Five Before Chaos

Interesting new theory in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly that will make conservative spittle fly:

The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.”

“Evolutionarily novel” preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. Some examples:

“General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.”

So what does this mean?

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals…

“Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid,” says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. “So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists.”

Now if someone could just come up with a theory to explain teabaggers and the Vermont secession movement, that’d be real progress.

Actually, no, as they’re just fucking crazy.

UPDATE: PZ sez this guy’s a hack, writes for Psychology Today.

Interesting and unsurprising poll out of Texas. Apparently, there’s a whole lotta stupid down there:

Did humans live at the same time as the dinosaurs? Three in ten Texas voters agree with that statement; 41 percent disagree, and 30 percent don’t know.38 percent said human beings developed over millions of years with God guiding the process and another 12 percent said that development happened without God having any part of the process. Another 38 percent agreed with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.

..and more of the typical religiously driven ignorance. What’s really scary is how much influence Texas has over the nation’s textbooks, but that’s another story.

Now,don’t take me pointing this out as some sort of defense of Democrats, but in this poll, the acceptance of stupid ideas are much more prevalent by Republicans:

Has life on earth always existed in its present form? Republicans are more likely to agree (29 percent) than Democrats (16 percent). They’re less likely to believe that life evolved over time with no guidance from God (8 percent to 24 percent). Democrats are slightly less inclined to believe in evolution with a “guiding hand from God” (50 percent to 55 percent).

Republicans are less likely to believe that humans developed from earlier species of animals; 26 percent agree, while 60 percent disagree. Among Democrats in the survey, 46 percent agree that humans evolved from earlier species; 42 percent disagree. Perry’s voters were most hostile to this premise — 67 percent disagree.

Everytime I think we’re moving towards a more sane, rational society (admiteddly, almost never), polls like this come out and completely put that notion to rest.

UPDATE- this nails it:

I’m not sure, but there’s something a bit different lately in that it seems like evolution (more appropriately reality-based) supporters seem to be taking on the flat-earthers a bit more forcefully as of late. Here’s two more great examples of critics unabashedly calling creationists out on their nonsense.

First off, apparently Forbes magazine ran an article by a neurosurgeon that essentially said evolution was bunk. Not surprising,considering how Forbes tends to be the pinnacle of another type of irrational fundamentalism, that of the “free market”. To their credit, they ran a forceful rebuttal from Jerry A. Coyne,  a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, called Why Evolution is True:

How does Egnor account for the natural world? He does not, in fact, offer a scientific theory. Rather, he subscribes to the creationist view that complex things, which are difficult to explain, are the domain of God. If we don’t understand something, there’s no point trying to understand it–we should just throw up our hands and say, “God did it.”

Imagine what would have happened if, over the history of science, we imputed to God’s hand everything we didn’t understand. We would never have cured the plague, which–like most diseases and disasters–was once thought to reflect God’s anger rather than bacteria-carrying fleas. “Barrenness” in women was thought to reflect divine displeasure; it is now treated effectively by scientific means, not by propitiating the gods.

If you read the article, one thing you’ll notice is creationists often like to flagrantly ignore evidence, stating there are “no examples of” things like transitional fossils or “no coherent, evidence-based explanation for the evolution of even a single molecular pathway from primordial components and such” (like the process of blood clotting), when a first-year biology student can clearly point out several examples. The only reason I can see for this is they probably figure their audience is primarily faith-based to begin with and not about to engage in pointless endeavors such as “fact checking”. Or they just need to ignore it, as their whole Sky Fairy deck of cards comes crashing down, if they don’t.

Example number two (h/t to Jack at GMD and PZ at Pharyngula) comes from a bioloist at UVM, a Dr. Nicholsa Gotelli. Dr. Gotelli was appreoached by the ID think tank Discovery Institute with an offer to have a “creation vs. evolution” debate at UVM. From the good doctor’s response, over at Pharyngula:

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

Indeed, it would, but it ain’t ever gonna happen. An excellent response, saying exactly what should be said: creationism is nonsense, and is not entitled to “debate” evolution, as one is supported by mountains of evidence and one is not. And of course, they will continue to whine and cry, and say we won’t debate them because we’re “afraid” they might be right. Yeah…. afraid… you betcha.

