"Like putting meat in a crock pot"

Pro-life folks from Live Action get abortionist LeRoy Carhart on undercover video, advising a potential... customer:



Carhart is no ordinary abortion hack. He's a hero to the pro-abortion movement, the heir apparent to George Tiller.

Here's a synopsis of Carhart's advice, from Live Action:

He casually described the abortion as a “shot into the fetus” to ensure that “[i]t’ll be dead for two days before you deliver it.” He told her the injection also causes the baby to “[get] soft, like mushy [makes squishing sound], so you push it through… so it’s like putting meat in a crock pot.” If this method is unsuccessful, he would have to remove the baby “in pieces,” using, he joked, “a pickaxe, a drill bit.” 

Both investigators asked if Carhart’s abortions “hurt” the babies. He replied by arbitrarily inventing his own parameters for when a fetus feels pain. “so, after about two to three weeks after birth… I think then they have pretty good knowledge of pain, but before that I’m not so sure that they do.” In fact, there is wide consensus in the scientific community that babies feel acute pain by 20 weeks of gestation.

Carhart's explanation would fit in nicely with the defense testimony at the Doctor's Trial in Nuremberg, which is the only thing comparable to it in modern history. 

"The job of a science teacher should be to present the evidence in favour of Darwin's beautiful theory. "

James Randerson of the Guardian wrote an essay a while back on efforts to prevent discussion of intelligent design in schools in England. His essay, with my commentary.

The origin of speciousness

School science lessons are not the place to teach children about creationism and 'intelligent design'

Growing numbers of school kids (we are told) believe in creationism. That poses a problem for teachers presenting evolution as part of the science curriculum. So they should cover religious explanations of origins alongside Darwinism.

Darwinism is an atheist explanation of origins, and is another form of religious explanation.

Evolution-- the science of biological change in populations-- is the relevant science. There are different scientific inferences that can be drawn regarding the origin of biological change. Some of these inferences point to evidence for intelligent agency in biology. Some don't. As long as they are testable theories about nature, all are science.

That was the argument put forward last week in a new book entitledTeaching About Scientific Origins. One of its editors Prof Michael Reiss, of the Institute of Education in London told the Guardian:

"The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins. While it is unlikely that they will help students who have a conflict between science and their religious beliefs to resolve the conflict, good science teaching can help them to manage it - and to learn more science.

"By not dismissing their beliefs, we can ensure that these students learn what evolutionary theory really says, and give everyone the understanding to respect the views of others," he added.

Prof Reiss, who has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is also a Church of England priest, qualifies his position in the book:

"Teaching about aspects of religion in science classes could potentially help students better understand the strengths and limitations of the ways in which science is undertaken, the nature of truth claims in science, and the importance of social contexts for science.

"I do not belong to the camp that argues that creationism is necessarily nonscientific ... Furthermore I am not convinced that something being 'nonscientific' is sufficient to disqualify it from being considered in a science lesson. An understanding of (nonscientific) context often helps in learning the content of science."

Prof. Reiss is right, in the sense that teaching students about the scientific questions regarding the origin of design and the broader question of teleology in biology is sound didactics. One cannot really understand evolution without understanding the questions that have been asked about the origin of the teleology that is manifest in living things.

Intelligent design and Darwinism are two answers to the same question: whence the design/teleology in biology? I.D. is the theory that intelligent agency is the cause of biological design. Darwinism is the theory that biological design has arisen without intelligent agency. Students cannot understand either theory without understanding the question about intelligent agency in biology, which means understanding the basis for both answers.

"Understanding" Darwinism without understanding the questions posed by intelligent design is merely indoctrination in Darwinism.

This "anything goes" approach to school science will only serve to blur the boundary between evidence-based scientific knowledge and faith.

Intelligent design is based on physical evidence for intelligent agency. It is not faith.

At best it will provide an unwelcome distraction in an already tight curriculum. At worse it has the potential to confuse children as to what science is and what it is not.

Science is not indoctrination. It is the evidence-based investigation of nature. Indoctrination in Darwinism is not science.

To borrow an example from the evolutionary biologist and popular science author Prof Steve Jones, we don't ask science teachers to spend valuable teaching time explaining why the stork theory of human reproduction won't get you many marks in the exam. Nor do we ask them to go in detail through the case for the sun revolving around the earth.

Right. When Darwinism-- the theory that intelligent agency is not discernible in biology--  is as proven as heliocentrism, we can dispense with the questions and get on with the indoctrination.

