Dishonest Dembski’s Darwin Doggerel

Warning: This gets extremely long because I have to explain grade school biology while pretending as if this troll actually cares about truth, morality, or anything other than trolling. Apparently, I’d have to upgrade my WordPress plan to get a “read more” button, so be ready for a lot of scrolling if you want to skip this one.

“None of the Above”

Five syllables to repeat.

Darwin’s no idol.

“Dembski’s Darwinian Devotion Detector.”

Answered by an amateur atheist, in haiku. (With essays. Brevity is hard for complex topics.)

Common Descent

• Evolution in the sense that all present-day organisms arose from one or a few ancestors (common descent) is now a proven fact.#
• Evolution in that sense is still an unproven hypothesis.

Proofs are for math class.

It’s consistently shown, yes.

Key word: Tentative.

It’s only been “proven” in the sense that all scientific theories are proven: Science works on falsification, and we can’t find counter-examples that can’t be explained with some light modifications to the theory. Organisms have legacy in their genes that’s never entirely erased. Common descent is, by an enormous margin, the most parsimonious explanation that fits within all other science: It doesn’t need to add new entities as placeholders, the way Creationism posits their God as a black box.

Natural Selection

• The theory of natural selection (i.e., retention of chance variations) adequately explains common descent.#
• Even assuming full-blown evolution to be a fact, the theory of natural selection does not adequately explain it.

Biology gives the second answer:

Neutral theory dominates,

More than just one cause.

Neutral theory, genetic drift, sexual selection, kin selection, the list goes on. Evolution wasn’t frozen in time with Darwin.

Word Play?

• The theory of natural selection accounts for the phenomenon of adaptation — and thus the appearance of design — in organisms.#
• For an organism to be selected it must already be well adapted; therefore, the theory of natural selection begs the question of the origin of adaptations (or design).

Misunderstanding?:

Selection means “good enough,”

Just one step ahead.

The hurdle organisms have to clear is the ability to survive long enough to reproduce (or aid their close kin in reproducing). If the environment is stable enough, that can mean just squeaking by. Those are the ones that are “selected,” to have their genes passed onto the next generation. As a consequence, any mutations, gene combinations that increase survival and reproduction are more likely to be “selected” in following generations.

Tautology and slogans

• The formula “survival of the fittest” amounts to “survival of the survivors,” suggesting that the theory of natural selection is empirically empty, or even a tautology.
• “Survival of the fittest” is a useful short-hand formula for characterizing the theory of natural selection.#

None of the above.

Not an article of faith.

Oversimplified.

“Survival of the fittest” is a slogan that’s been contorted so many ways, it’s no longer useful, except as something for Creationists to poke at for their wordplay. Organisms that have features suited for their environment are more likely to survive, and thus reproduce in that environment. At worst, you might argue that’s an axiom or an overly simple description of how the biological world works. It’s not much different than “the strongest person is likely to win a weight lifting competition.”

Darwin’s Legacy #1

• Although Charles Darwin is an important figure in the history of science, the conceptual importance of natural selection has been significantly exaggerated.
• Natural selection is one of the greatest ideas ever, and conceiving of it put Darwin in the company of Newton and Einstein.#

None of the above.

One’s subjective opinion.

No measuring [bleeps].

Darwin had a good idea and followed through with providing the preliminary framework of evolution that was reinforced, modified, and expanded through observations and experimentation by later predecessors. While I think he deserves some kudos for getting the evolution ball rolling, I don’t see how that’s relevant to the practical, factual nature of his theory. The same is true of Newton and Einstein. They deserve kudos, but not a pedestal or idolatry the Creationists seem to attach to them. When I read about science, I don’t cite divine inspiration from an allegedly unique intellect, I read about experimental results, observations, and the developing hypotheses. Most of the time, I don’t even remember the names of the scientists involved.

Darwin’s Legacy #2

• Because Darwin’s birthday falls on the same day as Abraham Lincoln’s (February 12, 1809), if Americans were to celebrate one or the other, we should celebrate Darwin Day.#
• Lincoln’s impact on the U.S. and the world was far more positive than Darwin’s and we should continue to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday as it is.

Reject the premise.

I’m sitting here, “Why not both?”

