Category Archives: Darwinism

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. The state's prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents, trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity, and drinkable water, of being the "lazy" products of a "socialist government." "I'm sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!" He said, predicting "only the strong will survive and the weak will perish."

Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America, most of them oil tycoons. Last week, its laissez-faire state energy market delivered a bonanza to oil and gas producers that had managed to keep production going during the freeze. It was "like hitting the jackpot," boasted president of Comstock Resources on an earnings call.

Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, holds a majority of Comstock's shares. But most other Texans were marooned, and some even perished.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electric power, exempted affluent downtowns from outages, leaving the thriving parts of Austin, Dallas, and Houston brightly lit while pushing less affluent precincts into the dark and cold.

Many Texans inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities also are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart.

In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even when they're able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. If they can't pay, they're cut off.

Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch, as last week, they check into hotels or leave town. As millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico for a family vacation. Their Houston home was "FREEZING," as his wife put it.

Climate change, COVID, and jobs are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. The white working class is taking as much of a beating as most Black and Latino people.

Lower-income Texans, white as well as Black and Latino, are taking it on the chin in many other ways. Texas is one of the few states that hasn't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving the share of Texans without health insurance twice the national average, the largest uninsured population of any state. Texas has double the national average of children in poverty and a higher rate of unemployment than the nation's average.

And although Texans have suffered multiple natural disasters stemming from climate change, Texas Republicans are dead set against a Green New Deal that would help reduce the horrific impacts.

Last Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state "shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States." Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that "wind and solar got shut down."

Rubbish. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.

In Texas, tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. Adapting to extreme weather is necessary but it's no substitute for cutting emissions, which Texas is loath to do. Not even the Lone Star State should protect the freedom to freeze.

Robert B. Reich is an American political commentator, professor and author. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Reich's latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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The Real Divide In America Isn't Politics. It's COVID and Climate | Opinion - Newsweek

Photo: Tom Bethell, by Laszlo Bencze.

Sometimes words can capture, partly, a human personality, or at least give a glimpse. Other times a photo or other portrait speaks eloquently in a way that words cant. Photographer Laszlo Bencze has taken photos of intelligent design proponents and Darwin skeptics, including several portraits of journalist Tom Bethell, whose passing I noted here yesterday. Tom was 84 years old. Bencze sent a beautiful and expressive photo of him, reproduced above with permission, along with this:

I am very saddened to hear of Tom Bethells death. Not only was he pivotal in my turning away from Darwinism due to his 1976 Harpers article, which I clipped from the magazine and still have, but we also became friends during one of his visits to California. He allowed me to do an edit on his book,Darwins House of Cards. It was so well written that my suggestions were rather minor. He was erudite and a true gentleman.

The photo was taken in Laszlos living room in 2013. Im no photographer but it seems to me that what the artist is trying to do is capture an image not just of the subjects body but of his heart, whatever we understand that to mean (personality, will, spirit), maybe even his soul. In my estimation, this portrait succeeds.

This occurs to me, not pertaining to Tom Bethell alone. Take a moment to browse Laszlos other photos. I was struck by his images of Flannery OConnors home, including one of her typewriter and writing desk. The photo is accompanied by this quotation from a letter she wrote:

A story really isnt any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase, unless it hangs on and expands in the mind. Properly, you analyze to enjoy, but its equally true that to analyze with any discrimination, you have to have enjoyed already

The same might be true of photos or of people. Were reminded of this when people die, and at other times.

I was going to say that the way Toms right eye is illuminated, in a penetrating manner, speaks to me. Suggesting a penetrating intellect, or some such thing. But you know what? That falls absurdly flat. When we try to paraphrase summarize, or indicate in words what draws us to someone or something and find that it successfully resists paraphrase, then we know were in the presence of something very good. The more secure the stronghold against paraphrase, the more special the object of our failed praise.

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A True Portrait of Tom Bethell - Discovery Institute

Photo: Tom Bethell, via Discovery Institute.

As a Darwin skeptic, journalist Tom Bethell preceded almost everyone I know. His groundbreaking attack on evolutionary theory in Harpers Magazine appeared in 1976. It is my sad duty to report that Tom passed away on Friday. We will have more to say about him. As to his gifts as a writer and thinker, I reviewed his wonderful book Darwins House of Cards back in 2017. From, Tom Bethells Rebuke to Fellow Journalists: A Skeptical Look at Evolution IsNotBeyond Your Powers:

Not a religious apologist or a cheerleader for any competing view, but rather an old-fashioned skeptic, Bethell has been doubting Darwin since he was an undergraduate at Oxford University. I admit hes a longtime friendly acquaintance and a contributor to Evolution News, so Im not unbiased. But others who, like me, have followed him for years agree in savoring his work.

