Which organism has the larger genome? | ||
| This one? | Or this one? | |
| 1 |  |  |
| 2 |  |  |
| 3 |  |  |
| 4 |  |  |
Here's some help for you. These are the C-values (amount of DNA per cell) for those animals, in ascending order:
0.23 -- 1.50 -- 2.24 -- 2.72 -- 2.91 -- 3.00 -- 3.29 -- 5.87
And here's a hint: the biggest number does not go with the biggest animal. Good luck!
1. We're living in the postgenomic era, and comparative genomics has already made it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled anti-evolutionist. I've written before about genome sequencing and the imminence of large-scale and inexpensive sequencing. Well, the first super-fast (4 months vs. more than a decade for the Human Genome Project), super-cheap ($1.5 million vs. billions for the HGP) human genome sequence is now official. It's Jim Watson's genome. Blecch. Someone should use BLAST to search his coding sequences for this amino acid sequence:
Alanine - Serine - Serine - Histidine - Glutamine - Leucine - Glutamic acid
Don't get it? Think about this guy's conduct, then check out the amino acid code.
2. If you think I'm never nice to Reasons To Believe, check out the discussion this week at the ASA listserv. The topic: RTB's statement in which they distance themselves from Expelled.
3. Speaking of Expelled, which I will do infrequently, here's a good reason to avoid the movie and its cynical attempt to enlist and co-opt evangelical Christendom: its indefensible linkage of "Darwinism" with Nazism. If that's not bad enough, check out John Lynch's examination of the diabolical credentials of one "expert" interviewed in the film.
If you're a Christian who thinks that the Nazis are a useful polemical tool against evolution, then maybe you should read about some of Hitler's best-known influences. In my view, if you can read Luther's words and still think there's any moral high ground surrounding the Holocaust that can be claimed by Christendom, then you're crazy. The Holocaust is an unspeakably abhorrent stain on the Church, if you ask me, and it's not Darwinists (whoever they are) who have hard questions to answer. I, for one, believe that Christians should be overwhelmingly humbled by the occurrence of the Holocaust, and not because of the Problem of Evil.
Christopher Heard has several recent posts on Expelled that are worth checking out. Just promise me you won't give any money to these chowderheads.
I say: skip Expelled. Send the money to Compassion International. Or give it to a library or school. Say no to the minions of the Discovery Institute who have given up the pretense of "scientific" explorations of "design" and have lustily embraced full frontal culture war. [spits]
3. [Deep breath] So, were you alive in the 1980's? Remember Bloom County? It's my favorite comic strip of all time (apologies to Calvin & Hobbes). The strip often tracked current events; during the 1981 Arkansas creationism trial, Bloom County presented the famous "penguin evolution" trial in which "scientific penguinism" was being advocated by certain characters. Some classic excerpts from that brilliant series are illicitly available in the blogosphere; don't miss the one (second from the bottom) in which the scientific expert states, "Penguin evolution is a fib." You can find some similarly scintillating examples on Berkeley Breathed's site. My favorites: the first and the next to last.
4. Kevin Corcoran writes this about a recent piece by Stanley Fish on deconstruction:
John Searle said it first, but it applies here: it’s stuff like this that gives bullshit a bad name.Now that's funny.
5. The online repository of Darwin's works at the University of Cambridge announced this week that they were making available a gigantic collection of Darwin's private papers, including "the first draft of his theory of evolution" and notes from the Beagle voyage. One little tidbit: apparently they sold tickets to lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Hmmmm. [rubs chin]
Via my brilliant brother, who works at HP and helps his wife run her cool small business.
6. There was a lot of cyberspace snickering when Answers Research Journal started up, and some of the articles there are pretty lame (the metaphysical piece would, I think, do poorly in a 200-level philosophy course at Calvin). But have a look at the new article on peer review; the authors are worth listening to, and their discussion of peer review from a Christian perspective is worth considering. I'm not crazy about the occasional proof-texting, and the authors frequently address the YEC community specifically. But here's the type of clear-headed wisdom you'll find in their paper:
By striving for excellence, we also love our neighbors. In our modern, western culture, many people view scientific pronouncements as authoritative. Christians who are also scientists therefore have an even higher duty to speak with excellence than the average Christian, simply because of the perceived authority that they possess. Errors made by Christians speaking in the name of science, no matter how well intentioned, can become “common wisdom” and thereby very difficult to correct. Even greater responsibility lies upon the scholar who professes ideas to the general public rather than just scholarly colleagues. In doing so, the scholar becomes a teacher, with all the attendant responsibilities (e.g., Matthew 5:19, 18:6; James 3:1). We therefore love our neighbors by striving to present the excellence of God in our written work and avoid the dangerous alternative of leading them into error.I probably don't need to explain why that passage rang true. You might notice, by the way, the links take you to the New King James Version. What is it with the conservative/fundamentalist fondness for 400-year-old prose bearing the name of an English monarch?
