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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Invades the School Restroom

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Nancy Pearcey, offers an article based on Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, her most recent book.

The public has responded swiftly and strongly against the Obama administration’s demand that public schools admit transgender students into the showers, locker rooms, and sports teams of their choice. But to be successful, the response must also be informed. Where did transgender ideology come from, and how can we respond more effectively?

The answer may surprise you. If we dig deeply, we discover that the turning point, historically, was Darwin’s theory of evolution. It had a lasting impact in at least three ways.

Matter Does Not Matter

Let’s tease out its impact through the language of the transgender movement. California set the tone in 2007 when it changed its education code to define gender as “a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.”

What’s the key word here? “Assigned.” As though a person’s sex at birth were purely arbitrary instead of a scientific, biological fact.

What such language implies is that biological facts do not matter. The law is being used to impose a worldview that denigrates the physical body as inconsequential, insignificant, and irrelevant to gender identity. It is a worldview that alienates people from their own bodies. As Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan writes, transgender ideology implies that “the body is an accident that has befallen the real me; the real me has a true sex” apart from my body.

Where did such a negative view of the body come from? From Darwin’s rejection of purpose and design in nature. Both classical Greek and Christian philosophy regarded the natural world as teleological – from the Greek telos, meaning purpose or goal. It is evident that eyes are for seeing and ears for hearing; fins are for swimming and wings for flying. The only reason molecules are arranged in those particular configurations is to achieve a purpose.

Because the human body is part of nature, it too was recognized as having a purpose. The sexual differentiation of male and female was not some cosmic accident. It showed that the human body is oriented toward opposite-sex pair-bonding for emotional attachment and procreation. Teleology is the basis for naturallaw ethics: It tells us how to fulfill our true nature, how to become fully human.

Darwin did not deny that nature appears to be designed for a purpose. But he wanted to reduce that appearance to an illusion, the result of a purposeless material process. The two elements of his theory, random variations sifted by the blind automatic forces of natural selection, were proposed expressly to eliminate plan or purpose.

As historian Jacques Barzun writes, “This denial of purpose is Darwin’s distinctive contention.”

The implication of the Darwinian worldview is that the biological differentiation of male and female is a cosmic accident. The body was reduced to raw material that can be manipulated and controlled to serve human needs and preferences – like any other natural resource. Gender identity is strictly in the mind, even to the point of overriding biological identity. Matter does not matter.

This was “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” says philosopher Daniel Dennett in a book by that title. He describes Darwinism as a “universal acid; it eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view.”

Darwin and Foucault 

The second way Darwinism feeds into the transgender movement is the elevation of evolution into an overarching philosophy – evolutionism or historicism. The philosophy itself preceded Darwin, but he gave it the scientific credibility needed for its widespread acceptance.

The source of the philosophy was Hegel, who taught a form of spiritual evolutionism. Hegel said that all ideas – law, morality, religion, art, philosophy, political ideals – are products of the gradual “actualization of the Universal Mind” over the course of history. All are partial truths in the upward progression of Mind, the evolution of consciousness.

Long before Darwin, then, Hegel was teaching people to interpret history in an evolutionary paradigm. Nietzsche even said that “without Hegel, there would have been no Darwin.”

How does evolutionism or historicism play into transgender ideology? It implies that there is no stable, enduring, universal human nature – and therefore no stable, universal sexual morality. As the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre put it, “There is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it.” Just as species are constantly changing and evolving, so individuals must leave behind all stable standards of behavior and immerse themselves in the ceaseless flux of life, constantly creating and re-creating themselves.

As postmodernists put it, the self is fluid. There is no blueprint for what it means to be human. Morality is reduced to a social convention, the product of a constantly evolving history.

Sexual theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler vigorously deny that the claim that any moral ideal – say, heterosexual marriage – is built into our nature because they deny there is any human nature. Any such claim, they say, commits the fallacy of “naturalizing,” defined as treating a behavior as natural when they know it is merely a social construction.

Sex as Identity

Finally, how did sex come to be seen as the core of human identity? Foucault points to biology. In the past, he explains, biologists treated sex and reproduction as just one among the many functions of an organism. But today they treat it as central to life itself. In Foucault’s words, “geneticists ceased to conceive of life as an organization strangely equipped with an additional capacity to reproduce itself”’; now “they see in the reproductive mechanism that very element which introduces the biological dimension: the matrix not only of the living, but of life itself.”