That includes some eminent names. Novelist Tom Wolfe has called him one of our most brilliant essayists, and Andrew Ferguson at The Weekly Standard, a great writer himself, says, As a journalist, Tom Bethell is fearless. As a storyteller and stylist he is peerless. All his gifts are on generous display in this fascinating and admirable book.

He has been writing about Darwin (among many other subjects, of course) for forty-plus years, beginning with an article in Harpers in 1976. Wry, unfailingly clear, never technical, yet astonishingly well informed, he has produced what might be the Platonic ideal of an introduction to an often challenging and certainly controversial subject. He covers the waterfront, probing the strength of Darwinian thinking with reference to common descent, natural selection, extinction, homology, convergence, the fossil record, biogeography, cladistics, Lenskis long-term experiment with bacteria, and much more.

He concludes that while confidence in the pillars of Darwinism common descent and innovation through natural selection hit their high-water mark at the celebration of the Origin of Species in 1959, the evidence has steadily and increasingly gone against the theory. The whole edifice rested on a 19th century faith in Progress, propped up by a dogmatic commitment to materialism. As the former falters, the structure is in danger of collapse.

To have won the admiration of Tom Wolfe is no small accomplishment for a journalist. Bethell was a vivid personality and highly independent. He could be entertainingly irascible, as he demonstrated in an email list in which we both participated. He was also loyal. I thought of him recently in connection with another journalist I knew, Joseph Sobran. As some may recall, Joe Sobran self-destructed, in career terms, and was forced out at National Review. By the end of his life, he had reconciled with his former employer, William F. Buckley Jr. But in the years when as far as Im aware, everyone else in the world of conservative journalism had dropped Sobran as too toxic, Tom Bethell, I know, remained his close friend. That struck me as a tribute to Toms character. A gift for loyalty and friendship is undoubtedly even more precious than a gift for thought, analysis, or writing.

I remember having an exchange with Tom about the meaning of his last name, which seems to correspond to the Biblical place name Beth El, meaning House of God. He has gone on now to that House. All his friends at Discovery Institute wish Toms wife Donna much comfort. You can see him below in a video we released, Iconoclast: One Journalists Odyssey through the Darwin Debates.

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Iconoclast: Farewell to Tom Bethell - Discovery Institute

Andrew LichtensteinGetty Images

Mutual aid has existed as long as people have been around, says Mariame Kaba, an educator and organizer in New York City who, in March 2020, collaborated with U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a mutual-aid workshop and the release of a COVID-19 mutual-aid digital tool kit. But theres a reason youve been seeing pictures of people filling a community refrigerator and videos of folks handing out clothing on the street accompanied by #mutualaid all over your social feeds lately. Were dealing with a disaster of massive proportions, [COVID-19], that most people have never lived through in their lifetime, Kaba says. When you are in this kind of a situation, you figure out ways to relate to other people that allow you to actually survive. Thats why people are paying attention to it; they have no choice.

Its important to be clear on what mutual aid really is (it can loosely be described as caring for others while working to improve our world)and isnt (charity). This is more than the giving or taking of goods or services; its a relationship that youre building. Its called mutual aid, so its not just the [assistance] that matters, says Kaba, its the reciprocity of itthat youre in a community with other people. From that association, you build connections in a way that you dont with a singular feel-good actions. (Not that theres anything wrong with those)

Its to create a new society; its to create a new community.

Its not just You do one thing for me, and then I never talk to you again, continues Kaba. Its to create a new society; its to create a new community. The idea is that once people are interacting in this way, they see more and more ways to work together to help one another, leading to greater transformation.

The key to understanding it is a 1902 essay collection by Peter Kropotkin. In Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, the Russian anarchist philosopher looked at mutually beneficial cooperation in human and animal societies, sort of the opposite of social Darwinism. For a deeper understanding of the modern version, try the primer Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), by Dean Spade (Verso, 2020). Spade outlines how the systems we currently have in place are not set up to meet peoples needsas weve seen highlighted by last years major global disruption.

But its not only worth practicing during a pandemic. Mutual aid is for when wealth is concentrated in one layer of society, when the health-care system is flawed, and when people can work full-time but still be unable to pull their families out of poverty. In other words, mutual aid is timelyand timeless.

