Anglican Samizdat

From here:

Psychologists have long known that many people are prejudiced towards others based on group affiliations, be they racial, ethnic, religious, or even political. However, we know far less about why people are prone to prejudice in the first place. New research, using monkeys, suggests that the roots lie deep in our evolutionary past…….

Overall, the results support an evolutionary basis for prejudice.

All of which is bad news for Darwinists who believe that evolution is responsible for human morality: it makes racism a moral good.

On the other hand, it’s good news for racist Darwinists.

From here:

The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Now some ID critics today are so fearful of lending any credence towards intelligent design that they are recommending that biologists stop using the word “design” entirely.

A recent article in the journal Bioessays by its editor Andrew Moore, titled “We need a new language for evolution. . . everywhere,” suggests that biologists should stop using the term “design.” According to Moore, under “Evolution old-speak” we would say, “Structure X is designed to perform…” but under “Evolution new-speak” we must simply say, “Structure X performs Y.”

This means that, since Richard Dawkins’ head isn’t designed to hold his ears six inches apart but merely performs the function of doing so, it is an even less important organ that I first thought.

A poke in the eye to atheist fundamentalism à la Dawkins:

Charles Darwin complained quite crossly in his autobiography that, despite many denials, people still kept saying he thought natural selection was the sole cause of evolutionary development. “Great is the force of misrepresentation,” he grumbled. Had he known that, a century later, his alleged followers would be promoting that very doctrine as central to his teaching, and extending it into the wilder reaches of psychology and physics, he might have got even crosser. Darwin’s objection was surely not just that he could see other possible causes. He saw that the doctrine itself did not make sense. No filter, however powerful, can be the only cause of what flows out of it. Questions about what comes into that filter have to be just as important. The proposed solution bears no proportion to the size of the problem.

Since his time, biologists have discovered a huge amount that is really interesting and important about internal factors in organisms that affect reproduction. This powerful little book uses that material to challenge sharply the whole neo-Darwinist orthodoxy – the assumption that, essentially, all evolution is due to mutation and selection. Its authors do not, of course, deny that this kind of classical natural selection happens. But they argue strongly that there is now no reason to privilege it over a crowd of other possible causes. Not only are most mutations known to be destructive but the material of inheritance itself has turned out to be far more complex, and to provide a much wider repertoire of untapped possibilities, than used to be thought. To an impressive extent, organisms provide the materials for changes in their own future. As the authors put it, “Before any phenotype can be, so to speak, ‘offered’ to selection by the environment, a host of internal constraints have to be satisfied.” Epigenetic effects, resulting from different expressions of the same genes, can make a huge difference. And genes themselves are now known not to be independent, bean-like items connected to particular transmitted traits, but aspects of a most intricate process, sensitive to all sorts of internal factors, so that in many ways the same genes can result in a different creature. Recent work in “evodevo” – evolutionary developmental biology – shows how paths of development can themselves change and can change the resulting organism. And again, forces such as “molecular drive”, which ­rearrange the genes, can also have that effect.

Besides this – perhaps even more interestingly – the laws of physics and chemistry themselves take a hand in the developmental process. Matter itself behaves in characteristic ways which are distinctly non-random. Many natural patterns, such as the arrangement of buds on a stem, accord with the series of Fibonacci numbers, and Fibonacci spirals are also observed in spiral nebulae. There are, moreover, no flying pigs, on account of the way in which bones arrange themselves. I am pleased to see that Fodor and ­Piattelli Palmarini introduce these facts in a chapter headed “The Return of the Laws of Form” and connect them with the names of D’Arcy Thompson, Conrad Waddington and Ilya Prigogine. Though they don’t actually mention Goethe, that reference still rightly picks up an important, genuinely scientific strand of investigation which was for some time oddly eclipsed by neo-Darwinist fascination with the drama of randomness and the illusory seductions of simplicity.

This book is, of course, fighting stuff, sure to be contested by those at whom it is aimed. On the face of things, however, it strikes an outsider as an overdue and valuable onslaught on neo-Darwinist simplicities.

As this article notes “no filter, however powerful, can be the only cause of what flows out of it.” Christians have always known the force that drives the filter: God.

From the LA Times:

Today, a century and a half after Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community.

According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue. In 1914, 11 years before the Scopes “monkey” trial and four decades before the discovery of the structure of DNA, psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 U.S. scientists about their views on God. He found the scientific community evenly divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not. Scientists have unearthed many important fossils since then, but they are, if anything, more likely to believe in God today.

This isn’t particularly surprising since the ability to make rational deductions from evidence presupposes the reliability of mankind’s capacity to reason. Without the rationality of a Designer, human thought is nothing but the meaningless firing of a collection of neurons accidentally produced by the universe it is trying to make sense of; why trust it?

From the BBC:

Europe is facing a population crisis because of attacks on religion by secular writers, Britain’s chief rabbi has said.

Lord Sacks blamed Europe’s falling birth rate on a culture of “consumerism and instant gratification”.

He said the continent was “dying” and accused its citizens of not being prepared for parenthood’s “sacrifices”.

He made his comments in a lecture for Christian think tank Theos in central London on Wednesday.

The 61-year-old, who took his seat in the Lords last week, said: “Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.