Foucault does not name names, but this shift, too, was a product of Darwinism. The theory made reproduction the linchpin of evolutionary progress. Because there is no independent criterion of success, Darwin’s theory boils down to “differential reproduction” – whoever has the most offspring wins.

Consequently, Foucault writes, in the space of a few centuries, sex has gone from being regarded as one activity of life to being our core identity. Sex is treated as the “master key” to knowing who we are: “Sex, the explanation for everything.”

Giving Dignity to the Body

If we draw these strands together, they form the philosophical underpinnings for transgender ideology: Sex is the core of our identity, but there is no stable human nature, so all concepts of gender are social constructions. We cannot derive our gender identity from our physical makeup because the body is just a piece of matter with no purpose or meaning in itself. It is a hunk of raw material whose meaning is imposed on it by the autonomous self.

We must help people to see that this is a very negative view of the human body. It grants no dignity to our physical, anatomical, biological identity. It drives a wedge between the body and the authentic self. And therefore it alienates people from their own bodies.

We would do well to retrieve the ancient wisdom that nature is teleological, just as people have long recognized. A teleological worldview leads to a positive view of the body. It acknowledges that there is purpose and dignity in being male and female. It leads to harmony between biological identity and gender identity. And it leads to respect for the body/person as an integrated unity.

Matter does matter.

It is important to protest the latest government overreach. But this positive message has the best chance of winning people’s hearts and minds.

Bio: Nancy Pearcey is a professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, editor at large of the Pearcey Report, and author most recently of  Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism & Other God Substitutes.

 

