Bias that we attribute to religious belief can be just as applicable to science if you are not open minded to evidence. Sometimes assumptions are the exact opposite of discovery but we are too dogmatic to see it.
“Richard Dawkins position is very much like a religious position. It’s got the following characteristics—he’s dogmatic and not open to being wrong (neither are his followers) and 2nd, he got the fantastic notion of original sin—we are born selfish, arisen from genes characterized as such”. —Denis Noble
There is a third wave of evolution being discovered top-down, that is, the organism derives the genes, not the other way around, such as, changing the gene does not cure the ailments as hypothesized, and cloning does not create copies.
Dawkins has admitted that since the “Selfish Gene”(1976) very little has been done to correct or falsify his claims, very little work has been done—in other words, “the selfish gene is a dogma, accepted by scientific skeptics as a final answer, as if to question it is an affront to the package deal of selfish genes, a purposeless universe, and atheistic bias.
New (and old) research is showing us different, and all the promises of genetic cures have proven impossible, that the organism as a whole is a top-down process, not a bottom-up emergent property.
The higher level of organization constrains what the molecular level does. Those constraints, the boundary conditions, determine what this molecules can do— not the other way around.
Purpose does not define ilfe to some sort of cartesian dualism—there is no ghost in the mashing. The ghost is the machine. The process has no outside cause—the process and the cause are one. Neo Darwinisms attachment to anti-causation is blinding the central dogma. The assumptions that support this are wrong.
Source article and video HERE
TheCommonAtheist 
You state as if true, “There is a third wave of evolution being discovered top-down, that is, the organism derives the genes, not the other way around…”
Umm. Is it?
From biologist Jerry Coyne, “As far as I can see, it’s basically a grab-bag of criticisms of evolution that are unfounded, as well as proposals of new mechanisms whose importance is yet to be established (or, in the case of adaptive mutation, has been shown to be unlikely by experiments), and of processes, like niche construction, that fit comfortably within modern evolutionary theory. The common theme of nearly every “Third Wave” member whose work I know is this: “Modern evolutionary theory is deficient because it has ignored my own view of what is important.” In other words, the whole site is solipsistic.”
SET (Standard Evolutionary Theory) works with massive explanatory power about its mechanism of natural selection that affects allele frequencies in offspring. Biology as we understand it to be makes no sense without it. Genetics fits seamlessly into it.
But to now say as if justified that, “the organism as a whole is a top-down process, not a bottom-up emergent property” presumes the conclusion for which there is almost no evidence (Coyne does explain where certain environments can be self altered that do affect evolutionary adaptation… ie milk). Without genes expressing themselves to create the whole organism FIRST, how on earth does the “top down process” then add the additional thumb to the panda that may desire one? This is why epigenetics has no genetic explanation to back it up: an absence of a mechanism that can then affect HERITABLE allele frequencies in offspring.
I think you’ve confused ‘restraint’ to mean ‘control’. These are synonyms and nothing this group has brought forward in the last 10 years has contributed much to evolutionary biology other than provide a somewhat sciency cover for all kinds of woo-meisters. The ghost IS the machine (which you agree with) but then fail to follow your own logic that properties must then emerge FROM it. If these properties advance fitness, then they are more likely to be similarly expressed when the genetic inheritance of the offspring advances because the properties are more likely to emerge. That is what an emergent property IS. You are suggesting the emergent property is somehow created and controlled by the “higher level of organization” for which the third way fails to provide any biological or chemical means by which this control is exerted in a way to become heritable. This is why the ‘selfish’ gene remains the standard and not because of some bias or doctrine. The SET remains the benchmark because it’s really good science. The Third Way is not.
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Why are you engaging with imbecility?
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Nice. I’ll change my mind if you can show me what diseases genetics has cured with the current models and promises? They hypothesized something and have found it doesn’t work the way it was hoped.
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I have no need or desire to reform flat earthers. But people can avoid breast cancer and treat leukemia because of specific knowledge of genes.
