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Darwin’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”

Darwin’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”

Last updated on: December 20, 2018 at 4:37 pm by Dan Peterson

Darwin’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” 2018-12-20T16:37:32-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Darwin’s finches, from “The Voyage of the Beagle” (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

Some of you may have missed an article by Dr. Gregory L. Smith that was published early on in the history of the Interpreter Foundation and of Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. In case you’re interested, though, I recall it to your attention:

““Endless Forms Most Beautiful”: The uses and abuses of evolutionary biology in six works”

To give you a flavor of it, here is the article’s opening paragraph:

For many, evolutionary biology ranks with politics and religion as a subject best not debated in polite company. This sentiment is not without some justification, since in all except the absolute basics and fundamentals of the faith (about which there can be no compromise), it is vitally important that our convictions or intellectual life not alienate us from others—or alienate others from us. Our reticence to discuss a matter on which opinions have differed widely has had some occasional side effects. For example, Mormon scholarship can be affected as some Latter-day Saints invoke biological concepts in a muddled way, bringing confusion, not clarity. And of greater concern is the worldly and secular philosophy, polemic, and propaganda that invoke evo-bio while going far beyond what science can tell us. Prominent examples include the militant atheism and philosophical materialism of people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Such philosophical claims often intersect with vital gospel truths and invoke evo-bio, such as whether free will/moral agency is an illusion. I think these conceptual extensions of and parasitism upon evo-bio are of far more significance and a far greater intellectual and spiritual threat to me and mine than biological Darwinism.

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Pleasant news:

“BYU home to nation’s best chemical engineering student: BYU professor also wins prestigious chemical engineering honor”

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There are, of course, many reasons for being extremely wary of opioids. Here is yet another:

“Opioids not much better than placebos at treating pain, study says: Alternative treatments are often better for noncancer pain, the study found.”

I’ve long thought that happiness comes best as a by-product of working toward other goals, not when it’s pursued as an end in itself. And the science seems to bear me out on this:

“Why the quickest route to happiness may be to do nothing”

This next piece strikes me as really, really, really important:

“Just 6 months of walking may reverse cognitive decline, study says”

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“News from Mars: A mile-deep ice crater and marsquakes”

The science fiction scenarios virtually write themselves in connection with this item:

“Matter Sucked in by Black Holes May Travel into the Future, Get Spit Back Out”

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A bit more down to earth:

“Long-hidden ‘pyramid’ found in Indonesia was likely an ancient temple”

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In recent years, whole scientific fields like psychology and medicine have been rocked by the realization that fraud, sloppiness, bias, and other error-inducing factors are rampant in them to a previously unimaginable degree.

Is archaeology in the same boat?

A doctoral student in the subject at University College London suggested back in 2016 that it just might be:

http://www.joeroe.eu/blog/2016/08/27/does-archaeology-have-a-reproducibility-crisis/

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