“Only systematic misrepresentations or lack of understanding of the relevant biology, together with far-reaching analytical and philosophical confusions, have led anyone to think otherwise.”

The irony, it hurts.

Them’s fightin’ words.

Maybe they need a little learnin’ in this area.

O’Leary asks: “But why did anyone ever doubt that?” [“that” being the notion that we are free moral agents who cannot avoid responsibility for our actions by sloughing them off as merely the pre-determined outcome of a materialistic process over which we have no control]

The answer is that many in the law have been preaching that very thing for nearly a century. Clarrance Darrow, famous as the Scopes trial attorney for the defense, actually argued this to juries in murder trials. Thankfully, the juries did not buy it.

We shall use “creationists” in what follows as a term of art to mean both those committed to the
literal truth of the Book of Genesis as well as the proponents of “Intelligent Design.” Intelligent Design is simply creationism for those who have consulted a lawyer and a public relations firm; it has nothing to do with science, since the criticisms of evolutionary biology are without merit and the positing of “intelligent design” as an explanatory hypothesis is on a par, epistemically, with the positing of turtles on whose back the universe rests. The Intelligent Design Creationists have stated no empirically testable hypothesis, and posit mechanisms that satisfy none of the standard desiderata of scientific theory construction, like ontological parsimony or methodological conservatism.

Also, from footnote 6:

Unfortunately for Professor Zywicki, while it is not reasonable, given what we know, to express doubts about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, it is extremely reasonable, given what we know, to express doubts about evolutionary psychology and its selectionist hypotheses about certain cognitive and mental differences between the human sexes. That Professor Zywicki thinks these claims are on an epistemic par just reveals that he has no notion of the actual state of the scientific evidence or of the relevant scientific
standards for confirming hypotheses.