The ID Report

Written by Felipe Aizpun Vines, OIACDI; 2010, ISBN 10-1452800790; Review by Carlos Javier Alonso, University of Navarra, Spain (see original review in Spanish at OIACDI); Translation by Robert Deyes

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional (Evolution and rational thought) presents a thoroughly comprehensive analysis of both the arguments in favor and against evolution and demonstrates the author's deep understanding of scientific literature published over the last few decades on the subjects of life's origins and the evolution of man. This timely volume deals with the subject matter in extraordinary depth through its coverage of both classical and contemporary viewpoints from the various schools of evolutionary thought. The 622-page text of Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is divided up into 21 chapters that systematically unpack the following topics: Darwinism, Evolution: fact or theory, materialist prejudices, creationism, fundamentalism, rational thought, science and philosophy, routes of reason, shortcomings of the scientific method, the 'new biology', intelligent design, evolution and creation and the philosophy of life.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional stands out as a resource that brings together the core elements of the topics it covers and thus provides an avenue for readers to assess the current state of debate. In this regard Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional can be seen as the 'evolution bible'. Rather than giving the impression of a rapidly assembled collection of facts put together for the sole purpose of disseminating information, the book bears all the hallmarks of a well thought out literary masterpiece. Most notable is the rich collection of arguments through which each of the evolutionary hypotheses are expounded and systematically considered. And yet Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is not exclusively directed towards specialist readers. On the contrary. In my assessment, it is easily accessible to those who have a basic training in philosophy and science and a firm grasp of the multi-faceted problems surrounding evolutionary reasoning.

Understood in a purely biological context, evolution is not a fact in itself but rather an interpretation of the facts as we find them. To be sure, no scientific specialty can claim to faithfully reconstruct what happened hundreds of thousands let alone millions of years ago. The relevant disciplines only allow us to make conjectures or presumptions regarding the journey that evolution has taken. It therefore follows that evolution carries with it an inherent (not necessarily false) bias and constitutes a hypothesis lacking the empirical support so necessary to establish it as a scientific theory.

Criticisms of the Darwinist paradigm and its neo-Darwinist reformulation are sufficiently convincing, not easily refutable and solidly rigorous. As Felipe Aizpun shows, Darwin's lack of understanding of genetics prevented him from drawing up a mechanism through which evolution could run its course. But the neo-Darwinist revision fares no better. The proposed combination of favorable random mutations preserved by natural selection falls short in every aspect.

The author compellingly asserts that the chance assessment of events exists nowhere other that in the minds eye. There are numerous causal factors that can affect the outcomes of natural processes and there is no way to predict which factors will act to produce a given outcome. The complexity of nature makes such predictions very difficult if not impossible given that causal factors that act in one instance might be absent in others. An appeal to 'chance' is an appeal made from ignorance of what causal factors are at play in the manifestation of a reality that we observe. Only in relation to a partial cause can we talk about chance. For these reasons the Darwinian paradigm, defined in Kuhnian terms, is one that is rife with anomalies and thereby one that is on the verge of a revolutionary crisis. While the alternative offered by Professor Maximo Sandin and biologist Lynn Margulis amongst others still carries with it significant gaps in understanding and points of contention (these are discussed with noteworthy precision and clarity in chapters 17 and 18) it could still unseat the official paradigm in the short term not only because of its more coherent consideration of the facts but also because the causal factors it invokes better explain the phenomenon of evolution.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional supplies an accurate analysis of scientific naturalism which at its core reduces all understanding to that which is experimentally demonstrable. Scientific naturalism is a theory that states that only experimental science can provide a valid understanding of reality and that scientific investigation alone meets the needs of human intelligence. In accordance with this doctrine there has been a pinning down that unjustifiably restricts all human understanding to the confines of science. Nevertheless we cannot lose sight of the fact that science is not the only system available to us for acquiring knowledge. Undoubtedly a large part of what we know and what we have achieved has come to us from sources outside the scientific enterprise. The avenues along which man can understand reality are many. Beyond genetic inheritance, traditions and personal experience as well as art, crafts, religion, poetry and philosophy can provide a basis for understanding diverse aspects of our experience. While scientism claims that knowledge of our world is limited to that which is obtainable through experimental science, reducing all objectivity to that which is experimentally acquired blinds us to the fact that the scientific/natural picture is only one branch of the total human experience.