However, no one who's not in a mental institution actually believes that Darwinism is actually proven.

Darwinists' panic about teaching intelligent design is clear evidence for the opposite: Darwinists are terrified that students will find out how little evidence there is for the naturalistic foundation of their theory.

School science lessons are for giving pupils a working knowledge of our current - but of course provisional - picture of how the world works, plus the evidence underpinning that. There is too much fascinating science out there to waste time rehearsing discredited old ideas.

To understand Darwin's theory, you have to understand the question the theory addresses: is there evidence for intelligent agency in biology, or can biology be explained by a naturalistic process?

You can't understand that question unless you understand the claims of intelligent design.

The job of a science teacher should be to present the evidence in favour of Darwin's beautiful theory.

Money quote. Darwinists see science as an opportunity for indoctrination, not an opportunity for exploration. You do think our theory is beautiful, don't you? Don't you?

The new guidelines from the government on teaching evolution state that alternatives to Darwinism such as creationism and intelligent design can come into discussions on the subject, but only to illustrate what does and does not constitute a scientific theory. In stating clearly that creationism and intelligent design "should not be taught as science" they are right on the money.

"Science" is the elaboration of testable theories about nature. If Darwinism is true, then its denial-- intelligent design-- must be false. If intelligent design is not testable, and therefore not science, then Darwinism is not testable, and not science.

It's perfectly fair for teachers to teach that intelligent design is wrong. But to do so, they must teach the evidence for and against it, and adjudicate the evidence. They must teach the students the truth: intelligent design is science.

Prof Reiss is not saying that creationism is science,

Intelligent design is quite different from creationism, if creationism is understood as the belief that the first two chapters of Genesis are true in a literal sense and the Earth is a few thousand years old.

Creationism is certainly science-- it is a testable theory about nature-- but I think that the evidence is against it.

Intelligent design has nothing to do with Genesis or the age of the earth. It has to do with the inference that intelligent agency is discernible in biology. The evidence for it is overwhelming, in my view.

but his proposals seem to stem from the dangerous notion that religious views are beyond challenge. Education should be about allowing such views to be challenged.

Darwinists are all for challenging other people's religious views. But they feverishly scramble to prevent you from challenging their creation myth, which they present in science classes. They challenge your views. Don't you dare challenge theirs.

Darwinists put their religious ideology-- materialist/atheist metaphysics-- beyond challenge, which is the only thing that this kerfuffle about teaching intelligent design is really about.  They aren't interested in a discussion, much less a debate. You must not ask questions, because Darwinists know that their theory cannot bear it. It cannot bear even questions from children in school. They will use legal force to stop you from asking questions.

Darwinism is the Lysenkoism of our era.

"We're all atheists for most gods. New Atheists just go one God further."

William Lane Craig demolishes this moronic New Atheist meme.

Natural selection is empty

Jerry Fodor's and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini's book What Darwin Got Wrong is a masterpiece. Fodor is a leading philosopher, and Piatelli-Palmarini is a leading cognitive scientist. Their analysis of natural selection is meticulous and devastating. They are both atheists-- they do not come to this debate with theistic presumptions. They demonstrate that natural selection is, in their word, empty. It's a meaningless concept, that should be abandoned.

I'll try here to give a precis of their argument. I heartedly recommend buying their book-- it's available on Kindle, and although it's not an easy read, it is written with as much clarity and brevity as the subject permits. The last chapter is a very nice summary of the argument. This post is a summary of the summary.

F&P-P begin their argument with the observation that phenotypic traits on which natural selection acts are often linked at the genetic level. It is unusual to find a specific trait that can be selected without selecting for other traits. Cellular genetics is a complex inter-connected affair. A change at the level of the gene generally has complex effects on phenotype.

When we say that natural selection acts, how do we know which phenotype is the object of selection, and which are free-riders? Preservation of one trait also preserves linked traits. Gould and Lewontin recognized this dilemma. In their paper The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme they take to task the adaptationist (strict natural selection-ist) view that natural selection can select for specific phenotypes that are linked to other phenotypes. They call the ostensibly selected phenotypes arches, and the free-rider unselected phenotypes spandrels, referring to the difference between the structural arches in cathedrals and the decorated spandrels-- the spaces between the arches-- that serve an artistic, but no structural, purpose. Gould and Lewontin point out, correctly, that phenotypes in nature are composed of arches and spandrels-- traits that enhance survival, and traits that are linked to survival traits genetically, but which provide no survival advantage themselves. They argue that adaptationist (natural selection-ist) explanations fail to take into account that fact that natural selection cannot distinguish between arches and spandrels, and that therefore invocation of natural selection, which is blind to the arch/spandrel dichotomy, is often an inadequate evolutionary explanation.

