About evolution: Like BP I never heard anyone say that we aren't still evolving, or try to suppress discussions of the subject, and I can't imagine why this particular aspect of evolution should be taboo in polite society.

Incidentally, considering those two issues together, I don't understand why the IQ-obsessed appear to believe that races have some sort of inherent genetic potential where IQ is concerned, and are unlikely to rise above this without extensive intermarriage with other races. For animal species to have evolved in such wildly different directions at all, mutations and "sports" (offspring that do not resemble their parents) must have been frequent throughout biological history, surely? And is it impossible that a species' or subgroup's efforts to adapt to its environment might actually trigger such mutations, by some as yet unknown mechanism? I'm not being contentious here; I would like to know where to look for an answer to such questions.

I must say I find it difficult to understand how anyone can speak of genetic superiority, in the broad sense (I mean, outside the IQ question). If a particular race has evolved with particular abilities to adapt to a particular environment, how is it inferior to another race that has evolved in a different direction to adapt to another environment?

Finally, if our potential for cultural and intellectual development really is determined by entirely or almost entirely by our genes (as John Derbyshire, for example, believes), then it seems absurd, to me, to take pride in the achievements of white culture or to condemn black culture. According to this understanding of evolution, surely they are what they are because of the genetic inheritance of the various races.

p.s. Law and Order, in its early years, was far more realistic about crime and race, as I remember from the days when I used to watch it. I read an interview with the producers once, in which they said that audiences simply got bored watching the shows that dealt with policing black-on-black crime. The crimes were repetitive and took little ingenuity to solve, so that the plots of the shows grew stale. And so the producers decided to take it in a different direction.

Posted by: alias clio on December 12, 2007 1:17 AM

With regard to evolution, BP and alias clio, here in rural Texas students wear "Darwin Lied" t-shirts to high school biology class. When fancy hydrologists out of Austin said our aquifers originated eons ago, city fathers were shocked. Everyone knows that can't be true because the world is only 6,000 years old. Here evolution equals atheism because it contradicts a literal reading of the bible so no, people don't talk about it in polite society. What world do you live in?

Posted by: not securely anchored on December 12, 2007 9:39 AM

Un-anchored, I can't figure out whether you're speaking tongue-in-cheek or not. I always thought that biblical literalists of the kind you describe didn't exist any more, and that they were just just a myth that the American Left likes to use to try to embarrass the Right.

Posted by: alias clio on December 12, 2007 12:06 PM

"I always thought that biblical literalists of the kind you describe didn't exist any more,"

Very common in the U.S. and becoming more so, thanks to the apparent respectability given by "intelligent design." I graduated from high school in Midland, TX, and most of my friends (Southern Baptists) were biblical literalists.

Posted by: CyndiF on December 12, 2007 1:06 PM

Stephen Jay Gould said “There's been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we've built with the same body and brain.“

Wrong, of course.

Posted by: gcochran on December 12, 2007 3:08 PM

But intelligent design supports evolution: it just says that there's a design behind it. It really doesn't leave much room for biblical literalism, if that means believing the world was created in 7 days, etc.

Posted by: alias clio on December 12, 2007 4:02 PM

"But intelligent design supports evolution: it just says that there's a design behind it. It really doesn't leave much room for biblical literalism, if that means believing the world was created in 7 days, etc."

Oh, don't get me started, Clio. If I may sound paranoid, "that's what they want you to believe." The actual intelligent design picture makes a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, to use their terms, so that they can acknowledge natural selection but deny the evolution from one species to another new one. Intelligent design was developed within a religious framework specifically to circumvent a U.S. court ruling that creationism was religious and could not be taught in schools. As a scientist, I have a real problem with intelligent design because its proponents deliberately blur the definition of a scientific theory and use specious arguments to attack the current picture of evolution.

Leaving aside my personal animus for intelligent design, it remains true that biblical literalists are common among evangelicals and fundamentalists in the U.S. I know and am related to many such people. They are not a myth. I was raised Catholic and think the novel is one of the great creations of man, so I have no problem with the idea that "truth" can be found in fiction, but for many the literal inerrancy of the Bible is a key component of their faith.

Posted by: CyndiF on December 12, 2007 8:21 PM

Well, I'll put my cards on the table and say that as a believer and a Catholic, I accept the truth of evolution but I don't believe that it happened at random. If that aligns me with biblical literalists (which I don't for a moment believe), well, so be it.

In any case, I confess that you do sound a little paranoid to me, in that you appear to think there was an element of conscious conspiracy at work here among different interested parties. I can't for the life of me see how intelligent design supports the theory that the world was created in seven days 6,000 years ago - and that's what a biblical literalist believes. I can believe that anti-evolutionists might seize upon ID in delight to support the idea that there is some disagreement about the process by which evolution happens.

Meanwhile, I don't know enough about how evolution was supposed to have functioned in order to answer all my own questions about it. I've always accepted, though, that it was a self-sustaining system and that it did not require actual intervention once set in motion, which I suppose excludes me from the Intelligent Design crowd. I believe, though, that there is a Designer.

Incidentally, I haven't forgotten how, in the 1970s, my high-school science teachers scoffed at the Big Bang theory and said that it was a piece of nonsense invented by a priest to make science's account of the origin of the universe line up better with biblical accounts of creation.

Posted by: alias clio on December 12, 2007 8:56 PM

Hi Clio,

I was trying to state that ID advocates imply that anyone who believes in a Creator must ergo believe in intelligent design, rather than suggest some broader conspiracy. ID is more specific in its attacks against current scientific theories of evolution than just a statement of belief in a prime mover. (However, it is also true that the development of ID, at places like the Discovery Institute, has been driven by former biblical literalists seeking a more sophisticated attack against evolutionary theory.)

Science operates on conflict and test. I hate to place too much credence on the opinions of science teachers (who, like Galileo's academic critics, are often more concerned about maintaining the status quo than seeking understanding) but current theories of evolution (among others--let's see if anyone believes in dark energy in a decade) will change with time and as the result of challenges. The problem with ID is that it claims to be a scientific theory, rather than a theological argument, but fails to meet basic scientific criteria, such as proposing a falsifiable hypothesis.

Posted by: CyndiF on December 12, 2007 9:44 PM

Re ID not providing a falsifiable hypothesis: I had understood that much that is wrong with Intelligent Design, and I certainly see why people object to teaching it or discussing it (except to explain the problems in it) as part of a science course. It was the "literalist=Intelligent Design theorist" idea that didn't make sense to me.

My great trouble with books about evolution that I've picked up and thumbed through (to see if they might help me to acquire a sounder understanding) is that the ones written for lay people appear to be fighting battles that are not the province of scientists. I have some real questions about how evolution functions; I'd like to find books that might address them.

I only mentioned my science teachers and their views on the Big Bang theory (our text books said it too, for that matter) as a tease. It proves nothing about ID, of course, but it shows that science education has its own dogmatists.

Posted by: alias clio on December 12, 2007 11:17 PM

The economist has an excellent and fairly long open access article on the Hawks, Cochran, Harpending et.al. acceleration paper.

Posted by: dougjn on December 14, 2007 2:28 PM






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