Comments
One pertinent note. In the Darwinian worldview, sexual reproduction does not make any sense and should not exist in the first place if Darwinism were true.
How did the sexes originate? Why is it that the vast majority of living things require a "male and female" to reproduce? If evolution were true - doesn't it make much more sense that EVERY living organism was self-replicating and required no useless energy expenditure? When did the first male get here? When did the first female get here? How? Why? Wouldn't they have had to appear fully functional and at the same time in order for the next generation of organisms to arrive? Of course, they would. So, how is it that the first male and female for almost 2 million living organisms arrived together and fully functional so that reproduction could take place? "Sex is the QUEEN of evolutionary biology problems." Dr. Graham Bell - In his book, 'The Masterpiece of Nature' Another whack at the “sex paradox” - July 1, 2014 Excerpt: The article is most informative about tests done on the various theses but in the end (they state). And so the paradox of sex lives on. “We still really don’t know the answer to this very most basic question,” says Mark Welch. “We don’t know why sex exists.” https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/another-whack-at-the-sex-paradox/
Simply put, if evolution by natural selection were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that should be around should be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most 'mutational firepower', since only they, since they greatly outclass multi-cellular organism in terms of ‘reproductive success’, would be fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the fittest are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
Richard Dawkins interview with a 'Darwinian' physician goes off track - video Excerpt: "I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly -- a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves -- that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we're stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html
In other words, Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically 'selected' for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction. Moreover, contrary to one of Darwin's central predictions, time after time we find micro-organisms helping each other, and us, in ways that have nothing to with ‘survival of the fittest'’. The following researchers were 'more than a little shaken' by what they found:
Doubting Darwin: Algae Findings Surprise Scientists - April 28, 2014 Excerpt: One of Charles Darwin's hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true. Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin's theory — at least in one case. "It was completely unexpected," says Bradley Cardinale, associate professor in the University of Michigan's school of natural resources & environment. "When we saw the results, we said 'this can't be."' We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?" The researchers ,,,— were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.,,, The scientists did not set out to disprove Darwin, but, in fact, to learn more about the genetic and ecological uniqueness of fresh water green algae so they could provide conservationists with useful data for decision-making. "We went into it assuming Darwin to be right, and expecting to come up with some real numbers for conservationists," Cardinale says. "When we started coming up with numbers that showed he wasn't right, we were completely baffled.",,, Darwin "was obsessed with competition," Cardinale says. "He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don't grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected. ",,, Maybe Darwin's presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong." http://www.livescience.com/45205-data-dont-back-up-darwin-in-algae-study-nsf-bts.html
Moreover, instead of eating us, which would be expected if Darwinism were actually true, time after time different types of microbial life are found to be helping us in essential ways,,,
NIH Human Microbiome Project defines normal bacterial makeup of the body – June 13, 2012 Excerpt: Microbes inhabit just about every part of the human body, living on the skin, in the gut, and up the nose. Sometimes they cause sickness, but most of the time, microorganisms live in harmony with their human hosts, providing vital functions essential for human survival. http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2012/nhgri-13.htm We are living in a bacterial world, and it's impacting us more than previously thought - February 15, 2013 Excerpt: We often associate bacteria with disease-causing "germs" or pathogens, and bacteria are responsible for many diseases, such as tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and MRSA infections. But bacteria do many good things, too, and the recent research underlines the fact that animal life would not be the same without them.,,, I am,, convinced that the number of beneficial microbes, even very necessary microbes, is much, much greater than the number of pathogens." http://phys.org/news/2013-02-bacterial-world-impacting-previously-thought.html#ajTabs Of Humans and Our Microbial Guests: A Dynamic and Living Balance - Stephen L. Talbott - Dec. 9, 2014 Excerpt: A rapidly swelling literature is testifying to human dependence upon the diverse microorganisms — collectively, the microbiome (or microbiota) — we play host to. By common admission, we have hardly begun to figure out how these microorganisms affect us,,, http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2014/microbiome_25.htm “Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides.” - Paul G. Falkowski – Professor Geological Sciences – Rutgers
bornagain77
May 25, 2016
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"Mildew has 2 sexes. So do some plants. A lot of insects are sexually differentiated, but they don’t go in for a lot of emotional attachment." So in the Darwinian worldview, the institution of marriage between a man and a woman degrades into insects having sex in order to reproduce? you are missing a rather huge elephant in the living room. i.e. Love!
The praying mantis, black widow spider, and jumping spider are among a number of species that devour their mates. Sexual cannibalism is also found in other invertebrates, including a relative of the praying mantis, the Chinese mantis, and scorpions.
bornagain77
May 25, 2016
