Sunspots 447

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Christian History has published an issue on the church's response to Darwin, from the time of the publication of The Origin of Species to the Scopes trial. The issue is available as a free .PDF file.
Ken Schenck has summarized his view on how to interpret scripture. Readable, and concise.
Politics: National Public Radio reports that we may pick our location, at least to some extent, to accord with our political preferences.
An editorial in The Washington Post says that, in government, managing for efficiency is not rewarded. In fact, managing inefficiently may be.
Science: Wired reports that lemurs can anticipate what other animals will see, but not what they will hear.
USA Today reports that pre-wedding jitters may predict problems in the marriage.
National Public Radio reports that our brains geotag memories, so that events are associated with places.
NASA has posted a video on sungrazing comets. By the time you read this, Comet Ison will, or will not, have survived its trip near the sun. (It probably did survive, or some of it did.)

Image source (public domain)

The Panda's Thumb on accomodating evolution and Christianity

The Panda's Thumb is a prominent, and important, blog, authored by many people, mostly scientists. Its most common theme is attacking the Intelligent Design movement. (I am not a fan of the ID movement myself. I do believe that there is a Designer, who did some designing. See here.)

A recent post in the Panda's Thumb, seriously criticizes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist and self-proclaimed atheist. According to the Wikipedia article on him, which is linked to in the previous sentence, "He claims that religion and science are incompatible. . ."

Nick Matzke, criticizing Coyne, points out that two of the most important evolutionists ever did not make such claims. One such was Theodosius Dobzhansky, who famously wrote "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution." The title of that article is often used today, in writing about origins, even though the article is nearly 40 years old. When I was a graduate student in genetics, I was urged to read Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species, and I did. It was an important book.

The other evolutionist was no less than Darwin, himself.

Matzke does not claim that either Dobzhansky or Darwin believed in a personal God, or in Christ's redemptive work, simply that they believed that there could be accomodation between a belief in evolution by natural selection and Christianity -- belief in one does not have to negate belief in the other. He merely claims, with solid documentation and appropriate quotation, that Coyne's claim about incompatibility is a real stretch.

Thanks for reading. Read Matzke.

Theories, facts, laws and doubting the truth of natural selection

In my small way, I have argued for many years that part of the disagreements over origins are because terms haven't been well defined. I was thinking principally of the term, "evolution," which, to some, is mostly about, say, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, while to others is about the origin of living things by exclusively random, purposeless processes.

I'm right about that. There is some muddy thinking about the meaning of evolution, some of it purposefully muddy, probably. Such muddiness has led to some unnecessary and avoidable disagreements on the topic of origins. However, I haven't gone far enough. There is also disagreement, or misunderstanding, about such important terms as fact, theory, law, and hypothesis, as they are used by scientists, and by the public at large. Again, such misunderstanding has led to some unnecessary and avoidable disagreement about origins, especially in statements such as "evolution is just a theory, so it doesn't need to be taken seriously." A recent article has attempted to clarify these matters.

The author, T. Ryan Gregory, writes that "Theories explain facts and are tested by generating hypotheses. No matter how much information accrues, hypotheses never become theories, and theories never graduate into laws. These terms describe three distinct aspects of science." ("Evolution as Fact, Theory and Path," Evo. Edu. Outreach (2008) 1:46–52, November 20, 2007. Quote is from p. 48.) He explains his reasoning carefully, and I believe that most all scientists, whatever their beliefs about origins, would agree with it. I also believe that non-scientists can read and understand his reasoning.

He also says:
That evolution is a theory in the proper scientific sense means that there is both a fact of evolution to be explained and a well-supported mechanistic framework to account for it. To claim that evolution is “just a theory” is to reveal both a profound ignorance of modern biological knowledge and a deep misunderstanding of the basic nature of science. (p. 50)

Gregory also points out that there is an opposite error sometimes made, namely that evidence of common descent is taken as evidence for natural selection, which, he says, does not necessarily follow.

Thanks for reading!