19 comments:
ASSHQLE? That's not very nice
Dude. Blaming Luther for the Holocaust? That a low blow, which puts you on about the same level as the creationists who blame Stalin on Darwin. I expect better of you.
Luther's hate speech didn't cause the Holocaust, but it did contribute to the background of Chrisitan antisemitism that made it possible. The Nazis wouldn't have gotten very far with their extermination program if there hadn't been all that bigotry lying around that they could tap into and Luther is partly to blame for this.
The previous anonymous was me--
Donald
What is it with the conservative/fundamentalist fondness for 400-year-old prose bearing the name of an English monarch?
Where do I even begin to explain that? I actually kind of like the new Holman Bible (haven't finished it yet, though, just started 1 Chronicles), but there are many in the YEC camp that think that KJV is the inspired word of God. Not the original authors and autographs, but the KJV. Others aren't quite so bad, but still view modern translations as somehow conspiratorial. I don't get it either, but there it is.
Using the KJV or NKJV is a concession to the hardcore conservatives. They need the warnings about excellence as much as anyone, and quoting from the NIV would just tick 'em off.
Interesting note about Watson: I heard him give his talk on genomics of racial characteristics back in 2002 or 2003, and I remember thinking at the time that it sounded pretty racist to me. I was wondering when the rest of the world was going to catch up to that.
If you're a Christian who thinks that the Nazis are a useful polemical tool against evolution, then maybe you should read about some of Hitler's best-known influences. In my view, if you can read Luther's words and still think there's any moral high ground surrounding the Holocaust that can be claimed by Christendom, then you're crazy.
It's hard to read something like that and not think that Luther was a little psychotic. I agree with anon that Luther's antisemitism contributed to the background of antisemitism in the church, but wasn't the biggest problem in Nazi Germany the apathy of Christians? Barth and Bonhoeffer tried to take Hitler out, but everybody else just kind of sat there.
I like your "problem of evil" comment..in Jurgen Moltmann's work on theodicy, he kind of turns the tables and demands an anthropodicy. We are responsible for what we've done to other people.
jsbangs, I think you've misunderstood. I did not "blame Luther for the Holocaust," and I think a more careful reading of my words would show this. I'm saying that Christians should be the last to point fingers on that score, because Christian guilt (not the same as blame) re the Holocaust is significant. Luther's obscenely inflammatory rhetoric, used directly by the Nazis, is just the most appalling fact for which Christians can be held responsible. Rachel refers to Christian apathy within Germany, others have lamented anemic responses by the Pope of the time, and Jew-hating fueled Holocaust destruction among Polish Catholics. We might hesitate to blame these various communities for the Holocaust, but we can't avoid noting that they all share moral responsibility.
The Nazis built their eugenic machine on all sorts of despicable lies, and Darwinian natural selection (mentioned, for example, in the indescribably evil Wannsee Protocol) was appropriated, too. The point is that Christians, of all people, should be ashamed, to this day, of the mere fact that such a thing could happen on the same soil that hosted the Reformation. That the diabolically malicious ranting of a giant of Protestant Christendom provided rhetorical fuel for the death machine is a monumental outrage, impossible to overstate. Even if the Nazis had used Darwin to help their cause, this moral stain on Christendom would be catastrophic.
A modern Christian who can implicate Darwin in Hitler's crimes, with a straight face, is either an ignorant buffoon (that's my bet) or a person of utter moral incompetence.
Hey TW :-)
Thanks for the explanation of the use of KJV; very helpful and I get it. Re Watson, I've long been mystified by the cult of personality that surrounds him. The truth is that he's not all that bright, and after the Tinker Toys episode that revealed the double helix, he never did science again. His first book's trashing of Rosalind Franklin is a disgrace ('Rosie'?!) that should have clued the world in to his moral/ethical frailty. I found his most recent comments to be racist, but unremarkable given his track record of revealing himself to be so porcine that only a fellow atheist fundie could find him lovable.
Calling it the Tinker Toys episode isn't really fair is it? That was some pretty important work. And never did science again? He's been part of some very important work, including his work on the Human Genome Project.
