Category Archives: Evolution

Prognostic Myopia: More about Justin Gregg

Posted on 22 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Picking up from where I left off yesterday. My basic summary of this book is: humans are not “stupid”; the issue is that human intelligence has both good and bad consequences, and apparently we can’t have the good without the … Continue reading →

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Justin Gregg: IF NIETZSCHE WERE A NARWHAL (2022)

Posted on 21 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a recent nonfiction book with a provocative thesis and some interesting points which nevertheless I give a mixed review of. Perhaps helpful to consider scoring the book along several independent parameters, like on some of those cooking shows, e.g. … Continue reading →

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Abortion Votes and Republicans on Parenting

Posted on 3 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

When I opened Facebook this morning the first 10 items were all about the election results in Kansas (from news sources or friends citing them), in which an attempt to remove protections for abortion *failed* rather dramatically — by 60% … Continue reading →

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Played by Evolution

Posted on 20 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

The motivations of those who think most harshly of abortion, homosexuality, transsexuals, and so on, are enacting the harshest strategies for species survival and growth of a process they don’t believe in: evolution. Happiness and well-being of actual living individual … Continue reading →

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Ensoulment and Miscarriages

Posted on 8 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a nice essay that observes how the prevelance of spontaneous abortions — miscarriages — doesn’t seem consistent with the theological position of “ensoulment,” the notion that God inserts the just-feritilized embryo with a soul.

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Evolution, Culture Wars, and Science Fiction

Posted on 30 June 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Jerry Coyne, 29 Jun 2022: Once again: A misguided article on why the theory of evolution is obsolete This discusses an article in the UK newspaper Guardian, Do we need a new theory of evolution?, by Stephen Buranyi, which uses … Continue reading →

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LQCs: Anti-Evolutionists’ Failures at Math

Posted on 2 June 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Skeptical Inquirer, Jason Rosenhouse, May/June 2022 issue: The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism And commenting on it, Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 2 June 2022: The intellectual vacuity of mathematical arguments against evolution

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Daniel C. Dennett, BREAKING THE SPELL, post 2

Posted on 3 May 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Finishing up key points and detailed notes on the second half of this book. Will have some general comments, and notes on the appendices, tomorrow.

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Daniel C. Dennett, BREAKING THE SPELL, post 1

Posted on 2 May 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book published in 2006. The author, Daniel C. Dennett, is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. He became grouped among the four so-called “new atheists” of the 2000s, along with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, … Continue reading →

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Richard Dawkins: THE BLIND WATCHMAKER (1986)

Posted on 19 April 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This now 35-year-old book was Dawkins’ third, following the famous The Selfish Gene (summary here) and the less-famous sequel The Extended Phenotype (which I still have not read). If the first two were relatively straightforward explanations of evolution and natural … Continue reading →

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