As part of a spate of reading on evolutionary psychology and the emergence of altruism and cooperation, I recently read the forthcoming Philosophy and Primates, based on primatologist Frans de Waal’s 2003 Tanner Lecture, with comments by an array of academic rockstars. One interesting notion floated in Robert Wright‘s contribution is the idea that it’s […]

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Over at The Corner, John J. Miller says about this story: One of the most interesting things about the abortion pill story is that it actually uses the term “abortion pill” — as opposed to “emergency contraception” or somesuch. I haven’t done a careful analysis of this, but I suspect that the media often doesn’t […]

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Over at Hit and Run, Ron Bailey posts about Pat Robertson’s warning that after Dover, PA voted out a pro–Intelligent Design schoolboard, well… it’d be a shame if something should happen to their very nice town. But accidents happen; locusts eat things. And commenter KipEsquire has the killer observation: But remember: Intelligent Design is not […]

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Hah!

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So, apparently my post below on evolution and the psychology of religious belief has kicked off a little debate over at The Panda’s Thumb. For the most part, I think Tim Sandefur’s reply says what needed to be said, but let me just add something brief about the point of the original post. My point […]

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In a very good anti-ID cover story in the current New Republic, scientist Jerry Coyne describes the “wedge strategy” motivating ID advocacy: [The strategy] begins with the adoption of intelligent design as an alternative theory to evolution, after which ID will edge out evolution until it is the only view left, after which it will […]

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Writing at Slate, Jacob Weisberg dissents from the chorus of culture war peacemakers asserting that theology and evolution can be friends. It probably is better in in the short term if religious people think that the two are compatible so they stop trying to torpedo public school science curricula (pending the move to a fully […]

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Y’know, I frequently disagree with pieces TechCentralStation runs—I expect to—but I don’t usually expect to feel embarassed for them. On Monday they ran this ridiculous defense of Intelligent Design, and I’m embarassed for them. The awfulness begins in the very first line, when the author, who has a degree in metorology, makes a disingenuously vague […]

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National Review‘s blog The Corner posts (presumably with approval) some truly heroically stupid thoughts from a reader in reply to a New York Times piece on genetics and politics that’s generating a lot of discussion. Sez he (and you may rest assured it’s a he): But perhaps the best evidence is the gender divide in […]

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You know, I was looking over this Scientific American piece debunking creationist (sorry “ID”) arguments and found myself wondering, how much would creationists really like it if public schools were to genuinely “teach the debate” in public schools? That is, what if after presenting the theory and massive evidence supporting evolution, biology teachers were to […]

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