That the diabolically malicious ranting of a giant of Protestant Christendom provided rhetorical fuel for the death machine is a monumental outrage, impossible to overstate. Even if the Nazis had used Darwin to help their cause, this moral stain on Christendom would be catastrophic.
I agree with you in your assessment of Christian culpability in the Holocaust, in that general Christian anti-Semitism as well as the writings of Luther provided 'cover' for Hitler to commit his crimes.
However, is it really right to metaphorically wash Darwin's hands of the Holocaust either? At the very least, the ideology of 'social darwinism' had begun to exert a non-trivial degree of influence among educated Germans during the nineteenth century, particularly in regards to the Monists, many of whom were staunch opponents of Hitler but inadvertently ended up aiding his party in its search for scientific legitimacy. I know it sounds weird, but a fellow named Niles R. Holt, affiliated with the Hastings Center (not the Discovery Institute :) ) wrote a very interesting article on the subject. It's short too, I'd recommend it if you have a bit of time:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/select/3560820
(pardon me if you don't have access to jstor, I'd be happy to upload a copy of the .pdf somewhere if you'd like).
I apologize for rambling so much in your blog, but my point is this: While you're absolutely correct in saying that Christians ought to be reminded of their culpability in the Holocaust before they condemn Darwinists, shouldn't Darwinists be at least somewhat humbled by the fact that the Nazis derived at least some degree of utility from Darwinist ideas (social Darwinism), even if these ideas were misunderstood and appropriated over the loud objections of many of their proponents?
My most humble apologies for the overlong comment, I don't mean to disrespect you, clog up your blog, or offend its readers. Just offering a bit of food for thought, so to speak.
Respectfully yours,
Gunbine
Gunbine--
Your point is very well taken, and thanks for taking the time to lay it out so well. I do not mean, in any way, to suggest that Darwin did not influence the Nazis, or to "wash Darwin's hands." And I think I'll take a look at the Holt paper. All I'm saying here is that Christians, specifically, should be too ashamed by the Holocaust to consider directing blame (accurately or not) at Darwin or those who claimed him as an influence. The difference I'm trying to emphasize is not just the difference in culpability (which I consider to be pretty significant) but also the difference between what it means to be a Christ-follower and what (if anything) it means to be a Darwinian. Does that make sense?
Biochemistrysinger: if you're related to James Watson, I'm very sorry. :-) My view of the achievement of Watson & Crick is based on the view Crick seems to advocate in his memoir, What Mad Pursuit: that he and Watson deserve credit for boldness, but that the real star of the show is the double helix itself. Watson's momentous insight is legitimately legendary, but I see him as tenacious and audacious, not as brilliant and certainly not as wise. He went on to work for a time in molecular biology, and then to turn to administrative/leadership work. Getting the HGP off the ground is an achievement, but it's not "doing science," and I'm baffled by the persistence of the impression that Watson is/was a genius.
BTW, I think he's a jerk, but I don't think he was treated right at the end, and I don't believe his legacy should be unduly trashed by his obnoxious behavior. Does that help?
And I think I'll take a look at the Holt paper. All I'm saying here is that Christians, specifically, should be too ashamed by the Holocaust to consider directing blame (accurately or not) at Darwin or those who claimed him as an influence. The difference I'm trying to emphasize is not just the difference in culpability (which I consider to be pretty significant) but also the difference between what it means to be a Christ-follower and what (if anything) it means to be a Darwinian. Does that make sense?
I agree with you, to an extent. While I'm no expert on the Nazis and am not qualified to judge how much they exploited and/or were influenced by Darwinism and Christianity, comparatively, and I do agree it is unseemly of Christians to gloat over the perceived sins of Darwinism when our own are so great, I still think it's a bad idea to avoid directing blame to Darwin's ideas (not necessarily the man himself)--ONLY to the extent such blame is deserved, of course. As an aspiring historian, I think honesty demands it of us. As a Christian historian I would consider it my duty to study the failures of Christianity as a whole during this time and not shy away from revealing any of them, so that people living today can learn from their mistakes. But as a historian, period, I think it's also my duty to study how Darwinian ideas were misused during this time so that the people today who accept them and rely upon them, such as biologists like you, can be better equipped to prevent them from being misused again. So I agree with you in saying that Christians shouldn't be so eager to play the ~*blame game*~, but I do think examining the relative influence of both Christianity and Darwinism on Nazism, and not giving *either* any sort of free pass, is both fair and better for the world as a whole. Sorry for ramblin' again :)
Gunbine wrote
... shouldn't Darwinists be at least somewhat humbled by the fact that the Nazis derived at least some degree of utility from Darwinist ideas (social Darwinism), even if these ideas were misunderstood and appropriated over the loud objections of many of their proponents?
