The old adage of evolve or dissolve has always been a part of the challenges that face businesses. This rings truer today than maybe ever before. We see daily the many changes that companies and their leaders must adapt to and prepare for. The most successful businesses must be constantly on the path of meeting their current business goals as well as have the foresight and strategy to look out further ahead to anticipate what others cannot.

The Darwinism of business is stronger than ever in our changing business climate. From issues related to workforce, technology, and governmental policies, times are changing at a rapid rate. This is why many area businesses choose to connect with their local economic development group and Chamber of Commerce to leverage shared knowledge and best practices.

Business as we know it today will not be the same in the next few years. Consumers will be seeing continuing changes in their shopping and dining experiences as technology continues to evolve. Businesses need to make bets on how they will adapt with the changing demographic of upcoming tech savvy generations. A couple areas where change has been happening at an extremely rapid pace is in the workplace culture and workforce development.

In my work, Ive been seeing tremendous business evolution. Here are some trends of note:

Millennials meet Generation Z The genZers have arrived! 2016 marked the first year they entered the workplace while a third of management roles were filled by millennials. What are some of the challenges? For one, there is an ever widening technology gap between younger and older workers. In addition, stereotypes abound between the groups which causes friction. Interestingly enough, both generations agree that they want businesses to transform the office environment, reward employees, embrace flexibility, and take on causes.

The three Ws Workplace wellness and well-being are the three Ws of attraction tool trends. Getting creative with wellness programs is increasingly common. Companies that are leveraging wellness programs find multiple levels of benefits that affect their bottom line including attracting talent, lower absenteeism and lower healthcare costs.

Changing employer/employee contract Believe it or not, regardless of age, the tenure for employees is currently 4.6 years in the U.S. There is no lifetime employment contract and attracting employees is an ongoing activity for all employers regardless if you have current openings. In addition, the work relationship between employers and employees continues to change with more working at home, more operating as independent contractors, and also with employers utilizing technologies to leverage employees in remote locales.

Evolving benefits All age groups, genders, and ethnicities care about fair compensation. Other important factors are healthcare and work flexibility. Studies have shown some employee groups value work flexibility above healthcare and yet only 1/3 of companies even offer it. And those that do, often dont promote it to job seekers. Other new benefits include assistance with student loans and I even heard of a local business thinking about providing car insurance.

While businesses continue to work on meeting the next challenges, especially in the area of workforce development, we have some local successes to celebrate.

Congrats to I.C. System, Reell Precision Manufacturing, and The Specialty Mfg. Company for receiving the Star Tribunes 2017 Top Workplace achievement.

Top Workplaces recognizes the most progressive companies in Minnesota through employee opinions, including employee feedback about workplace culture, the levels of employee engagement, organizational health, and overall satisfaction.

The Northeast Metro community is fortunate to have a vibrant business community continually connecting together to get ahead of the curve on what is next around the corner. Regardless of what tomorrow brings, we are all committed to shared success together.

Ling Becker is executive director of the Vadnais Heights Economic Development Corporation.

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Business times are a changin' - White Bear Press

Kevin Myers. He told Sen ORourke on RT: Men are driven by urges women dont have. Photograph: RT Radio One/PA Wire

If anything good can come from the painful results of Kevin Myerss now infamous column in last Sundays Sunday Times, it is that many people who take sexist language for granted have been forced to think about it. The column was essentially an attack on the idea that women are equal to men. But this was not in itself seen as a problem by his employers. The Sunday Times, in its two statements on the affair, made no apology for (or even acknowledgment of) this argument. Myers himself, in his subsequent radio interviews, apologised profusely (and with obvious sincerity) for his use of anti-Semitic tropes. But he stood over his broader argument in the column and strongly denied that he is any way misogynistic. This self-belief is also sincere. But it is wrong.

In the column, Myers blew himself up because he strayed off the familiar path of least resistance (insulting those who do not enjoy his own privileges) into the minefield of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This was an accident. But there was nothing accidental about his use of another far-right trope and his application of it to the notion of gender equality.

The central tenet of far-right thought has always been that equality is a degenerate illusion there is only the primal Darwinian struggle in which the weak go to the wall and the fittest survive and triumph. The core of Myerss column is a reiteration of this reality to justify the unequal treatment of women, primarily by the BBC but, by implication, in society as a whole. Women go to the wall because they are no good at the Darwinian game. Men triumph because they play it properly.

All of this is quite explicit. Equality is a unicorn in other words, it does not exist. Inequality in this case the unequal treatment of women is therefore natural and inevitable. Women, instead of wailing and shrieking, should accept the law of the survival of the fittest: Get what you can with whatever talents you have. And, if what you get is the shitty end of the stick, shut up about it.

To understand how misogynistic this is, we have to take it in its own terms. Lets accept, even though it is nonsense, that there is only an endless evolutionary struggle for dominance. How, in Myerss terms, could women ever win it? They couldnt because those terms are nothing but a series of traps designed to catch female ambition while letting the male version pass on to its well-deserved triumph.

The bogus nature of the argument is immediately obvious from its treatment of childbearing. If blind evolutionary drives are to be the main organising principle of society, basic logic would suggest that the primary instinct is the survival of the species. This being so, giving birth to children would be understood as an activity to be rewarded, supported and encouraged. But because it is women who do this, this logic has to be inverted. When it doesnt suit male dominance, the cod-Darwinism that supports the whole thesis goes out the window. Or rather, it is turned back on women: women have only themselves to blame when they are paid less than the men because the men seldom get pregnant. What should we call it when someone upends his own argument purely to justify female biological inferiority? Misogyny seems a good word.

Ploughing on, we encounter the evolutionary characteristics that, according to Myers, fit men better for the eternal struggle. One, that they work harder, is so ludicrous that it need not detain us, except to note the irony of the claim appearing in a column whose author now admits to not thinking very hard about even as he was writing it. The second is that they are more charismatic. But charisma isnt a natural trait it is a matter of perception. And you have to be wilfully blind not to know that charisma in the workplace is a matter of gender. A domineering, self-centred, demanding, entitled man is charismatic. A woman with the same traits is a monstrous harridan.

Which brings us to the most Darwinian term of all: men succeed because they are more driven than women. Can there be a more loaded word? A man who elbows his way to the top and walks over the fallen bodies of his rivals is showing that he has drive. There is a different word for a woman who does the same. She is a bitch. But then this is what this whole linguistic game is about. Myers argues that women can succeed only when they act like men or at least a caricatured version of manhood favoured by a particular variety of creep. But of course he doesnt really believe they can: as he told Sen ORourke on RT: Men are driven by urges women dont have. Hence the trap: the girls can succeed only if they are as driven as the boys, but since they dont have those drives at all, the real message is that they can never succeed at all and should stop whining about it. Men are always going to be better at manning up than women. Its only natural.

The column itself embodies these double standards. It is hysterical to and beyond the point of incoherence . It might fairly be called an extended exercise in wailing and shrieking. But of course those are female characteristics: one of the things Myers wails and shrieks about at the height of his indignation is female columnists indignant words of smouldering mediocrity. When Myers does it, its heroically male truth-telling. If a woman did it (and in fact I cannot think of a female columnist in Ireland who has ever been granted such well-paid licence to rehearse prejudice), it would be proof of female emotional instability.

