Science

UPDATE:  I can still see the viewable-by-all post of David Hillis; perhaps you have to be on Facebook yourself to read it. Here is the full text:

“Joao Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Lisbon, noted, with a trace of sarcasm, that the push to classify Neanderthals as a separate species frequently arises from a reluctance, especially among geneticists, to fully accept them as a geographically distinct, but interbreeding, branch of humanity.” Exactly. Neanderthals were a geographically distinct population of Homo sapiens, rather than a distinct species. The two populations interbred extensively, and many modern people (including me) have both as ancestors. If pure Neanderthals were around today, no one would call them a different species, which would be considered highly insulting and racist. Why does the fact that we interbred them to extinction (actually intergradation) change that? Given that much of modern humanity carries Neanderthal genes in their genomes, it is time to stop making this misleading distinction. Neanderthals are Homo sapiens, too. ***********************************************

For a long time I’ve maintained that Neanderthals, which most anthropologists seem to think are a species different from Homo sapiens, in fact constituted a population that was H. sapiens. That, at least, is a reasonable conclusion if you use the Biological Species Concept, which defines populations as members of the same species if, when they meet under natural conditions in nature, can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. And we know that’s true of  Neanderthals and “modern” H. sapiens, because we carry some Neanderthal genes (I have some), and that means the two groups hybridized and that the hybrids backcrossed to our ancestors—and were fertile.

The bogus “species” is known to some as Homo neanderthalensis, which I reject. I have no objections, however, to Neanderthals being called a “subspecies,” or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, as a subspecies is just a genetically differentiated population that lacks reproductive barriers from other populations.

The four or five “species” of giraffes that have recently been “recognized” are in fact just like Neanderthals and modern humans: bogus entities said to be “real species”; but in the case of the giraffes they don’t meet in nature so we can’t test their ability to interbreed in the wild. But they can do in zoos (and produce fertile offspring). There is likely only one species of giraffe. You cannot rationally separate species that live in different places by their DNA divergence alone. Those who love to divide up species for any reason whatsoever are known as “splitters.”

I’m glad to see that David Hillis, a widely-respected evolutionary systematist at UT Austin, agrees with me. Here’s his post on Facebook about the topic, prompted by an article in the NYT.

As we all know by now, American universities are starting to follow the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, which declares that our school is to be “institutionally neutral.” This means that no moiety of the University—no department, no center, and no official unit—can make an official ideological, moral, or political pronouncement unless it has to do with the mission of our University.  (In reality, such statements, as I note below, are really the purview of  only the University President, not subunits.)

But what is our mission? It’s pretty much outlined in the page on the foundational principles of the University of Chicago.  In short, it combines the usual goals of a university—the promotion, promulgation, and preservation of knowledge, as well as teaching it—with a fierce dedication to preserving free expression.

And it’s the latter, free expression, that institutional neutrality is meant to preserve.  If there were some departmental or university presidential statement, for instance, endorsing Governor Pritzker as a better Presidential candidate than J. D. Vance (I’m looking ahead), that would chill the speech of those favoring Vance. Because the statement is official, it could inhibit the speech of pro-Vance untenured faculty (or even tenured ones) as well as students, who would fear punishment or other sanctions for bucking what’s is an official stand.  The Kalven Report, of course, emphasizes that any member of the University community can speak privately on any issue (we have First-Amendment-ish free speech). And we’re encouraged to speak our minds as individuals. But in fact, the only person who can decide what the University can say publicly about such issues is the University President. (This has been violated in the past, but we try to police it. Because of some violations, President Bob Zimmer issued a clarification of Kalven in 2020, affirming that it applied to all official units of the University.)

One example of a political issue on which the University of Chicago spoke publicly was to favor DACA, as the University believed that its mission would be enhanced by allowing all students to compete for admission (or, if admitted, remain here) regardless of their immigration status. (The “Dreamers” came to America as children and grew up here.) And we have a policy that we do not reveal anything about the immigration status of students, for losing them would make our student body depauperate of diversity. (Yes, “diversity” is a principle of the U of C, too: see our Foundational Principles of Diversity and their codification here), but we are seeking viewpoint and experiential diversity, not ethnic diversity.