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clown fish, your postings certainly sound a lot like william spearshake. A troll whom has been banned several times under numerous different handles for exactly the same type of trollish behavior you are now exhibiting. i.e. ad hominem, refusal to deal forthrightly with the evidence, etc.. etc...bornagain77
May 25, 2016
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The sexual differentiation of male and female was not some cosmic accident. It showed that the human body is oriented toward opposite-sex pair-bonding for emotional attachment and procreation.
How does the fact that we have two sexes show that we are oriented towards pair bonding and emotional attachment? It only shows that we are oriented towards reproduction.
Quote. Mildew has 2 sexes. So do some plants. A lot of insects are sexually differentiated, but they don't go in for a lot of emotional attachment.Bob O'H
May 25, 2016
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So, a protein that is different than any previously known protein is not a new protein. You have some pretty strange definitions. And you should check the sources of your infirmation. Evolution News and Views and Cornelius Hunter do not exactly count as legitimate and respected sources of scientific information. Do you have anything else? Possibly an OP from News? Or an assertion from KF?clown fish
May 24, 2016
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Though Darwinists love to claim Nylonase as a 'new' protein. The simple fact is that is the same exact enzyme/protein, esterase, with only a minor variation on its previous enzymatic activity:
Character and Theology Aside, What About Denis Lamoureux's Science? - David Klinghoffer - March 21, 2016 Excerpt: Lamoureux mentioned the discovery of Nylon-eating bacteria as empirical proof that evolution can create new complex specified information and new proteins (nylonase enzyme) within only 40 years of time.,, Newer research by Negoro et al. (2007) has shown that the nylonase enzyme did not evolve by gene duplication and frameshift mutation as originally assumed, but arose from a pre-existing carboxyesterase enzyme, which already had some capacity to degrade nylon oligomers. In other words: Nylonase is NOT new information (also see here)! http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/03/character_and_t102708.html
Moreover, much like it was recently found for Lenski's citrate, Nylonase is a repeatable adaptation that is not arrived at by Darwinian processes but is arrived at by 'directed' mutations
Debate Debrief: The Two-Prong Canard Demonstrated Within 24 Hours - The Curious Case of Nylonase – March 20, 2016 - Cornelius Hunter Excerpt: Such adaptation to nylon manufacture byproducts has been repeated in laboratory experiments. In a matter of months bacteria acquire the ability to digest the unforeseen chemical. Researchers speculate that mechanisms responding to environmental stress are involved in inducing adaptive mutations. That is not evolution. In fact it refutes evolution. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2016/03/debate-debrief-two-prong-canard.html
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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BA77: "All childish games of prestige aside, the fact of the matter is that Darwinian evolution can’t explain, nor demonstrate, the origin of a single protein by Darwinian processes." Nylonase. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQEclown fish
May 24, 2016
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A self-named clown seeks to defend a troll? :) (Insert laugh track here) All childish games of prestige aside, the fact of the matter is that Darwinian evolution can't explain, nor demonstrate, the origin of a single protein by Darwinian processes. Much less can Darwinists even begin to coherently explain how trillions upon trillions of protein molecules and cells 'accidentally' came together to form a single unified whole that typifies a living organism.
It's Really Not Rocket Science - Granville Sewell - November 16, 2015 Excerpt: In a 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote: “It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident... you have essentially "lost your mind."” ,,, Max Planck biologist W.E. Loennig once commented that Darwinism was a sort of "mass psychosis" -- then he asked me, is that the right English word? I knew psychosis was some kind of mental illness, but wasn't sure exactly what it was, so I looked it up in my dictionary when I returned home: "psychosis -- a loss of contact with reality." I wrote him that, yes, that was the right word…. Loennig and Homnick are still right. Once you seriously consider the possibility that all the magnificent species in the living world, and the human body and the human brain, could be entirely the products of unintelligent forces, you have been in academia too long and have lost contact with reality -- you have lost your mind. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt100911.html ‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body-plan. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans - video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1140536289292636/?type=2&theater
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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BA77: "Seversky, you, a atheistic troll who could care less for the truth, are trying to give me pointers on how to be taken seriously? Thanks for the laugh!" The thought that anyone takes you seriously certainly made me laugh.clown fish
May 24, 2016
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Seversky, you, a atheistic troll who could care less for the truth, are trying to give me pointers on how to be taken seriously? Thanks for the laugh! Perhaps you would like to establish Darwinian evolution as a real science before you try to give me pointers on being taken seriously? Darwinian evolution, despite whatever lies you may prefer to believe, since it has no falsification criteria, does not even qualify as a real science in the first place but is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudo-science: The main reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly thought of as a pseudo-science instead of a proper science is because Darwinian evolution has no rigid mathematical basis, like other overarching physical theories of science do. A rigid mathematical basis to test against in order to potentially falsify it (in fact, in so far as math can be applied to Darwinian claims, mathematics constantly shows us that Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),, Darwinian Evolution is a Unfalsifiable Pseudo-Science - Mathematics – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1132659110080354/?type=2&theater "In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality." Karl Popper - The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge (2014 edition), Routledgebornagain77