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lol.
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Because some people actually believe that putting the cart before the horse is the ‘correct’ version of the causal connection, but they don’t see it that way. By the grace of god and the advancement of digital technology, I’m just here to comfort the sick and lead the stray lamb back to the fold.
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BTW, Pink, and on a completely different topic (sorry for the momentary diversion, Jim, if you will forgive me) here’s a longitudinal German study I think you may find very interesting.
(IIRC, this study shows roughly a 5 year 75% desistance rate for kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria (activists assure us it’s about 1%) who undertook some kind of chemical intervention (we already know about 90% cure rate for gender dysphoria if puberty is allowed, which has a tremendous suppressive and negative affect on same sex attracted gay and lesbian youth), about a 680% rise in female dysphoria over this time (activists assure us there is no such thing as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) with ~70% comorbidity factor (diagnosed emotional and/or psychological and/or psychiatric underlying issues untreated once GD is diagnosed) and a bunch of other data indicating high confidence that the Cass report’s findings of poor to very poor quality for gender affirming care are legitimate, a systemic report that highlights why gender affirming care should be treated with great caution. Here in North America, we’re SO far behind the medical science on this issue and yet face all kinds of supportive legislation and ‘human rights’ that now has to challenged in court to be changed.)
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I don’t get into the details of those things because it falls under the category of guardian/parental rights. At the moment I have to hold my tongue because our nephew’s wife refuses to give their son steroid medication for asthma. I think it’s idiocy, but it’s their right to decide.
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If you can hold your tongue (when all about you are loosing theirs, to bastardize Kipling) you are a better man than I, Gunga Din. I have no patience for stupidity potentially harming real kids in real life and so the tongue is all I can offer.
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I don’t have a choice. If I alienate the parents, we won’t see the kids… or the visits would be tense. I disagree with many of their choices, particularly home-schooling, but I have to grin and accept it.
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The problem is the approach and the arrogance that comes with it. We are not made of genetically assembled parts but the organism arises simultaneously. You’re the same thing as the zygote with more inner complexity. Tinkering with genes “should” amount to something with the current approach but it doesn’t work or work that way. Regardless of your beliefs about this there is no evidence to support it and Dawkins has arranged such a beautifully packaged religion that it rivals Islam, covid, climate change—all unfalsifiable claims that reassure atheism is a protected species. I would think you’d be smart enough to see that the wholistic approach to life does not threaten your beliefs, nor does it deprecate the human species as a random fluke of hot gas and time.
DNA code is a record of selection, not the driver of it. I know you and I see things from different assumptions, but have you seen that researchers at the UW have been able to infect their computers using malicious code samples read by the analysis computer?
Malicious code written into DNA infects the computer that reads it.
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You continue to do this, Jim; state something as if true that if not wrong is certainly misrepresentative, then attach some ethical or moral position to not going along with what you have interpreted and call it a kind of religious belief. What I continue to doo is point out the original assumption is NOT necessarily true because very often you get the causal order backwards.
The instrument does not create the music. The cart does not drive the horse. A genetic lifeform does not create its biology. And so on. It may SEEM to do so from appearances but this is not the case when there is good evidence of a causal mechanism at work in the opposite direction. To suggest any of these might be the case, one has to show a causal mechanism. And, in every case you love to mention, THIS is what is missing to turn your introductory claim into something beyond an assumption you are importing (assuming the conclusion, which is logical fallacy) that you are misrepresenting as if ALREADY the case. In other words, this approach is a thinking mistake you allow over and over in subject after subject. I don’t think pointing this out somehow turns me into a dogmatic religious believer, Jim.
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Jesus recognized the problem: ‘New wine must be put into new bottles.’ A cure happens from the inside out.
‘A seed is dormant until it falls into the ground, then it comes to life.’
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How do you know Jesus said those things?
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I don’t. Although they sound like him, and agree with his repent-and-believe theme.
