Hominid Hype and Homo Naledi: Did Scientists Really Discover a Human Ancestor?

Indeed, just four years ago Australopithecus sediba — also discovered and promoted by Berger — was the transitional form du jure between the australopithecines and our own genus Homo. Yet sediba had a very different set of traits from naledi. If the same researchers now want to advocate Homo naledi as the new “transitional form,” they must radically revise their evolutionary story. Both species been called a “human ancestor,” in recent years, but both claims cannot be true.

Another major challenge to claims for Homo naledi as a transitional form is the fact that the age of these newly reported fossils is currently totally unknown. For all we presently know, the fossils could be very young (say, less than 250,000 years old), and far removed from any hypothetical evolutionary transition between Australopithecus and Homo.

Homo naledi’s promoters are suggesting it is between 2.5 and 3 million years old. But that date isn’t the result of an objective geological dating analysis. Rather, that date is driven strictly by evolutionary considerations, because we have very few bones from that time period and very little to document the supposed transition between the apelike australopithecines and the humanlike members of Homo. More.

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)

There are two atheist “memes” (to use a jargon term) that seem to me to be in prima facie conflict…

…[T]hese are not exact quotes from anyone but approximate statements that reflect things that I, and I suspect you, dear Reader, have heard and read.

Atheist meme #1: It is offensive to imply that being an atheist is in any way detrimental to being a moral person. Atheists can be just as moral as religious people.

Keep your eye on the ball. The question of what is meant by “just as moral” will be crucial.

Atheist meme #2: The idea that man is in any way special is speciesism derived from religious ideas like the image of God. Once we get rid of those religious concepts we can see that man is just another animal, though a highly evolved one. Man’s continuity with the animals means that abortion, euthanasia, killing those in “vegetative states,” and even infanticide are all “on the table” for ethical debate. The decision in specific cases should be made on the basis of utilitarian considerations without any notion that human life per se is valuable.

It should be pretty obvious that the proposals in atheist meme #2 are socially radical. They represent a departure from what a lot of people for a long time in Western society have thought of as moral behavior. Yet atheist meme #2 says that, once you are an atheist, you should consider them to be viable options.

Prima facie, this conflicts with atheist meme #1. It’s pretty obvious that, if atheist meme #2 is true, atheist meme #1 is false: Atheism does make you a less moral person if atheism leads you to consider doing all those things or even advocating them.

Dr. McGrew accuses secular humanists who assert meme #1 and who then proceed to advocate meme #2 are “doing a bait and switch.” The first claim sounds reasonable, especially if we focus on well-known “intellectual” atheists, who look like “nice people.” Once the public is lulled into accepting that these people are just as moral as religious people, a humanist can then argue for the “enlightened,” utilitarian ethics that these figures espouse.

Not all atheists have warped ethical beliefs. There are a few noble atheists who uphold a pro-life position on moral issues, on purely rational grounds – for instance, the atheist Doris Gordon, founder of Libertarians for Life. Dr. McGrew has such people in mind when she writes:

The funny thing is that I actually believe that the true positions on these issues are available by the natural light and hence do not require theism to understand. (Though theism helps. Human beings always find it useful to have more sources of information than strictly necessary.) I examined some of these issues in this essay. In Western society, however, the brand of atheism most commonly held is not some sort of virtuous, Platonic atheism that cleaves to the Good and accesses the natural light but rather some version of naturalism. And that is highly detrimental to moral insight.

Precisely. Metaphysical naturalism is the worldview that poisons the way that most atheists reason ethically, because it views the mind itself as the product of unguided natural processes, instead of taking the existence of mind as a fundamental fact about our cosmos (as a few atheists do). Theists, by contrast, are immune to the poison of metaphysical naturalism, for as long as they continue to believe in God. And that, in a nutshell, is why atheism can interfere with being moral.

Those who promulgate the rhetoric of consensus rightly want to preserve the integrity of science in the eyes of the public. The empirical, precise, and collaborative method of natural science remains – despite the current reproducibility crisis – our most reliable source for knowledge about the natural world. And it often facilitates tremendous technological achievement. No surprise that its practitioners enjoy a high degree of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “cultural capital.” They ought to. More.

Well, yes, but if there is a reproducibility crisis, one would best deal with that before subjecting any decision to a vote.

Otherwise, it’s like showing up in court and saying you have no evidence for the strength of your case.

M. Anthony Mills’ analysis, linked above, sounds reasonable. But now here is a critical question:

Not what’s “true” but “what should the taxpayer be expected to fund?

In general, that’s the only question that need come to a public vote.

Science, as such, is like art. People are free to do what they want and be judged by their peers.

But if the rest of us must pony up, we ought to want to know the reason.

The form and function of the ears of modern land vertebrates cannot be understood without knowing how they evolved.