Another matter deserves our attention- the criticism (in my opinion questionable) of Tomist metaphysics and of the evidential force of his five arguments for the existence of God. According to the author such arguments imply the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God deductively. The author displays a partiality towards inferring the existence of God in probabilistic terms in accordance with the abductive line of reasoning put forward by Charles Sanders Pierce. A consideration of God's existence through probability rather than certainty, the latter being in accordance with a deductive mode of reasoning, has important ramifications. For example, a discourse on the foundations of morality on God would only fit into the religious context of revelation and would require from us additional efforts if we were to find an exclusively rational explanation, understood as an unavoidable commitment to action that could elude the subjectivist and relativist trap to which we would be destined.

Regarding this point the author reveals himself to be a partial doubter of the Kantian epistemology and criticism of the Tomist arguments. In his view, the Kantian criticism is made up of two parts that need to be differentiated. On the one hand we are to reflect on the fact that the deductive process for a cosmological argument is inconsistent given that it assumes an identification of the ideal concept of the necessary being with the being of realism even though such a connection is not rationally admissible. On the other hand, Kant concludes equivocally, taken by an arbitrary epistemological limitation, that transcendent ideas are inaccessible to reason. Although accurate the Kantian criticism of the Tomist approach, notes the author, the idea that God is not foreign to our rational state and the Kantian conclusion of unknowability, does not necessarily follow. What needs to be defined is an adequate method of reasoning that takes us to a primary cause and its connection with sensible knowledge.

One has to specifically acknowledge that there is something that is simply erroneous in the statement that knowledge exists exclusively as a function of sensible knowledge. Such a stance implies a rejection of formal abstraction and the separation of diverse aspects of being such as the modes of cognitive access and reality. To negate such an abstraction and separation is to obstruct the pathway towards God, given that we will not be able to access the being of those creatures.

Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional falls firmly within the paradigm of Intelligent Design. Seen from our vantage point, the design inference that comes from the study of living creatures is a completely logical one (one has to be blind not to see this); this is the inference that the latest theories- both theistic and more recently those of intelligent design- have put forward both in philosophical and scientific circles; such theories have generated much animosity amongst Darwinists, with their fundamental assumption of natural selection acting on random mutations. In any case, one has to recognize that all theories categorized under the ID umbrella play on two fields: that which argues strictly on scientific grounds (the work of Behe and Dembski concerning irreducible complexity and specified complexity in addition to their critique of the neodarwinist explanation, are paradigmatic examples of this) and also that which argues on philosophical grounds since they postulate the existence of a Designer as the causal agent that is necessary for the design. Within this perspective, ID theories do not fit strictly into the experimental scientific method and can therefore be considered as non-scientific. Nevertheless this does not mean that they are false since reality is not confined to that which we can observe through experimental science. Rather it means that these theories are at the same time both scientific and philosophical in nature.

In view of these points, Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional is a must-read for those wishing to remain up-to-date with contemporary evolutionary theories and the arguments that support them.

Dr. Carlos Javier Alonso obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Navarra in Spain. He also holds a degree in hispanic philology from the University of Leon and is an associate professor at the Instituto de Educacion Secundaria Ordono II in Leon. He is the author of several books on science including El Evolucionismo y Otros Mitos: La Crisis del Paradigma Darwinista (transl. Evolutionism And Other Myths: The Crisis Of The Darwinist Paradigm)

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My review of Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference:

The gender wars take no prisoners. In 2005, suggesting that there might indeed be innate differences between men and women derailed the career of Harvard president Larry Summers. He reemerged, years later, as President Obama’s sometime finance guru). Meanwhile, a host of neuroscientists report differences between the brains of men and women that, they say, account for different abilities and career choices.

Psychologist and author Cordelia Fine disagrees with the neuroscientists. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, she has no time for the "special powers" that pop brain science currently imputes to the female brain, reminding us that such claims were made long before the magnetic resonance imaging machine was invented.