False dichotomy.

Being the face of the emancipation of America’s enslaved people is a moral accomplishment, and one that’s a high bar to reach for. It also caters to the “Great Man” theory of cultural progress: Lincoln did his part, but so did countless others, such as Union soldiers and the members of the underground railroad. Lincoln naturally attracts the spotlight, being in a position of authority during the time. For the development of evolution, a scientific accomplishment that enabled us to get a step closer to understanding reality, Darwin, as stated previously, deserves some kudos, but not idolatry. While Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants, I think a human pyramid is a more apt metaphor. Darwin is merely one of the scientists at the foundation of evolution’s pyramid, and it’s the collective work of his peers and predecessors that got us the modern synthesis of evolution.

Science Marches On

• Darwinism, suitably updated, is good 21st-century science.#
• Darwinism is a relic of 19th-century science; Darwin’s work has now been largely superseded.

Ship of Theseus

Is it still “Darwinism,”

If all parts improved?

Seriously, what’s the difference between these two answers? The only reason Darwin continues to be attached to modern synthesis is a human urge for using notable figures in labels and Creationists who need a boogeyman and an alleged idol for science.

Scientists Aren’t Saints

• Darwin shared many of the conventional opinions of his day, including the superiority of the white race.
• Darwin embodies humanity at its best and deserves the status of a secular saint.#

His thoughts uncertain,

Sad for mistreated natives,

Still man of his times.

I have a hard time understanding why a Creationist thinks I should care. Darwin was a scientist, and I’m sure he had many flaws of his time. Darwin did have a lot of conventional opinions of his day, but I’m not sure he can definitively say he was a white supremacist. If he believed white people were “superior,” it wouldn’t surprise me, but he also expressed sympathy for exploited indigenous people at times. Even if we unearthed hugely bigoted rants of his that left no room for doubt or nuance, it wouldn’t change anything except possibly getting disowned on a moral level and having footnotes attached, bringing that bigotry to light by the scientific community. The experiments and observations are largely unaffected. We have plenty of other evolutionary biologists to cite as well.

Consequences of Knowledge

• Darwin’s ideas and their unintended consequences have done great harm.
• The world would be a better place if everyone had to learn about Darwin’s ideas.#

Knowledge is neutral.

How you use it defines you.

Cope with consequence.

Lots of people abuse scientific knowledge. When someone with malicious intent uses information about the world to harm others, it’s not the truth of the world that’s at fault or any scientists who uncovered that truth. Using scientific knowledge to establish an “ought” from an “is” is fallacious, too. Science isn’t about morality, but about understanding the world. I see morality is our collective coping strategy for dealing with the world, generally to mitigate harm, give people the freedom to seek out their own joy and meaning, and to do so as equitably as possible. The alternative is living in ignorance, spurning the benefits of a more accurate understanding of actions and consequences. Also, a lot of people find joy and meaning in solving the puzzles of reality.

Impact on Education in America

• Hostility toward evolution is a major factor in the decline of American educational standards in relation to international standards.#
• Other factors (such as classroom disorder and the breakdown of the family) have contributed more to the decline of American educational standards than hostility toward evolution.

Too many to list.

My peeves: “Truth is opinion,”

Capitalism.

For-profit colleges are monetarily incentivized to be diploma mills, framing the awarded piece of paper as a means to get a job. Public schools are criminally underfunded and constantly under assault against all sorts of “both sidesism” including Creation versus evolution. Teachers are taught to be cowards toward truth and compassion because some loud people manufacture controversy as an excuse to threaten their operations. For science, history, and other studies of fact, student should honestly be taught what the evidence and reason-based consensus is, along with the methodology used to arrive at these conclusions. Start with general simplifying at early grades, and increase the nuance as time goes on. In my experience, Creationists don’t have the slightest idea what either of those are, and Dembski is doing nothing to convince me otherwise.

More Ambiguity

• Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be free to teach what they can defend to be true based on evidence.
• Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be required to teach the received views of professional evolutionary biologists.#

Religion deals with received knowledge, not science. A teacher should cover scientific consensus, and if they think they’ve got a viable alternative, they should research or test it through the scientific community, not go half-cocked on some kids who are still learning how to discern scientific fact from fiction.