And if women do succeed in spite of all these traps? There are too bloody many of them. Myers tells women to forget equality and man up but then complains in the column about the ubiquity of Miriam OCallaghan and Claire Byrne on the airwaves, including the weather, the ploughing championships and the Angelus. Presumably they succeeded by being more driven than men and, um, not having babies (or at least keeping it to eight). But in the misogynistic mindset, a woman can never be right even when she does what men like Myers tell her to do.

Prejudice depends on such ludicrous inconsistencies. But it always has a purpose: to make inequalities rooted in centuries of oppression seem entirely natural and to blame the victims for their inferior situation. Those who benefit from these inequalities love nothing better than to be told that they deserve everything they have because the world is a jungle and they are the key predators. Myers may be gone, but so long as this is the case, there will always be a market for misogyny.

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Fintan O'Toole: There will always be a market for misogyny - Irish Times

Do low-cost index-tracking funds really threaten to turn us all into communists?

A year ago, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. warned that "passive investing is worse than Marxism." Today, the most-read story on Bloomberg is about Paul Singer warning that "passive investing is in danger of devouring capitalism."

The giant sucking sound in the fund management industry in recent years is the noiseof money flowing to passive products. The rise of exchange-traded funds has been relentless, and shows no signs of slowing. If anything, the shift to passive strategies is accelerating, as this chart based on data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence's Eric Balchunasshows.

Passive Aggression (Part I)

Net flows into U.S.-based passively managed funds and out of active funds in the first half of each year

Sources: Bloomberg, Investment Company Institute

It's not just the U.S. that's seeing a revolution. European ETFs are on track for their biggest percentage gain in a decade.

Passive Aggression (Part II)

Year-to-date inflows into European ETFs have already surpassed full-year percentage gains seen since 2013

Source: ETFGI {http://etfgi.com/news/detail/newsid/2211}

Investor enthusiasm for low-cost ETFs presents a clear and present danger to the active crowd. A report published earlier this year by Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman suggested the asset management industry could suffer a 30 percent drop in revenue by 2019 if fees continue to slide and market returns falter.

Forecast drop in revenue

30%

The uncharitable view of such alarmism from Sanford, a research and brokerage firm, and the billionaire founder of Elliot Management Corp. is that that they're just trying to ring-fence their own lucrative businesses against encroachment by the low-fee gang. Who needs expensive fundamental company research or high-cost hedge-fund expertise when your money can earn just as much of a return tracking an index?

A more charitable view of the anti-passive movement is that it's pointing out a genuine problem. If money gets invested in companies regardless of whether they are well run, or using their capital sensibly, or safeguarding the environment, then some element of the capitalist system is undermined.

Financial Darwinism, though, is beginning to work its evolutionary magic, both on the perceived overcharging by the active crowd and on the thorny stewardship issue.

Hedge funds have had to reduce their charges in response to the changing environment. Man Group Plc, the world's largest publicly traded hedge-fund firm has seen its net management fee margin drop by a third since the end of 2014, for example.

Falling Fees

The world's largest publicly traded hedge-fund firm has seen fees drop by a third

Source: Company filings

But money is flowing back into the active space. Man's funds under management reached a record $96 billion by the end of June; Allianz SE reported on Friday that its Pimco unit won a record 52 billion euros ($62 billion) in net inflows in the second quarter. Clearly investors still see a role for active managers in their portfolios -- albeit at lower fees than they were willing to pay for the privilege in the past.

Index trackers, meantime, are starting to acknowledge that with power comes responsibility. "We engage at board level on topics such as the qualifications of directors, the time they have to devote to their duties, on executive pay, on environmental issues," Blackrock Inc. Vice Chairman Barbara Novick in May. "This has nothing to do with the product or the pricing of products."

There's a cost in managers increasing their engagement with the companies they invest in. But with investors increasingly aware of environmental, social and governance issues, theyre likely to be willing to forego a few extra basis points for their passive funds to become that bit less passive.

Passive aggression is understandable when your business is threatened. But don't mistake a revolution for a natural commercial evolution.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

(An earlier version misattributed the source of the first chart.)

To contact the author of this story: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

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Devouring Capitalism - Bloomberg

Charles Darwin, whose bearded face looks out at us from the 10 note, is about to be replaced by Jane Austen. Ive spent the past five years of my life writing his biography and mastering his ideas. Which do you throw out of the balloon? Pride and Prejudice or The Origin of Species?

Funnily enough, in the course of my researches, I found both pride and prejudice in bucketloads among the ardent Darwinians, who would like us to believe that if you do not worship Darwin, you are some kind of nutter. He has become an object of veneration comparable to the old heroes of the Soviet Union, such as Lenin and Stalin, whose statues came tumbling down all over Eastern Europe 20 and more years ago.

We had our own version of a Soviet statue war in London some years ago when the statue of Darwin was moved in the Natural History Museum. It now looms over the stairs brooding over the visitors. It did originally sit there, but it was replaced by a statue of Richard Owen, who was, after all, the man who had started the Natural History Museum, and who was one of the great scientists of the 19th century. Then in 2009, the bicentenary of Darwins birth, Owen was booted out, and Darwin was put back, in very much the way that statues of Lenin replaced religious or monarchist icons in old Russia.

By the time Owen died (1892), Darwins reputation was fading, and by the beginning of the 20th century it had all but been eclipsed. Then, in the early to mid 20th century, the science of genetics got going. Science rediscovered the findings of Gregor Mendel (Darwins contemporary) and the most stupendous changes in life sciences became possible. Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, and thereafter the complexity and wonder of genetics, all demonstrable by scientific means, were laid bare. Only this week we have learned of medicines stupendous ability to zap embryonic, genetically transmuted disorders.

Darwinism is not science as Mendelian genetics are. It is a theory whose truth is NOT universally acknowledged. But when genetics got going there was also a revival, especially in Britain, of what came to be known as neo-Darwinism, a synthesis of old Darwinian ideas with the new genetics. Why look to Darwin, who made so many mistakes, rather than to Mendel? There was a simple answer to that. Neo-Darwinism was part scientific and in part a religion, or anti-religion. Its most famous exponent alive, Richard Dawkins, said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. You could say that the apparently impersonal processes of genetics did the same. But the neo-Darwinians could hardly, without absurdity, make Mendel their hero since he was a Roman Catholic monk. So Darwin became the figurehead for a system of thought that (childishly) thought there was one catch-all explanation for How Things Are in nature.

The great fact of evolution was an idea that had been current for at least 50 years before Darwin began his work. His own grandfather pioneered it in England, but on the continent, Goethe, Cuvier, Lamarck and many others realised that life forms evolve through myriad mutations. Darwin wanted to be the Man Who Invented Evolution, so he tried to airbrush all the predecessors out of the story. He even pretended that Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, had had almost no influence on him. He then brought two new ideas to the evolutionary debate, both of which are false.