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What Is Mutual Aid? | How to Get Involved in the Community Movement - MarieClaire.com

In a recent article Evolution and artificial intelligence face the same basic problem, Eric Holloway addressed the conundrum faced by artificial intelligence theorists: How can a random process with no insight into the environment increase information about that environment within evolving DNA sequences and/or artificial intelligence programs. By what mechanism can randomness know anything? Dr. Holloways challenge goes to the heart of the problem with the materialist worldview regarding origins, evolution, and ultimately intelligence.

Imagine you knew absolutely nothing about roller skates. Then you awoke this morning to find your ankles and feet permanently installed into roller skates. Instantly, everything you understood about walking and running is worthless.

Getting onto your feet at all is risky. Standing is your second awful challenge. To move, you cant walk; you must glide. To turn is a mysterious twist-and-lean maneuver. Stopping means grabbing onto something stationary or just falling down a lot. Dont even think about moving backward. When you finally gain some skating skills through endless struggles, you find skates are great for speed on paved surfaces. But they are slow and dangerously ill-suited for gravel, grassy terrain, or staircases. You will certainly miss your feet in their natural state.

This thought experiment captures the fundamental distinction between biological hardware and biological software. We have hardware for locomotion: ankles and feet. We need the know-how, the methods, the sequence of commands the software to operate that hardware. Feet dont walk us, nor do they walk independently of us. Rather, we walk using feet. When the hardware changes, for example, if feet were to become roller skates, the software must change radically too.

If you dont figure out how to move around on skates instead of feet, your chances of surviving and thriving greatly diminish. Having to think specifically about every step or glide would drain your energy, so you need to develop the sort of muscle memory with skates as you previously had with feet.

Bottom line: You must change your software to operate new or modified hardware. In the same way, when an animals biological hardware changes, that animals operating software must also change to match the hardware changes.

Somehow, when we think about evolution, the problem of hardwaresoftware coordination is ignored. Take, for example, the neo-Darwinian claim that modern birds evolved from reptile-like dinosaurs. Discussions of dinosaur-to-bird evolution talk about the hardware changes: scales became feathers, legs became wings, cold-blooded (exothermic) physiology became warm-blooded (endothermic) physiology, tooth-filled mouths became beaks, and so on. All of these monumental changes in hardware present enormous operational challenges that incremental mutations somehow solved over millions of years. But totally missing is any account of the evolution of the necessary software.

Assume for the moment that unguided mutation could actually modify a reptile and install the wing apparatus, including all the muscles and feathers. For the early stubby proto-wing to give the modified reptile the survival advantage necessary to win in natural selection, the reptile must know how to use the proto-wing. A reptile with proto-wings instead of legs is like a human with roller skates instead of feet. The reptile must have the biological software to operate the proto-wings successfully. Whatever software the legged reptile had, it wont operate a proto-wing. The stubby-winged reptile is worse off than his legged brothers and sisters, not better, and wont win the natural selection prize.

So lets generously give a reptile a full set of beautiful wings with feathers and the powerful muscles needed. We have doomed the poor creature. She wakes up to the world, clueless about how to use the wings. She cant walk like her legged siblings. She cant fly because she lacks the software, in the sense of neurological adaptations, to launch, flap, soar, glide, turn, and land.

Operating feet or skates, legs or wings, is algorithmic. Robert Marks, Michael Egnor, and Winston Ewert have all argued that the mind is distinct from the brain, at least in humans, and that consciousness does not arise in the brain alone. William Dembski has suggested that consciousness could potentially be the result of material features that are intelligently designed. It is a fair question whether consciousness, human reason, and subjective preferences are algorithmic or non-algorithmic. But those elements of mind function well above walking or even flying in terms of complexity or comprehensibility; the ordinary operations of movement are algorithmic because they can be programmed into computers.

When walking or skating, we develop muscle memory. Our brains and nervous systems internalize the procedures for these tasks. We dont think about them, we just engage them. The toddler toddles around looking for the kitten he wants to play with and finds it prudently perched on a ledge out of arms reach. The toddler doesnt think about having to walk while trying to carry out that intention. Doubtless, reptiles dont think about walking, and birds dont think about flying. They just expect the subroutines in their brains to carry out the tasks.

According to the materialist view, every feature of life is explainable using cause-and-effect physics and chemistry. Neo-Darwinism (the theory that natural selection acting on random mutation builds complex, functional structures) still seems to be the dominant materialist account of the existence of animal species. To properly claim that throne, however, neo-Darwinism must explain not only how hardware features mutated into existence but also how the biological operating software came into existence and could then be modified successfully in dramatic ways.