Happy Darwin Day! But seriously, howzabout some non-economic depressing news, from Gallup:

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity…
[snip]
Thus, it comes as no surprise to find that there is a strong relationship between church attendance and belief in evolution in the current data. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to say they believe in evolution.

Church makes you stupid.

Now go and read a great Darwin Day post by Julie at GMD about the value of fighting for science.

And the clouds parted…

Conservative Republicans are in shock after it emerged this morning that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, currently a self-proclaimed hockey-mom, used to be a pitbull-human hybrid. It was also revealed that shortly after accepting the Republican nomination she began to evolve rapidly into a 90-year-old man with one testicle and a Georgia cotton plantation.

Ms Palin, who has promised to keep wearing her popular rimless spectacles despite the rapid changes that will see her face become even squarer than it is, apologized to her party for proving Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“I am gutted that I have let the American Right down like this,” she said at a tearful press conference this morning, surrounded by her collection of stuffed polar bears in the den of her Anchorage home.

“Our primary argument for Creation and against the communist satanic onslaught of evolution has always been: ‘Well I’ve never seen a chimp turn into a man’ or ‘Show me a gorilla giving birth to a human baby and I’ll believe in evolution’.

“It has been an argument as sophisticated as our Grand Old Party, and I am devastated that I have undermined it, firstly by transforming from a pitbull to a woman, and now into an elderly male slave-owner.”

(h/t to Pharyngula)

Yeah, I’m still here. Not my last post today, but just wanna give you a few things to look at on the tubes today.

You’ve probably seen that old clip of Bill O’Reilly’s meltdown by now. Oh, the anger and angst it exudes – you can read into it a raging, sexually frustrated alcoholic who’s incredibly miffed that the high point of his career at that point was a tabloid news show. In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen it:

What’s even better: “Fuck It: The Remix”.

Julie at GMD has some hilarious insights on that new GOP slogan, “Change You Deserve”. First thing I thought when I heard it – what did I do that was so bad? Did I kill someone or milk some old lady out of her life’s savings?

PZ at Pharyngula has updates on the latest religious stupidity. There’s a bill in Oklahoma now that will prevent teachers from actually judging students’ work on whether it’s actually correct or not:

A controversial provision in House Bill 2633 states that “students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions.”

So if you turn in a paper in biology that promotes the creation myth or perhaps a social studies paper that finds religious justification for the oppression of (fill in the blank), they can’t give you a bad grade. Bullshit. Also, in Maine, a school board member is trying to get evolution out of the classroom because it “can’t be proven”. I thought this kinda shit only happened south of the Mason-Dixon line. Silly me.

Those of you who follow the neverending assault on science and reason known as “Intelligent Design Theory” are probably familiar by now with the new movie out now about it by former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. PZ at Pharyngula has been writing about it quite regularly, so if you need some background, go over there and poke around.

The long and short of it is it’s an hour and a half of pure bullshit, persecution complexes, faulty logic, and something that will appeal to the incredibly ignorant. Arthur Caplan eviscerated the movie in a review at MSNBC. The worst thing about the movie, though:

Then, and most culpably in terms of the downright immorality of the movie and everyone associated with it, we are presented with what will happen if we keep teaching Darwinism in our schools. The logical consequence of Darwinism is Nazi eugenics: the state directed murder of the handicapped, mentally ill, political dissidents and racial “inferiors”!

No, I am not making this up. The core of the movie consists of a sequence in which Stein visits the former German psychiatric hospital at Hadamar where the mass sterilization and murder techniques were first perfected that were later to be used in the concentration camps. Then Ben heads to Dachau, the first concentration camp, where 35,000 people died. These excursions are followed by a visit to Down House, Charles Darwin’s country home outside of London where Ben looks warily at the memorabilia of Darwin’s scientific work that led him to posit the theory of evolution. Stein finishes this sequence by bravely visiting a statue of Darwin where he stares the long deceased now marbleized evil-doer down while making it clear who is directly to blame for Hitler, the sterilization of tens of thousands of German children, the death of 6 million Jews and the deaths of countless other millions of victims of Nazism and those who died fighting the Nazi regime.