One is that evolution only proceeds little by little, that nature never makes leaps. The two most distinguished American palaeontologists of modern times, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, both demonstrated 30 years ago that this is not true. Palaeontology has come up with almost no missing links of the kind Darwinians believe in. The absence of such transitional forms is, Gould once said, the trade secret of palaeontology. Instead, the study of fossils and bones shows a series of jumps and leaps.

Hard-core Darwinians try to dispute this, and there are in fact some missing links the Thrinaxodon, which is a mammal-like reptile, and the Panderichthys, a sort of fish-amphibian. But if the Darwinian theory of natural selection were true, fossils would by now have revealed hundreds of thousands of such examples. Species adapt themselves to their environment, but there are very few transmutations.

Darwins second big idea was that Nature is always ruthless: that the strong push out the weak, that compassion and compromise are for cissies whom Nature throws to the wall. Darwin borrowed the phrase survival of the fittest from the now forgotten and much discredited philosopher Herbert Spencer. He invented a consolation myth for the selfish class to which he belonged, to persuade them that their neglect of the poor, and the colossal gulf between them and the poor, was the way Nature intended things. He thought his class would outbreed the savages (ie the brown peoples of the globe) and the feckless, drunken Irish. Stubbornly, the unfittest survived. Brown, Jewish and Irish people had more babies than the Darwin class. The Darwinians then had to devise the hateful pseudo-science of eugenics, which was a scheme to prevent the poor from breeding.

We all know where that led, and the uses to which the National Socialists put Darwins dangerous ideas.

Now that we have replaced Darwin on the tenner with the more benign figure of Miss Austen, is this not the moment to reconsider taking down his statue from the Natural History Museum, and replacing him with the man who was sitting on the staircase until 2009 the museums founder, Richard Owen?

A.N. Wilsons Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker (John Murray, 25) is out next month

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AN Wilson: It's time Charles Darwin was exposed for the fraud he was - Evening Standard

QUESTION: Creationism vs. Darwinism Are they compatible?

ANSWER:

Definitions in Creationism vs. Darwinism, as described by the by the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary states that creationism is: A doctrine or theory holding that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing and usually in the way described in Genesis.

The definition for Darwinism is, A theory of the original perpetuation of new species of animals and plants that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen and may continue to rise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors; biological evolution.

Are the two theories of Creationism vs. Darwinism capable of existing together in harmony? In order to be compatible, there needs to be a number of similarities between the two theories. Do similarities exist?

Creationism states that God created matter and life forms out of nothing. Theistic evolutionists believe that God or gods created matter originally then left it to evolve on its own. Darwinism does not allow for the presence of God or gods in the origin of life. Darwinism states that various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types. This means that in evolutionism, a form of matter existed from which all life came.

The compatibility of creationism vs. Darwinism is faint, although some agreements between the two do occur. Both agree that DNA strands cause the varieties we see within a genus, like some people are short, while others are tall. There are color variations in people, plants, and animals. Aside from these points, there seems to be good evidence to suggest that Creationism vs. Darwinism have too little in common to call them compatible with each other.

What is your response?

Yes, today I am deciding to follow Jesus

Yes, I am already a follower of Jesus

I still have questions

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Creationism vs. Darwinism - Creation - AllAboutCreation.org

Several documentaries have just been released on DVD or Blu-ray, including Kansas vs. Darwin, Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary, I Am the Blues and Alive and Kicking.

Alive and Kicking glances back at swing dancings roots in 1920s Harlem and its ancestral ties to hip-hop. But the documentary focuses on the present, showcasing comments from young dance partners for whom swing is a way to dress up, have fun, improvise within set boundaries and develop personal skills. For some, its a finger in the eye of contemporary digitalized existence, a way to feel alive. Many scenes were shot at high-stepping ballroom contests.

The great postwar blues artiststhe Muddy Waters and the John Lee Hookersare gone, but their musical children continue. I Am the Blues is a journey through the muggy backcountry of the American South with Grammy-winner Bobby Rush and less-known 70-something-year-old survivors of an earlier era. All are filled with memories, are still musically proficient and often capable of moving performances. Tin-roofed juke joints and dusty rural roads are among the settings.

As astronauts first ventured into outer space, Harvard psychology professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) began exploring inner space through psychedelics. Narrated by Robert Redford, Dying to Know crisscrosses around the lives of those two academic adventurers with emphasis on a conversation between them shortly before Learys death (1996). They werent playing around for kicks but used science to transcend science in an exploration of the human psycheand perhaps the divine.

The 2005 hearing by the Kansas Board of Education on the validity of Darwinism drew international attention and is the subject of this documentary. What emerges is the self-perception of many creationists as rebels, kicking against elitists trying to impose an alien worldview. Their fundamentalism is aided, ironically, by the pervasive relativism of our time in which sincerity trumps factuality. Several Kansans interviewed by director Jeff Tamblyn intelligently blend science with philosophy and faith.

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Home Movies/Out on Digital: Aug. 3, 2017 - Shepherd Express

The Republican controlled US Senate just voted to proceed to debate Trumpcarea major step in the repeal and/or replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Following like docile sheep, most of the Republican Senators, who indisputably place party before country, voted yes not even knowing whats in the bill!

There are no profiles in courage among Republican Senators who voted to debate a bill that would, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), take health care away from upwards of 20 million Americans, obliterate protections for pre-existing conditions, and raise healthcare premiums across the board. Put more bluntly, if you get horribly sick, good luck finding insurance coverage. If you dont have the funds to pay for expensive cancer treatments or for assisted living, or for a nursing home, well just let these lesser people wither away. The strong survive. The weak sicken and die, which enables the fit to pad their already overflowing bank accounts..

If you think Im being harsh, consider the position of US Congressman Tom Reed (R-NY). In a June 24 Politicususa article Sean Colarossi reports that Reed

said on Saturday it doesnt bother him too much that 20,000 more Americans will die under the Republican health care plan as long as less money is going into Medicaid.

Mr. Reeds comments bring to mind a scene from Stanley Kubricks monumental film Dr. Strangelove. In the film, the President has called an emergency situation room meeting to discuss how to deal with a renegade nuclear attack ordered by an insane Air Force General, Jack D. Ripper. General Ripper illegally sent B-52s to obliterate the Russians with 40 megatons of nuclear bombs. Enter Air Force Chief of Staff General Buck Turgidson, played by the legendary George C Scott.

[Turgidson advocates a further nuclear attack to prevent a Soviet response to Ripper's attack]

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.

President Merkin Mufley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

If it is passed by the Republican controlled congress, Trumpcare may well result in a massive uptick of thousands if not millions of unnecessary deaths. Considering its unpopularity, why would any sane politician vote for such a politically and socially destructive bill? Why is it more important for Republican legislators to extend tax breaks to the wealthy than to save human lives?

What difference does it make if 20,000 people die if we are able to cut Medicaid?

What difference does it make if three million people die if we are able to extend tax breaks to the wealthy?

You might think that such poisonous thinking is social insanity, but the notion of social winners (who have earned health care) and social losers (who dont deserve heath care) has a long history in the United States.

