A frequent contributor of posts at the Discovery Institute’s site “Science and Culture Today”, David Coppedge, has sternly lectured us evolutionary biologists: we “need a refresher course in natural selection”. He is really trying to straighten us out, wagging finger and all.

I agree that someone needs a refresher, but in this case think it’s David Coppedge. Did he ever get “freshed” in the first case?

Let’s look at the points he made, and see whether any of them are misconceptions, particularly ones we have exposed here as misconceptions, long before Coppege’s call for a refresher course.

Coppedge sets out his task thusly:

Abuses of the concept of natural selection abound not only in science news articles but in research papers in major scientific journals as well. It’s time for a remedial course.

At best, natural selection allows the fortunate to continue existing. I say fortunate, because a mindless process could not care what exists or not, and there is no guarantee that survivors will represent an improvement over what existed before; the survivors might be lucky bums. At worst, natural selection (hereafter NS) commits the fallacy of personification, ascribing the power of choice to impersonal happenstance. This makes as much sense as speaking of “natural voting.” NS doesn’t care who wins. NS is not a person. Extinction is just as valid an outcome of “selection” as innovating a new organ, eye, or wing. Other blatant cases of personification can be found in descriptions of NS as a “blind watchmaker” or a “tinkerer” or a “driver” and in Dawkins’ concept of “selfish genes.”

Before continuing, clear your mind of any idea of foresight, plan, or purpose as we consider what natural selection means and does not mean. Notice I do not call NS a process. The word “process” carries with it the baggage of programming or an algorithm. NS has neither.

Oy! “impersonal happenstance” does not tend to result in organisms with greater fitness? The particular happenstances that we talk about when we call them natural selection certainly do. Fitness is a combination of viability and fertility. And when an indvidual has higher fitness, it survives better and/or has greater fertility. Its descendants are better-represented in the next generation. By definition. No personification needed. It is just a matter of bookkeeping. And that bookkeeping results in changes in the genetic composition of the population.

Wasn’t Coppedge taught this in his high school (secondary school) biology class? Or in college? He has a B.S. degree in science education. Maybe he missed a few lectures. The university where he studied was Bob Jones University. Maybe there was no good lecture on natural selection.

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Creepy Ken Ham attacks/abuses regional reporter for not regurgitating cultish AiG press releases verbatim.

The 17th annual Panda’s Thumb Photography Contest begins now, Monday, June 29, at 12:00 p.m., MDT (MDT = UTC(GMT) – 6 h). Owing to the short notice (we have been preoccupied), we will accept entries between now and Monday, July 20, at 12:00 p.m., MDT. The rules are precisely the same as previous years’, except, obviously, that the dates have been updated.

We encourage entries in a single, general category, which includes pictures of just about anything of scientific interest: any object of experimentation or observation, from single-celled organisms, through nematodes, fruit flies, rats, chimpanzees, and college sophomores to volcanoes, stars, and galaxies. In order not to omit theoreticians, we will consider computer-generated pictures and also photographs of equipment. Photomicrographs and electron micrographs are likewise welcomed.

Glenn Branch of NCSE has generously offered the following books as prizes: Edward Humes, Monkey Girl (2007), and Larry A. Witham, Where Darwin Meets the Bible (2002). The winner may have his or her choice; the runner-up will be offered the remaining book.

If we get enough entries, consistently with Rules 11 and 12, we may add categories and award additional prizes, presuming, of course, that we can find more prizes.

The rules of the contest are simple:

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Photograph by Bridgette Stockwell.

Glenn Branch has pointed out that there is now a paper in the philosophy literature reviewing William Dembski and Winston Ewert’s 2nd edition of “The Design Inference”. It is written by Joseph K. Cosgrove, a philosopher of science at Providence College.

It will be found here: Joseph K. Cosgrove. 2024. Order, organization, and randomness: on the mathematical formulation of life. Synthese 204 (6): 1-17 where there is open access.

Let me try to summarize these issues.

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