Walking and flying are two animal functions that are often called behaviors. I scoured the Encyclopedia of Evolution (2002) a few years ago but found no substantive explanation for the origins and implementation of behaviors.

Computer systems within robots can engage in behaviors and we can see and modify the software code that was designed for the purpose. Ive been reading articles about dinosaur-bird evolution, but none have described where and how the walking and flying software is encoded and stored in the animals bodies or brains. No article Ive seen reveals the mechanism for modifying behavioral software in animals, let alone how the algorithm for walking in two dimensions can be modified by undirected mutation to become the algorithm for flying in three dimensions.

Materialist thinkers contend that every feature of brain, mind, and consciousness arose via cause-effect physics and chemistry accounted for by neo-Darwinism. In that case, they first need to explain how biological software is created and stored in animals, and then how such software can be mutated by accident just in time to operate new biological hardware. Solve those problems first, before claiming human consciousness is mere biochemistry.

Note: See also the detailed presentation about bird flight prepared by Professor Gary Ritchison, Eastern Kentucky University here and here.

Photo credits:

Figure 1: Roller skates is by Ryan McGuire at Pixabay.

Figure 2: Foot by HeelsandFeet is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 3: Feathered Dinosaur: File:Harpymimus steveoc.jpg by Steveoc 86 is licensed under CC BY 2.5

Figure 4: Archaeopteryx closer to a bird by Luna04 at French Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

You may also enjoy: Evolution and artificial intelligence face the same basic problem. Think of the word ladder game, where we transform one word into another by changing only one letter at a time. (Eric Holloway)

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Random Evolution Doesn't Produce Algorithmic Functions in Animals - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Darwinism, theory of the evolutionary mechanism propounded by Charles Darwin as an explanation of organic change. It denotes Darwins specific view that evolution is driven mainly by natural selection.

Beginning in 1837, Darwin proceeded to work on the now well-understood concept that evolution is essentially brought about by the interplay of three principles: (1) variationa liberalizing factor, which Darwin did not attempt to explain, present in all forms of life; (2) hereditythe conservative force that transmits similar organic form from one generation to another; and (3) the struggle for existencewhich determines the variations that will confer advantages in a given environment, thus altering species through a selective reproductive rate.

On the basis of newer knowledge, neo-Darwinism has superseded the earlier concept and purged it of Darwins lingering attachment to the Lamarckian theory of inheritance of acquired characters. Present knowledge of the mechanisms of inheritance are such that modern scientists can distinguish more satisfactorily than Darwin between non-inheritable bodily variation and variation of a genuinely inheritable kind.

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Darwinism | Definition & Facts | Britannica

Image, Belisarius Begging for Alms, by Jacques-Louise David.

On a new episode ofID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid presents an Evolution News essay,How to Destroy Love with Darwinism.Download the podcast or listen to it here. Altruism as defined by evolutionists means behavior by an animal that may be to its disadvantage but that benefits others of its kind. Its not an easy fit with Darwinism, since Darwinian evolution is all about passing your favored genes onto your offspring. How can a creature do that if she gives her life for another, particularly when its not even her own children, and before she has produced any offspring? Such individuals fail to pass on their own genes a seeming conundrum for Darwinism.

Evolutionists have made some progress (they think) explaining such things with theories of group selection or kin selection. But those explanations face some fresh challenges and dont even begin to explain self-sacrificial acts done for non-kin, a behavior we see among humans. From a design perspective, though, such behaviors are not baffling, for they are not genetically determined acts, as if humans are only wet robots governed by genes. They are acts of true self-sacrificial love, done freely and made possible because reality is more than matter and energy, and humans are more than just DNA survival machines.

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To Say the Least, Altruism Is Not an Easy Fit with Darwinism - Discovery Institute

Photo credit: Satwinder Singh via Unsplash.

Darwinism isnt just a scientific theory. It has implications for culture, politics, and personal interactions. Writing at The Stream, John Zmirak describes his interest in documentaries about gorillas and other beautiful animals. He includes deserved kudos for Discovery Institutes popular YouTube videos:

At days end, when Im exhausted, I wind down by finally turning on the television. The last things I usually watch are nature films, on the diverse, fascinating, and mostly apolitical channel CuriosityStream. For a grand total of $12 per year (as of now), you get access to thousands of polished, beautifully produced documentaries on every subject from ancient history to contemporary science. Its the best entertainment money Ive ever spent.

