“We are survival machines-robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.� This is Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. His selfish gene theory, he remarked in 1989, “has become textbook orthodoxy,� because it is merely “a logical outgrowth of orthodox Neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image.� The image is misleading.... Read More

This is a much-updated version of a previous column on evolution, is atrociously long, criminally even, by internet standards but I post it anyway because I get occasional requests. Few will read it, which is understandable. Apologies. The Devil made me do it. I will get transcendently stupid email saying that I am a snake-handling... Read More

Jewish engagement with evolutionary theory is an important dimension of modern Jewish history and thought. While Jewish leaders and intellectuals have used the science of evolution to bolster notions of Jewish identity, they have also confronted and (often fiercely resisted) the use of evolutionary theory to conceptualize conflict between Jews and non-Jews. Published in 2006,... Read More

Years back, Dr. Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, published Darwin’s Black Box, in which he questioned tenets of official Darwinism. It was a grave no-no-no, akin to doubting the divinity of Christ or the value of diversity. The Darwinian establishment started as if stung. Dr. Behe was soon viewed in Big... Read More

I am sorry. I admit it: I am a bad person. I promise I will never write about this again. Well, sort of never. It’s just too much fun. Anyway, it’s not my fault. My childhood makes me do it. Maybe I ate lead paint. Science is supposed to be objective study of nature, impelled... Read More

Since the beginning of the “Me, too!� movement, “patriarchy�—and the very idea that females prefer to be feminine—is under attack as never before. The Swedish capital Stockholm has banned ads that portray female stereotypes [Stockholm bans “sexist� and “degrading� adverts from public spaces, By Sara Malm, Daily Mail, 13 June 2018]. An Austrian museum about... Read More

Recently I wrote a column about the theory of Intelligent Design, which holds that that life, both in its origins and its changes over time, are the result of design instead of chance. Several hundred comments and emails arrived, more than I could read. This was not surprising as there seems to be considerable public... Read More

In the ever-entertaining dispute over Darwinian evolution, “irreducible complexity�–IC–has provided a serviceable bone on which intellectual rodents, such as myself, can gnaw. Briefly, for those who have had better sense than to entangle themselves in such brambles, irreducible complexity is the observation–if it is an observation–that many things in biology consist of many parts such... Read More

This is atrociously long, criminally even, by internet standards but I post it anyway because I get occasional requests. Few will read it, which is understandable. Apologies. The Devil made me do it. Regular readers, if there is one, will have seen most of it before since in large part it is a gluing together... Read More

Previously I have proved that life cannot have evolved. Today I will prove that life cannot exist. Let us begin with Samuel Johnson’s response when asked whether we have free will. He replied that all theory holds that we do not, all experience that we do. A similar paradox occurs in the realm of Impossibility... Read More

In a recent post, Fred Reed asks: The short answer is that any killing, for whatever reason, increases the likelihood of killing for other reasons. One exception is self-defence, but that's not done for pleasure. Another exception is capital punishment, but that, too, is not done for pleasure. More to the point, no single citizen... Read More

Over the years I have occasionally expressed doubts over the tenets of evolutionism which, perhaps wrongly, has seemed to me a sort of political correctness of science, or maybe a metaphysics somewhat related to science. As a consequence I have been severely reprimanded. The editor of a site devoted to genetic expression furiously began deleting... Read More