The University of Chicago was the first school to officially codify institutional neutrality, but now, according to FIRE, 41 universities have adopted neutrality. That’s still pathetically few: only 1% of the 4,000-odd degree-granting institutions in America.  In contrast, 115 have adopted the Chicago Principles of Free Expression. But the list of Kalven-adopting schools is growing fast, for we’ve seen what happens when universities take gratuitous political stands.

However, Brian Soucek, a law professor at UC Davis, disagrees, claiming that it’s impossible for universities to be neutral.  In his misguided and poorly-written piece at the Wall Street Journal‘s “Education News section”, Soucek  says that “the neutrality so many are touting and pledging is an illusion.” That’s wrong, which becomes clear when you read his argument. Further, he says that “by one estimate, over 150 universities” have adopted the principles of the Kalven report.  He gives no link, and I don’t believe it, because FIRE is punctilious in keeping the list linked above and, as I said, it lists but 41 schools.

I argue that, with the exception of schools like Brigham Young and Catholic University, in which promulgating faith is part of their mission, and schools like West Point and Annapolis, which produce future military officers, all universities should adopt institutional neutrality, for neutrality promotes free speech and free speech promotes learning, teaching, and academic freedom. (I may have missed a few exceptions, but I can’t think of any.)

Click the headline below to read:

So why is it impossible for universities to be truly neutral? Why is neutrality “largely an illusion”?  It may be hard to maintain, and be violated in some schools, but the reason Soucek gives for the “illusory” nature of neutrality (which should apply to many companies, too!) are unconvincing.  I’ll summarize his two main reasons in bold, but indented statements are from the article.

1). Universities sometimes have buildings named after people, expressing admiration for them. And sometimes those names are taken down. Both acts are, says Soucek, political. 

More common are the choices around the names that universities give to their schools, buildings, scholarships and chairs. Schools express something with each of these choices.

At UC Davis, I am lucky to work at King Hall, named after Martin Luther King, Jr., but some neighboring law schools haven’t been so fortunate. UC Berkeley no longer refers to its law school as Boalt Hall, having discovered how grossly anti-Chinese its namesake was. And the first law school in California, once known as UC Hastings, is now UC Law SF—less catchy but no longer associated with the massacre of Native Americans. Renaming efforts may strike some as hopelessly woke, but choosing to keep a name for the sake of tradition, or branding, is no less value laden.

Even the University of Chicago has dealt with this. A few years ago, the university renamed what was formerly its Oriental Institute, partly to avoid the “pejorative connotations” of the word “oriental.” Chicago also quietly gave its Robert A. Millikan chair a new title after other schools had removed Millikan’s name because of his ties to eugenics. In each of these decisions, Chicago, like other universities, did exactly what its former provost, Geoffrey Stone, said universities shouldn’t do: “make a statement about what is morally, politically and socially ‘right’”—and wrong.

Well, sometimes buildings are named after donors, and it may be in the donation papers that the donors’ names must stay on the building.  Renaming the “Oriental Institute,” is not chilling speech, but expressing the faculty’s feeling that the word “Oriental” had bad connotations (thanks, Edward Said). And renaming a chaired professorship in the rush to purge people who had views we considered reprehensible may be something to argue about, but one thing it does not do is chill speech.  There was no official statement about the badness of eugenics (actually, some eugenics is still practiced today, but not in the way it was once conceived). This was simply a renaming. Further, will not see any official statement of our University about eugenics or about prenatal screening for genetic diseases, or aborting genetically defective fetuses. In fact, you will find no official statement in our University about abortion at all.  (I was told that OB-GYN had a big argument about this when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision, and the upshot was that this medical department could not make any official statement about Dobbs.) That was the right decision. I myself opposed Dobbs, but I would not want universities saying so officially.