She takes aim at books such as What Could He Be Thinking? where we hear that images of male and female brains were "marriage saving" for author Michael Gurian and his wife, to say nothing of Gurian's Leadership and the Sexes which "links the actual science of male/female brain differences to every aspect of business."

And if that doesn't make you feel like Employee Double X or XY clocking in, what will?

For more, go here.

See also:

Evolutionary psychology: Pink for a girl, blue for a ... girl?

Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media's bread and butter

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Philosopher Cordelia Fine, who wrote a book on the neuroscience and other studies of the differences between men's and women's brains - and found most of them flawed - pauses to target a classic in evolutionary psychology: Why girls prefer pink.

... psychologists and journalists now speculate on the genetic and evolutionary origins of gendered color preferences that are little more than fifty years old.

Little more than how many years old? Read on:

For example, a few years ago an article in an Australian newspaper discussed the origins of the pink princess phenomenon. After trotting out the ubiquitous anecdote about the mother who tried and failed to steer her young daughter away from the pink universe, the journalist writes that the mother's failure "suggests her daughter was perhaps genetically wired that way" and asks, "is there a pink princess gene that suddenly blossoms when little girls turn two?"

Just in case we mistake for a joke the idea that evolution might have weeded out toddlers uninterested in tiaras and pink tulle, the journalist then turns to prominent child psychologist Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg for further insight into the biological basis of princess mania: "The reason why girls like pink is that their brains are structured completely differently to boys," he sagely informs us. "Part of the brain that processes emotion and part of the brain that processes language is one and the same in girls but is completely different in boys ... "

- Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, p. 208.

Okay, but if Dr. Carr-Gregg and other authorities are correct, the pace of evolution has been nothing short of catastrophic in recent decades. Formerly, blue was the colour for girls - and for boys?:

The preferred color to dress young boys in was pink! Blue was reserved for girls as it was considered the paler, more dainty of the two colors, and pink was thought to be the stronger (akin to red). It was not until WWII that the colors were reversed and pink was used for girls and blue for boys... -Dress Maker Magazine

Certainly, in Kate Greenaway's late 19th century illustrations, fashionable girls strut in blue.

Fine also informs us that the early 20th century saw a concerted move to use infant and toddler clothes to reinforce gender differences. But that requires consumer choice. Most children's clothing of long ago was pretty functional - swaddling clothes, smocks, et cetera, and cut down adult clothes. Few people could afford dyes of their choice.

So yes, it's evolution - a very recent evolution of ideas about gender, which might depart with no offspring.

See also: Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media 's bread and butter

More fun from voodoo neuroscience:

Neuroscience and popular culture: Who do voodoo? They do! Social neuroscientists, that is:

Neuroscience shows why women love shopping, why gay guys read maps like women, why jealous guys ... come to think of it, why does social neuroscience only tell us what we already heard from that high school drop-out cousin, shooting pool down in the rec room between his split shifts at the loading dock?

Is this really science? Probably not, say a team of statisticians, who took a look at some of these studies. Basically, many of the claimed correlations were simply too high to be possible. That was because the "social neuroscience" people were cherry picking the data."

Gender Genie: Fritz your wits about which sex you belong to?

Using an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, you can find out whether the genie thinks you are a man or a woman by submitting a sample of your writing.

Given that the genie works best on texts of more than 500 words, I have decided to submit my five most recent columns for ChristianWeek.

Neuroscience: Vive la difference between boys and girls?

What I find really interesting is the way people are always looking for confirmation of weird theories from neuroscience, but they won't accept actual evidence that disconfirms a weird theory. For exmaple, there is way more evidence that boys and girls are different than that weird materialist theories of religion are true.

Incidentally, none of these findings shows that girls can't excel in math and science. They help us understand why many girls do not TRY to excel in math and science. That's useful information, however we choose to use it.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Once upon a time there was this bright philosopher and Fine writer who immersed herself in the pop culture sludge of the breathless (this just in!) latest findings of neuroscience on human nature, in this case the supposed differences between the way men and women think. Differences that, Fine argues, are poorly supported.

What I learned from Cordelia Fine's latest book: Add time on an fMRI scanner to a mediocre mind carrying out a conventional research program and you end up with fodder for Cowsmoopolitan. Fine found that the men vs. women studies were too badly done to be conclusive. Her survey removes all doubt as to how many magazine and newspaper editors, stuck for a Sunday featurette, ever even wonder about such matters.

