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Brian J. Gladish's avatar

While there is nothing untrue in the article, the fact is that Popper struggled with Darwinian evolution—a theory that he did not doubt but was not testable and for which he coined the term "metaphysical research program" (see Elgin & Sober, "Popper's Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory" as well as Popper's Darwin Lecture, "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind"). I believe that late in life Popper was coming to terms with apriorism, and I wrote a short article on the compatibility between his and Ludwig von Mises's views of action that came out of Popper's Medawar lecture and his professed acceptance of Mises's "most fundamental theorems" : https://mises.org/mises-wire/mises-and-popper-action

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War for the West's avatar

One can hear this ignorance spouted by many college kids today. They are told that 'natural selection' has been disproven. I'm shocked when I hear this as they seem to not understand is that we've merely found additional drivers of evolution such as genetic drift etc. I read Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea long ago and it fundamentally shifted how I understand all this and see the natural world.

The most important observation Dennett made, for me, was the randomness in the 'genetic bush' (it's not a tree). As we look through what we know about it the genetic record, what's clear is that the data can only explained by randomness. There is no signal in the data of any intelligent design. None, and its axiomatic that any design would leave an artifact in the data. In other words, finding randomness leaves no room to claim any kind of design.

Doesn't matter to most people who believe in intelligent design. So I'm getting this from two angles now. A newly confident and aggressive Christian Right (which I'm part of in my own way) asserting debunked nonsense, and dopey, underinformed college student who think 'Darwinism is gross, all that competition, yuck' and find a statement from a book or professor that allows them to preen like this.

I'm nobody, I'm not a scientist, hell I didn't even finish undergrad (college bored me). I read a lot though, and find it sad that most people for whom I attempt to explain the above cannot grasp the implications. Fyi, nothing about 'no design' means there may not have been some divine 'first cause' and I am at once a Catholic who prays and has faith while acknowledging what seems to be 'known' about the world. But it does eliminate God or some other force as 'designing' all life. It's simply not true. Saddest is to see the 'gaps in the fossil record' BS peddled again. Those gaps keep closing more and more each year, yet you don't ever hear that mentioned...

Last. This conversation about the nature of reasoning, evidence and science is crucial, yet so absent from our world. Many people would benefit from understanding Popper, why aren't kids taught this in junior high school instead of Gender Theory? I look at the entire postmodern/crit theory freakshow movement and want to scream, of course 'truth' is contingent. Of course we are biased. But isn't the entire point of 'the Age of Reason' to refine what we know is true? To become 'less wrong' (a great blog I used to enjoy was entitled Less Wrong), this is the purpose of science, and the Modern Age. I think in all of our discussion about method, it's worth noting what the end point is. If we ground ourselves in the belief that their is objective reason, we can bend towards it. But if we do not start by trying to do so, we will end up believing the craziest crap. Look all around you at what our Leftist politics are yielding, can it not be explained by their abandoning science and reason for their postmodern non-truth? It turns out that when you don't believe truth itself exists or is knowable that you'll end up believing anything that is sold to you hard enough. I see the same in many evangelical Christians. I wonder if the two groups realize just how similar they are?

Sigh...Happy Sunday.

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