This stuff about renaming, while you might be able to squeeze a drop of juice out of it, misses the main point, which is not about names but official statements. The latter chill speech; the former almost never do.

2). Universities have different missions, and so even if they adopt neutrality, they will make different exceptions to neutrality. 

Soucek shows that he misunderstands Kalven when he says stuff like this:

The University of Chicago itself has spoken out on any number of politically fraught issues in recent years, from abortion to DACA to Trump’s Muslim ban, which Chicago filed a legal brief to oppose. Some see this as hypocrisy. I see these choices as evidence of what Chicago considers integral to its mission. In its brief, Chicago claimed it “has a global mission,” which is what justified its stance on immigration law. Not every university shares that global mission; some exist to serve their states, their local community or people who share their faith. We’re not all Chicago, and that is OK. We can be pluralists about universities’ distinctive missions.

First, the University of Chicago has not spoken out officially on abortion. If it has, let Soucek give a reference.There are no official statements I know of.  As far as DACA and banning Muslims, those are both conceived of as limiting the pool of students we could have, and that violates the University’s mission.  This is well known, and doesn’t violate Kalven.  Ergo, “having a global mission” was not the justification for our stands on immigration. Those came from seeing our mission to allow qualified faculty and students to form a diverse community regardless of immigration status.

Second, I am baffled by Soucek’s statements that “some universities exist to serve their states and their local community” (serving faith is okay for religious schools and allows Kalven violations, but faith-based universities are inimical to free thought and as an atheist I don’t approve of them). Even a community college or a state school should maintain institutional neutrality as a way to promote free speech.  “Serving your community” can be one mission of a school, but it’s not one that should allow a school to make official pronouncements on morality, ideology, or politics.

Soucek goes on to explain that he taught a “great books” curriculum at three different schools (Chicago, Columbia, and Boston College, with the latter a Jesuit school, but one that encourages free expression).  Again, with the exception of religious and military schools, most universities should share a similar mission, one that I outlined above. And insofar as they do that, they should have institutional neutrality. Because Columbia and Chicago taught great books courses for different missions (they used to, but no longer!) does not mean they should differ in what political/moral/ideological statements they make officially. It is the commonality of missions that lead to a commonality of reasons for neutrality.

In fact, Soucek himself seems to realize that secular schools shouldn’t make Kalven-violating statements, and in a weird paragraph, he endorses neutrality (bolding is mine).

The real question universities need to be asking, then, isn’t whether some statement, policy or investment strategy counts as “political,” especially in a world where nearly every aspect of higher education has become politicized. Instead, I would replace all of the recent committee reports and neutrality pledges with something like this: “The university or its departments should make official statements only when doing so advances their mission.”

The last paragraph is in fact what institutional neutrality is for.

One more confusing paragraph.  What is the sweating professor trying to say here?

Some issues, for some schools, so thoroughly implicate their mission that they need to be addressed no matter how controversial. Catholic University and the University of California were both right to talk about Dobbs, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, though in opposite ways, and for different reasons.

Maybe Catholic University was okay to talk about Dobbs, as its stated mission is cultivation of Christianity (read Catholicism) for CU says this in its “aims and goals” statement:

As a Catholic university, it desires to cultivate and impart an understanding of the Christian faith within the context of all forms of human inquiry and values. It seeks to ensure, in an institutional manner, the proper intellectual and academic witness to Christian inspiration in individuals and in the community, and to provide a place for continuing reflection, in the light of Christian faith, upon the growing treasure of human knowledge.

But no, it was not okay for the University of California to talk about Dobbs. I don’t know what they said, but if they officially attacked the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, which is what Dobbs did, they would chill speech of those who are opposed to abortion, and members of the University community should have the right to say that without fear of retribution. Again, Soucek seems to misunderstand why Kalven is there, and gives no reason why the University of California should be okay with violating it.