Legal Lies

• In Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that it is illegal to “disparage or denigrate” Darwinism in the public schools; Judge Jones decided this case correctly.#
• By suppressing dissent and creating a state-imposed ideology in America, Judge Jones’s ruling parallels Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.

Playing spin doctor:

Criticize it in the lab,

Not the kids’ classroom.

If anything parallels Lysenkoism, it’d be Intelligent Design “theory.” You can criticize and question evolution, but you do it through scientific methodology: Research previous works, devise a testable alternative hypothesis, and conduct experiments. Intelligent Design wanted to skip all that and substitute an argument from ignorance and personal incredulity dressed up with sciencey-sounding words. If a kid wants to explore an alternative, they need to do so honestly, through the scientific method, not idle religious apologetics painted over with jargon. One contributing problem is that our public schools can’t afford or simply aren’t interested in hiring people who actually understand what they’re teaching.

“Exact” Sciences

• Darwin’s theory of evolution is as well supported scientifically as Einstein’s theory of general relativity.#
• Putting Darwin’s theory of evolution in the same league as Einstein’s theory of general relativity is an affront to the exact sciences.

“Why not politics?”

“Because physics is simpler.”

-Einstein shows wisdom.

The messier, more complex, and more nuanced the subject, the less exact it’s going to get. Physics deals with the simplest of particles and forces, therefore you would expect a high level of precision, but even then, there’s a lot of quantum weirdness Einstein didn’t want to deal with. There’s a probabilistic aspect we haven’t eliminated, even there. Biology deals with complex systems: Living organisms, so there are going to be weird edge cases and uncertainty. In reconstructing the history of evolution, we’re pulling in multiple fields, like ecology, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and so on to ensure everything meshes as nicely as we can in this noisy universe.

Darwin Awards

• The Darwin Awards, given to people who kill themselves due to their rash or foolish actions, reflect an unhealthy cynicism and low view of humanity.
• The Darwin Awards rightly recognize individuals for contributing to human evolution by weeding themselves out of the gene pool through their stupidity.#

Slapping on “Darwin,”

Doesn’t make it scientific.

Rarely genes to blame.

The Darwin Awards are a pointless meme in the pop culture sense, deriving their cynical premise from hyper-adaptationist parodies of evolution. It has nothing to do with science, anymore than Social “Darwinism.” I doubt genes contribute all that much to human stupidity: Developmental disorders can cause some learning problems, people can be raised to be spoiled, entitled, or simply misinformed and suffer because of it. If anything I’d say it’s a pseudo-scientific veneer added to the longstanding human tradition of jumping to conclusions about heredity as destiny.

Eugenics!

• The eugenics movement — which led to the mass sterilization of people deemed “defective” in the United States and to mass murder in Germany — was largely based on Darwin’s ideas.
• To lay the eugenics movement at Darwin’s feet is grossly unfair.#

Older than Sparta.

Political selection,

Not nature’s mandate.

“Defective” is a subjective evaluation, and very often a political one, never a scientific one. Eugenics has been somewhat effective in getting the practical results we want from plants and non-human animals: It’s how we got our modern crops (like the Cavendish banana), but typically at the cost of the dependence on human infrastructure: These crops, livestock, and pets are often at an enormous disadvantage in the wild. Darwin himself denounced the idea of applying eugenics to humans as immoral. I agree, and add on that it’s inherently impractical: Diversity is an effective means of surviving unexpected changes in an environment as well as a large variety of environments. As an autistic person, there’s also social value in that people like me often give perspectives and approach problems in ways other people don’t normally consider. If you value humanity’s ability to persist as a civilized species, “eugenics on humans is bad,” seems pretty damn intuitive to me.

Of course, it always annoys me that when I speak against eugenics or suggest disabled people are worthy of dignity and can contribute to society, I’m labeled “dangerously woke.”

Noteworthy: Darwin’s Origin of Species was on the Nazis’ burn list. They didn’t need the veneer of then-modern science, they just exploited preexisting popular bigotry.

Vitalism

• Living things are collections of ordinary chemical elements organized in particular ways; there is nothing physically distinctive about life.#
• The “living state of matter” is physically distinctive, implying the existence of special causal powers that inorganic systems do not possess.