Its not a pretty story, but its a tale well known to anthropologists.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the United States was a fundamentally racist society in which the rich (white people of means) led lives very different from the poor (immigrants and African Americans). Back then many of our elites followed the dictates of Social Darwinism in which British philosopher Herbert Spencer mangled the findings of Charles Darwin to suggest that natural selection applied to human beings and that the fittest, in this case, White Europeans, were better ablephysically, intellectually and emotionallyto adapt to the world. The strong and the fit would survive. Those who lacked fitness would sicken and dieridding the world of inferior traits. Spencers ideas gave rise to a scientific racism that posited that race was the determining factor in social fitness. Franz Boas, the founder of American anthropology used science to publicly refute these socially destabilizing ideas. Although these toxins never disappear, they have reemerged strongly in the alternative realities that motivate the me-first attitudes of President Trump and the Republicans who rule congress. From an anthropological perspective, Trumpcare is a path back to the gilded age in which income inequality, reinforced through financial and immigration policies, created a stark society that juxtaposed a slim minority that enjoyed unimaginable luxury to an ever-increasing majority that confronted misery and death each and every day. In that time, the wealthy used the ideology of Social Darwinism to reinforce their social, economic and political power.

From an anthropological perspective, Trumpcare is a back to the future move to socially engineer a society of winners, the fit, who are strong, and losers, the unfit who are weak. In this sophomoric mix, our cherished social contract will be lost, millions of our citizens will suffer and our society will be ripped to shreds.

Is this the legacy we want to bequeath to our grandchildren?

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An RX for Social Darwinism - HuffPost

Heres a fair question: Why do I prattle on so much about scholastic philosophy? Of what genuine relevance is it to intelligent design, and how is it of help in our twilight struggle with Darwinism and materialism?

My quick answer (and quite honest) is that I love it. The metaphysical perspective of the great scholastic philosophers hylomorphismis the best idea anyone ever had. At least, the best secular idea anyone ever had. There is a deep beauty and encompassing rationality to the Aristotelian-Thomist way of understanding the world. It can be said that Aristotle was the last man to know everything that could be known in his time, and that Aquinas was the last great systematic philosopherthe last philosopher/theologian to put together a coherent system for understanding all of reality. It is a way of understanding the world that is at once true and beautiful (and St. Thomas would say that truth and beauty are really the same thing). And I think that he pretty much got it right.

How does this help in the struggle between design and Darwinian materialism? Do beauty and truth really play a role in this fight in the trenches of 21stcentury science and culture? I think they do, in a practical way.

The fundamental modernist error is Nominalism. Nominalism, which is a philosophical school that had a foreshadowing in antiquity but fruition in the 14thcentury, is the belief that universals dont exist independently of the mind. It is the view that such general things as justice or humanity or mathematics are merely concepts, with no real instantiation in the extra-mental world. Nominalism is the view that universals are just names, without instantiated reality. It is a view in contrast to the radical realism of Plato, who believed that universals existed in perfect Forms in a realm more real than our own, and to the moderate realism of Aristotle, who believed (in characteristically moderate fashion) that universals had an extra-mental reality in this world, but not in the Platonic world of Forms.

The problem with Nominalism is that it detached and eventually isolated the mind from the world, and evolved over time into the Cartesian dualist model of the mind that man was a composite of two separate substances, mental and physical. Modern materialists simply discarded Descartes mental substance, and built their metaphysical structure (tottering as it is) on matter merely a substance extended in space. It is through matter, and matter alone, that materialists try to explain the world. And of course stuff extended in space left no necessary room for God, which pleased newly emboldened atheists no end.

Materialism, the witless spawn of Nominalism and Cartesian dualism, provided passable grounding for some aspects of modern science, especially after Bacon discarded teleology as a principle of nature and Newton developed a rather successful cosmology based on the analogy of nature to a machine. Mechanical philosophy, the ideological substrate of materialism, became the default metaphysical stance of modern science.

But an explanation for life seemed beyond the reach of even most passionate materialist. Stuff extended in space seemed (to the unreflective atheist) adequate to investigate rocks and such, but living things manifest a breath-taking complexity and purpose that no one in their right mind could attributed to just extended stuff. Richard Dawkins got it right: materialism left an atheist intellectually unfulfilled.

Fulfillment came in 1859. Darwins survivors survived theory put life into the machine of nature, and seemed (if you dont really think about it) to explain the uncanny adaptation of living things to the natural world. If they didnt adapt, theyd die! thats how it all happened! The non-adaptive ones are dead, the adaptive ones are alive! Biology is explained! Atheisms shiny new creation myth put out pseudopods into science and culture, degrading both in ways painful to examine. Fairy tales became scientific explanations, and they werent even nice fairy tales. In the Darwinian myth, mans highest attributes evolved due to his lowest dispositions. Eugenics was and is the inevitable outcome of Darwins sanguinary anthropology.

If we are to defeat this madness, for the sake of science and culture and humanity, we must do more than grind Darwinism to dust, as necessary (and satisfying) as that is.

We must replace it. And the replacement must be something true and moral. Hylemorphism, the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas, is the metaphysical system that Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy and materialism and Darwinism replaced, yetit remains the one metaphysical system utterly opposed to the idiot and ugly errors of Darwins fairy tale.

My hope is that the ID movement can move toward an Aristotelian and Thomist critique of Darwinism. It is the most effective way I think the only really effective way to kick out the foundation of Nominalism and Mechanical Philosophy on which Darwin and his children built their fiction.

Photo: Carving of Aristotle, Chartres Cathedral, by Wellcome Images, via Wikicommons.

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Why Aristotle and Aquinas? - Discovery Institute

70 years in a nations timeline is substantial. Time is fleeting, so are political ideologies, ideologues, instruments and applications. The theory of Darwinism is applicable not just to living beings but also to live institutions.

Survival of the fittest applies even to political parties in democracies across the world Those who adapt survive, those who wont perish. I strongly believe this evolutionary challenge is currently underway in the political ecosystem of India.

Indian National Congress is a pre-independent political entity. It was primarily set up as a common platform for fighting and achieving freedom. Prior to 1947, freedom from the British was a singular ideology and objective for all Indians.

Mahatma Gandhis advice to Nehru to shut down Congress party was in the true spirit of democracy. Bapu did not see the relevance of Congress party in its old form after independence. However, the decision to outrun Bapus advice and continue Congress party was driven out of a well-conceived dynastic plot by Jawaharlal Nehru. In retrospect, the contemporary history is a testament to that pre-conceived plot. India today has the 5th generation of Nehru scions at the helm of Congress, the dynastic party.

First things first. A dynasty was irrelevant even in 1947 right after independence; as we are a democratic republic, its even more irrelevant today. The irrelevance incremented all the way till 2014, with every generation of Nehrus dynasty experiencing power.

Congress party was rendered irrelevant in 2014 General Election, where it won just 44 MP seats from across India and that pattern continues till date in almost all the subsequent state or local body elections. Indian voters message is very clear to Congress party: your politics wont work anymore.

However, Congress continues to ignore that message, in the dynastic arrogance that it has been stuck for over 70 years. Anyone else would have understood the anger and disenchantment, Congress party wouldnt and it refuses to acknowledge even today.