Soucek also seems to think that maintaining silence in the face of a controversy means that you are taking sides–and defining your “mission”. He’s wrong. Have a gander at this:

More recently, when the Trump administration has denied the existence of transgender people and demanded that universities do so as well, so-called neutrality pledges give them nowhere to hide. If universities must speak out about threats to their mission but can’t speak otherwise, every choice about when to speak ends up defining what their mission is. Staying quiet when trans students, faculty and staff are under attack isn’t silence in that case. It is a loud expression that trans rights, and trans people, aren’t relevant to that school’s mission. There is nothing neutral about that.

In the end, Kalven’s loophole ensures that universities will always be saying something—about their mission, if nothing else—even when they maintain the institutional silence the Kalven Report has become so famous for recommending.

The University is not “hiding” about various transgender controversies. Au contraire, it is encouraging discussion about them by refusing to take any official position, which would squelch debate.  A school not saying anything about Trump’s views on trans people does not mean that the University endorses those views. Rather, each person is free to say what they want without fear of retribution from the school.  I, for example, think that Trump is wrong to ban transgender people from the military. Others may feel differently, and that difference leads to the kind of debate that college is about.  Soucek’s big error is to think that by NOT issuing statements, the University is making statements,  That’s the old ‘silence = violence” trope and again shows the authors’s ignorance of Kalven, an ignorance surprising coming from a professor of constitutional law. Soucek seems a bit short on logic.

As one of my colleagues said:

[Soucek] complains that if the university does not speak up against Trump’s statements about trans people, then trans people are not part of the university’s mission.  Well, that seems reasonable to me.  I don’t see that any particular group or identity is the “university’s mission”, no matter how topical.  Individual faculty, students, and staff who research, treat, and advocate for trans people have that mission. But that’s not the university’s mission.

Is that so hard to understand?

Just when I finished this post, Luana sent me this tweet, saying “I hope he means it.” So do I.

NEW: Harvard President Alan Garber said the University “went wrong” by allowing faculty activism in the classroom, arguing professors’ political views have chilled free speech and debate on campus.@EliseSpenner and @HugoChiassonn report.https://t.co/CsyA2gfQNK

— The Harvard Crimson (@thecrimson) January 3, 2026

Scientists have discovered a rogue planet roaming the Milky Way after combining observations from Earth and a space telescope. This rare dual perspective allowed them to weigh the planet and pinpoint where it lies in the galaxy. With a mass similar to Saturn, the planet likely formed around a star before being thrown out. The finding opens a new window into how planets are lost to interstellar space.

Seeing plastic trash while hiking inspired a Rutgers chemist to rethink why synthetic plastics last forever while natural polymers don’t. By mimicking tiny structural features used in DNA and proteins, researchers designed plastics that remain durable but can be triggered to fall apart naturally. The breakdown speed can be precisely tuned, from days to years, or switched on with light or simple chemical signals. The discovery could reshape everything from food packaging to medicine delivery.

A new study by researchers at the University of Amsterdam shows how gravitational waves from black holes can be used to reveal the presence of dark matter and help determine its properties. The key is a new model, based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, that tracks in detail how a black hole interacts with the surrounding matter.

Scientists have developed molecular devices that can switch roles, behaving as memory, logic, or learning elements within the same structure. The breakthrough comes from precise chemical design that lets electrons and ions reorganize dynamically. Unlike conventional electronics, these devices do not just imitate intelligence but physically encode it. This approach could reshape how future AI hardware is built.

Scientists have developed molecular devices that can switch roles, behaving as memory, logic, or learning elements within the same structure. The breakthrough comes from precise chemical design that lets electrons and ions reorganize dynamically. Unlike conventional electronics, these devices do not just imitate intelligence but physically encode it. This approach could reshape how future AI hardware is built.

Terrestrial planets such as Earth need an early solar system rich in short-lived radioisotopes. But the supernovae that create these elements would tend to rip an early system apart. A new study suggests that these isotopes are produced by a bath of cosmic rays from more distant supernovae.