She goes on to challenge neuroscientists on the ethics of passively allowing these shenanigans:

... neuroscientists who work in this area have some responsibility for how their findings of sex differences in the brain are interpreted and communicated. When this is done carelessly, it may have a real and significant impact on people's lives. Many neuroscientists do appear to be aware of this. They are appropriately cautious about interpreting sex differences to the brain, and may also take the time to remind journalists of just how far we are from mapping sex differences in the brain onto the mind. (And of course they may find their work being misrepresented, regardless, others, however, as we have seen, are more cavalier.) " - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

On a less heartening note, she adds,

Finally, there's an urgent need for editors, journalists, and schools to develop far more skeptical attitudes toward claims about sex differences in the brain. It is appalling to me that one can, apparently, say whatever drivel one likes about the male and the female brain, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing it published in reputable newspaper,changing a school's educational policy, or becoming a best seller. - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

Trouble is, Cordelia, drivel sells. The woman whose boyfriend is running around wants to believe that a brain scan shows that he is merely a less-evolved ape. And she may not have to wait long for "He's a Gorilla, You're a Bonobo, and You Two Make a Great Scream" (Whattafastbuck Press, 2011) to hit her local bookstore's Women's Empowerment Evening ...

It is really a moral question for the journalist, editor, and bookseller, whether - in hard times - to front this neurobullshipping or demand accountability.
Anyway, hats off to Fine for saying something.

Now, do I agree with Fine that there are no significant brain differences between men and women? Well, let's just say I have a different take on those differences, explained here.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Recently, I advised readers of Jane Harris Szovan's new book on the shameful secrets of social Darwinist eugenics in Canada. The Alberta-based author tells me,

People have been asking me what Eugenics and the Firewall is about. Basically, it is about the history of eugenics in the Western countries. But it looks specifically at what happened in Alberta, how our province's somewhat bizarre political culture allowed it to happen (and why the vulnerable are still at risk for disaster, not just here but worldwide.) Then it compares Alberta to British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Then, we look at how Alberta's experience compared to the rest of the Commonwealth, specifically the U.K. where forced sterilization was judged contrary to our shared constitution.(How a province in a dominion was allowed to get away with violating the constitution just shows how far the federal gov. will go in not challenging 'provincial rights.'

Hmmm, yes, it shows that for sure.* But it shows something else too.

Here is the gist of the book:

It's a dirty little secret the heirs to Alberta's populist legacy don't want Canadians to talk about.

In 1928 the non-partisan United Farmers of Alberta passed the first Sexual Sterilization Act. The UFA's successor, the Social Credit party, led by a radio-evangelist William Aberhart, and later by his protégé Ernest Manning, removed the need to obtain consent to sterilize "mental defectives" or Huntington's Chorea patients with dementia.

Between 1928 and 1972 nearly three thousand citizens were sterilized, lied to, experimented on, and subjected to daily abuse at the hands of provincial staff in Alberta. Most Albertans have forgotten the victims whose names made headlines in the 1990s, and politicians and pundits have shown little empathy for the victims.

The Eugenics Board horror story has largely been buried in Canada's mainstream national media. Conservative bloggers and columnists in Canada continue to blame the Liberals and CCF for Canada's barbaric eugenics program. The tar sands, oil royalties, health care budgets, environmental policies, and making sure the province's interests remain high on the federal agenda top the provincial headlines.

But the questions must be answered: How did a province that claims "strong and free" as its motto deny basic freedoms to so many of its own citizens? Why does the extent of Alberta's eugenics past and its link to the UFA/Social Credit legacy remain the unacknowledged moral blind spots in Canadian politics?

It's time to set the record straight.

It is past time. And from the fact that Harris Szovan's Google search stats spiked rapidly over the past 48 hours, I would guess that many know that.

Jane has quite reasonably been thinking/hoping that people won't go after her, but ... A straight record can mean crooked bunch. If you care about setting the record straight, spare a thought for her, and buy the book for a library and/or for yourself.

