The Misreporting of Evolution

I occasionally glance at the Disco ‘Tute’s “Evolution News & Views” blog (which it isn’t, since they don’t allow comments), just to marvel at what easily refutable drivel they’re writing today. Usually I don’t bother to delve too deeply, but today for some reason I decided to click their linked article to see if it really said what they said it says. I concluded that their site tagline - “The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site” – still holds true.  Today’s article is by Logan Gage who writes Hello Evolution, Nice to Meet You, and it certainly misreports evolution. Gage is commenting on the recent “Seed” interview with Alison Gopnik, entitled To Be a Baby. His interpretation of what Gopnik said is:

Gopnik notes that the helplessness of young children seems to be an evolutionary disadvantage and thus would never have developed via the Darwinian mechanism

Note, children would never have developed through evolution.  Never!  So how come there are children? Intrigued, I clicked the link to the Seed article, where Gopnik says:

It doesn’t make tremendous evolutionary sense to have [children] that can’t even keep themselves alive and require an enormous investment of time on the part of adults.

You’ll note that “it doesn’t make tremendous evolutionary sense” is not quite the same as “would never have” evolved. Of course, factual inaccuracies have never stopped a creationist from making his point.  If you read on, you’ll find that Gopnik does actually explain the Darwinian process involved in the development of children:

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use.

Gopnik’s opening “it doesn't make sense” is just a rhetorical device that then allows her to provide the answer and explain how evolution might actually account for the existence of helpless children and babies. The answer is that there is a tradeoff – one that we humans are able to take advantage of because of our evolved child rearing tendencies.  Far from saying children would never have developed through evolution, Gopnik explains exactly how and why they could have evolved.  Gage continues to completely miss this point by concluding with this piece of drivel:

Rather than see the amazing design of the world, the Darwinian is forced to the absurd position of personifying "Evolution." Evolution intended this and that. And yet this rings hollow when you read the genius of child development which she ably describes.

What “personifying" evolution even means (or why the word “evolution” is in scare quotes) is not explained. Nor is there any justification given for saying that evolution “intended” anything – since Gopnik never even used the word “intended”, and evolution does not “intend” anything.  Typical clueless Discovery Institute sophistry, in other words.  To paraphrase Gage’s words back at him, rather than try to understand the amazing process of evolution, the creationist is forced to the absurd position of denying it, even when the article he is critiquing explains exactly how the observed world evolved. 

And of course, it goes without saying that there is no explanation at all from Gage for why the “designer” would have created helpless children who need the enormous investment of time on the part of adults.  How would “helpless children” be a prediction of design?  Surely an intelligent designer would have created children who are not helpless?  Once again, Intelligent Design is shown to be useless vacuous posturing, and the only reason for the Discovery Institute and its lame website is still to misreport evolution.

Comments

[Yojimbo]

Well, it is nice to see them doing their job well. And you have to admire their honesty...

No, wait - you don't.

[rubinass]

I've never heard the assertion that blogs aren't blogs if comments aren't enabled.

[TechSkeptic]

I occasionally glance at the Disco ‘Tute’s “Evolution News & Views” blog... just to marvel at what easily refutable drivel they’re writing today.

I don't know how you do it. My brain explodes when I try to seek out nonsense. I tend to just write about nonsense that crosses my path.

I guess that's why you blog is far more entertaining with a far higher readership than mine. Keep up the good work!.

also, I'm with rubinass, seems to me its still a "web-log" whether or not you allow people to comment. Perhaps not an interesting one, but a blog nonetheless.

[Skemono]

I think what Skeptico was trying to say wasn't that they aren't a blog, but that it isn't News & Views--without comments to provide a second view, it's really just one (inaccurate) view of evolution. That's how I took it, at least.

[Robert Kullberg]

Yeah, he was refering to the "views" part of their title. They should have made "views" singular.

[yojimbo]

Yeah but then it wouldn't rhyme with "news"...

[Stewart Paterson]

"Evolution New & View", works for me.

This helpless infants argument is an old canard. A while back someone in some forum somewhere said "What do they expect? Babies to leap raptor-like from their mothers' vaginas ready to kill?"

[Yojimbo]

How about "Evolution? Eeeew!... and View"

It doesn't scan well but it would be truthful :)

[Rob Jase]

Stewart, thanks for a wonderful mental image.

Of course babies being unable to fend for themselves doesn't say anything good for a creator that frequently killed off mothers during childbirth either. But I guess the DI forgot to mention that.

[yakaru]

I wonder what they'd say about this

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090603-19689.html

"Two homosexual Humboldt penguins have become happy foster parents at the Bremerhaven Zoo, marking the first time two male penguins have helped hatch a baby bird in the northern German port city."

[TechSkeptic]

lol yakaru,

I just linked to this article about stinkin, lyin', kidnappin gay penguins at atheist revolution

[yakaru]

That's more up the Discovery Institute's alley - the other penguins ostracising them, and the zoo keepers segregating them. That's more like the true laws of nature!