Scientists have precisely measured two unstable atomic nuclei that play a crucial role in explosive X-ray bursts on neutron stars. The results reveal faster nuclear reactions than previously thought, reshaping how we understand element formation in extreme cosmic environments.

Scientists have precisely measured two unstable atomic nuclei that play a crucial role in explosive X-ray bursts on neutron stars. The results reveal faster nuclear reactions than previously thought, reshaping how we understand element formation in extreme cosmic environments.

A team of Canadian astronomers has used Webb's observations of "Milky Way twins" in the early Universe to learn more about our galaxy's turbulent youth.

Did Sahelanthropus, which lived 7 million years ago, walk on two legs like a modern human? It's complicated

A physicist has proposed a bold experiment that could allow gravitational waves to be manipulated using laser light. By transferring minute amounts of energy between light and gravity, the interaction would leave behind faint but detectable fingerprints. The setup resembles advanced gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO, but pushes them further into quantum territory. Success could hint at the long-sought quantum nature of gravity.

A physicist has proposed a bold experiment that could allow gravitational waves to be manipulated using laser light. By transferring minute amounts of energy between light and gravity, the interaction would leave behind faint but detectable fingerprints. The setup resembles advanced gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO, but pushes them further into quantum territory. Success could hint at the long-sought quantum nature of gravity.

I haven’t read the New York Review of Books in years, even before the editor who made it so good, Bob Silvers, died in 2017. And lot of the great authors who published there, like Fred Crews or Dick Lewontin (my Ph.D. advisor) have passed on, and the magazine haven’t seemed able to replace them (I don’t know why; perhaps they don’t exist).  But reader Barry called my attention to two articles in the new issue, one of which is pretty good, and I’ll discuss today, while the other, dire and über-woke, I’ll discuss tomorrow—even though I’m sick to death of its subject.

But today we have Robert P. Baird, a novelist who apparently knows a lot more about science (and religion) than Ross Doubthat, reviewing Douthat’s new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, and pretty much taking it apart. Hell, it’s not just taken apart, but destroyed, though politely.  I’ve discussed this book several times on this site, and Douthat has published excerpts and touted it widely, so its contents are no secret.  It makes, as I take it, four major claims, several of which are criticized in extenso by Baird:

1.) Science has failed to explain major things about the Universe, including consciousness and the “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics. This means that there is A Big Explanation Beyond Science, and that explanation is God

2.) Therefore you should believe in God (such belief also brings comfort, says Douthat, but he advocates belief for the next reason, not because it brings comfort).

3.) The religious tenets of faith are true. (He’s never given any evidence for this.) That, and the inadequacy of science and its materialistic viewpoint, is the major reason for belief.

4.) But since different religions make different truth claims, which one should you believe? Douthat zeroes in on Christianity (see below), in particular his own Catholic faith. His reasons are laughable.

All of this is the usual nonsense, and makes one wonder why Douthat is taken seriously as a thinker, since none of these tenets are new, and all have been refuted. Further, why on Earth does the NYT employ him as its house conservative columnist? Is he the best such columnist they can find? The paper already has Bret Stephens, so why do they need Douthat? For balance? That’s like trying to balance a lead sinker with a feather.

At any rate, it’s salubrious, at least, to have a comprehensive takedown of this ludicrous book in one place, since the NYT hasn’t given the book a formal review. Indeed, they’ve allowed Douthat to blather on about his book several times in its pages (e.g., here, here, and here), which almost amounts to journalistic nepotism.

At any rate, you can see Baird’s review by clicking on the screenshot below, or find it archived here.

Baird’s quotes are indented, while mine are flush left. (You can see another good takedown of Douthat’s book by Ron Lindsay at Free Inquiry.) The first quote below gives Baird’s accurate take of the materialist view of the Universe, including biology, a view that Douthat opposes because it leaves no space for God.

