March 29, 2019 | David F. Coppedge

Science Media Tolerates Silliness

As long as you are a secular Darwinian, you can get away with anything.

Are Aliens Ignoring Us? Maybe We’re Already Their Captives in a ‘Galactic Zoo’ (Live Science). You can use “maybe” to tell any tall tale. Mindy Waisberger gets away with imagining, in a “science” media site, that space aliens—for which there is zero evidence—have put our planet in their zoo. Let’s play her game. “Maybe” she is one of them! Why, she might even be part of an alien conspiracy to discredit Earthling science by making it look stupid.

Universities spooked by Trump order tying free speech to grants (Nature). Oh no! Universities will have to stop violating the 1st Amendment in order to receive funds for science grants! Spoooooky! Did anyone at Nature think about how this headline could come across to the average taxpayer?

A mating war in diving beetles has stopped the evolution of species (University of Copenhagen). Evolution is a fact, you see, even when it isn’t. The same process yields opposite outcomes. What flexibility this gives to Darwin storytellers!

In nature, males eager attempts to mate with females can be so extreme that they will harm females. Such negative impact of mating interactions has been suggested to promote the emergence of new species under some circumstances. Surprisingly, one type of diving beetle species now show that this conflict between the sexes can instead lead to an evolutionary standstill in which mating enhancing traits in males and counter-adaptations in females prevent the formation of new species.

Natural selection favors cheaters (UC California, Riverside). Since natural selection built everything in the biosphere, as Darwinians believe, perhaps the authors of this study are illustrations of their thesis. If so, don’t listen to them!

Scholar makes ‘moral case’ for letting people decide their own age  (The College Fix). The assumed right to identify your own sex, gender or other personal reality has gone so far overboard, this “scholar” thinks you should be able to declare your age, too. Some already do this, of course, answering their age as “29” every birthday. He is in favor of “trans-ageism” in order to avoid “discrimination,” he argues.

The piece, by Joona Räsänen of the University of Oslo in Norway, titled “A Moral Case for Legal Age Change,” concludes that there are three scenarios when a change to one’s legal age should be allowed: When “the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age,” when “the person’s biological age is recognized to be significantly different from his chronological age,” and when “age change would likely prevent, stop or reduce ageism, discrimination due to age, he would otherwise face.”

Räsänen differentiates between “chronological” age, or how long the person has actually lived; “biological age,” or the state of one’s body; and “emotional” age, the age as which one identifies.

“Legal age is a cause of severe discrimination for some people whose biological and emotional age do not match their chronological age,” he argues.

Did the “scholar” think through the social consequences? What if a 30-year old wants to apply for Social Security on grounds he identifies as a senior? Maybe he could get senior discounts at restaurants, too. What if a 21-year old declares himself a 15-year old to dodge the draft? Imagine the possibilities!

To understand what’s going on, watch this video from Prager U.



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