Life is chemistry,

We give ourselves distinction.

Vacuous statements.

If we found some manner of life force, that’d just be an additional layer for us to study in methodological naturalist fashion. We haven’t found any, yet, so we use entities we’ve demonstrated thus far. We’re likely never going to figure it all out, but that’s no excuse to give up on the pursuit of truth and attribute it to magic.

We make a value distinction, being thinking, living organisms. Even then, we’re fond of speculating on electronic life in the form of androids and intelligent computer programs (not to be confused with large language models), as well as speculative alternatives to carbon-based organic life. I’d say life is about what those physical forces do as emergent features, rather than the medium used. If there are “special causal powers,” you need to demonstrate their existence through experiment, not just cite your personal incredulity at the notion of emergent behaviors.

Genetic Destiny and the Selfish Gene

• Living things are basically just vehicles for their genes.#
• Genes play a necessary but not sufficient causal role in living things.

Why choose only one?

One, perspective to ponder.

Two, science confirms.

As much as I hate Dawkins, I occasionally find the general idea of “selfish genes” a useful perspective to consider when speculating on evolutionary mechanisms. Purpose changes depending on the agent involved, and treating the gene as if it were an agent with a short-sighted agenda of maximizing the copies of its presence in the gene pool can be a useful approach to explaining why certain genes can persist despite the real or alleged disadvantages ascribed to it.

It is not a moral perspective or an only-cause.

As for the second statement: Duh. No reasonable scientist believes genes are destiny. They’re just one component in the mosaic of an organism. Even if you take it from the perspective of explaining evolution: Again, duh. You’ve got ecological selective forces, developmental issues, epigenetics, and in the smarter organisms, humans especially included, education by parents or communities. Genes are just one piece of the tapestry, even if it’s an important one.

Reversed Answers

• Organisms, while highly complex, are fundamentally no different from humanly constructed machines.#
• Organisms are essentially different from humanly constructed machines.

Purpose: The difference.

We make stuff to further goals.

Life begets more life.

It’s Creationists who usually liken life to human-manufactured machines in my experience: Paley’s Watchmaker. Watches don’t reproduce, they aren’t made of the most common elements available, and they are far more specialized for a single or narrow set of tasks than any living organism. The closest argument I can imagine is a virus: They depend on cellular life to reproduce, vaguely similar to how watches depend on watchmakers to be reproduced. Even then, the virus uses the same reproductive tools, they just borrow from other forms of life. Watches, meanwhile, don’t have discrete heredity: A human can experiment randomly with variations of a design, but that’s not how it’s done in real life. We can infer watches are designed precisely because they are notably distinct from organic life.

Creationists don’t bother with finding or understanding their asserted creator, defining a consistent purpose life fulfills, or even searching for tool marks.

Junk DNA

• The concept of “junk DNA” was a major scientific blunder directly attributable to Darwinian thinking.
• Darwinian thinking advanced science by correctly characterizing non-coding DNA regions as “junk DNA.”#

None of the above.

A casual label stuck.

Journalists latched on.

I was under the impression of junk DNA being a product of sloppy journalism, not science. There’s non-coding DNA, and to my understanding, it serves as a sort of buffer for mutations: An error there isn’t likely to cause problems, but every once in a while, something novel can come out of it. It’s also a marker of legacy for evolution: There’s typically little selective pressure to maintain one consistent code among descendant species, so we can use it to infer family trees by observing how changes in the code are distributed and inherited. Endogenous Retrovirus (ERVs) sequences are a common example: Viral implants that get added, disabled from creating new viruses by mutation, and persist through generations afterward. Even if you can say it’s useless to the organism, it’s certainly useful for scientists reconstructing the history of biology. Creationists, in my experience, explain this non-coding DNA as somehow functional without demonstration, a deception intentionally added by their trickster god to mislead science, or they jump to random coincidence: The same virus just happened to infect multiple similar, but unrelated organisms in the same place in their chromosomes, receive the same mutated error, and have further compiled errors that just coincidentally are consistent with evolution’s branching paths.