Invariably, I look for animal films. First of all, Im a sucker for Gods innocent creatures, especially the furry ones. But I take delight in all the evidence of direct, Divine design all through the animal kingdom from speeding sharks to circling condors. I do wish CuriosityStream would air some programming from the Discovery Institute. Its scientists do much better explaining nature via design than Darwinists do with their just so stories and smuggled-in teleology. (Evolution developed the eagles eye to make it a better hunter .)

The Pyramid Is the Point

One thing I notice among most higher mammals, especially primates: the almost universal preoccupation with hierarchy. In some species, only the highest status female gets to breed. Once she claims that position, usually by bullying other females, it goes mostly unchallenged. But much more prevalent are species where the status that matters is male. The dominant male collects a harem of she-gorillas or sea lionesses, and fathers all the groups children. Lesser males steer well clear of females, and accept the scraps from hunts, lest they summon the alpha males wrath. Often the dominant males will go out of their way to humiliate their lesser brethren, just to remind them whos boss.

Its true: on one hand, animals inform us about the mind and the care for beauty, charm, and nobility that lie behind biology. In a way, they speak to us about the vision, and the love, of their creator. That is the design perspective.

Looked at another way, the animal world is a theater for brutality, where social interactions can be about brute displays of force, and the strong dominating the weak. As Zmirak argues, the Darwinian view, when embraced, whatever the context, encourages a way of interacting with others individuals and other groups where the aim is to humiliate [ones] lesser brethren, just to remind them whos boss. After all, humans are just animals.

As Zmirak puts it, They pyramid is the point. If thats the kind of worlds you want to live in, Darwinian evolution is the view of reality for you.

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When Darwinism Reigns, The Pyramid Is the Point - Discovery Institute

Social Darwinism focuses on the principle of survival of the fittest. Within the news ecosystem, this means that only news outlets which are heavily profitable will survive. Some news organisations receive public funding while others are privately run. This creates a competition environment for news organisations who are actively competing for viewers attention.

To compete within the news ecosystem, news organizations have to diversify their content. As a consequence of this, journalists often experience burnout as they are having to produce multiple pieces at once in order to conduct their job. Within this instance, the news is distorted because of this perspective as the news networks are promoting their economic and business obligations over the well-being of their employees. This can lead to misprints, incorrect information being reported because of a lack of fact-checking, or lead to an article being biased because of the framing of the content to attract more viewers. An example of this is clickbait articles which use strategic phrasing within the title to get viewers to read the material.

Within diversifying news organizations create pieces for infotainment, which are designed to focus more on entertaining the viewer rather than educating them. This distortion allows for a business to gain higher viewership and therefore increased revenue, however the information is again framed to create a specific narrative to engage the user to spend more time on a specific news platform. The Spinoff recently created a series on political youth wings; this was designed primarily for entertainment rather than to educate viewers. They attracted viewership to this series using strategic sound bites which appeared on multiple social media platforms artificially inflating their viewership and therefore their revenue.

News organizations often have multiple revenue streams, all of which rely on the ability to attract viewers to them rather than their competition. Many articles are written for a wide target audience in order to capture a high viewership and therefore more revenue whether it be from advertising, grant funding, or private sponsorship.

Furthermore, news organizations exaggerate news conflicts to increase viewership. News corporations compete with each other for the accolade of having the most graphic imagery, which attracts viewers to their content. Humans are attracted to violence and conflict and therefore news organizations are able to distort news through exaggeration, curation of imagery and creating an attractive narrative to engage viewers. The aim of journalism is to report factually correct information which has been fact-checked to be accurate, as conflict news is distorted it doesnt fit the aim of news. News organizations fail to complete this aim, because of the nature of competition within Social Darwinism, as they have to put the economic and business needs ahead of its duty to give its viewers an accurate portrayal of both sides of news.

News organizations actively have to manipulate viewers and their behaviour in order to be able to keep operating as businesses. News organizations have to prioritise their business and economic needs first. As a result of the competitive nature of the news ecosystem and the attitude of Social Darwinism within news journalism, news organizations diversify content, use clickbait articles to attract viewers, focus on entertaining rather than producing news content, write broad pieces attractable for large audiences and exaggerate news. We must ask ourselves as a society whether we are able to accept these unethical news practices or whether we need to look differently as to how we fund news organisations.

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Social Darwinism and News. - The Organization for World Peace

Photo: Casey Luskin in South Africa.