The repeated use of various forms of "Darwinist" there slides around a good deal of semantic territory. For example, if by "Darwinist" one means that one accepts the modern theory of evolution as the best available explanatory account of the diversity of life on earth, then no, I'm not at all "humbled" by whatever inspiration the Nazis derived from a grotesquely distorted view of an already bad misinterpretation (social Darwinism) of Darwin's original ideas. Angered, even enraged by it because it is such a distortion, but not "humbled."
The core difference between Darwin and Luther (and I was once a head usher in a large Lutheran church) is that the truth or falsity of Darwin's ideas about natural selection is unaffected by the use or misuse of them. They are not moral statements.
Luther, on the other hand, was making moral pronouncements, and one criterion for judging the acceptability of moral pronouncements is their effect on behavior. Luther's effect on behavior in Hitler's Germany was pervasive and pernicious.
And let us not forget that the concentration camp guards and SS troopers were drawn from a population that was Lutheran and Catholic and that was bathed in the anti-semitism of those religious traditions. Hitler almost exclusively used the language of religion, nationalism, and racial supremacy to mobilize and control them.
No, I'm not "humbled."
I'm not at all "humbled" by whatever inspiration the Nazis derived from a grotesquely distorted view of an already bad misinterpretation (social Darwinism) of Darwin's original ideas. Angered, even enraged by it because it is such a distortion, but not "humbled."
An interesting point. But a Christian (My apologies if you are one), particularly a Catholic, would say that Luther's views on the Bible and the Jews were already bad enough to begin with, the anti-Semitism they spawned was an even worse misinterpretation (which goes for their fellow Catholic anti-Semites), and Hitler just grotesquely misinterpreted it further. That says nothing about Christians as a whole or the validity of the Bible, just that many Lutherans and many Catholics subscribed to an inaccurate interpretation of Scripture first promulgated by a crazy man. That being the case, why should Christians feel 'humbled' by the Holocaust? Enraged at both Hitler's bastardization of their faith and even more enraged at the fact that so many of their coreligionists bought into it, but not 'humbled.'
(The assumption here, of course, is that the Bible is 'true' in any sense, and that may be something you agree with, but I'm hust saying that's a retort a Christian might come up with).
That said, as I mentioned earlier, Nazi Germany is not my field of study, such as it is, so I respectfully defer to you in regards to the motivating factors of the Lutherans and Catholics who served as Hitler's goons. I would point out, though, that the article from Dr. Holt makes a note of the ironic fact that the ideas of the Monists who so vehemently opposed Hitler were hijacked by his regime anyways. I do wonder if Hitler exploited these already blatant misinterpretations of Darwin's ideas to curry favor with Germany's educated, secular class, most particularly its scientists, whom Holt notes were generally less than staunch opponents of the regime, the Monists excepted. But that's just me being curious, of course, please don't pay me too much thought.
Oh, er, in case this isn't clear, it's obvious that Catholic anti-semitism and Protestant anti-semitism are independent of each other, of course. But if I were a Catholic that would just be another reason I'd be so enraged at Catholic anti-Semites in Germany during this time period--how dare they hop on the same bandwagon the Protestants were riding! :p
I agree with gunbine that those who hold particular ideas should be aware of how those ideas have been abused in order to avoid such misuses and abuses in the future.* But this is clearly not what Expelled does; rather, the film by all accounts I've heard (I refuse to pay money to see it and am doing all I can on my end to aide this cause, so I have to go by published report) uses the argumentum ad Hitlerum, basically associating Darwinism with Hitler in order to discredit Darwinism, not to provide a warning of its potential misuses.
*And I should note that there isn't enough of this done; one of the
reasons William Jennings Bryan has such a horrible reputation among evolutionists is that in creating a mythic character out of him, they have forgotten that his chief motive in arguing against evolution was the devastation he saw that social darwinism had wrought among the nation's poor. Clearly Bryan was wrong to blame the scientific concept for causing the social reality, but in forgetting this part of the story, evolutionists can avoid remembering how much the ideas they hold so dear have been used for ill (and in a context much more easily provable than Hitler's Germany). Neglecting this part of the history also keeps us from realizing one of the reasons why the resistance to evolution runs so deep among fundamentalists, a sector of American Christianity that was largely forged among those in the poorer social conditions engendered by the Gilded Age. Having been declared by social darwinism that they deserve the unspeakably difficult lives that they live, it's no wonder that they started to and continued to suspect scientific theories of darwinism. While this itself is only a partial explanation of the evolution-denying phenomenon, certainly its a better explanation than is offered in your typical "why aren't these dummies more scientifically literate" screed I regularly hear.
