Atheists believe in Determinism

I try to understand intellectuals who deny free will.

They argue that all of everyone's choices are determined by laws of nature, and yet they often talk about choices they make, and they try to persuade others to make better choices.

Here is a leftist-atheist-evolutionist in his latest of many rants against free will:

There need be no “free will” to have morality, for even though we lack free will, we are still malleable beings and can alter our behavior depending on society’s “moral code” and the praise and punishment that go with it.

How can we alter our behavior if we have no free will? What is the use of praise or punishment, if no one else has free will either?

Since Egnor is a neuroscientist, the audience probably buys this the most. Egnor cites two bits of evidence here. First, as he says, during operations that involve stimulating parts of the brain, he says, “Patients asked to raise their arms at some point could tell whether they raised arm voluntarily or due to electrical stimulation.” And they could tell the difference. But that is not “free will”, ...

There is a difference between raising your arm voluntarily, out of your own free will, and being forced to raise it because a brain surgeon triggered a neuron.

He complains that Egnor ignores a 2013 study that concludes:

Neuroscience cannot straightforwardly accommodate a concept of “conscious free will”, independent of brain activity [42].

I accept that free will involves brain activity. I do not accept that there is any law of nature prohibiting free will.

They cite experiments by Libet that supposedly showed that voluntary decisions are preceded by brain activity. This means that a decision takes more than a millisecond, as the brain takes some time to make it. It has nothing to do with free will.

when you push a button at a time your brain determines, and think you did it of your own “free will.” The problem with that, and the reason Libet and his successors have done such provocative studies, is that brain signals (fMRI, etc.) say you’re about to push a button before you become conscious of making that decision.

So your brain prepares to push the button before it pushes. It baffles me that anyone thinks this refutes free will.

Responses are posted here and here.

I have never said that people are or should be deemed “morally responsible” for their good and bad acts. That would assume the ability to freely choose to be moral or immoral, but I am a determinist who rejects that kind of “choice.” What I have said, and which anybody who reads what I’ve written will know, is that you should be held responsible for what you do, but not morally responsible.  That is, you are responsible if you are the person who performed the act. That, to anyone with two neurons to rub together, is absolutely compatible with determinism.

So no one can make any moral choices. Curiously, he goes into a big rant against another site for plagiarism. Web content is mostly generated by robots today, and of course the robots are deterministic plagiarizers.

If no one has any free will, then all the humans posting online are just deterministic automatons who are not much different from the robot plagiarizers that he complains about. Including himself.

He concludes, to rousing applause, that “Free will is God’s fingerprint in us.”

Here we see that religion, tricked out in the trappings of science, has led Egnor to reject determinism and materialism because they don’t involve his Catholic God.

I wonder if that is the real issue. Catholics and most other Christians believe in free will, and Atheists believe in determinism. Rejecting free will is a way of expressing rejection of Christianity. The other prominent anti-free-will scholars are all strident Atheists. They like to present themselves and logical, scientific, and enlightened, but what they say does not make any sense, is not grounded in science, and is terrible advice on how to live.

Human are not Apes

All my life I have heard evolutionists say that humans are apes, and that we share 99% of our dna with chimps. It turns out to be more like 85%.

They get 99% when a chimp gene can be matched to a human gene, and then the nucleotides are 99% the same. But there are huge other chunks of dna that do not match, and if you look at the whole dna, there is much less similarity.

Jonathan Leaf argues in this video and this book (buy) that there are so many differences that humans should not even be considered primates.

A lot of species classifications are based on common descent, so perhaps that justifies calling humans primates and apes. But Leaf points out that a lot of ape research is based on a belief that we are apes, so learning more about chimps and gorillas will tell us more about humans.

The big differences, he says, are that humans use language, are social, and are domesticated. Chimps are wild animals that cannot be tamed.

Note that "homonid" was redefined to include apes:

The most commonly used recent definitions are:

Hominid – the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans plus all their immediate ancestors).

Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus). ...

The term ‘hominid’ used to have the same meaning that ‘hominin’ now has. ...

In this old scheme, humans were seen to be so different to other apes that we should be placed into our own distinct family, the Hominidae or hominids.

This change was to trick you into thinking that humans were apes.

No Harmful Ideologies of the Sex Binary

Biology professor Jerry Coyne writes:

Ecology Letters, which I thought was a reasonably respectable journal, has now accepted a “viewpoint” article arguing that there is no consensus on biological sex, and that a definition based on gamete size—a consensus if ever there was one—is just viable as “multivariate” definition that incorporates a combination of chromosomes, genetics, and morphology.

They’re wrong and misguided in many ways, ...

But they add that the “rigorous research” they propose be done “also challenges simplistic and harmful ideologies of the sex binary”.

One of the paper's more ridiculous arguments is that female hummingbirds sometimes have bright colors, making them look more like male birds. No, bird colors do not refute sex being binary.

The Titanic Black Pill

The 1997 movie Titanic is considered one of the most successful movies of all time. Women in particular thought that it was the greatest love story.

Among red pillers, Rose is one of the great movie villains. One of the main aims of civilization is to tame the malevolent instincts of women, and Rose is a good example.

Rose betrays her rich and devoted finance in order to have one night with a slightly more exciting homeless man. She steals the rich man's extremely valuable diamond, lets the poor man die, and becomes an alpha widow.

After the shipwreck, she gets married and has a family, but never really loves them. She throws her stolen diamond into the ocean, rather than leave an inheritance for her family. She is pathologically selfish and narcissistic throughout the movie.

Pearl Davis explains this in a video from about a year ago. She points out Rose's big movie line:

I would rather be his whore than your wife.

Nobody thinks this movie is misogynist. It was extremely popular with women. They recoil with horror at the suggestion that Rose is evil.

It is not so much that Rose decides to be evil, but she follows female human nature. The movie is a big lesson about unchecked female behavior.

I started to say that this was a red pill movie, but now I think it is black pill. Here is a description of the difference:

The Black Pill and Red Pill are both terms used in online communities to describe different perspectives on society and human behavior. The Red Pill is associated with a belief in traditional gender roles, self-improvement, and a rejection of mainstream narratives. It encourages individuals to seek out the truth and take control of their lives. In contrast, the Black Pill is a more nihilistic viewpoint that emphasizes the futility of life and the inevitability of suffering. It often leads to a sense of hopelessness and resignation. While both perspectives offer critiques of society, the Red Pill tends to focus on empowerment and personal growth, while the Black Pill leans towards pessimism and despair.

In the movie, achieving a successful relationship with Rose is impossible. She has no redeeming qualities, except that she is pretty.

Yes, I know that 99% of the reviews say that Rose is the hero, not the villain. The fact that her behavior is so acceptable to so many is revealing. Not only that, but women see this as the greatest movie ever. They see her character as admirable. That is the real black pill. The movie is fiction but the universal admiration is real.

If you google black pill, you will find sources saying that it is misogynist. That is like saying the Titanic movie is misogynist. It is, in the sense that the female protagonist is such a bad person.

I asked an AI LLM about this, and it said I was all wrong. It said "the movie positions Rose as a heroine of self-liberation, not consistent selfishness or narcissism." It cites her mother favoring the engagement, her near suicide, and her posing nude.

In the movie, it is not really a near suicide. As Jack points out, if she really wanted to kill herself she would have jumped before he arrived. No, she was just trying to get attention.

As for posing nude before the homeless guy Jack, the AI says:

The nude drawing scene isn't just about nudity — it's about vulnerability, trust, artistic expression, and reclaiming her body from being treated as an object (Cal sees her as a trophy; Jack sees her as a person). Rose says, "It's overwhelming... being with you." It's a moment of genuine intimacy and rebellion against her repressed life. The film treats it as empowering, not trivial — part of her awakening to passion, independence, and living authentically.

Cal was proposing to marry her and make her rich. Jack was using her for a one-night stand. The AI is reflecting conventional wisdom here. The modern accepted view of self-liberation is for a pretty girl to pose nude for a homeless man she just met.

the film's intent is clear: her arc is about breaking free from oppression, not entitlement. ...

The movie's core message is that Rose rejects that path [marrying Cal] to choose authenticity, adventure, and self-determination.

Living the life of an alpha widow is a much worse oppression than anything from Cal. She would have been freer and happier taking her mother's advice.

These are harsh, modern interpretations (often from online forums like Reddit) that project cynicism onto a fictional romantic tale. ...

James Cameron crafted it as a celebration of love inspiring a full life — Rose fulfills her promise to Jack by surviving and thriving, including building a family.

Cameron's other movies have some strange messages. Especially the Avatar movies.

Here is a recent comment:

Titanic? Really? I had more empathy for the guy whose car they defiled than either character. Hundreds of actual real people died on that ship so we could have a back drop to a trite and unbelievably sappy romance about fictional characters? The ending was beyond annoying too with the whole throwing a unique priceless heirloom into the ocean, you know to "let go" of Jack. you know -- that boy she knew for almost 4 whole days.

Neanderthals were the Most Advanced Humans

I have often complained about people who deny that Neanderhals were humans. Almost every article about them says that "we" outcompeted the Neanderthals and drove them extinct.

However most of the evidence indicates that European Neanderthals had bigger brains and were more advanced than the African homo sapiens.

A new NY Times article sumarizes some of the recent evidence:

Neanderthals, who flourished across Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years before vanishing around 40,000 years ago, had a notable return to the scientific spotlight in 2025.

More than a dozen high-profile scientific studies explored all sorts of aspects of their existence, from their love lives (they probably kissed Homo sapiens) to potential flaws in their red blood cells that may have hastened their decline.

Biology professor Jerry Coyne, an expert on speciation, adds:

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.

DNA evidence shows that Neanderthals and African homo sapiens interbred, with today's non-African humans being descended from both.

His fieldwork in Spain indicates that Neanderthals independently fashioned cave art and jewelry, such as decorated seashells, between 65,000 and 115,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before similar finds linked to Homo sapiens in Africa or their arrival in Europe. ...

A study in Science Direct detailed how Neanderthals in modern-day Serbia were elite hunters, executing daring, commando-style ambushes and dramatic cliff drives to corner wild goats in treacherous terrain. Fifty thousand to 70,000 years ago, in what is now Israel, neighboring Neanderthal groups practiced distinct, culturally transmitted methods for butchering animals, according to research published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. And in a paper in Science Advances, scientists working a site in Germany found that Neanderthals were extracting marrow fat from bones 125,000 years ago, long before early Homo sapiens were doing anything similar. ...

The study, detailed in Science Advances, highlighted three items that showed clear evidence of having been intentionally shaped and used for drawing. One remarkable discovery was a two-inch yellow “crayon” from roughly 42,000 years ago, which microscopic analysis showed had been repeatedly sharpened, indicating that it was likely a valued tool. The implement had clearly been modified through grinding and scraping.