Five years ago, on December 31, 2015, after working at Discovery Institute for ten years, I wrote a farewell message. I said the following:

It is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I write this to announce that, as the year 2015 closes, I am leaving Discovery Institute. I am doing so in order to fulfill a lifelong goal of furthering my studies. My colleagues, who entirely support this decision, are people of the utmost integrity and they have been incredibly generous and welcoming to me and my family. I know we will miss each other.

Now at the beginning of 2021, it is with a mixture of joy and excitement that I write to announce that Im grateful to return to Discovery Institute as Associate Director of the Center for Science & Culture (CSC). And Im very optimistic about the future!

Over the past few years, Ive seen critics of intelligent design (ID) advance some wild and amusing conspiracy theories about the reasons for my departure and absence. Fortunately, none of them are true. I chuckled when they wishfully and confidently asserted that I had, alternatively, jumped ship, abandoned ID, was fired or retired.

So where was I for the last five years? Hiding out because I couldnt take the heat? Finally seeing the light and converting to Darwinism? Fired from Discovery Institute? Not at all. The truth is exactly what I said in my farewell post: I was fulfilling a lifelong goal of furthering my studies specifically, to earn a PhD in geology.

This pursuit took me to the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in South Africa, where I used paleomagnetism to study the early plate tectonic history of the Kaapvaal Craton, an ancient portion of Earths crust in southern Africa that traces back to over 3 billion years in age. Although my research does have some implications for early earth habitability, it was not related to intelligent design. And while many of my colleagues were aware of my ID views (and my prior work at Discovery Institute), to my knowledge they did not share them. My colleagues at UJ are first-rate geologists doing phenomenal research, and are great people who have nothing to do with ID. The focus of my PhD at UJ simply was not intelligent design, but rather Archean geology (and the subfield of paleomagnetism). I had a great time doing it.

My PhD project focused on the Pongola Supergroup, a major section of supracrustal rocks in southeastern South Africa (Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces) and southern Swaziland, aged ~2.8 3.0 billion years old. These rocks represent some the earliest deposits of volcanic rocks and siliciclastic sedimentary rocks that were deposited on stable continental crust. Specifically, my research investigated the paleomagnetism of the Pongola Supergroups volcanic rocks of the Nsuze Group, focusing on trying to determine where they were located on Earth at the time they formed about 2.95 3.0 billion years ago.

When molten rock cools, it frequently gets magnetized by the Earths magnetic field. Because the magnetic field varies according to latitude (i.e., angular distance from the equator), studying the magnetic properties of rocks can reveal where on Earth the rock originally formed in terms of its original paleolatitude (though not paleolongitude). If you have enough data, you can use paleomagnetism to attempt to reconstruct the plate tectonic history of a continent that is, figure out where continents were located in the past, what they may have looked like, and where they have drifted over time.

Suffice to say, this project involved months and even years of fieldwork, lab work, data analysis, and writeup. Like most PhDs, mine had its ups and downs, complete with excitement, fun, blood, sweat, tears, near-madness, sheer terror, and utter boredom.

Regarding excitement and terror, more than once I collected samples where signs warned of crocodiles, pythons, hippos, leopards, and other hazards. Fieldwork also gave me new experiences such as getting tick bite fever and other weird illnesses, getting caught in lightning storms, an angry farmer threatening to shoot me, and nervously tromping through countless kilometers of snake-infested bush.

Regarding the boredom and tears, my PhD required me to endure machinery and lab instrument breakdowns which slowed progress significantly and forced travel to other continents to finish lab work, amounting to untold days and nights spent alone in a small, windowless room measuring rock samples. As for the madness, thats what happened after I wrote over 30,000 lines of Python code to create new software tools for generating paleomagnetic diagrams. My family bought me a t-shirt that said I dream in Python because for months it was all I ever thought about.

None of the above makes me special or unusual. It just makes me like every other geologist who has done fieldwork, lab work, and data analysis. But in the end, the research was immensely rewarding because it allowed us to test fascinating hypotheses about whether Kaapvaal Craton of southern Africa and the Pilbara Craton of western Australia were once connected as an ancient supercontinent billions of years ago in the Archean.

Oh yes, the big question! Over the last few years many friends have asked me, Why did you go to South Africa for your PhD? Well, a major reason is that my wifes family is South African and we have a lot of extended family there. Another reason is that I wanted to study geology, and with South Africas rich mineral resources and extensive mining industry, it has among the best national infrastructures for geological research in the world.