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As uncomfortable as it is, you would be much better off following where the evidence leads, instead of holding onto beliefs that give you comfort.
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I’m really disappointed Jesus endorsed the purchase of single-use containers instead of the 5 R’s (refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose and recycle) and how putting them into practice would benefit the planet.
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Hey, I’m a selfish person- many, many times while helping someone I’ve caught myself pondering, “How will this benefit ME?”
I think that’s why Jesus said, “Follow me.” Because he kept his eyes on God. At some point along the way we make choices based on accumulated evidences.
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I’ve never read The Selfish Gene, so I can’t opine on whether or not it’s accepted as scientific dogma. But it’s highly unlikely that genetics research alone could resolve health problems induced by poor diet and lifestyle choices.
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I read the selfish gene a few years ago and it’s a real confirmation bias for those who believe. It raises questions the scientific community is shunned from asking these days.
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I can’t speak for others, but my acceptance or rejection of any given proposition is based solely on the empirical evidence presented in support of that proposition. And in all cases, the burden of proof remains with the person making the claim — not vice versa.
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Solely? That sounds stifling.
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Not Necessarily. Even the good book advises “Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.”
That’s sound advice for everyone regardless of their belief system.
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Two days later, I still can’t stop laughing at this claim, Ron! I know you believe it but you do not practice it on certain subjects, most notably on why rapid climate change caused by human activity is a fact that you deny not because you follow overwhelming empirical evidence presented in support of that proposition that justifies it but but because you intentionally choose not to. AND you will go to extraordinary lengths expending time and energy to justify avoiding that preponderance of evidence being played out around the globe daily while you do it!
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Hark! ‘Ts the dull thud of the hammer whisperer pounding his fists upon the table. 🙂
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It’s not his fist, it’s his shoe…
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Yes. It’s It’s a clown shoe, to be specific. I stand corrected.
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I was thinking more of a 1960 Soviet dress shoe.
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Ah. I see what you mean.
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You know you’re proving your denialism is not scientifically valid, right? The market forces behind the denialism you uphold and practice is a multi-trillion dollar industry you aid and abet and collaborate. Climate science, in stark opposition, is a pauper’s industry by funding comparison. Yet the message from reality is clear and has been for many decades and is enunciated only by those courageous enough to choose the climate science side of this equation rather than the monied side. So, thanks Bret; you’re only a partial wingnut.
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That’s funny. Professors being no longer insulated from industry is why they are paupers. Being paupers IS why it is unreliable, not the other way around. Professors used to have status and tenure was the insulations. Paupers are wont to speak the truth because they have everything to lose—only when one reaches escape velocity, the un-cancellable, do they speak truth against the managed reality.
You do realize that he arbiters of lies are also the fact checkers—to bring you back to the approved narrative and nationally approved medias? As with covid, the “misinformed” who were excoriated, were in the end right, and the fact checkers wrong. This is the same game on a different field. Wake up man.
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Yes, yes, yes Jim, your denialism is all very brave and heroic and filled with truth seeking. Just don’t forget to reference Galileo.
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You’re right—just blindly trust the science industrial complex. I remember you had ALL the covid data figured out too. Nice narratives you’re buying.
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Did you swallow Bret’s Ivermectin advice, oh courageous one?
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No. I didn’t get the shot either. It was all bullshit. I had natural immunity (which for the first time in history) wasn’t good enough for your lord Fauci. You were duped just like now. But I suppose you remained un-vaxxed too. The “science” was manipulated to sell mRNA and you’re probably smart enough to see through that privately, just like those who invented it
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Jesse Singal takes Weinstien to the woodshed for his claims and concludes with, “Bret Weinstein is profiting significantly off of people’s worst fears, and he’s doing so in a lazy, pseudointellectual, morally bankrupt manner. He should stop.” And you should get your head out of whatever orifice you like to stick it in and drop confidence in anyone who claims to be both a scientist and a conspiracy wingnut.