F&P-P unpack Gould's and Lewontin's critique, and provide logical rigor. They point out that genetically linked traits are coextensive. Ya' select for one, ya' select for the other. They come as a package. F&P-P ask:

How can natural selection distinguish between, on the one hand, phenotypic traits that affect fitness and, on the other hand, their endogenously linked phenotypic correlates... selection [cannot] apply differentially to coextensive properties.

So merely invoking "natural selection" fails to provide an explanation for the survival of a trait, because natural selection is blind to the difference between traits that enhance survival and traits that are free-riders and irrelevant to survival, as long as the traits are linked.

F&P-P propose that there are two ways in which natural selection could be a genuine explanation: if natural selection can be understood as acting on counterfactuals, or if natural selection can be understood as acting according to physical laws (of evolution).

A counterfactual is a statement of what would be the case if something untrue happened. An example of a counterfactual is: "If I were PZ Myers, I wouldn't say such silly things on Pharyngula". I'm not P.Z. Myers, but if I were... . For natural selection to be a genuine explanation for the survival of a specific trait that is linked to other traits, it would be necessary to invoke a counterfactual about natural selection-- "It the selected trait were not linked to free riders, it would still be selected." Which is the way that we generally try to invoke natural selection of linked traits. Selection is for the pumping function of the heart (selected trait), not for the sound it makes (linked free-rider). If pumping and noise-making weren't linked, it is the pumping, not the noise-making, that would be selected.

But F&P-P point out that counterfactuals are intensional statements-- they refer to concepts in a mind, not to external physical things. And of course natural selection has nothing to do with a mind. That is the whole point of natural selection-- it pays no mind at all.

So natural selection can't select according to counterfactuals. "If these traits weren't linked, this is the trait I'd select for" is specifically denied to a blind watchmaker.

Natural selection is mindless, and is blind to counterfactuals.

F&P-P point out that the other way that natural selection could provide an evolutionary explanation is if selection followed a natural law, like a law in physics. If there is a law-like correlation between a type of trait and selection for that trait, then a correspondence between natural selection and one of several linked traits could be established.

But F&P-P point out that there seem to be no laws of selection:

[T]he problem is that it's unlikely that there are laws of selection. [I]t's just not possible that there are laws that relate phenotypic traits per se to fitness. What (if any) effect a trait has on fitness depends on what kind of phenotype it is embedded in, and what ecology the creature that has the trait inhabits.

The adaptive value of a phenotype depends critically on its ecological niche. Fins help if you live in water. Fins don't help if you live in the desert. Are fins adaptive? It depends. There is no "Law of Fins" that determines the adaptiveness of fins, independent of the ecological niche the finned critter inhabits.

F&P-P put it succinctly:

[I]f you wish to explain the effects that a phenotypic trait as on a creature's fitness, what you need is not its history of selection but its natural history. And natural history offers not laws of selection but narrative accounts of causal chains that lead to the fixation of phenotypic traits. Although laws support counterfactuals, natural histories do not; and, as we've repeatedly remarked, it's counterfactual support on which distinguishing the arches from the spandrels depends. 

The explanation for a critter's phenotype vis-a-vis its fitness is its natural history, not its history of natural selection. But natural history is a narrative, not a law.

Natural history is just one damned thing after another. This should seem, on reflection, unsurprising since, to repeat, natural history is a species of history, and history is itself just one damned thing after another... Darwin made the same sort of mistake that Marx did: he imagined that history is a theoretical domain; but what there is, in fact, is only a heterogeneity of causes and effects. 

F&P-P sum up their argument:

What's essential about adaptationism, as viewed from this perspective, is precisely its claim that there is a level of evolutionary explanation. We think this claim is just plain wrong. We think that successful explanations of the fixation of phenotypic traits by ecological variables typically belong not to evolutionary theory but to natural history, and that there is just no end of the sorts of things about a natural history that can contribute to explaining the fixation of some or other feature of a creature's phenotype. Natural history isn't a theory of evolution; it's a bundle of evolutionary scenarios. That's why the explanations it offers are so often post hoc and unsystematic.

Natural selection is not a level of explanation. In F&P-P's cogent phrase, natural selection is empty.

