purpose in a mirage .
Faith in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the slide into ugliness and formlessness in the arts .
It is also a key contributor to the postmodern turn toward a hermeneutics of relativism and nihilism , championed in the deconstructionist criticism of thinkers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida .
But that ’ s an essay for another time .
Here , suffice to say that Darwinian materialism ’ s impoverishing effect on literature is so much of a problem that my alma mater , a Christian university in Texas , published an anthology of literary works that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provide balance for the typical literary anthologies assigned to students in freshman and sophomore English .
It ’ s called Shadow and Light : Literature and the Life of Faith .
It includes short stories and poems from various great authors who maintained faith in a cosmos that is more than matter — John Milton , Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Flannery O ’ Connor , Isaac Bashevis Singer , John Updike , and various others .
Editor ’ s note : This essay originally appeared in Salvo Magazine as “ Art for Nothing ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Photo: Humans and hominids, by Carolyn WIlczynski, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.
The classic science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I referred to here yesterday, doesn’t begin in space but in the prehistoric past, with a little tribe of pre-human hominids. The opening scene shows an African landscape where water is scarce. The words appear on screen, “The Dawn of Man.”
This little ape-like tribe lacks the mental capacity even to use animal bones as weapons, and they’ve been driven from their watering hole by another little tribe. The next day, a strange, tall black monolith appears in their midst, shaped roughly like a domino, but perfectly smooth and geometrical. It emits a strange noise. The ape-like creatures draw near, terrified but also fascinated. Eventually one of them touches the monolith. His fellow tribesmen follow suit.
A bit later our protagonist is toying with some animal bones and thinking. Suddenly, he gets an idea. He picks up one of the longer bones and tentatively strikes the ground with it. He grows a little bolder. He tries striking some of the other bones. He grows more excited, thrilled by the idea now dawning on him: the bone can be used as a tool . . . as a weapon. He raises his arm and brings the bone crashing down on an animal skull, which smashes to bits.
The implication is clear: the alien monolith has somehow bequeathed to him and his little tribe a sudden quantum leap in brain power. In the next scene they use the animal bones to drive away the tribe that earlier drove them away from their watering hole. When the victory is complete and one of the enemy hominids lies battered and motionless at their feet, our protagonist tosses the bone up into the air in ecstatic triumph.
At this point the film drops into slow motion and, as the bone spins through the air, the scene switches to a scene in space, with the bone suddenly replaced by another human tool of a similar shape, though far larger: a space vessel in the near future of the modern age.
An Escape Hatch
These opening minutes of the film convey several themes. Most obviously, they reinforce the Darwinian idea that humans descended from ape-like ancestors. There is also here the central premise of Robert Ardrey’s Territorial Imperative — man as a violent territorial animal, programmed by millions of years of evolution to kill and conquer.
And lastly, the film provides an explanation, if only fictional, for the great gap between apes and humans: an alien monolith came down and, upon being touched, bequeathed our ancient ancestors with a major brain boost, setting us on a trajectory stretching from primitive bone tools to the glories of space travel.
Both in this opening scene and later in the story, the film epitomizes a futurist ET myth that Michael Keas excavates and describes in his excellent recent book Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion.
To grasp what Keas means by a futurist ET myth, some additional background is helpful. Darwinian materialism, taken at face value, strips life and the world of higher meaning and purpose. (H. G. Wells deserves credit for facing those implications in The Time Machine.) But many who accept Darwinism don’t want to go there. One escape hatch is the idea of humanity rescued and exalted by a race of wise and advanced extra-terrestrials — a substitute god to replace the God of the Bible Darwin is said to have killed with his theory of evolution.
This is the ET myth that Kubrick reenacts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the artist whose vision of reality has been impoverished by Darwinism grasping for meaning and purpose in a mirage.
Faith in More than Matter
Darwinism is partly responsible for the slide into ugliness and formlessness in the arts. It is also a key contributor to the postmodern turn toward a hermeneutics of relativism and nihilism, championed in the deconstructionist criticism of thinkers such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. But that’s an essay for another time.
Here, suffice to say that Darwinian materialism’s impoverishing effect on literature is so much of a problem that my alma mater, a Christian university in Texas, published an anthology of literary works that are not nihilistic and materialistic, just to provide balance for the typical literary anthologies assigned to students in freshman and sophomore English.
It’s called Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith. It includes short stories and poems from various great authors who maintained faith in a cosmos that is more than matter — John Milton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Updike, and various others.
Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in Salvo Magazine as “Art for Nothing” and is republished here with permission.