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Yes. Just like covid where the arbiters of lies were also the fact checkers. You’ve never noticed that? Btw, your dismissal of the facts about professors being insulated from the profit motives was cute, but I did notice. Do you actually read the comments?
Notice how it was only the wingnuts that were right during Covid? Funny that you use that term with virtually every conspiracy turns out to be real or close to it. Like your dismissal of human caused climate change while they spray the shit out of our atmosphere. It’s human caused all right, and appears to be intentional. Why would anybody do that unless they had Automotive ?
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That article is insanely inaccurate. Btw, Bret isn’t the only professor ruined by speaking his mind. Can you name the dozens of profs and scientists excoriated for questioning the pandemic—and they were correct. Oh where but climate “science” does one get the truth from ANY government agency or program? Aren’t you getting g sick of being lied to while they mismanage EVERY thing they touch and steal from the citizens?
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Ah yes, the the famous ‘They’.
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lol. You really are sucked in. Name something (besides climate change of course) where those in charge have been honest with you and spent your money wisely. Have you quit following covid and the disaster unfolding for a new “bird flu” the who, the nih, and all your buddies are ready to go again.
You’ve never addressed the geo engineering that’s going on either… or just pretend with this “they” know what they’re doing. Goodness I forgot, you being in Canada have to show allegiance to big brother or be censured. Do you love big brother?
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“The problem with following the science, is that science follows the money”
— Russell Brand
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And Science isn’t the only discipline that does …
So long as there are “people” involved, the motivating factor will always be $$$$$$.
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Something I came across today, Nan, wondering as I was what the Hitch would have thought about today’s decline into idiocy and how altering and abusing the language plays such an important part.
In his book Why Orwell Matters the Hitch made the following observation I think too many people have forgotten:
“What he (talking about Orwell) illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.”
The decline of believing science as a discipline, as a METHOD of inquiry into reality and how it operates, is as untrustworthy as Ron and Jim put forth with such idiotic quips as Russell Brand makes here is just that: a belief that the attempted progressive capture of some scientists who are trying to alter their discipline – especially through inverting language in the name of social justice (or, in this case, through the pursuit of profit) represents the discipline itself. And so, therefore, science is untrustworthy.
*Sigh
Again and again and again, this is just another example in a long string of examples, of religious apologetic tactics in action. Why so many atheists fall for this trick, or go along with it (to appear, what, virtuous?) is as depressing as it is foolish. We know better. In this case, it’s an obvious motivated smear. It suggests we can confidently dismiss any scientific finding we choose by highlighting an example of some misdeed by a scientist or some partisan undertaking done in the name of science. The intention of the smear is to wave away not some fact someone doesn’t like or that punctures some preferred belief but the method that reveals it. How handy!
Come on.
To go along with this smearing (or failing to even recognize it as a tactic) is becoming a partner to lies, to continue Orwell’s point. To then insert a false equivalency that all ‘opinions’ are equally valid regardless of whether or not the belief comports with reality or the compilation of supportive facts is to reject the central pillar of science itself, to do our best to pursue what’s singularly true beyond our petty and subjective preferences and wishes. Water does boil at 100C at sea level no matter what contrary opinion or view someone may hold, no matter what preference of other ‘alternative’ facts one wishes were the case, no matter what contrary belief someone would prefer to ‘support’. When we forget that we don’t have a right to make up up our own facts, we descend into being part and willing participate of this decline into idiocy. And the red flag this is happening is almost always deceit by the inversion of language. Ron and Jim treat ‘science’ as a result, a noun, a conclusion when it means a process, a verb, an inquiry that collects the preponderance of evidence to justify a working hypothesis followed up by testing. To dismiss this process entirely and pretend that only money or partisan manipulation determines the results is not just a fiction but a very dangerous belief because it dismantles knowledge and replaces it with ignorance.