The University of Johannesburg has a world-class geology department doing many forms of cutting-edge geological research, and was a superb place to study. Many other top geology research institutions are located in South Africa, offering prime opportunities for research collaborations. There are other reasons I went there, too, but all in good time. In sum, South Africa was an ideal place to do geological research.

Critics of ID often claim that if you dont have a PhD then you cant understand science and you dont deserve to speak on the topic. This is simply false.

There are lots of very smart people with PhDs but an amusing and astute saying Ive heard says that Science is 50 percent luck, 50 percent hard work, and the rest brains. Earning a PhD isnt easy, but Im now more convinced than ever that a PhD is not a litmus test for whether youre intelligent, whether you understand science, whether you have the ability and right to cogently speak in public about science, or whether your scientific views are ultimately correct. That said, Im immensely grateful for the experiences and opportunities I had working toward my PhD.

Of course everyone on the planet who has ever gotten a PhD did so because they wanted to improve their skills, credentials, and advance their career. But to be frank, before I did the PhD I was content with my credentials and my career. So for me, those werent the driving concerns.

Prior to attending law school, I had a bachelors degree and a masters degree in earth sciences from UC San Diego. As a kid, I would make my dad pull over our familys old RV on road trips so I could scamper off into the desert to collect rocks. Science was always my first academic love, and I was a weird geology-loving kid from a young age. Simply put: Going on to obtain a PhD in geology was a lifelong goal I had. None of my close friends were surprised when I told them I was doing this.

So why did I do the PhD? Answer: For the love of science, a desire to do research, and a quirky passion for rocks Ive had my entire life! And South Africa was an amazing place to do it.

So, you dont need a PhD to do good science, but that doesnt mean a PhD is a cakewalk. My PhD was the most mentally and emotionally exhausting academic venture of my life and I suspect that most folks who have gone through the experience will agree. Im still recuperating. In the end, I feel incredibly grateful to have learned a ton, met amazing people from all over the world, made many great friends, and had the experience of a lifetime.

As I return to Discovery Institute, I remain as optimistic about IDs future as I was when I wrote my farewell post in December 2015: my personal support for ID and confidence in its future have never been stronger the fundamentals of ID are sound. In that post, I discussed four general areas where ID was forging ahead: (1) scientific advancements and peer-reviewed papers, (2) failed attempts by critics to suppress ID, (3) IDs performance in high-level debates against top critics, and (4) a growing community of ID-friendly graduate students and scientists. Considering various developments over the past few years while I was doing the PhD, I believe this optimism remains warranted, and that ID is in an even stronger position than when I left:

Evidence supporting ID and/or challenging standard materialistic evolutionary models has continued to grow these past few years. There are so many examples its hard to know where to begin. In 2016, the Royal Society held a meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology, in which some talks were sharply critical of modern evolutionary biologys ability to explain the origin of new complex biological features. Also in 2016, a team led by Scott Minnich published a paper in the Journal of Bacteriology which showed that the famous Cit+ phenotype of Richard Lenskis Long Term Evolution Experiments actually involved, as the paper argued, No new genetic information. Then, in 2017, Discovery Institute released an updated list of pro-ID peer-reviewed papers, now topping over 100 papers.

There will surely be quite a few more papers added when we next update our peer-reviewed articles page, but there are a few worth mentioning that showed ID expanding into new areas of research. One of my favorite developments of the past few years was a paper published in BIO-Complexity in 2018 by computer scientist Winston Ewert. He applied the concept of common design to produce a dependency graph model of organismal relationships based upon the principle that software designers frequently re-use the same coding modules in different programs. Ewert tested his model by comparing the distribution of gene families in nine diverse organisms to a treelike pattern predicted by neo-Darwinism versus a dependency graph distribution used by computer programmers. His preliminary analysis showed that a common design-based dependency graph fit the genetic data 103000 times better than a Darwinian evolutionary tree!

Another important novel contribution from the ID camp was a project on human origins that published a paper in BIO-Complexity in 2019. This paper used population genetics to refute those who cite evolutionary models to claim that human genetic diversity indicates we could not have originated from an initial couple. As a final example, in 2020 a major article came out in the Journal of Theoretical Biology which supported intelligent design by name, noting that ID aims to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other scientific and philosophical enterprises, and it is subject to the same methods of evaluation and critique. The authors predicted that we will establish fine-tuning as a sustainable and fully testable scientific hypothesis, and ultimately a Design Science.