May 24, 2016
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bornagain77 @ 3
Seversky asks:
Was this by accident or design, I wonder?
Which is the old ‘God would not have done it that way so Darwinian evolution must be true’ argument. The primary problem with this type of argument is that it is a Theological argument that is trying to make a scientific conclusion. Apparently, in Darwinian theology, we do not live in a fallen world and God would never allow such things as detrimental mutations. But aside from such a simplistic theology as Darwinists have, the fact of the matter is that detrimental mutations are a VERY powerful SCIENTIFIC, not Theological, argument against Darwinian evolution being true
If you want your copy/paste of cherry-picked quotes to be taken seriously in any way as a scientific approach then you should explain how evolutionary biology accounts for detrimental mutations and, while you're at it, you could summarize objections to the concept of "The Fall" in Christian theology. Of course, if your purpose is the same as Cornelius Hunter's, namely anti-evolution advocacy rather than science, that is not going to happen, is it?Seversky
May 24, 2016
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News @ 2
Would Seversky care to say what the percentage/number of such infants is? One heard hardly anything of it until “transgender” became the new progressive cause. A market for big government?
One heard hardly anything about the oppression of slavery, or the denial of women's rights, or the treatment of homosexuality as a crime until the "progressives" of the day began protesting about them and demanding the redress of longstanding grievances. Do you dismiss all of them as just "a market for big government"?Seversky
May 24, 2016
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Jon Garvey, I think you misunderstand the nature of my post. I agree that psychological issues are likely the reason for a majority who identify as transgendered. However, there is a foundational belief that the biological sexes are clearly and easily defined. Sadly, this is not true for far too many people. So, how is a society to deal with this issue? Do we leave it to the individual to determine their sex? Do we establish a legal framework to determine the gender of the sexually ambiguous? It's not an easy question, and goes straight to the philosophical grounding for what is gender identity, and who owns it.rhampton7
May 24, 2016
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supplement to post 21
Podcast: "The Top 10 Problems with Darwinian Evolution: A Bonus 11th Problem" - Casey Luskin In this segment, Casey discusses a bonus eleventh problem: that humans display many behavioral and cognitive ability that offer no apparent survival advantage. http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2015/05/the-top-10-problems-with-darwinian-evolution-a-bonus-11th-problem/ Icons (false evidences) of Evolution - 10th Anniversary - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzTFeWL19Bs&index=1&list=PLR8eQzfCOiS2RPQAPifs6t__mIAqITpYy
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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For more background, including a discussion of intersex and its implications, please read this article that appeared in CNSNews: (excerpt) "Is this fragmented view of sexuality actually liberating? Many who have tried it say no. Jonah Mix, who writes for “Gender Detective,” spent years immersed in queer theory, wearing makeup and nail polish: “It was in those queer circles that I first heard the common admonition to never define a person by their body.” Eventually, however, he realized the promise of liberation was a lie. To discover whether you “identify” as a man, you must define manhood. If you do not define yourself by your biological sex, then you must define yourself by your actions. Do you act stereotypically masculine? Then you are a man. Do you behave in ways that are stereotypically feminine? You must be a woman. Queer theory actually reinforces gender stereotypes. By contrast, if you base your identity on your physical anatomy, you can engage in a range of diverse behaviors without threatening your identity as a man. Mix writes, “When we are defined by our bodies, the whole width of human experience remains open. ... There is freedom in the body.” On a trans website a commenter named Trish wrote, “As a little girl, I enjoyed both ballet lessons and playing in the mud. ... I liked miniskirts and wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. It looks to me like the trans movement is fighting very hard to force everyone to choose whether to live in the blue box or the pink box, and no playing mix-and-match. To me this is the opposite of freedom.” Contrary to what progressives say, there is greater diversity when we anchor our gender identity in the objective, scientifically knowable reality of our biology as male or female. In culture war rhetoric, the existence of intersex people (hermaphrodites) is often used to disrupt the male/female binary. But intersex conditions are a matter of biology, not gender identity. A report filed to the European Commission in 2011 says, “Intersex people differ from trans people as their status is not gender related but instead relates to their biological makeup (genetic, hormonal and physical features).” http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/nancy-pearcey/do-biological-facts-no-longer-matternpearcey
May 24, 2016
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"Contrary to the belief of some, accurate information, even if disturbing, is always preferable to the withholding of accurate information or the dissemination of misinformation." Does this include teaching students the accurate information against Darwinian evolution instead of just the dissemination of misinformation currently taught for Darwinian evolution? Or does teaching all of the information suddenly become problematic for you when it comes to Darwinian evolution?