Dr. d’Errico argued that the crayon must be attributed to Neanderthals rather than modern humans: It was found in a site known to have been occupied by Neanderthals, and preceded the era when Homo sapiens were widely accepted to have arrived in that area. Researchers called the artifact a crayon, he said, based on its function and specific wear patterns, which strongly confirmed its use for marking a surface, possibly skin or rock. Tiny signs of friction and applied pressure, not just the object’s shape alone, suggested it had been used as an artistic tool.

Note that even this article calls the Africans "modern humans" to distinguish them from Neanderthals, as if the Neanderthals were not modern or not human. On the contrary, this evidence shows that Neanderthals were more modern and more human than the African homo sapiens.

I used to follow some the evolutionist v creationist debates. The evolutionists would argue that the Neanderthals were a separate species, contradicting the Bible somehow. The creationists argued that the Neanderthals were human, possibly descended from Adam and Eve. It is amusing that the evolutionists turned out to be wrong.

And yet the evolutionists seem to want to cling to the idea that the true humans were the Africa homo sapiens, because they are closer to African apes, and maybe descended from an African Adam and Eve.

Watson, of DNA Fame, dies

The London BBC reports:

Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died aged 97. ...

"We have discovered the secret of life," they said at the time.

His later comments on race led to him saying that he felt ostracised by the scientific community.

In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa", because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

The comments led to him losing his job as chancellor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Academics are proved wrong all the time, and they do not get fired for it. No, they get fired for saying something true, but offensive.

Working with images obtained by King's College researcher Rosalind Franklin, without her knowledge, Crick and Watson were able to construct a physical model of the molecule. Maurice Wilkins, who shared the Nobel with Crick and Watson, had worked with Franklin to determine the DNA molecule's structure.

This is a little misleading, as she was credited with the images. She might have gotten Wilkins' share of the prize, if she had been still alive, and if the public knew how much those images influenced Watson.

NY Times obituary.

Update: Noah Carl writes:

It’s crucial to note, of course, that Watson’s views on race and intelligence are scientifically unimpeachable. The testing does show large average differences between Africa and Western countries. Meanwhile, surveys of experts working in relevant fields reveal non-trivial or high levels of agreement that genes contribute to psychological group differences. ... ...

Watson’s work on the structure of DNA has certainly earned him a place in history, whatever his (less accomplished) critics might say. But perhaps what he should be remembered for above all is possessing that rarest of qualities: he wasn’t a coward.

Some quotes here:

I’ve given my DNA to two of these companies. I’ve told them they can publish everything except the structure of the gene that will tell me if I’m predisposed to Alzheimer’s. I don’t want to know.

I am always amazed when people are afraid to learn their genes. Watson seems like as much as a DNA enthusiast as you will ever find, and yet he was afraid to learn one of his genes.

That gene is not even dispositive. It is just a risk factor, like cholesterol level and body mass index.

Not a coward? Ha ha.

I don't get it, but the entire related subjects of race and intelligence drive people bonkers. They do not want to know the scientific facts, and they run from examining the implications.

I would say that less that 5% of the population just want the truth, whatever it is.

Update: Here are the snide comments of a Watson-hater.

The Watson-Crick DNA work did indeed depend on the work of others, as with all scientific progress. Their crucial original idea was that DNA had two strands with paired bases, so that the strands could be split and copied as a biological process. This was the secret of life that made digital genetic coding possible. No one else had this idea.

On the Need for Eugenics

David Skrbina writes:

Eugenics is one of those ideas that has come to acquire a negative reputation for all the wrong reasons. Under pressure from mainstream academics and writers since World War Two, and largely due to its association with National Socialism, the very concept of eugenics has been derided and defamed for decades. Today it is widely seen as misguided, racist, or as some downright evil social-programming scheme; but in fact, as I will argue, it is vital for our collective survival. ...

I claim that everyone, already, is a eugenicist—they just don’t use the term.

The term is certainly out of favor. Everyone will say he is against, saying that history has shown it leads to bad things, or something like that. Not really an argument.

As a rough outline, though, what might a contemporary eugenic program look like? We must work from first principles here, and I find four to be of central importance. First: No one has a ‘right’ to bear children. In a dysgenic world, childbearing is a privilege, not a right. ...

A second core principle relates to the notion of human equality: In no meaningful sense are all humans equal. People differ in every conceivable way: abilities, skills, interests, capabilities, intelligences, creativities, appearance, etc. ...

Third: Eugenics works best in ethnically homogenous societies. ...

Fourth: The best individuals have the highest obligation to the community—and vice versa.

I do not expect these arguments to persuade anyone. If he is right, then we will have a systematic decline in the gene pool until some drastic action is necessary.

Sydney Sweeney has great jeans

Ever wonder what defines a Nazi, to today's leftists? Apparent it is a pretty actress wearing blue jeans.

A new ad campaign featuring Euphoria and White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney has sparked fierce backlash over racial undertones, leading some to label it as “tone-deaf” and even “Nazi”. ...

In it, the 27-year-old sports a pair of jeans, flaunts her curves and tells viewers: "I’m not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans... And I definitely won’t say they’re the most comfortable jeans I’ve ever worn, or that they make your butt look amazing."

Then, the slogan "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans" pops up on the screen.

I am just trying to untangle this. Ads try to get attention, so that part is easy to understand.

Sweeeney's beauty, as well as her charm and acting skills, are presumably a result of her genes and her environment, including food, upbringing, schooling, exercise etc. Probably all those things were favorable for her to get where she is.

So why does this bug people so much?

Indeed, critics have accused the ad of peddling “Nazi” propaganda, pointing out that the play on words with “great genes” has racist connotations and veers towards white supremacist ideals. Many have also highlighted that considering Sweeney is blue-eyed and blonde-haired, it echoes eugenic messaging.

Today's ad world is not exactly pro-white. Everywhere I look, I see lots of ads with Black actors, targeting a White audience. The ads are the opposite of White supremacist. They appear to be written for Whites who consider themsel\ves subservient to Blacks.

Africans have Archaic Hominin DNA

I missed this 2020 science story:

Four West African populations — Yoruba, Esan, Mende, and Gambian — derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from a yet-undiscovered species of archaic hominin that diverged before the split of modern humans and the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans, according to new research from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Contemporary people who have ancestors from Europe, Asia, and Oceania carry DNA from two archaic species, Neanderthals and Denisovans, making up 1-4% of their genome.

These genetic segments arrived in modern humans through introgression, the process by which members of two populations mate, and the resulting hybrid individuals then breed with members of the parent populations.

Recent studies have shown that, though modern West Africans do not have Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestry, there may have been introgression by other ancient hominins in their past.

It is commonly remarked that all humans have similar DNA and can interbreed. We are all relatives, and skin color only evolved recently.

But there are also DNA differences that go back a million years or more. Europeans have the Neanderthal DNA, and Africans have DNA from other pre-human cave men.

Nobody knows the significance of these genes. My guess is that a lot of other genetic differences are more important. At any rate, there are a lot of differences.

How Girls Fall Behind in Math

A new Nature article claims to have resolved a nature-nuture debate.

When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment

Analysis of almost three million children captures when ‘mathematical gender gap’ first emerges and could help focus efforts to stop girls from falling behind. ...

Boys and girls receive similar maths scores at the start of school, but boys pull ahead of girls after just four months (see ‘Watch the mathematics gender gap emerge’). A more dramatic gap in mathematical performance emerges after 12 months of school, according to the analysis, published on 11 June in Nature1.

“This paper suggests that the gender inequalities in children’s maths performance aren’t innate or inevitable,” says psychologist Jillian Lauer at the University of Cambridge, UK. “If we want to stop girls from falling behind, we need to focus on their early experiences at school.”

The research found that boys and girls get to first grade being equally able to count, but boys pull ahead when asked to do problems like 5+6=11. The poor girls never catch up.

This is ridiculous. Grade schools are much more adapted to teaching girls than boys. I do not think that girls are falling behind because first grade teachers are not teaching them to add well.

I also don't think first grade addition has much to do with long term math abilities.

I met the science writer of this story a long time ago. She might even remember me, even though it has been maybe 25 years. I don't blame her for this. She is just writing up the published research that the Nature editors accepted. I am happy to see she is a successful science writer.

This research is only appearing in the leading British science journal because of the leftist egalitarian implication. Nature even has an editorial:

Close the mathematics gender gap: huge study prompts urgent call to action ...

‘Boys are better at maths’. It’s a stereotype that’s still pervasive among many children, teachers and parents. But is there any truth to it? A study of millions of schoolchildren in France reveals that boys pull ahead of girls in mathematics early, during the first year of school, but suggests that this ‘gender gap’ is not inevitable ...

The lack of differences in achievement at the start of school is an indication that boys have no inherent advantages when it comes to raw ability or interest. That, in turn, indicates that the gap could be reduced, or even erased, if children’s early environment at school and at home is changed. By pinpointing when girls start to fall behind boys, this study should help to focus further research into interventions that could reduce the gap.

Such interventions are needed. Women in many countries are less likely than men to study maths, ...

The latest study is a wake-up call for parents and carers, educators and scientists. The next step is for researchers to develop various interventions and measure their impact before and during the first year of school. For instance, do girls in classes taught by teachers who provide support to reduce anxiety around maths perform better than girls who don’t receive such support?

No, this is crazy stuff. First grade schooling is already girl-oriented. First grade girls do not have math anxiety. It is foolish to even think that this is a problem to be solved. From Wikipedia:

The gender-equality paradox is the finding that various gender differences in personality and occupational choice are larger in more gender equal countries.

The better you teach math, the more you will find performance differences. Face reality.

Society is Divided into Free Men and Slaves

Leftist-atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne writes in another of his anti-free will rants:

Legal systems are grounded on the notion that we are morally responsible, but under determinism we’re not. Yes, we can be responsible for an act, but “moral” responsibility is intimately connected with libertarian free will; it’s the idea that we have the ability, at any given time, to act either morally or immorally (or make any any other alternative decision, even if it doesn’t involve morality). Yes, I know there are some who think that the justice system already implicitly accepts determinism, but they are wrong. For if it did, we wouldn’t have any form of retributive punishment, including capital punishment.

As for rewarding good behavior, well, yes, you couldn’t have done otherwise than, say, saved a drowning person. But rewarding people who do good is a spur for other people to do good.  Even if the rewarded people don’t “deserve” plaudits in the sense that their accomplishments didn’t come from LFW, handing out rewards for things that society approves of is simply a good thing to do—for society.

So the criminal does not deserve punishment, but it is good to punish him anyway to deter others. Likewise we reward do-gooders, not because they deserve it, but to provide an incentive for others.

Coyne says he is a hard determinist, who believes that everything people do is pre-determined.

I believet that some people have free will, and some do not. Those without free will are essentially slaves, or robots.

If a wild dog kills and eats your pet rabbit, then the dog does not deserve punishment. However I may forcibly separate it from my other pets. I can do this because I have free will.

If I do not have free will, then there is no sense is telling me what I ought to do, or what is moral to do. I will do whatever I have been programmed to do.

I am trying to make sense out of Coyne's position. I think it would make sense if many heroes and do-gooders have no free will, and our authorities and judges and morally conscious citizens do have free will. Then our leaders can make good decisions, and some citizens will respond to incentives. The others are slaves, and can be thrown in prison if they fail to follow orders.

Okay, but Coyne thinks that it is a law of physics that no one has free will. We are all automatons. It is no use trying to persuade anyone of anything. You cannot make a decision, and you cannot influence anyone else's.

As I always say, “It’s much harder to convince a free-willer of the truth of determinism than to convince a creationist of the truth of evolution.”

Not surprising. Why does he even try, if he is a determinist?

Trump believes in Racehorse Theory

SciAm published this essay:

Eugenics was debunked as both biologically unsound and morally repugnant decades ago, but Donald Trump has repackaged its key lies to appeal to 21st-century American anxieties. In his worldview, there are hereditary haves and have-nots. Biology is used, not to draw attention to what all humans have in common, but instead to manufacture artificial divisions. It is a tool of dehumanization, meant to reinforce the notion that some people are inherently broken, inherently evil, inherently other.

There are hereditary haves and have-nots. Not everyone has the same inborn strengths and talents.

Sure, biology, like every other science, explores differences. For example, everything you eat is based on scientists having studied differences between animals, plants, feed, etc.

Appreciating human differences is what humanity is all about.

A rising tide of anti-eugenic scientists took issue with the biological myths undergirding his [Harry Laughlin's] vision. Genetic research on plants, fruit flies, livestock and humans revealed more and more about how chromosomes and genes worked. The human genome was found to be far more complex than eugenicists anticipated. There simply were no genes for crime or poverty, let alone leadership or honesty.

This is from a science magazine, so there ought to be scientific references to back up such assertions. Nope.

Crime and poverty are known to be correlated with IQ and other heritable personality traits. Hundreds of genes for these traits have been found. There is even a company that offers genetic screening of embryos.

He has been spouting this nonsense for decades. In 2007 Larry King was a recipient of Trump’s hereditary lesson. In touting his work for the how-to company the Learning Annex on King’s show, Trump said about talent and business success: “But there is something. You know, the racehorse theory, there is something to the genes. And I mean, when I say something, I mean a lot.”

Yes, some horses have the genes to be better racehorses. I never heard it called racehorse theory, but it makes sense.

I have to assume that SciAm would provide some evidence to refute the theory, if it could.

New Diverse DNA Database draws Criticism

Genetics professor Lior Pachter complains that his fellows geneticists write papers about race.

The All of Us Research Program, whose mission is to “to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs, enabling individualized prevention, treatment, and care for all of us”, recently published a flagship paper in Nature on “Genomic Data in the All of Us Research Program“.

All of Us has collected data on diverse racial groups, so health research can be directed to underrepresented minorities. What could be wrong with that? Plenty, he says.

The misuse of the concepts of race, ethnicity and genetic ancestry, and the misrepresentation of genetic data to create a false narrative, is a serious matter. I say this because such misrepresentations have been linked to terror. The Buffalo terrorist who murdered 10 black people in a racist rampage in 2022 wrote that "Jews cannot be considered European" ...

The pseudoscientific belief that humans can be genetically separated into distinct racial groups is part of scientific racism. Such pseudoscience, and its spawn of racist policy, has roots in many places, but it must be acknowledged that some of them are in academia.

He complains that DNA evidence can identify Ashkenazi Jews. Pachter himself identifies as a South African Jew who moved to the USA, so it is not clear why he would be offended by this.

This idea for this post arose during a DEI meeting of my research group organized

So these professors are subjected to DEI meetings where they says race is not real, and complain about scientific papers proving that race is real.

Not just him. Berkeley geneticist Michael Eisen has demanded that the Nature paper be retracted. Eisen is a Jewish name. I see from Wikipedia that he was wrongly fired for a satirical tweet about tue Gaza War.

This is the objection. Wokeness requires denying the biology of race. DNA data show racial differences. Such data must be considered to ensure that medical databases are diverse. The datasets are huge, and are oversimplified when reduced to 2-dimensional plots for publication in print journals. The woke scientists make technical objections to the 2D plots, as a way of undermining racial biology.

There is something strange about Jews making all these high-handed racial pronouncements, and then demanding that a scientific chart be retracted because of obscure technical criticisms.

Judaism is the most ethnocentric of the world's religions. Jews call people racists more than anyone else. Jews have a bunch of rules for genetic qualifications to be a Jew. They do not like it when others identify them as Jews. They scream scientific racism if non-Jewing groups talk about how they can be genetically identified.

How to make sense of this? Jews believe that they are God's Chosen People, and that all others are sub-human animals that are not worthy of being distinguished. Even Atheist Jews recite leftist political opinions, and rush to put down ethnic pride in all non-Jewish groups, especially White Christians.

Pachter is an example of this. See the glee he takes in arguing that The perfect human is Puerto Rican. Jews have contempt for most of humanity. We non-Jews are no better than Puerto Ricans. He particularly hates James Watson, of DNA discovery fame.

This appears to be a Jewish religious belief. We see the same thing in prominent Jewish intellectuals, such as the late Stephen Jay Gould, and many others. They adamantly argue that there is no such thing as human races, even though they can be identified by DNA. Non-Jews must have nothing to distinguish them from each other. There can only be one Chosen People.

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but why else would Pachter get so excited by an obscure figure in a scientific paper? Why else would he hate Watson so much? Why do the vast majority of academic Jews say the same thing?

They have influenced the scientific establishment in reciting this nonsense. The leading journal, AAAS Science, just published this:

The sociopolitical in human genetics education

Education must go beyond only countering essentialist and deterministic views of genetics

Biological and genetics research has established that racial categories have no biological or genetic basis. Social sciences have established that race is a socially and politically constructed categorization that undergirds racism, which has devastating consequences for racially oppressed groups.

The authors are not even scientists, and most have jobs in Education departments. This paper was not accepted on its scientific merits. It was published because those who do control AAAS wanted that political-religious message. Some of the paper's problems are explained here.

The Gaza War has changed the public perception of Jews. If the Gazans could demonstrate Jewish DNA and acceptance of Jewish ideologies, they would be welcomed into Israel. They cannot, and the Israelis are exterminating them like subhuman animals.

Reuters reports:

Health authorities in Gaza said on Thursday Israeli fire on people waiting for aid near Gaza City had killed 104 Palestinians and wounded 280, with one hospital saying it had received 10 bodies and dozens of injured patients.

I am not necessarily saying Israel is wrong. After all, Hamas is still holding Israeli hostages. I am just pointing out how the world is wising up to how Jews view non-Jews. R

Genetic Determinism and Free Will

Aporia magazine tackles tricky genetic issues like this:

Warm and caring mothers tend to have more successful children, but this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an effect of warmth and care. The problem is that warm and caring mothers tend to pass on the sorts of genes that are correlated with being warm and caring. Since people with such traits are often successful in life in other ways, we should expect kids raised by warm and caring mothers to be successful for environmental and genetic reasons. The question then arises: to what degree does each of these influences matter?

In an article in Aporia published last August, Curtis Dunkel mentioned the issue of genetic confounding with respect to supportive parental behaviors.

In other words, good parents have good kids by passing good genes, not by good parenting behaviors.

Sounds a little like genetic determinism. Another article attacks free will:

For libertarian free will not only does not exist, it is utterly incoherent. Many philosophers have eagerly made this point, but few with the panache of Friedrich Nietzsche:

“This causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.”

What is more, even if libertarian free will were coherent, it would be undesirable, granting free will only in the way a mischievous genie grants wishes that go badly wrong in popular parables for children. Libertarian free will leads to absurd and unappealing consequences. ...

Libertarian free will is a metaphysical monster invented by philosophers to be hunted and slain by philosophers. A cynic might even contend that its very purpose is to keep philosophers employed by giving them something to refute.

Scathing attack. The article is titled, "in defense of free will". Go figure.

Most people believe in free will, and even believe free will is essential to the human existence. And yet all these smart philosophers reject it.

I understand why parents want to deny genetic influences. Child-rearing is hard work, and they like to believe that the work is doing some good. But why are philosphers so eager to reject free will?

The above complains that free will makes the "universe unpredictable not just in practice, but also in principle." Yes, right, and that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

There is no scientific proof or disproof of free will, so you can believe or disbelieve as you wish. You may choose to believe that you are a puppet in a predetermined universe, if you wish.

RadioLab: Not Born That Way

Here is the latest RadioLab episode:

Born This Way?

Today, the story of an idea. An idea that some people need, others reject, and one that will, ultimately, be hard to let go of.

It traces the notion that homosexuals and other LGBTQ folks are "born that way" and that the condition is immutable. it says that the belief was crucial to winning public acceptance of same sex marriage and other privileges, but not really backed by any hard science all scientific attempts to prove it has failed. The show suggests that people will continue to recite this belief in spite of the evidence and possible harms from the belief.

Genetic research has shown a large number of human behaviors that are correlated with a large number of genes. However the idea that some single gene is responsible for some complex human behavior has been proved wrong.

In other areas, genetic determinism is considered harmful and offensive. There is a lot of evidence that Black men have innate instincts to commit violent crimes. You will not learn about that in school. Being fat and lazy is heritable, but not commonly accepted as an excuse. People do have power to change their lives.

But "born that way" is just a hoax used to advance some political goals.

Human Ancestors Originated Outside Africa

Anthropologists have been telling us for a century that we are all descended from African apes. Ever since the 1912 Piltdown Man turned out to be a fake. They seem to take great glee in saying it, as if it shows that we should identify with Africans.

Okay, I can accept that, but they ignore so much evidence to the contrary. It appears that our ancestors ten million years ago were not African at all.

Sci-Tech Daily reports:

A recent discovery of a fossilized ape from a site in Turkey, aged 8.7 million years, is challenging long-accepted ideas of human origins. This finding supports the hypothesis that the forebears of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe and later migrated to Africa approximately 7 to 9 million years ago.

The findings establish Anadoluvius turkae as a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans. Although African apes today are only known from Africa, as are the earliest known humans, the study’s authors ... conclude that the ancestors of both came from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.

Anadoluvius and other fossil apes from nearby Greece (Ouranopithecus) and Bulgaria (Graecopithecus) form a group that comes closest in many details of anatomy and ecology to the earliest known hominins, or humans. The new fossils are the best-preserved specimens of this group of early hominines and provide the strongest evidence to date that the group originated in Europe and later dispersed into Africa.

The study’s detailed analysis also reveals that the Balkan and Anatolian apes evolved from ancestors in western and central Europe. With its more comprehensive data, the research provides evidence that these other apes were also hominines which means that it is more likely that the whole group evolved and diversified in Europe, rather than the alternative scenario in which separate branches of apes earlier moved independently into Europe from Africa over the course of several million years, and then went extinct without issue.

Those were apes, but the first ancestors who were identifiably human were Neanderthals living in Europe.

Scientists try to find Queer Plants and Fungus

everybody is celebrating LGBTQ+, even a plant exhibit:

This autumn, we’re celebrating the diversity and beauty of plants and fungi with an inspiring new festival, Queer Nature, at Kew Gardens.

What makes nature queer?

As well as refusing to conform with socially-constructed binaries that science has applied to them over the years, plants and fungi have also been used as symbols for LGBTQ+ groups throughout history.

The green carnation became a symbol for homosexuality in the early 20th century, due to Oscar Wilde’s wearing of it, at a time when being openly gay was still a criminal offence.

Since the mid-20th century, the colour lavender was used to represent gay communities across the world.

Looking at plants and fungi through a queer lens sheds a new light on the complexity and infinite possibilities of nature, highlighting the vital importance of conserving biodiversity and protecting the natural world.

That's why it's the perfect time to celebrate Queer Nature. Why not join us this autumn and discover the true diversity of the natural world?

Biologist Jerry Coyne explains how ridiculous this is, if it isn't obvious.

Genetic Influences on Intelligence

Emil Kirkegaard

A plethora of evidence for genetic influence of American race-ethnic gaps in intelligence ...

Intelligence tests are excellent predictors of school and job performance, and racial/ethnic differences in mean IQ are common. Based on five lines of evidence, Warne (2021) builds a case for partly genetic causes of differences in general intelligence (g) across American self/parental-identified race or ethnicity (SIRE).

All the groups show average differences. No surprise there. What is interesting is that is shows correlations between IQ and religion.

Okay, you are not going to get smarter by converting to a different religion. There are genetic factors at work, and you cannot do anything to change those.

Conservatives Accept Human Nature

I posted how leftists are more neurotic, and Scientific American has an article on the differences between conservatives and liberals:

In politics, researchers usually define conservativism as a general tendency to resist change and tolerate social inequality. Liberalism is a tendency to embrace change and reject inequality. Political parties evolve with time—Democrats were the conservative party 150 years ago—but the liberal-conservative split is typically recognizable in a country’s politics. It’s the fault line on which political cooperation most often breaks down.

Psychologists have long suspected that a handful of fundamental differences in worldviews might underlie the conservative-liberal rift. Forty years of research has shown that, on average, conservatives see the world as a more dangerous place than liberals. This one core belief seemed to help explain many policy disagreements, such as conservative support of gun ownership, border enforcement and increased spending on police and the military—all of which, one can argue, aim to protect people from a threatening world.

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But new research by psychologist Nick Kerry and me at the University of Pennsylvania contradicts that long-standing theory. We find instead that the main difference between the left and right is the belief that the world is inherently hierarchical. Conservatives, our work shows, tend to have higher belief than liberals in a hierarchical world, which is essentially the view that the universe is a place where the lines between categories or concepts matter.

It goes to explain that conservatives accept scientific facts about human nature, and liberals do not.

It says that conservatives do tend to be more tolerant, and more likely to recognize dangers, human nature better explains the differences.

SciAm has become a leftist journal, so the purpose of this research is to convert conservatives! It says:

One reason our discovery is exciting is because it hints at ways to work through specific political deadlocks. For example, consider debates around LGBTQ+ topics. Conservatives may feel the line separating men and women is natural and innate—a big, bold line—whereas liberals may see that distinction as more superficial and culturally based—a gray area. Welfare payments and policies, too, might be seen through a hierarchical lens, with some assuming that lines between rich and poor often reflect meaningful differences in people’s work ethic, talent, morality or value to society. ...

For instance, imagine trying to convince a conservative to adopt a more liberal policy on transgender rights. If you assume their beliefs are informed by fear of danger, you might note that transgender people are much more likely to be assaulted than to assault anyone themselves—a tactic of assuaging fears. But another tactic is blurring lines—perhaps noting that a small but consistent number of babies are born with ambiguous genitalia and arbitrarily assigned a sex at birth, which suggests the line between male and female is not always extremely clear.

That is, tell conservatives that men are the same as women because 0.01% of babies are born intersex.

This is not going to work. The Left only gains by suppressing science. The more you learn about the science of sex, the more you discover innate differences.

New Movie Documentary Against Free Will

There is a new movie on Free Will? A documentary:

No idea is more fundamental to who we are than the idea that we are free to choose what we do and who we will become.

This idea is known as free will and since ancient times humanity has debated whether or not we have it. The question still remains: are we truly free? And in what sense are we free? Are we determined by forced beyond our control? Is free will compatible with determinism? What does quantum mechanics and neuroscience say? Is free will necessary in order for society to function? What implications does free will have on morality, religion, and the criminal justice system?

Free Will? A Documentary explores all of these topics and more. ...

We're gathering some of the best minds available on every side of the issue — libertarians, determinists, and compatibilists — to offer the best arguments from each side. In short, the mission will be to change the cultural zeitgeist on its understanding of free will.

Biology professor Jerry Coyne watched it so we don't have to, and comments:

But everyone else interviewed is a naturalist, all believing that at any one moment you have only one course of action.

Then it is not covering those who believe in (libertarian) free will. If we only have one course of action, then we have no free choices.

There’s a good discussion of the science, including the Libet and more recent Libet-like experiments

The preview mentions these experiments as showing that a decision might take the brain a couple of seconds, so that it is initiated before the brain is aware of a decision having been made. These experiments have been widely misinterpreted, and really don't say anything about free will.

the failure to connect libertarian free will to Abrahamic religions, of which it’s an essential part — a connection that accounts for why more than half of people surveyed in four countries accept libertarian free will.

Free will is essential to Christianty, but not to Judaism or Islam. Moslems think everything is determined by God's will. Some Christians also think that, but only a small minority. Some Jews believe in free will, but it is not important to Judaism.

I thus use “naturalism” (a term that’s not idiosyncraatic; it was suggested by Sean Carroll) to mean “determinism + quantum mechanics”, i.e. the laws of physics. People who hear “determinism” think that at the big bang the entire future of the universe was determined, which isn’t true.

I guess he is trying to say determinism plus indeterminism explains everything.

That’s fine with me, for once you accept naturalism, one can begin dealing with the important social consequences, including how to judge other people in both life and the legal system.

And then he can use his lack of free will to judge others with no free will? He makes no sense.

One of his readers:

Being an atheist I have to accept that free will is an illusion. But this has no relevance to the criminal justice system. ... Criminologists can debate, on free will principles, whether the purpose of prison is deterrence, revenge, or rehabilitation but ordinary people don’t care as long as the sentence provides a just measure of pain.

Wow, these anti-free-will opinions are just leftist atheist talking points. Free will does not just affect the criminal deciding on his crime, it also affects the judge meting out the punishment. If it is meaningless to talk about why the criminal acts, it is also meaningless to talk about the judge.

Sam Harris is a prominent free will critic not in the movie, and he has released a new podcast on the subject. He claims that he has no free will, and not even the feeling of free will. My theory is that his brain was damaged by hallucinogenic drugs.

His podcast was indeed a rehash of his earlier views. He does not mention his reckless experimentation with mind-altering drugs in his youth. But philosoher Daniel Dennett does tell him that some people do not have free will, as they have a neural disability. He subtlely told Harris that he was brain-damaged!

Harris did admit that the issue is not just nature-nurture, as quantum mechanics disproved determinism. He also conceded the possibility of a conscious soul, although he is a naturalist with no such beliefs.

He argued that everything is determined by four things: nature, nurture, randomness, and souls. But he says, you get no free will from randomness because you do not throw the dice, and you get none from your soul either, because you do not choose your soul!

Theologians make more sense than this. Who does throw the dice? Who chooses the soul?

The argument can be summarized: Everything is either predictable or unpredictable, and therefore there is no free will. This is obviously false, as a free choice is not predictable by someone else.

He also presented a thought experiment, where a violent intruder breaks into your home with evil intent. You have three weapons to choose from. (1) An ordinary gun, to easily kill him. (2) A cage to imprison his body indefinitely, and prevent future harm. (3) A sci-fi "cure gun" that will permanently alter his brain into being a docile slave with no free will.

Harris asks which will you choose? He argued that the third choice is the preferable and humanitarian choice, as it recognizes that the intruder was just someone with a malfunctioning brain that needed to be fixed.

Wow. First, why is he even presenting us with choices, if we have no free will? Second, is this really his goal, to put everyone in a mental prison?

Netflix has a series called Black Mirror, where in some episodes people are trapped in computer simulations. It is a horror show.

Harris is a monster.

Update: Evolutionist Jerry Coyne plugs the new Robert Sapolsky book against free will

At the “Moving Naturalism Forward”, the late physicist Steve Weinberg professed to me a belief in libertarian free will. See the story I told here (scroll down). In our conversation I ascertained that yes, although Weinberg was a Nobel Laureate in physics, he was resolutely wedded to the idea that he could, at any time, have behaved other than how he did.

Weinberg was maybe the most respected Physicist alive at the time. Funny how Coyne thinks he understands science better than Weinberg.

I was accosted by an angry jazz musician. He said that I had basically ruined his life (I am not exaggerating) by telling him that his “improvisations” were not really improvisations in the sense that he he (in a dualistic way) “decided” what riffs to play, but that they were were the determined product of unconscious processes. I tried to reassure him that they were still the product of his own brain, his own musical background, and his training that allowed him to improvise around what his fellow musicians were playing, but he didn’t find that reassuring. (Even Dawkins jumped in and tried to explain that this didn’t devalue the man’s art or abilities.)

Yes, Coyne was devaluing his music by saying it was all pre-determined.

Eventually my friend appeared and said, “You have to leave.” ...

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I’ve gone over this in my mind repeatedly, and I am absolutely sure that I didn’t raise my voice or say anything offensive. I was being booted out of a friend’s house because I had the wrong stand on a metaphysical argument!

Again, such is the rage of those who hear others tell them they have no agency. ...

When I hugged his wife goodbye and thanked her for her hospitality, she said, “Have a nice predetermined life.” How rude can one get?

I think Coyne misinterpreted them. They were not angry at having no agency. They just did not want in their house a pre-programmed robot who denies any personal moral responsibility for his actions.