There’s a view of the human situation that goes something like this: 14 billion years ago, give or take, the universe exploded into being. The Big Bang didn’t create everything, but it did provide everything necessary to create everything else: a collection of immutable physical laws, a hot soup of subatomic particles, an unthinkably vast quantity of energy. After 10 billion or so years of expansion and cooling, the universe contained some trillion trillion stars, and at least as many planets. Around that time, on one of those planets orbiting one of those stars, a random series of chemical reactions produced self-replicating molecules. Chemistry made way for biology as four billion years of further chance developments generated a bewildering diversity of living organisms. Eventually one of those organisms, a bipedal primate with small teeth and a prominent chin, developed the capacity for complex language and abstract thought. This species called itself Homo sapiens, the wise man, but this was only puffery, the illusory boast of an apex predator at the extremely temporary peak of its powers.

and Baird’s assessment:

Believe, the recent book by Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times,presents itself as a work of apologetics—a case, as the subtitle has it, for “why everyone should be religious.” Though late chapters do make a positive case for religious belief, and the final chapter offers a half-hearted pitch for Douthat’s own strain of conservative Catholicism, I don’t think it misrepresents the book to say that it is mostly interested in disqualifying the comprehensive skepticism I outlined above.

Baird goes on to discuss Douthat’s tenure with the NYT and why they continue to employ him, supposing that he’s a “serious and reasonable conservative.”  The first adjective is correct, the second wrong. And Baird adds that Douthat, while pretending to oppose some tenets of the Republican Party, appears, says Baird, to blame them on the Left:

Douthat’s punditry has long struck me as glib and sententious, and it particularly rankles when you notice how many of his arguments borrow the look-what-you-made-me-do rhetoric of domestic abusers and playground bullies. Whether his subject is immigration, or abortion, or gay marriage, or trans rights, or free speech, or the broad rollback of civil rights taking place under the cover of the “anti-DEI” backlash, Douthat likes nothing more than telling his liberal readers that conservative extremism is in fact all their fault.

But the ridiculous train of argument for God, and then Christianity is in fact all Douthat’s fault. On to his major points:

Douthat’s presumed motives: 

But the deeper I read into Believe, the more I began to see why the idea of mere religion appeals to Douthat. He is a pundit, not a theologian, and he admits early on that he has no interest in debating the kinds of questions that have traditionally animated Christian apologetics—about Christology, say, or apostolic succession. (You will find Tyler Cowen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the Claremont Review of Books cited in his notes but only passing mentions in the text of Augustine, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard.) What Douthat does want to do is argue with atheism, especially with the lingering legacy of New Atheism, the Anglo-American media phenomenon from the early Aughts that sought to disqualify religious belief tout court.

This is where mere religion comes in. Though it makes little sense as a rigorous conceptual category, it does work reasonably well as a catchall for everything the New Atheists despised. By stripping away the thorny and often mutually contradictory truth claims of this or that faith tradition, Douthat is able to focus his rhetorical energies in a way that suits his polemical style. It allows him to argue, in other words, by means of a familiar double negative: not the case for religion so much as the case against the case against any kind of faith.

Douthat’s stupid argument for God from ignorance: Granted, the second paragraph above isn’t written well, with the double negative confusing the reader, but it’s okay. While Baird himself seems to be uncomfortable with atheism, and wishes that Douthat had indeed made his case (I guess Baird harbors that God-shaped lacuna), he can’t resist showing the flaws in Douthat’s Big Argument from Ignorance, and to the problems with using that tired old Bucephalus to tout religion:

Part of the trouble is Douthat’s tendentious misunderstandings of basic science. He appears to think, for instance, that when physicists talk about the observer effect in quantum physics, they mean that human consciousness is “the only thing that transforms quantum contingency into definite reality, wave into particle, probability into certainty.” But this is not what most physicists mean at all. As Werner Heisenberg noted, “The introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature.” A quantum observation is a type of physical interaction; it has nothing to do, contra Douthat, with any “mysterious but essential role” for specifically human observation.