It has over the period turned into a thick-skinned, unscrupulous, self-serving and un-empathetic political formation, which lost its ability to be sensitive to its immediate environment. It happens, when you outgrow your relevance and purpose. No wonder it is naturally progressing itself to possible extinction. It proves the relevance of Darwinism in the political ecosystem.

I foresee an unprecedented extinction of Congress party from the mainstream political system of India. It will be quite tough for Congress to accomplish even a double-digit tally in the next General Election. This is not my partisan pre-electoral assessment 2 years in advance, but an outcome of incisive analysis of changing mindscape of the Indian voter.

If Congress has to correct its course, the time is now. If it has to survive, it has to reinvent itself as a new political organization under non-Nehruvian regime. Theres no other way out, no other cosmetic correction will save this dinosaur from extinction.

BJP is blessed with regeneration and re-adaptation intrinsically, owing to a professionally managed, democratic, political organisation. That is how, just under two decades the first of its political formation, Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), merged into Janata Party for a contextual fight against rampant corruption in 1970.

Being a listening and feeling organisation, it re-emerged in 1980 as Bharatiya Janata Party with a progressive ideology of integral humanism and nation first. BJP has a built-in organisational mechanism through its core values to be grounded and to eternally have its ear to the ground.

BJP further evolved and adapted to the needs of changing India, through a change of old guard and redrawing its ideology to focus on the larger needs of Indians and India. Inclusive development, transparent governance, corruption-free administration and global leadership are the aspirations of 1.25 billion people. Thats exactly what is being promised and delivered by the BJP government under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi.

BJP understands, empathises and redirects its political agenda, adapting to the changing needs of the electorate. This singular competence is enabling BJP to lead the entire political ecosystem of India.

Parties like Congress are incapable of natural progression and evolution owing to their dynastic liabilities, highly centralised leadership, numbed and dumbed political leadership through incessant corruption.

These contrasting natural strengths and weaknesses of these two national political organisations, is the reason for the steady and steep rise of BJP, which is bound to continue till a credible alternative evolves in the national scene. However, it seems unlikely that a credible alternative evolves, even in the next decade.

Communist parties have no relevance in a democracy. Original Communist ideology is of single party rule. Communist system of governance is a clear alternative model to the democratic system of governance. Its imperative that Communist parties are fundamentally irrelevant in a democracy. The local fusion of democratic values and Communist ideology is a disastrous model.

It is like Indian Chinese fusion fast food recipes, which are far from any authenticity and originality. Communist parties have been in Indian political ecosystem for over a century and have made zero impact on the composite governance model of India. Relevance of these parties in New India is not even a point of discussion. Communist parties today are at the bottom of the food chain and are left with no survival opportunities. Extinction is imminent.

Regional satraps are what they are, satraps to national parties. The extinction of one leads to the other naturally. The current situation of UPA exemplifies this evolutionary trend. This coalition of losers is left with just 5 parties, with only DMK as a noteworthy partner.

Congress party, the primary host of almost all the regional parties in India in the last five decades, finds itself deserted by its foster children. Most of the regional parties are micro models of Congress party, they are mom & pop stores. While their original origins are through much proclaimed differentiation from the national entities, their post power equations are quite similar to their mother model dynastic politics.

The agenda of regional partisanship, protection of regional identity, development of the regional parties gets quickly diluted to their eternal quest to stay in power, no matter what. It leads to family control, nepotism, massive corruption, misgovernance and divisive appeasement politics. Regional parties which seemed to control the national governments for over two decades in the past have lost their strength, with their loss of regional credibility.

In 2014, Indian voters gave BJP and PM Narendra Modi a decisive new mandate with their changing priorities. They have removed any dependence on regional parties for delivering the governance agenda. As I see, this mandate will only get more decisive going forward to 2019.

This consistent voter pattern against regional satraps has been established in state elections across India, where the electorate chose BJP against very popular regional parties. Regional parties are fast losing their credibility. Its the rigidity built into their political model, which works against their basic survival in a rapidly transforming new political environment across India.

New India needs inclusive development, progressive policies, citizen-centric administration, transparent governance, corruption-free and accountable leadership. New India aspires for credibility, respect, results and global leadership. Congress and regional satraps are being oblivious to these rising standards for public office, growing aspirations over public leadership.

Unacceptable, petty and divisive politics for family control, survival politics for relevance, is being rejected across India. Darwinism is more relevant than ever in Indian politics. Those who adapt will survive, others will perish.

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Darwinism: Old politics will perish - The Hans India

If Republicans example of reforming health insurance is any indication of how they plan to run this country the next few years, were all in trouble. For several years during the much-hated Obama administration, Republican lawmakers whipped constituents back home into frenzied delight with their vows to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something more comprehensive and market-driven.

Yet from what weve seen the past few months, Republicans are far better at putting on a show for their base than crafting viable policy. Embracing the Ayn Rand brand of conservatism nothing more than social Darwinism that allows the vulnerable to perish as the price for others to flourish the Republican plan proposes gutting Medicaid as a safety net for poor and sick people and removing insurance restraints that keep premiums from skyrocketing for regular folks with preexisting conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

This hardly fits what President Trump promised health care for all. Scrapping Medicaid and turning it over to the states is sure no solution, given what weve seen from our state lawmakers. Their priority the past several months focused on the mythical problem of keeping rampaging trangenders out of public restrooms rather than preventing more deaths of innocent children in dysfunctional, underfunded Child Protective Services.

Trump offers wildly mixed signals for a non-politician. On Tuesday after botched Senate efforts, he said he would let Obamacare fail under its own weight and that Republicans would not own the consequences an astonishingly deceptive statement since, through all machinations, Republicans have rigorously excluded Democrats. Its pretty hard to blame Democrats when Republican infighting is the problem.

By Wednesday Trump had flip-flopped again and was threatening Republican senators whose constituents and governors back home express concern over what Republicans hammered out behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. One Republican senator who represents many poor whites who bought into Trumps vow to safeguard them said whats being discussed is not in the interest of her constituents and she did not come to Washington to hurt people.

So much for all that silly talk about making the deal. Making a deal from the perspective of bold leadership means forcing all parties to the table centrist Republicans, conservative Republicans and, yes, even Democrats and then painstakingly forging consensus. Thats clearly not happening. It also requires a familiarity with policy details. Trump has yet to demonstrate any such familiarity or even the mere willingness to learn.

Those who have health insurance and embrace social Darwinism may well sniff that government has no business being involved in health care. But when Republicans and Democrats passed Medicaid and Medicare in 1965, when they passed the Emergency Medical Treatment & Active Labor Act under President Reagan in 1986 and when some continue passing laws such as requirements that women contemplating abortions undergo sonograms first, government has clearly become involved in health care and, yes, owns much of the consequence.

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EDITORIAL: Republicans can't turn anger into viable health policy - Waco Tribune-Herald

Intellectual discovery is often a matter of rediscovery: revivinginsights that were available before but overlooked, forgotten, or neglected. Think of the European Renaissance with its rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy and other classical ideas.

In the context of arguments for intelligent design, historian Michael Flannery has pointed to the precedent for design thinking in Alfred Russel Wallaces break from Charles Darwin, after the two scientists had together revealed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Biologist Michael Denton draws in his books on a tradition represented by thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Harvard biological chemist Lawrence Henderson (1878-1942). And so on.

In his important forthcoming book, Purpose & Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It(HarperOne),State University of New York biologist J. Scott Turner recovers the thought of French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), another Darwin contemporary.

Dr. Turners book is a riveting instance of intellectual and scientific rediscovery, highlighting Bernards insight on the phenomenon of homeostasis, buried by the craze for materialism, what evolutionist Ernst Mayer called physics envy, which reduced life to mechanism and fatally misunderstood it in the process.Professor Turner writes:

The story of how Bernards fundamentally vitalist conception of homeostasis becametransformed into its modern anodyne, tame, and neutered form of mechanism a clockwork homeostasis, if you will illustrates the most pernicious feature of epistemic closure: its ever-increasing reliance on narrative, rather than evidence, to sustain it.

Note that Turner isnt a proponent of intelligent design theory, but of a different yet still profound alterative to shallow Darwinism. His book, delightfully written for the general reader, is fascinating evidence of the ferment driving the search for something to take the place of fast-failing evolutionary theory.

The book wont be released till September 12, so now is the time to pre-order. If you do, then we are offering two excellent free e-books to go with it and enhance your own intellectual discovery. They are Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by Dr. Denton, andMetamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Chrysalis, which I edited with contributions from Paul Nelson, Jonathan Witt, Ann Gauger, and more.

Look here for details about pre-ordering Purpose & Desire! The deal with the free e-books is of limited duration. Dont miss out on it!

Photo: Location ofClaude Bernards laboratory in Paris, 1847-1878, by Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Biologist J. Scott Turner's Rediscovery How Darwinism Fatally Overlooks What Life Is - Discovery Institute

The evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne,writes a blog entitled, Why Evolution is True.

One would think that by choosing that title, Coyneshould restrict his discussions to questions of science that touch on questions and explanations abouthow and why life changes over time.

But Coyneas many Darwinists dotakes the question beyond science, and extrapolates evolutionary theoryinto questions of morality, philosophy, and ethics.

And now, he is promoting the propriety of infanticide. From, Should One be Allowed to EuthanizeSeverely Deformed or Doomed Newborns?:

If you are allowed to abort a fetus that has a severe genetic defect, microcephaly, spina bifida, or so on, then why arent you able to euthanize that same fetus just after its born?

I see no substantive difference that would make the former act moral and the latter immoral.

After all, newborn babies arent aware of death, arent nearly as sentient as an older child or adult, and have no rational faculties to make judgments (and if theres severe mental disability, would never develop such faculties). It makes little sense to keep alive a suffering child who is doomed to die or suffer life in a vegetative or horribly painful state.

Coyne makes the boringly predictable claim that since we euthanize our sick pets, we should also kill seriously ill and disabled babies. He then explains why he thinks the reasons we resist that meme are wrong, and indeed, irrational.From his blog:

The reason we dont allow euthanasia of newborns is because humans are seen as special, and I think this comes from religionin particular, the view that humans, unlike animals, are endowed with a soul.

Its the same mindset that, in many places, wont allow abortion of fetuses that have severe deformities. When religion vanishes, as it will, so will much of the opposition to both adult and newborn euthanasia.

Well, no. As I have written repeatedly, human exceptionalism can include religious views, but it definitely does not require them. As Coynes advocacy proves, once we reject human exceptionalism, universal human rights becomes unsustainable, and we move toward the manufacture ofkillable and exploitablecastes of people, determined by the moral views of those with the power to decide.

Moreover, some of the most vociferous opponents of infanticide are disability rights activistswho are generally secular in outlook, liberal politically, and not pro-life on abortion. But they see the euthanasia and infanticide agendas as targeting people with disabilities. The advocacy of Coyne, Peter Singer (see below), and others of their materialistic ilkproves they are correct.

Besides, if allowable abortion is the lodestar, then any baby could be killed. At the very least, the killable categories of infants would include babies with Down syndrome, dwarfism, and even, cleft palateall reasons given forlate term abortion.

Adding heft to that argument, Coyne cites the advocacy ofSinger to validate his own position. Singerbelieves all babies are killable as so-called human non-persons, and moreover, he has infamously used Down babies and newborns with hemophilia as examples of acceptable infanticide subjects.

Coyneconcludes with the believe thatcontemporary times will be looked down upon as brutal for not allowing infanticide:

In the future well look back on our present society and say, How brutal not to have been allowed to do that.

Coynes odious advocacyis the logical outcome ofaccepting the following premises:

Many scientists bemoan the fact that so many people refuse to accept evolution as a fact. Without getting into that controversy, perhaps they would be better off ruing the fact that ever since Darwin published The Origin of Species,so many of the promoters of that view also couple it with anti-humanism and a moral philosophy that was judged a crime against humanity at Nuremberg.

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Does Darwinism Lead to Infanticide Acceptance? - National Review

Lets talk a bit about some of historys most infamous racists. You know, the animals like Alabamas Bull Connor in the 1960s, Virginias George Fitzhugh in the 1850s and Englands Charles Darwin, author of Origin of the Species.

What? Do I mean Charles Darwin, founder of what we know today as the theory of evolution? Yes, thats the one, though, I hasten to add that there are two important qualifiers to be considered in the following discussion.

First, as an evangelical Christian, I absolutely believe the Bibles creation account. I also know that time isnt the same for God and man, so maybe He used something akin to evolution in the eons before Adam arrived, though that raises a host of spiritual issues to which we might return here in the future.

For now, no qualifiers are needed for Connor or Fitzhugh. The former was Birminghams Commissioner of Public Safety when the civil rights movement was focusing the nations attention on the injustices of Southern segregation. He cruelly unleashed police dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators.

Fitzhugh was among the most prominent Antebellum defenders of Southern slavery. He argued that the free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the Negro because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave Sounds a bit like Karl Marx, no?

Heres what Darwin, who was an English contemporary of Fitzhugh, said:At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.

The second qualifier thus enters the conversation. Darwin had in mind Black Africans and Aboriginal Australians in his references to the savage races, but he wasnt simply offering a straightforward endorsement of racial genocide.

As John Wilkins, one of Darwins modern defenders,put it, at this time, it was common for Europeans (based on an older notion of a chain of being from lowest to highest) to think that Africans (negroes) were all of one subspecific form, and were less developed than Caucasians or Asians In short, Darwin is falling prey to the same error almost everyone else was . . .

In other words, a natural inferiority of Blacks to Whites was a commonplace assumption. No surprise then that Darwin subtitled his most famous book as The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

Thus, the great Christian politician and reformer William Wilberforce had won victory in 1807 in his campaign to abolish the African slave trade, but racism had by no means disappeared from among Darwins enlightened contemporaries in mid-19th century Great Britain.

What did other evolutionary pioneers believe about the races? Consider the words of Thomas Huxley, the Imperial College of London botanist known to the Victorian Age as Darwins Bulldog for his earnest advocacy of evolution.

No rational man cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man, said Huxley on the future prospects for Americas emancipated slaves. Huxley wasnt endorsing racism but his 1871 observation may tell us something about why the survival-of-the-fittest universe of Social Darwinism was right around the corner.

And thats the point here. Removing Gods purposeful creation of the Adam whose physical nature is constant throughout time leaves us with an uncreated, eternally changing evolving universe in which anything is possible and, more importantly, anything goes.

And what might be termed the Evolutionary Era of history that Darwin inaugurated 1859 to the present has seen mankinds worst racial and ethnic genocides, successive world wars, totalitarianisms, the Holocaust, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and the possibility, however remote, of nuclear incineration of the entire human race.

No wonder Dostoevsky wasnt kidding when he saidwithout God,everything is possible.

Which is why I like something else Huxley said: My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. I wonder if todays evolutionists are prepared to follow Huxleys example?

Mark Tapscott is executive editor and chief of The Daily Caller News Foundations Investigative Group. Follow Mark on Twitter.

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Here's Why We Can't Just Ignore The Racism In The Dawn Of Evolutionary Theory - The Daily Caller

July 11 2017

"Proverbs is probably the most Republican book of the entire Bible."

I had to laugh when I read the above quote, in an article in Politico by Yale Hebrew Bible professor Joel S. Baden.

Baden was pointing to Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio's propensity for tweeting quotations from the biblical book of aphorisms traditionally attributed to King Solomon. Apparently Rubio tweeted on June 26: "As dogs return to their vomit, so fools repeat their folly. Proverbs 26:11. I don't know exactly what Rubio was referring to: Maybe that Trump vs. CNN wrestling video that CNN just can't stop making itself the butt of jokes over.

Plus, Baden writes:

Just this past July 5, Rubio tweeted, They will die from lack of discipline, lost because of their great folly. Proverbs 5:23. Of course, its not all diligence and righteousnessin Proverbs, faith in God, too, will keep you away from things like poverty and failure. On June 16, Rubio tweeted, Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.

What was Rubio talking about this time? Repealing Obamacare?

At any rate, Baden opines:

Some of the statements in Proverbs look strikingly similar to those made by modern-day conservative policymakers. Take, for example, Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who, arguing that poorer people should pay more for health care, recently said, Those people who lead good lives, theyre healthy. Its not quite a direct quote from Proverbs, but its not too far from these: The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry (Proverbs10:3) and A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich (Proverbs 10:4).

According to Baden, the Book of Proverbs presents a "harsh, almost social Darwinist worldview"--which obviously fits every Republican you've ever met to a T.

This made me wonder: If Proverbs is the most Republican book in the Bible, what's the most Democratic book? I came up with several candidates:

1. The Book of Genesis. Remember this passage (Genesis 27:41), when Esau erupts in rage because his father, Isaac, has given his planned inheritance to his younger brother, Jacob? And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob."

Sounds f like the way liberal media pundits' heads exploded on the night of Nov. 8 when Donad Trump defeated their anointed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (Of course we know they don't want to literally slay Trump, but they sure are loving on that Julius Caesar prduction in Central Park.)

2. The Book of Ruth. Here's a passage (Ruth 2:1-3) that should warm Dem hearts: 'And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers."

Going after the rich to grab what you can via tax hikes.

3. The First Book of Samuel: "Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth" (1 Samuel 17:49.

Again, what the Dems would like to do to Trump (metaphorically, of course).

4. The Acts of the Apostles. "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need (Acts 2:44-45).

Socialism! Need I say more?

5. The Book of Revelation. "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 17:3)

I think the Bible is talking about Sarah Palin here.

So see? If the Book of Proverbs is the most Republican book in the Bible, all you have to do is vote for one of the above, Democrats, and you'll have your own book!

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Pundit Calls Proverbs the "Most Republican Book in the Bible" Because It Preaches "Social Darwinism" - Independent Women's Forum...

In his important new book, coming out on September 12 from HarperOne, State University of New York biologist J. Scott Turner tells the story about the Christmas pony. As a gift for a child who wants a pony, a poor family could afford only a pile of horse manure. Traipsing downstairs on Christmas morning to behold this well-intentioned mess, the child delightedly squealed and clapped.

Her parents asked her why. She answered, Because I know theres a pony in there somewhere.

In evaluating the coherence of Darwinian theory, Dr. Turner finds many of his fellow biologists in much the same mood. Squealing and clapping, they know theres a coherent theory in there somewhere.

His book, Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, underlines that Turner is not an anti-Darwinist. On the contrary, he explains that I want deeply for it meaning the modern theory of Darwinian evolution to make sense. The reasons for his disillusion, which he outlines in this fascinating contribution to the evolution debate, turn upon long-ignored problems with the theory, and counterevidence from the mysterious nature of life itself.

It is still a couple of months too early for reviews of Purpose and Desire, but Kirkus welcomes it with a pre-publication starred review as an ingenious mixture of science and philosophy that points out major defects in Darwinism and then delivers heterodox but provocative solutionsa highly thought-provoking book.

Turner writes:

For the longest time, weve been able to fudge these problems, carried along on the faith that, to paraphrase the punch line of an old joke, there had to be a pony in there somewhere. But the dread possibility is beginning to rear its head; what if the pony isnt there?

The problem for modern Darwinism is, I argue, that we lack a coherent theory of the core Darwinian concept of adaptation.

It all unravels from there, thanks to unexpected insights from Biologys Second Law homeostasis and the great 19th-century French physiologist Claude Bernard, writing just six years after Darwins Origin of Species. After some delay, the crisis for the evolutionary biologist is at hand.

Without giving away any more punch lines, I recommend this: Pre-order Purpose and Desire now, because if you do so, for a limited time only, youll also get two free e-books to go along with it. The free e-books are Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by biologist Michael Denton, andMetamorphosis, which I edited as a companion to the Illustra Media documentary. Find the details here. (Note: When we first pointed out this offer, the web page wasnt working correctly. Its now fixed.)

Well. Turners book is a great read, and while hes not a proponent of ID, he turns a fresh new page for the case for design in nature. Promise: Well have more to say about his argument in due time.

Photo credit: Azaliya (Elya Vatel) stock.adobe.com.

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Biologist Laments, I Want Deeply for [Darwinism] to Make Sense - Discovery Institute

While its commonplace for snooty, liberal academics to blame men for every misery to betide humanity, boffins at Yale have taken this sexist blame-game to absurd new heights.

They are claiming that modern men are too stupid or feel threatened by their success to date 30-something selfish career women, who are increasingly having to freeze their eggs until they meet men they deem worthy of siring their children.

That is the conclusion of a Yale study that interviewed 150 women at eight IVF clinics in America and Israel and experts admit the trend is identical in the UK.

With 81% having a college degree, in more than 90% of cases, these women were buying extra time because they were experiencing a dearth of educated men. Academics blamed this not on selfish career women but instead sweeping social changes and, of course, men.

The tantalisingly-named Marcia Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, said, There is a major gap they are literally missing men. In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women.

Using all her mighty intellect, Prof Inhorn proffered, Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated.

At this point, most men will probably be face-palming to the point of whiplash, slugging scotch directly from the bottle or changing their Tinder settings to exclude late-30s careerists.

But the professor is onto something, only shes looking down the wrong end of the telescope. So, allow me to mansplain.