What part of Darwinian theory made any appearance in Nazi philosophy? "Social Darwinism" was a form of elitism promoted by Herbert Spencer before Darwin ever published evolution theory, and it bears no substantial resemblance to evolution theory (especially in the way it eschews altruism, to pick one example). Hitler's odd holding to a Biblically-based idea that heritage is carried in blood, and not in genes, is also rather anti-Darwin.
So, in the end, I'm curious as to just what of Darwin's theory ever made it to Nazi philosophy? I read the Swansee stuff, and there is no evolution there.
Evolution does not call for murder. In the wild, murder is really quite rare. Confusing murder with Darwinism does not make Darwinism evil, it only confuses the issues.
Kyle--
Thanks for the comment, and it's true that social darwinism is unappreciated as a source of evil and of opposition to evolution. Stephen Jay Gould give Bryan credit for opposing truly outrageous abuse of science, and the textbook that Scopes was using would be considered obscenely racist today, because it was in fact obscenely racist.
Ed--
gunbine has posted a citation to an analysis of a particular aspect of the influence of "darwinism" on the Nazis, and maybe we can get her/him to point us to more material. In the meantime, I would suggest you search the Wannsee Protocol for the phrase 'natural selection' and/or read Stephen Jay Gould's "The Most Unkindest Cut of All". It might be silly to "blame" Darwin for racism and for Nazi anti-Semitism, but it's also silly to deny that the Nazis weren't influenced by "darwinism" in some form.
Sfmatheson--
I'm a 'he" :) Anyways, again, I'm not an expert on Nazi Germany or the history of science in Germany, but I did manage to scrounge up a couple more journal articles from the University of Pennsylvania Press (God bless JSTOR :), written by authors who don't seem to be associated with the Discovery institute or otherwise have large chips on their shoulders.
The first I found interesting was "The "Survival of the Fittest" and the Origins of Social Darwinism" by Gregory Claeys. In a nutshell, this article echoes Mr. (er, I'm kind of new here, so forgive me if it should be Dr.) Darrell's claim that Social Darwinism is a misnomer and the ideas associated with it are more accurately attributed to Malthus and, of course, Spencer. Check it out here:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3654026.pdf
It is important to note, though, that the article, while indirectly supporting your view, Mr. Darrel, doesn't give Darwin 100% of a free pass either. To quote the last page of it,
This intellectual shift was not indicated as such by the Origin of Species or the preexisting metaphor of struggle which Darwin and Wallace adapted from Malthus in particular. Instead it was the product of a debate in the 1860s, in which Darwin accepted the application of natural selection to humanity by other writers and incorporated it into his own views, with others following suit, craft-ing a language of exclusion which was internally directed at class antagonism and externally to racial conflict.
(emphasis added).
Another interesting article I would recommend is an older one (1972), "Darwinism and Social Darwinism" from James Allen Rogers. This interesting piece examines why advocates of 'social Darwinism' tried to appropriate Darwin to their cause rather than Malthus or Spencer who they drew more from. Essentially, his conclusion was that their misunderstanding of his theories on natural selection. Check out the article here:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2708873.pdf
To quote again the article's conclusion,
Although their resulting doctrine of inevitable human social progress (Spencer's survival of the fittest) contradicted both Malthus' and Darwin's views on human society, the Social Darwinists preferred to see their doctrine as a necessary consequence of Darwin's scientific theory. For those who could not distinguish between biological and social evolution, Darwin's theory offered the public authority of science by which they could attempt to legitimatize their private vision of human progress.
This would support the idea that Social Darwinists, although relying on misunderstood and bastardized portions of Darwin's theories for which he was not responsible--still found his writings useful to twist towards their own ends, contrary to Darwin's though they may have been.
(As an aside, if you're an American, you might like this article published in the Journal of Negro History: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2967206.pdf)
Finally, bringing all this back to the subject of Darwin and the Nazis, another article I found is a good companion to Holt's as it examines the complexities of Darwinism as both an asset and a liability to the Nazis and the eugenicists:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3079479.pdf
In the course of looking through all these articles, I also found a couple of books which seem interesting, such as "The scientific origins of National Socialism" by Daniel Gasman, whom a little searching reveals is a member of Ferris State Univeristy, not a creationist or religiously-oriented think-tank or anything. I suppose I shall check to see if my library has a copy. Hope this helps~!
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