* They say this about us: If a Canadian species were in danger of extinction, the British would come up with matchless essays on the crisis, the French would fly Brigitte Bardot to scream up a storm on the ice pack, the Germans would write an encyclopedia about it, the Americans would set up a plan to save the species that cost three trillion dollars and employed one hundred thousand people ... And the Canadians? Oh, we'd spend ten years arguing about whether the species' woes are a federal or a provincial responsibility. That's part of how big problems get started here, when they do.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Jane Harris-Zsovan's book, Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada`s Nasty Little Secret n Shillingford, 2010) is now in print. It details the surprising reach of the compulsory sterilization movement in early twentieth century Canada. Many across the political spectrum participated, until the practice was finally derailed by informed public opinion and the courts.

The book's national launch will be Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 1:30-3:30, Galt Museum & Archives Store, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Harris-Zsovan chose that locale because "the Galt archives have been helping me from time I wrote my first history paper at University."

Harris-Zsovan, who spent many hours poring over decades-old newspaper clippings, is bracing herself for controversy:

I'm inviting everyone I know and that includes people on the left, right and centre in Canada. I can't wait to see them all chit-chatting in the gallery at the Galt! I've warned them all that they will be uncomfortable with parts of this book. They seem okay with that so far. But I hope that discomfort leads to a healthy discussion.

Well, I hope so too. Many of us have found that discussion of eugenic sterilization - discussion that includes any mention of the social Darwinism that underlies it - often leads to the frantic defense of some Shrine to Evolution. To say nothing of attacks on anyone who offers evidence. Indeed, the spin now turns so fast that in the United States, museum goers are informed that Darwin was not a racist or eugenicist, when there is simply no escaping the facts of the case.

Anyway, Jane's is hardly a "take no prisoners" approach to unsavoury history:

I treat my home province, Alberta, B.C., and the architects of the only Sexual Sterilization Acts in the British Empire fairly gently. They made bad decisions, but we make worse ones. This behaviour continued from 1928 until 1972. (Actually it continued well after that until the Supreme Court put a stop to it.)

My sense is that too many people in Canada, generally a"low threat" society, assumed that it Couldn't Be Happening Here. Surprise, surprise.

Harris Zsovan is confident that

The lesson of the book: As bad as our past was, especially in Western Canada, we can be an example to other countries, most particularly the U.S. and Western Europe, if we own up to this.

Sure, Jane, if all Hull doesn't break loose first.

And if you think what happened in Canada was bad, consider what happened when social Darwinism hit Africa ...

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

When Social Darwinism found Africa ...

But then cats use a more subtle method for everything ...

Al Mohler vs. Mark Sprinkle: Is all this about being right or being nice?

Coffee!!: The evolutionary theory of why you feel smarter after a few beers

The very idea of design in the universe utterly obliterated: Chronicle 4382

New book: God and Evolution confronts the fan club of Darwin's unemployed God

At last: Chinese translation of By Design or by Chance? (But a question as well ...)

Top pundits: How can they score consistently higher than chance at being wrong?

Don't you feel better already, knowing that your innards are accidental globs of goo?

Very Weak Anthropic Principle: Is the Principle going, going, gone?

Christian Darwinism: Now you see the "Creator" and now you don't, but believe anyway

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Creationism lives on in US public schools" (New Scientist 20 October 2010), John Farrell revisits the Dover trial:

IN DOVER, Pennsylvania, five years ago, a group of parents were nearing the end of an epic legal battle: they were taking their school board to court to stop them teaching "intelligent design" to their children.

But the monster never sleeps, it seems:

None of this means that the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design, has been idle. The institute helped the conservative Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), headed by Christian minister Gene Mills, to pass a state education act in 2008 that allows local boards to teach intelligent design alongside evolution under the guise of "academic freedom".

Who told these Cajuns that they have the same right to question Darwin as the Altenberg 16 or philosopher Jerry Fodor? Actually, no one should have the right, but definitely not Cajuns. And it gets worse all the time:

Five years after the landmark case, the battle for science education continues. But for the plaintiffs and their representatives this does not detract from the achievement. Their lead attorney, Eric Rothschild, sums it up: "If we'd lost, intelligent design would be all over the place now".

Earth to planet Rothschild: It already is.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).