                                                                          ***

So how do we understand evolution?

Evolutionary science is (in part) natural history, and in natural history real evolutionary understanding can be found. But we must keep in mind that natural history is history. It is the recounting of real events, which are generally "one damn thing after another". True things, and important things, but narrative, not law. Natural history is not law-based science. It is narrative science.

And there is another way to understand evolution:

There aren't, and never were, pigs with wings. That there aren't and weren't needs to be explained; but the explanation surely cannot be selectionist. Mother Nature never had any winged pigs to select against; so pigs not having wings can't be an adaptation. We think such considerations strongly suggest that there are endogenous constraints-- quite possible profound ones-- on phenotypes. As far as we can tell, this is slowly becoming the received view in evolutionary biology. 

F&P-P are surely right. Endogenous constraints are profoundly important to phenotypes and to adaptation, and much of the rational study of evolution is properly the study of endogenous factors that establish adaptation.

Endogenous constraints, of course, raise the specter that haunts evolutionary biology. Endogenous constraints are front-loaded. Evolution hews to ends. Teleology.

If we are to provide real explanations for evolution-- natural history and teleology-- we need now to go to the closet and get out the dust bin. We need to discard some junk.

Natural selection is empty junk, and no explanation at all. 

President Obama: We're going to kill Syrians because Syrians are killing Syrians

Here are some suggestions for the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate as to how he can step back from his Red Line in the Sand:

1) Offer the Assad government an exemption from the Red Line, like the exemptions from Obamacare that you gave to unions and corporations that contributed to your campaign.

2) Refuse to enforce the Red Line for Syrians, like you refuse to enforce immigration law for Mexicans.

3) Declare that killing Syrians isn't a violation of the Red Line, because if you had a son, he wouldn't look like a Syrian.

4) Since the gas attack happened ten days ago, declare "what difference-- at this point, what difference does it make?"

5) Arrest someone who made a YouTube video and blame him for the whole thing.

"I know I shall never make the same mistake again"

Luke Foster:

Believing, Doubting, Trusting
The postmodern age is open to hearing that we all have worldviews—basic assumptions that spool into a narrative about who we are, where we come from, and what we ought to be doing. Whether we come to our worldviews through a kind of cultural osmosis, or whether we stand upon well-articulated premises bolstered by a martial array of philosophy, we are all believers of some sort. 

This recognition has proved salutary for Christians concerned to engage believers of other stripes. It is, thankfully, more rare these days to hear the materialist dogmatism that claims to be “rational,” “scientific,” and “objective,” denying any faith commitments or presuppositions. 

But this growing critical awareness of our own interpretive frameworks has not had entirely welcome consequences. Sometimes it causes a cloying skepticism, relativism, or compartmentalization in which our beliefs and our lives get out of sync. Over at Fare Forward, Jake Meador draws on Chesterton and Bunyan to sound a healthy warning against reacting against arrogance by becoming timid about making truth claims at all. A healthy, humble trust in God’s promises transcends that baleful antithesis. 

Renowned New York pastor and author Tim Keller bases his apologetic on “doubting your doubts” in The Reason for God. By recognizing our doubts as derived from alternate worldviews, and examining them to find that they have less explanatory power than the Christian story, we are drawn to know the God of Reason. British man of letters A.N. Wilson has spoken of his return to Christianity after abandoning it as a young man: “My departure from the Faith was like a conversion on the road to Damascus. My return was slow, hesitant, doubting. So it will always be; but I know I shall never make the same mistake again.” Let us use doubt as a means to find the answers, not to avoid them.

I am a convert, and there is none so fervent as a convert. Perhaps some of the reason for my passion for blogging is because I want to keep confronting atheism. It's a way to settle an old score, and some of it is fun, in an embarrassingly sadistic way (I've never debated opponents who were as easy to demolish as atheists), but some of my predilection for confrontation is to keep reminding myself just how empty, how foolish, how self-refuting atheism is.

I struggle to understand and do God's will, and I am a sinful man. I had a close call with perdition-- most of my life I rejected God, implicitly if not explicitly-- and I want to know I shall never make the same mistake again.

Confronting atheists has shown me this: even if there were not a single bit of positive evidence or logic to support God's existence (the positive evidence and logic is in fact overwhelming), I would not be an atheist.

If I saw no evidence whatsoever for God, I would believe in God because I understand atheism.

"Mr. Balls"

A mascot for a Brazilian non-profit that fights testicular cancer.

:-/