“The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.”

There is a message here: secularists believe in evolution, so if evolution is true, it programs those who believe in it to stop reproducing; they have been naturally selected out and are not fit to survive.

If evolution is not true, those who believe in it are deluded. The delusion leads to the conclusion, as Richard Dawkins says, that the universe has “no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference”; this is sufficiently depressing to cause Darwinians to abort and birth-control themselves into extinction.

Either way, evolutionists lose.

And this is why an evolutionist’s attempts to lay claim to a moral framework – as Dawkins and Hitchens are fond of doing – fail. Atheistic morality does not distinguish “is” from “ought” and without cosmic justice, there is no “ought” and no morality.

This article by Dinesh D’Souza is most illuminating on the subject; the whole thing is well worth a read here:

Cosmic Justice
If evolution cannot explain how humans became moral primates, what can?

By Dinesh D’Souza
All evolutionary attempts to explain morality ultimately miss the point. They seek to explain morality, but even at their best what they explain is not morality at all. Imagine a shopkeeper who routinely increases his profits by cheating his customers. So smoothly does he do this that he is never exposed and his reputation remains unimpeached. Even though the man is successful in the game of survival, if he has a conscience it will be nagging at him from the inside. It may not be strong enough to make him change his ways, but it will at least make him feel bad and perhaps ultimately despise himself. Now where have our evolutionary explanations accounted for morality in this sense?

In fact, they haven’t accounted for it at all. These explanations all seek to reduce morality to self-interest, but if you think about it, genuine morality cannot be brought down to this level. Morality is not the voice that says, “Be truthful when it benefits you,” or “Be kind to those who are in a position to help you later.” Rather, it operates without regard to such calculations. Far from being an extension of self-interest, the voice of the impartial spectator is typically a restriction of self-interest. Think about it: If morality were simply an extension of selfishness, we wouldn’t need it. We don’t need moral prescriptions to tell people to act for their own benefit; they do that anyway. The whole point of moral prescriptions and injunctions is to get people to subordinate and curb their selfish interests.

[……]

Now let’s make the supposition that there is cosmic justice after death and ask, Does this help to explain the great mystery of human morality? It seems clear that it does. Humans recognize that there is no ultimate goodness and justice in this world, but they continue to uphold those ideals. In their interior conscience, humans judge themselves not by the standard of the shrewd self-aggrandizer but by that of the impartial spectator. We admire the good man, even when he comes to a bad end, and revile the successful scoundrel who got away with it. Evolutionary theories predict the reverse: If morality were merely a product of crafty and successful calculation, we should cherish and aspire to be crafty calculators. But we don’t. Rather, we act as if there is a moral law to which we are accountable.

ht/ Reformed Chicks Babbling

Richard Dawkins in discussing his new book, describes creationists thus:

“I don’t think they read books anyway, except for one book”:

Doesn’t that make it difficult for a creationist to read this book without feeling insulted? Won’t that hurt your goal?

No, I’m not really aiming it at creationists. I don’t think they read books anyway, except for one book. It’s aimed at the intelligent layperson who does read books and who vaguely knows a little bit about evolution and who vaguely knows that there are creationists and maybe even vaguely thinks that he’s a creationist himself, but who is curious and wants to know the evidence.

It’s just that the evidence is so enthralling, it’s so exciting. It is so wonderful that here we are on this planet and we understand why we’re here. And it’s just a sort of ecstatic feeling to understand why you exist, and I want to share that feeling with other people.

In spite of his claiming always to appeal to reason and evidence, Dawkins more often than not simply resorts to insulting those who disagree with him, presumably because he believes anyone resistant to the force of his ego is irretrievably lost and unworthy of attention.

The last paragraph of the quote is interesting in that it displays a degree of ecstatic rapture that is normally associated with mysticism, confirming my suspicion that Dawkins is indeed launching a religion. It also enshrines some pseudo-scientific nonsense: science is capable of deducing from evidence whether common descent occurred and what the mechanism was that achieved it. Science can tell us how the material universe functions; it cannot tell us why because “why” implies purpose and science knows nothing of purpose.

And about time. The fact that Dawkins would like to suppress any exploration of intelligent design in the classroom is a particularly repulsive example of totalitarian scientism.

It seems that we are programmed to believe in God:

Humans are programmed to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival, researchers claim.

A study into the way children’s brains develop suggests that during the process of evolution those with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs – possibly by working in groups to ensure the future of their community.

The findings of Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, suggest that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.

There are two possibilities:

God does actually exist and he designed us; it should come as no surprise that we are inclined to believe in him.

God does not exist and the proclivity to believe he does is a product of evolution: evolution has programmed us to believe a lie. If evolution predisposes us to believe something to be true that isn’t, we cannot trust our ability to deduce from evidence; therefore, no amount of evidence can prove evolution to be true.

Why was Dawkins’ site chosen? Natural Selection.

No Intelligent Design for Dawkins forum…

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and popular science author, famed for his no-holds-barred approach to what he sees as the unsubstantiated claims made by religion, certainly has all the proof he needs to believe in the cybercriminal underground.

Members of the discussion forum over at RichardDawkins.net all received a message, purporting to be from the forum admin which incongruously invited them to join a warez site.