Excuse me, excuse me, we can know everything there is to know about hearing today simply from examining life forms today.

Darwinism forces on people the belief that they must know about the “evolution” of such a function – somewhat like thinking you have to know a lot about Henry Ford in order to drive or fix a car.

Hey! Who pays for this stuff anyway? Meanwhile:

Although fish can hear, only amphibians and true land vertebrates—including the aquatic species that descended from them, such as whales and pinnipeds—have dedicated hearing organs. In land vertebrates belonging to the group Amniota, including lizards, birds, and mammals, sound usually enters through an external canal and impinges on an eardrum that is connected through middle-ear bones to the inner ear. There, hundreds or thousands of sensory hair cells are spread along an elongated membrane that acts as a spectral analyzer, with the result that each local group of hair cells responds best to a certain range of pitches, or sound frequencies. The hair cells then feed this information into afferent nerve fibers that carry the information to the brain.

…

Thus, remarkably, these complex events led independently to all modern amniotes possessing a middle ear that, at frequencies below 10 kHz, works equally effectively despite the diverse structures and origins. There is also evidence that the three-ossicle mammalian middle ear itself evolved at least twice—in egg-laying mammals such as the platypus, and in therians, which include marsupials and placentals—with similar outcomes.More.

Just an accident, for sure.

The False Science of Cryonics

No one who has experienced the disbelief of losing a loved one can help but sympathize with someone who pays $80,000 to freeze their brain. But reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the “cryonics” industry. Those who profit from this hope deserve our anger and contempt. More.

In case you knew someone who was thinking of doing this. Why not give the $80,000 to a health research outfit?

Also: That means the mind is something different from the brain.

…[H]e (Nye) misrepresents the facts from top to bottom in an embarrassingly transparent effort to hijack science in the cause of pro-abortion ideology.

The authors’ conclusion is also worth quoting:

At several points in his video, Nye expresses frustration with people who don’t share his support for the moral and legal permissibility of abortion. One can, perhaps, be forgiven for indulging a chuckle at his exasperation, given the level of scientific ignorance on display from a guy whose whole message to those he disagrees with is “Listen to me, you rubes; I know the science.”

See also Mollie Hemingway’s highly illuminating article, A Quick And Easy Guide To The Planned Parenthood Videos in the Federalist. Videos are embedded for ease of reference. Well worth reading.

Comments are welcome.

Once, about forty years ago, one of my kids was hit on the head by a car. She was taken immediately to the local ER.

I flagged down a cruiser to follow. Even in those days, one could get immediate updates by cruiserphone (… so far okay … so far okay … um, check with medical resident … )

So the cops and I rushed through the ER doors.

It wasn’t hard to find her; I could hear her screaming from four emergency rooms away.

Later, a medical attendant told me to carry her upstairs to paediatrics.

She was still screaming and screaming. But after all, she had been hit by a car.

Now, of five possible things the attending physician didn’t “believe in,” what would a reasonable person think should be of least concern to a parent?

1. What people choose to do matters (not all just “fate”)
2. Children matter more than cockroaches
3. Science-based medicine
4. Sterile procedure
5. “Evolution” – Darwin’s theory or any other

Reader, if you have kids, I sure hope you got this one right.

Apparently, most US doctors don’t “accept” evolution (Darwinism). Should they lose their licences?

See also: Can we talk?

Note: No news posting till late tonight.

CASE A: he’s running for President of the United States of America; he’s a politician who’s put religion and science into his platform. He willingly exposed himself to criticism and does not deserve a pass because he did good things as a surgeon.

CASE B: Dr Carson. He is clearly a talented physician, but get him talking about evolution or cosmology and he turns into Ken Ham. Looks like a classic case of willful ignorance to me; he should know better. Is that acceptable for the president of a world power?

CASE C: Surgery is to science what carpentry is to engineering.

CASE D: it is a sad and disturbing aspect of our times that the scientific views of a neurosurgeon could be swayed by an argument rooted in the supposed existence of an atavistic embodiment of evil, Satan.

I believe this pattern requires an answer, and so:

KF, 29: >>Folks,

I think we need to look again, at how we are thinking, at how we allow media to manipulate us, at how we project ideologically and what we suppress in the context of what we imagine is light in us. END

If it is really a science topic, shouldn’t it be like the Large Hadron Collider or Pluto’s  geography?

So how is it the Prez’s business? Why ask him in particular?

Doesn’t he mainly deal with domestic and foreign crises?

I first wondered about this when I saw four hairstyle models (oh, excuse me!, highly paid US broadcast media reporters) puzzling over former prez  contender Scott Walker’s views on “evolution.”

People who, I realized, knew nothing whatever of the issues and would consider it their professional duty not to know anything.

Their duty is just to look concerned.

You bought, you paid. Fine. Glad you like the hair.

If it ever comes down to evolution as a matter of fact, can we talk?