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You have to realize that the method of inquiry is also an intellectual straight jacket, that the “science” promoted in life is not from the scientific method. The climate data is akin to the cost of living indicators, which is science, which is also nonsense that omits data that EVERBODY knows is a scam. Do you believe the cost of living indexes are an accurate portrayal of the actual cost of living? If so, I know why you believe in climate science—it has an agenda
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I don’t know what any of this means, Jim. But I do know that Brawndo has what plants crave. And it has electrolytes.
Talking about climate change with those who have no real interest in finding out WHY climate change is real but certain enough with their contrary beliefs to spend time and energy presuming they know more (by Googling) than people who have dedicated their lives to the importance of this issue (and who see first hand what dramatic changes to patterns does to the biosphere) always reminds me of the movie Idiocracy. The frustration the lead has is similar to the frustration climate scientists have trying to point out what should be relatively easy to understand to a population that lacks basic knowledge they should have… but certain enough in their denialist beliefs that Brawndo MUST be better water than water because it has electrolytes. Fossil fuel energy MUST be better energy because it has immediate benefits.
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Ok. Stay where you are. Here’s 30 seconds https://youtube.com/shorts/NdD4Q-zrYv0?si=tF10p7noSLDkuLhp
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I’ve noticed you often reference some kind of pronouncement from the legacy media as ‘science’ that later turned out to be wrong…. as if this supports the idea that therefore ‘science’ is untrustworthy. Now you post a criticism of legacy media as untrustworthy. Somewhere in your mind I suspect this is supposed to make some kind of connection to climate denialism… as if because climate change now makes its appearance on legacy media we shouldn’t trust it BECAUSE it’s on legacy media.
We should increase our confidence in claims based on what’s probably true as arbitrated BY reality. And the very best method we have to do this is the scientific method. When applied to atmospheric gases and the relationship this has to climate, we have a extremely robust hypothesis that is justified by the preponderance of evidence in its favour AND its ability to successfully predict consequences. As Dawkins’ has said about why we should lend confidence to the results of such robust science is that, “It works, bitches.”
Now, however that may be reported in legacy media is not an indication of the value of science or its ability to work.
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You must have me confused with someone else. I haven’t had tv or legacy media since 1997 when I realized none of it was true. I may have inadvertently seen a dozen news casts since then.
Of course some of the gadgets work. Necessity is the mother of invention, not the scientific method that you never use to get those gadget. Don’t confuse science and technology.
We’re using technology from 100 year old discoveries. Where’s the innovation from string theory?
Scientific reporting is largely released and restricted by the medias which science AND media are owned by the same corporations that control the dialog with their advertising dollars. Like covid for instance.
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Well said, thanks.
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I am intrigued by “the process and the cause are one.” That sounds to me almost like a doctrine about divinity. The notion of an uncaused cause is one I gravitate towards. The idea that the universe is eternal and that there is a principle of intelligence or at least information that maintains that internal reality seems to me like a religious one instead of a scientific one. Thanks for sparking some critical thoughts.
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Speaking of Covid-19, hubris and those who employ science as a noun:
“Attacks On me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.“
–(flip-flopping “health expert”) Anthony Fauci (Chuck Tod interview, June 9, 2021)
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Just remember the mental gymnastics wheeled to convince us that natural immunity was no good, must get vaccination!
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Rest assured that I’ll never forget, nor forgive, the crimes against humanity( and especially the young and elderly) committed by the mask, social isolation and forced injection zealots. and their willing sycophants –in the name of science.
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What’s troubling is they haven’t learned (or maybe they have) a thing from it. Look at what Australia is doing with the bird flu. Here they go again over nothing.
And don’t forget the thousands and thousands of small businesses ruined over the scale to sell shots.
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Depends on which “they” you’re revering to. T the “they” that wants to rule over others has learned how easy it is to gain compliance via manufactured crisis. Whether or not the “they” targeted for subjugation has learned anything is unknown.
The bird flu scare appears to be yet another attempt to thwart people from gaining food self-sufficiency via independent means.
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