Another part of the trouble is Douthat’s dependence on the argumentum ad ignorantiam, a fallacy so common in apologetic literature that it has its own Wikipedia page. Arguments of this type, known derisively as “the God of the gaps,” look for holes in our scientific understanding of the world and claim those as proof, or at least a heavy suggestion, against the secular hypothesis. Douthat wants us to see mysticism, near-death experiences, our own consciousness, and even the physical constants that make life possible in the universe as evidence that a superreal Something Else must be going on.

. . . At one point Douthat suggests that the physical laws that govern the universe ought to be seen as evidence of a divine mind. He compares the universe to a house and scientific laws to “finely wrought schematics” that imply a Great Architect in the sky. But here the double-negative reasoning that Douthat loves so much shows its limits. The fact that science can’t explain where physical laws come from is an epistemological nullity; it can’t be tweaked to reveal some esoteric alternative. Maybe physical laws do come from God or the gods. Or maybe they’re the local manifestation of the multiverse. Or maybe they simply are, for reasons we’ll never grasp. The possibilities are endless, and nothing allows us to prove which option is superior.

Douthat’s argument for God also uses evolution, and again Baird shows his ability to tackle those claims. Douthat appears to be in the 34% of Americans who think that humans evolved, but their evolution was guided by God:

A related innumeracy shows itself when Douthat turns to evolution. He seems to accept a version of the Darwinian theory, even as he wants to argue that the emergence of the human species is too complex, too mind-bogglingly unlikely, to have occurred without divine guidance. It’s true that if you tallied the likelihood of all the billions of events that led up to the evolution of human beings on Earth, you would end up with a probability that, on any human scale, looked indistinguishable from impossibility. But the long process that led to our species did not take place on a human scale. It happened over billions of years, in a universe with something like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets—a universe old enough and big enough, in other words, to offer statistical room for a lot of approximately impossible events to take place.

Does this mean that science can rule out the possibility that evolution was directed by a divine intelligence? Of course not. But it does give the lie to Douthat’s desperate claim that “the universe isn’t really hiding the ball from us when it comes to cosmic order and human exceptionalism.” Reason can tolerate the belief that God had a hand in evolution, but only at the price of admitting that He took pains to conceal public evidence of His interventions.

The Argument from Ignorance seems to be making a comeback these days; you see it everywhere. And it always involves the same stuff: science hasn’t explained the laws of physics, “fine-tuning”, human consciousness, why math is so effective in helping understand the Universe (presumably God created math, too), and so on.  One would think that a refutation like Baird’s would prevent future misunderstandings, but each generation (particularly the younger ones who don’t read) have to be presented with the rebuttals anew. Fighting religious arguments against science is a battle that won’t end until religion ends, and that’s never.

Douthat’s stupid argument for why Christianity is the best and truest religion. This argument and others like it. fascinate me, for every religion has its own set of truth claims,—and many are incompatible.  Since those claims can’t be adjudicated because there’s no relevant evidence, you have to more or less make up reasons why your religion happens to be the best and “truest” one. Here’s how Douthat does it:

Perhaps the most serious weakness of Believe is its poor handling of religious pluralism, which is in many ways a far more difficult challenge to belief than scientific skepticism. Douthat clearly wants mere religion to help him dodge the problem as long as possible; arguing for a general acceptance of religion—which is to say, a general rejection of secularism—allows him to hold off questions about specific religions until well after the midpoint of the book. But eventually he turns to the hard question left open by his title: Believe in what?

To answer this, Douthat downplays all the fantastically complicated disagreements that have marked religious history for centuries. Instead he narrates a tidy tale of convergence toward a handful of broadly similar, and mostly monotheistic, major faiths. With the unearned confidence of a Whig historian, he allows himself grand and absurd pronouncements like “The more popular, enduring, and successful world religions are more likely than others to be true” and “If God cares about anything, He cares about sex.” Claims like these are so theologically preposterous, especially coming from a practicing Catholic, that it’s hard to know quite what to make of them. If nothing else, though, they reinforce my sense that the existence of Believe is its own best counterproof: in a world where religious truths were as obvious and reasonable as Douthat wants them to be, there would be no need for him to write it.