Abiogenesis

• Darwin speculated that life began in a “warm little pond”; in this, as with so many of his ideas, he was remarkably prescient.#
• Nobody today has any real insight into how life began.

Intuitive guess:

Life involves warm salt water.

Pretty obvious.

I don’t find it particularly prescient, just a natural direction to speculate, given how life operates and what it’s made of. I’m not as versed in this bit, but people like me don’t follow hypotheses of abiogenesis because Darwin graced us with a reasonable-sounding guess. We follow them because they’re derived the known understanding of chemistry, making predictions and experiments based on geological data about Earth’s history, and getting results of lipids, amino acids, and such, key ingredients in biological life.

Humanocentrism

• Human beings are fundamentally different from all other animals.
• Human beings are basically no different from other animals.#

Classic fallacy:

The oft-excluded middle.

The line is fuzzy.

We are different from other animals, but not “fundamentally,” by any stretch of the imagination I can conjure. We’re made of the same stuff and share the same massive family tree, we’re just abnormally specialized towards neural plasticity as our strength: We’ve become wildly successful in a reproductive sense because we can transmit and modify useful knowledge across generations in addition to inheriting instincts and genetic traits. Because of our intelligence and social interdependence, cultures arise to reinforce community survival. Unfortunately, we’re also a centerpiece in a mass extinction of our time because of some persistent ideas create perverse incentives that cause harm in the long run or become sacred in themselves, resisting change as humanity’s needs and desires change.

Intelligence

• The most important fact about human beings is our capacity for conscious reflection, reason, and language.
• Human mental capacities are a minor and superficial adaptation of an unexceptional primate.#

Humble origins

Do not invalidate us.

Values are our own.

This is the core narcissism of Creationism I just find bizarre: God exists only because they need one to glorify humanity, and by extension, themselves. I also find the notion of “objective value” an oxymoron: Valuing something is subjective. Knowing our origin does not undermine my sense of humanity’s value. Conscious thought, reasoning ability, social interaction may be inherited features because they provided highly adaptable advantages, but just because they’re explainable through material forces doesn’t mean I’m not supposed to value these things as a person. If anything, it seems to me that Creationists can’t see value in human life if they can’t invent a reason to make us the “objective” center of all existence. These are the same kinds of people who insist understanding prisms and the visible spectrum somehow kills the beauty of a rainbow for them.

Free Will

• Human beings can freely choose what to do.
• Free will is an illusion.#

Please define “free will.”

I can’t agree with either,

if you don’t explain.

Free will is one of those concepts that seems to make sense until I actually think about defining it. “Illusion” is too strong a word and I hate how so many people use it to describe subjective experience. We choose what to do based on prior experience, cost, risk, benefits, needs, and desires. That’s how we subjectively experience all those brain chemicals bouncing around in our heads, obeying the laws of chemistry. The concept of choice exists at the psychological level of abstraction and is a useful element in modelling and altering our behaviors. It’s real in that holding the concept of choice has observable effects on people’s behavior.

The Value of Love

• The capacity for mature love is one of the noblest aspects of human nature.
• Humans experience “love” as the result of oxytocin and other hormones coursing through the body — just as for other mammals.#

Again, why not both?

Rainbows are still beautiful.

Love matters to me.

I have no reason to think love is exclusive to humanity, but with our level of consciousness, we probably have unique nuances fitting for our capacity. Again, just because we can explain a bit on a scientific level doesn’t invalidate the experience. If anything, this just tells me Creationists crave excessive validation.

Kin Selection & Altruism

• Referring to “kin selection,” J. B. S. Haldane remarked: “I would gladly lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”; this principle helps us to understand the nature of human altruism.#
• Mother Teresa (who ministered to dying homeless people in Kolkata) and holocaust rescuers (who risked their lives to help Jews escape Nazi death camps) have more to teach us about human altruism than kin selection.

None of the above.

Always multiple causes,

Life’s complicated.

I imagine Creationists would have a hard time finding someone who actually believes kin selection is the only basis for altruism. It’s a contributing factor in families, but we’re also social creatures. I think selfishness and altruism are frequently a false dichotomy: Altruism can just as easily be seen as a roundabout way of being selfish. If you care about someone, helping them fulfills your desire to feel good about yourself. Also, in my years of religious arguments, Creationists nearly overlap infernalist Christians, who posit a cosmology that makes altruism a source of eternal suffering and thus must be abandoned to cope with the existence of an eternal Hell.

Morality’s Core

• Some things (like killing innocents) are absolutely wrong.
• Nothing is right or wrong except in relation to its consequences, especially for one’s genes.#

None of the above.

We can find common meaning,

Or be led astray.

Morality is a messy collection of strategies for dealing with life’s messy problems and the numerous conflicting goals of individuals. It’s a loose social contract backed in a lot of relatively common principles with the goal of helping the collective and the individuals prosper. It’s never going to be perfect, and we’re always going to have to rethink it as new problems arise. Infernalists (again, a hair-splitting distinction from Creationists), near as I can tell, don’t believe in any sort of moral right or wrong, just arbitrary reward and punishment. I think killing innocents is wrong because its an unfair imposition of one’s desires at the expense of another person’s capacity to do what they want with their life. It violates the principles of equity and the autonomy of the victim. Infernalists seem to only believe it’s wrong because it supposedly leads to eternal torment in Hell. They believe it’s evil because it’s punished, not the other way around.

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

• Rape is morally wrong because it treats an autonomous human person as an object.
• Rape is properly viewed as an adaptation in early hominid males to help them spread their genes.#

“Dangerously woke,”

When I say such moral things.

It’s not about genes.

Rape is a horrible crime because it violates another person’s autonomy and consent, treating them as an object to be possessed and acted upon. In humans, I have a hard time seeing it as about genes. It’s a horrid exercise of power over another person, especially when organizations will overlook their boss’ transgressions for fear of reprisal. (Yes, I’m including churches among organizations, and no, not just Catholics.) I’m willing to let non-sapient animals slide on the gene point because they’re driven by instinct and hormones far more than humans are. Just don’t expect me to look at ducks the same way after learning about their common male behaviors and that particular sexual arms race.

I find it hypocritical for Creationists to denounce rape when the existence of a woman’s soul and therefore status as a person is so frequently debated in religion. Sometimes I think souls were invented just so that monstrous people could deny them to their victims. Whatever you want to call that spark of consciousness, thought, and individuality we value in a person, women deserve to have theirs recognized as much as any other person. It’s not something to be arbitrarily denied by religion.

Wut?

• If scientists could crossbreed a human and chimpanzee to form a hybrid “humanzee,” it would be a triumph and cause for celebration.#
• Hybridizing a human being with a chimpanzee or any other animal is likely to be biologically impossible and, in any case, would be a moral outrage.

An ongoing fear:

Chimera for no purpose.

Bizarre obsession.

On the practical level: Our branches of the primate tree have diverged too far for crossbreeding, as far as I know. If it somehow happened anyway, it would be noteworthy just for giving us an anomaly to figure out, but beyond presenting us with a new puzzle to solve why in the world would it be a cause for celebration? Hypothetically, we might be able to introduce some genes unique to chimps into a human or vice-versa through other methods, like with GMO crops, but that gets into academic semantics about which category a unique individual falls into (or has created for them) after jumping across clades through human intervention in their genes.

The moral question requires a hell of a lot of elaboration: Why, just why, would we seek to do such a thing? What would it accomplish? How would the resulting hybrid be treated by society? I say if they’re sapient (and very likely would be), they’d better be treated the same as a human.

If we ever develop biopunk technology that allows consensual self-modification with animal features, my only objections would be to take extra care of any children that they might produce (unlikely, unless one particular modification becomes sufficiently common), since they’d likely have special needs, or to simply avoid having kids. About the only other objection I can think of is a sort of heckler’s veto: Creationists might rationalize modified people to be fair game for crimes because their life has no value as “non-human.” Humanity is in our cultures, not exclusive to our genes.

Confused Valuations

• Goodness, truth, and beauty are illusions that helped our hominid ancestors to survive.#
• Goodness, truth, and beauty are objectively real norms that guide human belief and action.

Truth is reality.

Goodness is ours to decide.

We behold beauty.

Truth is objective reality. Understanding objective reality is useful for manipulating it. Goodness and beauty are subjective evaluations. These abstractions are real because they have observable effects, but they’re limited, messily defined, and thus not the mythical “exact science” Creationists insist on trying to force on reality. Creationists, in my experience, believe that human-invented words and their own narrow imaginations impose limits on reality.

Again, Wut?

• The motivations of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice cannot be understood at the deepest level without a knowledge of evolutionary theory.#
• Jane Austen had no need of evolutionary theory to understand human motivations at the deepest level relevant to literature.

Dunk on evo-psych?

If so, you missed your target.

What’s the relevance?

It’s shit like this that convinces me that Creationists don’t take Creationism seriously, just as a bizarre vehicle to troll people with. Hypothetically, maybe, if Jane Austen had been aware of evolutionary theory, there might have been some way it might inspire ideas to add. I can’t imagine what fucked up thought process Dembski went though to come up with this steaming pile of bullshit. Humans are social creatures and many of us find aptitude for navigating complex social situations. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book or watched a movie rendition, but if I recall, it involves the couple juggling the possibility of marriage for love with perverse social obligations of high society that reduces marriage to an economic and political tool.

If it’s some bizarre dunk on the pseudoscience calling itself “evolutionary psychology,” come back when you understand evolution and discard notions of genetic destiny being treated seriously. Evolutionary psychology is an idea that sounds perfectly fine in principle (evolution plays a role in shaping our psychology), but that all goes out the window when they essentially that extremely recent and localized cultural phenomena are based primarily in ancient gene sequences. Also, they jump to a lot of other conclusions because western college students are easily accessible, and not, say, a genuinely random sample of humanity.

Memes, The Dawkins Kind

• Memes are the units of selection of human culture, much as genes are the units of selection of organismic traits.#
• Meme theory is a crude caricature of the way human beings come up with new ideas and share them with one another.

I’m not quite as harsh,

Sometimes a handy kludge,

Not taken as real.

Superficially, meme theory looks like it has some merit as an explanation, but yes, it’s a crude over-simplification. It’s ironically more of a meme in the pop culture sense of the word than any kind of serious science.

Dawkins, Himself

• Richard Dawkins is a distinguished scientist who deserves a Nobel Prize.#
• Richard Dawkins is a [non-]brilliant popularizer who has not done any original scientific work in decades.

Doesn’t speak for me.

I added square brackets

For commentary.

Richard Dawkins is an asshole, but I can’t deny he wrote some arguably decent popularizing with his books to explain some basic ideas behind evolution. Then I found out how big a jerk he was on issues of race, sexism, and gender identity. We need people who understand science enough to bridge the gap between dedicated scientists and the public at large, so I don’t denigrate people for doing that.

Seriously, what is it with Creationists assuming that attacking alleged idols will sway us? Dawkins is a Creationist boogeyman, not an idol of biology or science. As far as I can tell, Dawkins is losing relevance with both the atheist and biology community because of his bigotry and doubling down with shoddy attempts to rationalize them.

Atheism

• Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.#
• The atheist worldview still contains major conceptual gaps.

None of the above.

We didn’t need Darwin for that.

We’ve long been around.

I’d like a definition of “intellectually fulfilled” in this context. Even if the theory of evolution never formed, I don’t see how that would interfere with being an atheist. “I don’t know, yet” is a legitimate and typically honest answer to big questions. Admitting ignorance is better than declaring an answer without even trying to demonstrate it, which is what religion does.

Religious Functions

• Religion is a legitimate activity in which humans try to understand and make contact with what is ultimately real.
• Religion is an irrational response to unknown causes operating in nature; as we understand nature better, religion will disappear.#

None of the above.

Social functions good or ill:

Beware crowd’s madness.

Religions fulfill a lot of social functions, like establishing cohesion of a group identity. It operates on a lot of psychological, sociological, economic, and political forces, and even perverse incentives. And yes, making up explanations for the unknown is often one of those functions. Religion’s been fading a lot as we understand more of reality, but I doubt it’ll ever completely disappear, if only because of human vanity and stubbornness. People will die on strange hills and jump off cliffs so long as there’s enough camaraderie promised by the group.

Honestly, I don’t grok religion. I suspect my autism contributes. I don’t understand this clawing need to be validated by magic reasons. Even if we discovered a sort of spiritual realm, powerful god-like beings involved in running the universe, and all that sort of thing, I’d still be a materialist, just with some truly exotic new materials and forces to try to understand. I do some fantasy games and worldbuilding. I’m fine creating fictional gods, afterlives, and so forth, but they feel tacked on. Religion is the part I really don’t know what to do with, aside from treating them like political factions or a stereotypical cult. No idea how to role play a cleric, either, unless it’s as a villainous type who uses spirituality as an excuse for fulfilling his own selfish desires.

Agent Smith Rants About Humans as Viruses // Dembski Vicariously Worships Himself?

• Due to our uncontrolled population growth, human beings have become a scourge upon the earth not unlike cancer.#
• Human beings are the crown of creation.

Yes, we’ve fucked things up.

Not an excuse to wallow

In idle self-hate.

Put the gauntlet down, Thanos. “Overpopulation” is a red flag for ecofascism and eugenics. If we have to lower the population, the ethical approach is to increase quality of life and access to contraception, thereby lowering the birth rate. To me, environmentalism means finding a way to keep civilization running while reducing harm to the ecology. Sustainability is the watch word. We need to clean up our own shit as a community if we want to flourish. We need to change and work to fix the negative consequences we inflicted on ourselves. We are part of the world, not gods with divine right to exploit it from above, like Dembski seems to believe. We have a worldwide food surplus, so we can feed ourselves if political and economic entities didn’t get in the way. We need to find the political will to change for the better.

Only reason I can see evolution being involved in this one is our humble origins challenge the all-consuming self-idolatry Creationism feeds.

Priorities

• Third-world economic development to relieve poverty is more important than preserving biological diversity at all costs.
• Preserving biological diversity is more important than third-world economic development.#

Premise rejected.

Both need to be accomplished,

For us to prosper.

Lazy, Dembski. Just lazy. Here’s a fun exercise for you to try: Find me a Creationist who sincerely believes in relieving poverty for its own sake, not just selfish pursuit of brownie points in Heaven.

Social Constructs

• Purpose, value, and meaning are “folk-psychology” categories that do not correspond to anything in reality.#
• Purpose, value, and meaning are objectively real.

They affect my life,

Observable effects are

what science measures.

More Creationist ability to muddle the concepts of “is,” “ought,” “objective,” and “subjective” with absolutist bullshit. Yet another, “none of the above” answer.

Criticism of Evolution

• Darwinian evolutionary theory has weaknesses and those who point them out should be tolerated, if not applauded.
• Darwinian evolutionary theory has no weaknesses and those who say it does are usually religiously motivated.#

Pot calls kettle black.

There’s scientific method.

Get off your asses.

All knowledge has weaknesses. We’ll never have perfect information. Meanwhile, Creationism is the kid who just goes “Nuh-uh!” over and over again without contributing useful insight.

Intelligent Design’s Place

• Intelligent design, as a voice of dissent, does useful work in keeping the evolutionary biology community honest.
• Intelligent design has no intellectual merits and deserves no public hearing.#

Science is method.

I.D. spurns such diligence.

Hypocritical.

Scientists aren’t a monolith, and neither is evolutionary theory. Every step is subject to scrutiny by genuine peer-review. It’s not perfect, but Creationism in any form doesn’t care about even trying. If anything, Dembski’s trying to drown out real evolutionary theory with random straw men he invents in these statements. Another none of the above.

Theory of Everything

• The theory of natural selection is a “universal acid” that dissolves every problem in the biological and social sciences; Darwinian theory explains virtually everything.#
• A theory that explains everything explains nothing; for all practical purposes, Darwinian theory is unfalsifiable and so is essentially unscientific.

None of the above.

Evolution is nuanced.

Three words: Read a book!

Creationism can explain any result as the random whims of a random god capable of anything. Evolution has had results it couldn’t explain in earlier forms and needed to be modified to account for those results. That’s how science progresses. In the modern form, if a species of cat evolves into a genuine dog, the theory of evolution can’t explain that because it violates the way clades work and the law of non-reversability. And yet, it’s the Creationists who demand we produce such results to prove evolution?