How did critics respond to IDs advances? Well, the media gave muffled coverage to the Royal Society conference in 2016 while participants tried hard not to think about ID. As for the Journal of Theoretical Biology, it issued a tepid disclaimer and weak rebuttal to the 2020 pro-ID paper, which, as John West pointed out, showed the article survived peer-review and was accepted for publication despite the open hostility of the journals top editors! The episode demonstrated the bias and opposition often faced by ID theorists in the scientific community, but that quality pro-ID science is being published nonetheless. Another episode from last year was telling. When we merely cited evidence from a mainstream journal that fulfilled IDs prediction of function for junk DNA though making it clear that the writers did not intend to support ID the same journal responded by calling for us to be censored!

I suppose little has changed in the past five years while I was doing the PhD: attempts to suppress ID continue, but the evidence for ID grows stronger apparently so strong that it cant be answered on the merits and must be suppressed. One wonders why there cant just be a serious, civil conversation about ID.

ID has fared superbly in high-level debates against its top opponents in recent years. Consider Brian Millers exchange with fellow physicist Jeremy England in the journal Inference. Miller showed that leading origin-of-life thinkers like Dr. England still cannot account for the high-energy, low-entropy states of living systems. As Miller explains, doing so requires explaining the origin of molecular machines which perform work to maintain these states. And explaining the origin of molecular machines requires accounting for the information that encodes them. Miller identifies the crux of the matter: Until origins researchers address the central role of information, the origin of life will remain shrouded in mystery. The exchange showed that even brilliant origin-of-life theorists like England simply do not have an answer for the origin of that necessary genetic information.

Or consider the scientific debate over Michael Behes book Darwin Devolves which came out in February 2019 and argued that evolutionary adaptations typically break or diminish function at the molecular level. The book received a critical though serious review in the journal Science, as well as in other scientific journals, and a lively debate ensued online. I followed the debate closely, and could not help but participate in it with a few anonymously submitted posts here at Evolution News. What I saw was that top anti-ID scientists like (such as Richard Lenski, Jerry Coyne, and others) barely put a dent in Behes arguments. Undoubtedly they would feel otherwise, but consider this: On degradation in polar bear genes, Behes defenders carefully answered every objection from critics and uncovered medical research showing that, as Behes model predicts, degradative mutations to APOB can help reduce cholesterol (see here for a summary and guide to that intense debate).

As we dug into other criticisms, Behes arguments stood the test at almost every turn. Then last year, Behes arguments were further vindicated when a Harvard geneticist wrote in Current Biology that the majority of the mutations that lead to adaptation are loss-of-function mutations that impair or eliminate the function of genes rather than gain-of-function mutations that increase or qualitatively alter the function of proteins. Read the Criticism & Response page on the books website to get a sense of how well Behes arguments fared.

This past year I had the pleasure of assisting with the 2020 Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design my first time teaching at the program in five years. I was reimpressed that there are dozens upon dozens of bright and motivated ID-friendly graduate students around the world doing (or planning to do) research in fields including biology, biochemistry, physics, cosmology, chemistry, and many other fields who want to advance the case for ID. Quite a few Summer Seminar alumni are already publishing papers contributing to the ID research program showing that ID is a healthy science with an up-and-coming crop of international scientists. Meanwhile, high-level defections, such as Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, show that its not just young scientists who are coming to doubt Darwin. Gelernter came out in 2019 as a critic of Darwin after reading Stephen Meyers Darwins Doubt (though hes not persuaded by ID). Another example is Gnter Bechly, a German paleontologist and entomologist who first officially came out as a Darwin-skeptic and ID-sympathizer in late 2015, but became widely known in 2016 when he publicly joined the ID community, and gained even more notoriety in 2017 after being forced to resign from his position as scientific curator for amber and fossil insects at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, and Wikipedia tried to erase him from history.

Over the last few years, many other scientific advances turned out to support ID and/or challenge Darwin. I hope to discuss those in depth on other occasions. For now, I want to list one final reason for optimism. Prior to my leaving Discovery in 2015 I helped craft the vision for the ID 3.0 research program a vision that has since become a reality. As Associate Director of the CSC, Im excited about helping to manage the research that is being funded by Discovery Institute and about renewing my contributions to the ID community in many other ways.

Despite this positive outlook, I must again confess a lingering sadness: I left a major part of my heart in the South Africa. With its wonderful people, rich multicultural society, cheerful vibe, and unmatched natural beauty, including incredible wildlife testifying to natures design, South Africa will always be a special place for me. If you ever plan to go there, feel free to contact me and Ill offer some tips for your trip!

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I'm Excited to Return to Discovery Institute to Find Intelligent Design Stronger Than Ever! - Discovery Institute