The book’s strangest feature is its enervating conception of belief. Douthat claims that he doesn’t look to Christianity primarily for comfort, and yet he writes about religion as though its major purpose were to banish any thought of our insignificance. He wants religion to assure him not only that “our conscious existence has some cosmic importance, some great consequence,” but that the universe was designed with one end in mind: “Toward making us possible, the readers that the book of nature was awaiting all along.”

There is more, but the review, sadly, ends rather lamely. But never mind: Baird has focused on, and dismantled, the key points of Douthat’s argument.  The two I find most important are the claims that, first, science hasn’t explained everything, and therefore there is a God whom we should worship, and second, that the “right” God just happens to be the Christian God.  It’s time to put this nonsense to bed, but it refuses to get under the covers.  So I’m glad that people like Baird keep fighting the good fight: the fight against believing stuff not because it’s supported by evidence,but because it makes you feel good.

The NYT really shouldn’t keep Douthat on, or use its pages to tout his ludicrous ideas, but they want a couple of house conservatives (Stephens is far, far better), and, as I’ve pointed out before, the paper, like the Free Press, is curiously soft on religion.  Why that’s so is beyond me.

Sunspots and solar flares go hand in hand. They generally occur in the same region of the Sun around the same time. We've long thought the same would be true for other stars, but a new study finds that isn't the case.

It sneaks up on us, every annual flip of the calendar into the new year. If skies are clear, keep an eye out for the brief but strong Quadrantid meteors this weekend. The Quadrantids or ‘Quads’ have a brief but strong annual peak just after New Year’s Day. This also makes the shower notoriously elusive for observers.

Detox trends come and go. Modern “detox” claims, from microplastics to microbiome resets are marketing, not science.

The post Detox 2026: What Big Wellness Wants You to Believe first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

UC Davis Math professor (emerita) Abby Thompson sends some (mostly) intertidal photos, but from Hawaii rather than California. Abby’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

We got to spend ten days before Koynezaa in Kauai, thereby missing some torrential northern California rains.    So here’s a little Hawaiian wildlife:

A not-great iphone photo:  This drama played out on our hotel walkway.  We came across a father explaining to his son that this was a momma snail taking care of her baby, a charming but inaccurate description.  In fact the “baby” is the voracious and carnivorous Rosy Wolfsnail (Euglandina rosea) which was introduced to combat the “momma” African Giant Snail (Lissachatina fulica), also an introduced species.  The result has been the extinction (by the wolfsnail) of some 8 species of endemic Hawaiian snails.  The Giant Snails (well, perhaps not this one in particular) are thriving.  The road to hell, etc.:

Cellana sandwicensis (yellow-foot ‘Ophi):

Arakawania granulata (Granulated drupe; [a gastropod]):

Actinopyga varians (Pacific white-spotted sea cucumber) Not the most attractive creature- and there are a lot of them.    They’re about 8” long and seem to just lie about.:

Colobocentrotus atratus (Shingle urchin). These very cool urchins make it look like a fleet of miniature spaceships have landed on the rocks:

Exaiptasia diaphana (pale anemone):

Gyractis sesere (colonial anemone):

Monetaria caputophidii (Hawaiin snakehead cowrie). Not sure where the snakehead part comes in:

Sunset behind the palm trees (iphone photo):

Most photos were with an Olympus TG-7, in microscope mode.

Size matters when it comes to telescopes. The bigger they are, the farther they can see. Prioritizing constructing large ones is therefore high on the priority list for many observational organizations. But doing so comes at a cost, and not just in terms of money. Finding a suitable site can be a challenge, and that has been particularly true for the effort to build a 30-meter telescope in the Northern hemisphere. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Francesco Coti Zelati of the Spanish Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona and his co-authors, makes the argument for building it at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma.