Free Republic

In every large-scale military conflict, there is the macro war and the micro war. While the macro war fought strategically by the generals has a great influence on the micro war fought tactically by the individual soldiers, the two wars are nevertheless distinct from one another and must be contemplated separately. In this second column in the series related to the war against men, I am focused solely on the micro war that is fought in the houses, classrooms, churches and night clubs of America. In the prelude to a battle, the local commander always considers four things. His resources,...

"My dear, let us hope that it isn't true!" the wife of the bishop of Worcester is reputed to have exclaimed 150 years ago, on hearing that human beings might be descended from apes. "But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!" When it comes to sociobiology - better known these days as "evolutionary psychology" - the bishop's wife has modern counterparts: The religious right and the secular and supposedly scientific left are remarkably on the same page, both sides inclined to dispute or misrepresent the relevance of evolution to human beings. The former,...

Reviewers have not been kind to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, professor of something called "the public understanding of science" at Oxford. Critics have found it to be the atheist's mirror image of Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism - long on in-your-face rhetoric and offensively dismissive of all those holding an opposing view. Princeton University philosopher Thomas Nagel found Dawkins's "attempts at philosophy, along with a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak." Prof. Terry Eagleton began his London Review of Books critique: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is...

The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law Marc D. GuerraIn a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that "in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory of evolution is widely accepted as established scientific fact. Given the quasi-religious hold...

Demons and Dawkins So You Think You Are a Darwinian? Darwinism's Dilemma (part I: Cave Man) Darwinism's Dilemma (part II: Hard Man)An exerpt from Altruism and Shared Genes David Stove WE ARE NOW in a position to identify what the irresistible attraction is that the theory of inclusive fitness holds for every modern Darwinian Mind. If a man openly denies the reality of altruism, then, as well as incurring the deserved ridicule of people of common sense, he incurs the moral indignation of people of common decency; as Hobbes, Mandeville, and Machiavelli (among others) found out by experience. He...

If Steven Pinker's latest 500-page treatise on the brain, The Blank Slate, serves any wider purpose in the popular discussion of science issues, it will, one hopes, be the final demolition of that battle-worn slur, "biological determinism," still lugged out by the occasional critic when someone starts talking about genes, evolution and human behavior in the same paragraph. Ever since E.O. Wilson first published the 1975 book Sociobiology--which argued that human behavior, like that of all creatures on the planet, was partially shaped by natural selection--certain factions of the left, sometimes led by creditable scientists like Richard Lewontin and Stephen...

Sunday, 30 June, 2002, 15:31 GMT 16:31 UK English and Welsh are races apart Gene scientists claim to have found proof that the Welsh are the "true" Britons. The research supports the idea that Celtic Britain underwent a form of ethnic cleansing by Anglo-Saxons invaders following the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century. Genetic tests show clear differences between the Welsh and English It suggests that between 50% and 100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out, with Offa's Dyke acting as a "genetic barrier" protecting those on the Welsh side. And the upheaval...