This frighteningly immoral narrative is capped off with a lot of shots of the Berlin Wall, old stock footage of East German police kicking around those trying to escape through the wall to the West and some solemn blather by Ben, who calls upon each one of us to rise up in defense of freedom and knock down a few walls in order to get creationism back into the curriculum at Iowa State, Baylor, and other dens of American secular iniquity.

I suspect this movie will rake in a lot of Christianist bucks, no surprise considering how much money they give away to other bullshit-spreaders. And of course, anyone with even a cursory understanding of evolution (sadly, too few Americans) either won’t waste their time with this garbage, or will come away with even more ammo against the IDiots.

Ya’ know, I’ve never been a Black Flag or Rollins band fan or anything. Stylistically, it’s not my bag. But I’ve always sorta dug Henry Rollins, because every interview I’ve read with the guy shows he’s a pretty smart guy. Stumbled on this little Rollins rant about the religious right(h/t to Pharyngula):

I have to give a huge thanks to Mike Huckabee, for so many reasons. First off, for drawing more attention to how nutty the fundies really are. It’s not like it shouldn’t have been obvious to those paying attention, but of course, when you’re competing with American Idol, peoples’ attention is usually elsewhere.

Secondly, I’d like to thank him in accelerating the fracturing of the unholy cabal that makes up the Republican party – the warmongers, the millionaire/corporatists, and the religious nuts. The nuts really never had much in common with the other two (although they do share the aura of perpetual pants-pooping fear that typifies the warmongers).

See, everything was fine and dandy till Huck started up with the populist crap, something that really has no place in the Republican party. Then he was persona non grata. Hopefully, the fundie contingent is slowly waking up to the fact that they’ve been used, nothing more. Vote against gay marriage, get a capital gains tax cut. Vote to end abortion, get a huge corporate subsidy. Then again, looking at what these people believe, they do tend to be some of the most gullible and least inclined to critical thinking people in the country, so there’s really nothing surprising here. What they believe and what they want to make this country into will never happen, nor ever will it be a majority position. Sometimes I wish the Rapture would actually come so it would take these people away and I can ransack their belongings.There’s gotta be some cash in there somewhere with those Left Behind books, brilliantly Caucasian Jesus pictures and hairspray.

Lastly, I’d like to thank him for giving me so much content for the blog. “Mike Huckabee + dumb” and its many permutations have been my biggest Google referral so far.

Go below the jump for more Huckery as well as some commentary about William Jennings Bryan. It’s a long one.

Continue reading

From Reuters:

A Christian biologist is suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, claiming he was fired for refusing to accept evolution, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.

Nathaniel Abraham, an Indian national who describes himself as a “Bible-believing Christian,” said in the suit filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston that he was fired in 2004 because he would not accept evolution as scientific fact.

Woods Hole, a federally funded nonprofit research center on Cape Cod, said in a statement it firmly believed its actions and those of its employees in the case were “entirely lawful” and that it does not discriminate.

Abraham, who was dismissed eight months after he was hired, said he was willing to do research using evolutionary concepts but that he had been required to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution as scientific fact or lose his job.

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination dismissed the case this year, saying Abraham’s request not to work on evolutionary aspects of research would be difficult for Woods Hole because its work is based on evolutionary theories.

Well, duh… if a central focus of your job description entails basing your research on evolutionary biology and you don’t believe in it, you are tremendously, utterly, unqualified for the position. It’s like being a lifeguard and losing your job after being blinded in an accident; you no longer have a central qualification to do your job competently. Unsurprisingly, Abraham was able to find employment at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, where things such as facts tend not to get in the way of an education. Perhaps if Huckabee wins, he could give Abraham an appointment as a senior science advisor.