What’s the matter with evolution? Science | A ranking of the top five scientific problems found in evolutionary theory By Casey Luskin - April 25, 2015 Problem 1: No Viable Mechanism to Generate a Primordial Soup Problem 2: Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code Problem 3: Random Mutations Cannot Generate the Genetic Information Required for Irreducibly Complex Structures Problem 4: Natural Selection Struggles to Fix Advantageous Traits into Populations Problem 5: Abrupt Appearance of Species in the Fossil Record Does Not Support Darwinian Evolution http://www.worldmag.com/2015/04/what_s_the_matter_with_evolution Part 2: What’s the matter with evolution? By Casey Luskin - May 2, 2015 Excerpt: Five more scientific problems found in evolutionary theory Problem 6: Molecular Biology has Failed to Yield a Grand “Tree of Life” Problem 7: Convergent Evolution Challenges Darwinism and Destroys the Logic Behind Common Ancestry Problem 8: Differences Between Vertebrate Embryos Contradict the Predictions of Common Ancestry Problem 9: Neo-Darwinism Struggles to Explain the Biogeographical Distribution of Many Species Problem 10: Neo-Darwinism Has a Long History of Inaccurate Darwinian Predictions about Vestigial Organs and “Junk DNA” http://www.worldmag.com/2015/05/part_2_what_s_the_matter_with_evolution http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/problem_10_neo-091191.html "It has become clear in the past ten years that the concept of design is not merely an add-on meta-description of biological systems, of no scientific consequence, but is in fact a driver of science. A whole cohort of young scientists is being trained to “think like engineers” when looking at biological systems, using terms explicitly related to engineering design concepts: design, purpose, optimal tradeoffs for multiple goals, information, control, decision making, etc. This approach is widely seen as a successful, predictive, quantitative theory of biology." David Snoke - Systems Biology as a Research Program for Intelligent Design - 2014 http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/viewArticle/BIO-C.2014.3 In Court Rulings on Teaching Origins Science, Law Review Article Finds a Double Standard - Sarah Chaffee – May 6, 2016 Excerpt: In a newly published law review article, "Darwin's Poisoned Tree: Atheistic Advocacy and the Constitutionality of Teaching Evolution in Public Schools," attorney and former Discovery Institute research coordinator Casey Luskin examines the way courts have struck down the teaching of alternatives to evolution because of their historical associations with religion. At the same time, he notes that courts typically ignore anti-religious historical associations with Darwinism. As Luskin documents, these associations are prevalent and well known. The result is a double standard, as courts hold alternatives to evolution unconstitutional to teach, but evolution constitutional. Luskin notes that the solution to this problem is not removing evolution from schools. He vigorously opposes having evolution declared unconstitutional. Instead, he argues that religious associations of scientific views on origins science should not be constitutionally fatal, but rather should be considered an "incidental effect." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/in_court_ruling102826.html
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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"Parents furious over school’s plan to teach gender spectrum, fluidity “The district will also introduce young teenagers to the “concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum.” By tenth grade, they will be taught that one’s sexuality “develops throughout a lifetime.”" Yes, I can see why parents would be furious at the plan to teach reality to children. They would be much better off not being taught that homosexuality exists, that transgender exists, that they have both existed for all of human recorded history. Maybe we shouldn't teach them about hygiene and germ theory either. Contrary top the belief of some, accurate information, even if disturbing, is always preferable to the withholding of accurate information or the dissemination of misinformation.clown fish
May 24, 2016
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News, where do Pearcey's words begin? In this available elsewhere? KFkairosfocus
May 24, 2016
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Transgender boys that I've known are pretty meek - your daughters are safe. The only Darwinian concept at play is extinction?ppolish
May 24, 2016
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You know, I'm reminded of G.K. Chesterton saying, "If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits." In that we are not making a distinction of the sexes doesn't elevate anyone or free anyone, rather, it binds everyone. And then to C.S. Lewis who says, "Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have 'taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?" "Man's conquest of nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man."Brent
May 24, 2016
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Parents furious over school’s plan to teach gender spectrum, fluidity "The district will also introduce young teenagers to the “concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum.” By tenth grade, they will be taught that one’s sexuality “develops throughout a lifetime.” “Emphasis will be placed on an understanding that there is a broader, boundless, and fluid spectrum of sexuality that is developed throughout a lifetime,” the document states. “Sexual orientation and gender identity terms will be discussed with focus on appreciation for individual differences.” As you might imagine – parents are freaking out. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/15/call-it-gender-fluidity-schools-to-teach-kids-there-s-no-such-thing-as-boys-or-girls.html?intcmp=latestnews
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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Let’s tease out its impact through the language of the transgender movement. California set the tone in 2007 when it changed its education code to define gender as “a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.
What’s the key word here? “Assigned.” As though a person’s sex at birth were purely arbitrary instead of a scientific, biological fact." No, the key word is AND. "...to define gender as “a person’s gender identity AND gender related appearance and behavior..." To hear the opposition to the transgender use of bathrooms, it would give sexual predators the legal right to enter women bathrooms to attack them. Obviously, assuming your words are correct, this is not the case.
The sexual differentiation of male and female was not some cosmic accident. It showed that the human body is oriented toward opposite-sex pair-bonding for emotional attachment and procreation.
How does the fact that we have two sexes show that we are oriented towards pair bonding and emotional attachment? It only shows that we are oriented towards reproduction. There are plenty of examples of species with two sexes in which there is no pair bonding or emotional attachment.clown fish
May 24, 2016
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Romans 1 playing out right before our eyes
Romans 1:20-28 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
bornagain77
May 24, 2016
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rhampton Before this line of argument goes further, let me point out that from the medical point of view biological intersex and transgender are chalk and cheese. It's the equivalent of using castration to explain why some people don't like the idea of marriage. I studied social psychology when the idea of "assigned gender" was the new kid on the block in sociology - and its roots are, to say the least, muddily associated with a particular ideology (as in most sociology of that era). But it arose from the suggestion that a biological male with ambiguous anatomy would do best "assigned" to the female sex. Not surprisingly, it led to tears. To go from that to the current idea that gender is universally independent of biology, independent of social condition, and instead a mysterious "inner" conviction, cannot be reached through science, but only some kind of ideological mysticism.Jon Garvey
May 23, 2016
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How would your philosophical framework assign sexual identity for those who are afflicted by Disorders of Sexual Development? What constitutes a male vs a female designation when the chromosomes and/or the genitalia are ambiguous? As examples, classifications of sex chromosome DSD include the following: - 45,X ( Turner syndrome and variants) - 47,XXY ( Klinefelter syndrome and variants) - 45,X/46,XY (mixed gonadal dysgenesis, ovotesticular DSD) - 46,XX/46,XY (chimeric, ovotesticular DSD) Classifications of 46,XY DSD include the following: - Disorders of testicular development (complete and partial gonadal dysgenesis) - Disorders of androgen synthesis (complete and partial androgen insensitivity, disorders of antimüllerian hormone [AMH]/receptor, androgen biosynthesis defect) - Other (severe hypospadias, cloacal exstrophy) Classifications of 46,XX DSD include the following: - Disorders of ovarian development (ovotesticular DSD, testicular DSD, gonadal dysgenesis) - Androgen excess (fetal [eg, congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)], fetoplacental, maternal) - Other ( vaginal atresia, cloacal exstrophy) http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1015520-overviewrhampton7
May 23, 2016
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Human body structure is a complicated one. We all do not know how it forms. However, we can study it through the biological field. And now many researches related to drug discovery have become more and more popular here:henrrymo
May 23, 2016
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This transgender stuff comes from the same place as the gay stuff. The good guys must make a great argument and based on morality. First it must be based onb morals and that from God and man. So it must be the peoples decision. not governments acting on their own. Everyone must get a say and then , I guess, a head count ala democracy. the bad guys never let the people decide just like gay marriage etc. If they say experts have decided transgender is scientifically right then its a science issue once more. We must say God, our ancestors, and ourselves have the moral duty to do the right thing and the moral to decide that based on each individuals opinion. Then we can contend on the merits. Obama and company FIRST deny the people the right to decide and then say we may discuss it. Then a vote as long as they are sure of the result. I say the, whjats the name, our our side has failed since WWii to argue on moral foundations but instead argues on the merits only. We must THIS TIME use this transgender thing as a way to ROLL BACK all these attacks. The people must demand the people decide the moral status of these things. Until then its illegal invasion and occupation by those in power to assert thier will. We must then demand there is no case for transgenders confusion. We deny it. They don't need to interfere with our historic segregation of the sexes based on the physical body.Robert Byers
May 23, 2016
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The purpose of claiming that we are only meat is to establish the authority for saying, "You are only meat."EvilSnack
May 23, 2016
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Question. Since transgender ideology implies that “the body is an accident that has befallen the real me; the real me has a true sex” apart from my body. And yet there is no real me apart from the biological body within materialism, only an illusion of a 'real me', then why is the sexual illusion of the illusory 'real me' given priority over the biological/material reality of the body by materialists? If materialists were consistent in their materialism, they should be first and foremost to give priority to the material reality of their body over the psychological preferences of the illusory mind.
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - Ross Douthat - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0
Quote of note:
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” - Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
bornagain77
May 23, 2016
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News @2 Evidently, based on the Wikipedia article Seversky quoted, 0.005% of babies lack sufficient physiological definition to identify sex within seconds, minutes or a few days of birth. It seems to me that under normal conditions one could uncontroversially characterize this kind of condition as an extremely rare pathology. But who would be so foolish as to think these types of issues are allowed to be discussed as if they were subject to "normal conditions"?HeKS
May 23, 2016
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