On the manosphere, hypergamy the concept that women will only cynically marry up in terms of status and wealth is a recurrent bone of contention.

Yet the comments under the Telegraph piece show this cynicism is bleeding hard into the mainstream.

Having forlornly waited decades for Mr Right, haunted by the tick-tock of their biological clocks, these women instead now want a Mr Right Now. Whos basically a walking sperm donor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many men dont want to play that game especially those ultra-desirable, highly-educated, alpha males these women covet.

What the Yale team have spectacularly failed to grasp is that these men arent intimidated by these careerists. Increasingly, they just dont want them. But why not?

Firstly, they are growing wary of women who have decided Im ready! What man wants to go straight from Tinder to the kids section of IKEA without a few years fun first? Its sensible, risk avoidance: making sure shes mother material. Only she doesnt want to wait, cos fertility. So, men avoid them.

Were all increasingly making more informed choices later in life so its a bit rich to claim its a bad thing when men do it. You cant have it both ways, ladies.

Instead, these men are increasingly dating younger women, not because theyre shallow sexists, but because they dont want to have children yet. Again, their body, their choice, doubly so when their reproductive clocks can be ticking strong as they turn into grandfather clocks (see: Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, etc)

The report next blames terrifying demographic shifts and sweeping social changes, and here theyre onto something.

With unexpected irony, the gender education gap girls and women now outperform boys and men at every level of education from kindergarten to college is suddenly a problem for women, too.

Not because these entitled careerists suddenly care that, increasingly, boys are destined for a life of servitude, performing the low-paid, dangerous jobs nobody else wants.

But because they cant get laid by a graduate.

Its almost funny.

This problem isnt going away; in fact, its certain to grow. In the UK, there are now 60,000 more women at university than men. Men are a minority on 2/3 campuses. This gender education gap is even worse in America.

A British girl born in 2017 is 75% more likely to attend University. In the UK, women in their 20s now out-earn men.

The gender pay gap has now totally flipped, until childbirth, which is increasingly unlikely for female high-fliers. One in five women in the UK is now childless by the end of their fertile life compared to one in 10 a generation before.

For the first time in human history, reproductive destiny is slipping from womens grasp, and that is due to their own lifestyle choices.

Here, finally Prof Inhorn lays some blame with feminism, saying, As a feminist I think its great that women are doing so well but I think there has been a cost, adding many had been left in sadness and isolation.

Is feminisms greatest victory equality in the workplace starting to look like a bauble if the kickback is the prospect of loneliness and childlessness?

Yales careerists are effectively removing themselves from the gene pool. Only, Darwinism trumps feminism. For we are all mere genetics. DNA doesnt care about equality. It cares only about survival.

Tonight, the women of the have-it-all generation are being kept awake by the grim realisation that their genetics might not even be a part of the next generation.

Is this the cruellest payback of all in the great equality experiment?

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Will Darwinism Kill Feminism? - Heat Street

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Patricia Gowaty were pioneers. Yet their work is still contentiousand their contribution all too often ignored by Angela Saini / July 6, 2017 / Leave a comment

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (left) and Patricia Gowaty (right) corrected myths about female animals. Photo: courtesy of the author/Hrdy/Gowaty

When I set out to write a book on what science tells us about womena topic as controversial as it is vastthere was one person I knew I had to meet. So I found myself on the sun-drenched road to Winters, a town in Californias western Sacramento Valley. Here, a picturesque walnut farm is home to one of the most incredible women in science, a thinker whose work one researcher told me reduced her to tears. Anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, now professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, can reasonably be credited with transforming the way biologists think about females.

Everything I am interested in, initially, its personal, she told me as we parked ourselves in deep couches outside her study. Now in her seventies, Hrdy came from a conservative American family which made its money from oil. I grew up in South Texas, a deeply patriarchal, deeply racist part of the world. The juxtaposition between this and her current liberal Californian life could not be starker. But its also no accident.

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Bluebirds, babies, and orgasms: the women scientists who fought Darwinism's sexist myths - Prospect

Yesterday on NPRs Morning Edition, the historian Jon Meacham was on to talk about the political moment. Meacham had some interesting things to say. But in the course of the conversation he said this:

You know, Woodrow Wilson once said one of the tensions in the United States would be, is the Constitution going to end up being Darwin or Newton? And its really well put. Right now, its feeling more Darwinian. Trump embodies an idea or a reality that strength is what matters. Its a struggle for the survival of the fittest in a bizarre, media-driven environment.

Readers may surmise that I dont have much of a problem with this criticism of the current president. But as a dues-paying member of Woodrow Wilson Haters International, I really cant let this stand.

Woodrow Wilson did not describe this Darwin versus Newton thing as a tension. Rather, he was emphatic that the Constitution was Darwinian and that anyone who thought it was Newtonian was a boob.

Wilson said:

The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of checks and balances. The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live.

And:

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop.

Meachams pejorative use of Darwinian here is very different from what Wilson had in mind. Meacham is conjuring the survival-of-the-fittest view of Darwin. What Wilson had in mind was almost the complete opposite. Wilson associated Darwinism with all social progress. He believed that all of government, and society, should harmonize and work together as one unit or body politic, to evolve into one organic entity, with no internal division. Thats what he meant by no living thing can have its organs offset against each other.

The Newtonian view, (which is really the Founders view, somewhat by way of Locke and Montesquieu) holds that conflict between different branches of government, and between the people and their leaders, are good and healthy and protective of liberty.

So, in a sense one could say Trump is Darwinian insofar as he wants everybody else to get with his program. The press should shut up and fall in line, the Democrats should stop their obstruction, the Senate should get rid of the legislative filibuster, and the whole country should unite around him. But thats not how Meacham meant it. And, to be fair to Trump, thats largely how Barack Obama saw things too. Indeed, politicians almost always think the country should be unified around them.

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Woodrow Wilson & Donald Trump's Darwinian vs. Newtonian ... - National Review

On Independence Day, its appropriate to review the sources of our rights as citizens. There is one source that is more basic than any other, yet that receives less than the attention it deserves. I refer to the idea that there is an intelligent creator who can be known by reason from nature, a key tenet underlying the Declaration of Independence as well as, curiously, the modern theory of intelligent design.

The birth of our republic was announced in the Declaration through the pen of Thomas Jefferson. He and the other Founders based their vision on a belief in an intrinsic human dignity, bestowed by virtue of our having been made according to the design and in the image of a purposeful creator.

As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. If we had received our rights only from the government, then the government could justifiably take them away.

Jefferson himself thought that there was scientific evidence for design in nature. In 1823, he insisted so in a letter to John Adams:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.

Contemplating everything from the heavenly bodies down to the creaturely bodies of men and animals, he argued:

It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.

With such thoughts in mind, he wrote the Declaration, asserting the inalienable rights of human beings derived from the Laws of Nature and of Natures God.

Is Jeffersons belief still credible in light of current science? The decades following Darwins publication of Origin of Species saw the rise of social Darwinism and eugenics, which suggested that the Jeffersonian principle of intrinsic dignity had been overturned.

Taken to heart, Darwins view of man does undermine the vision of the Founders. As evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson explained, Darwinism denies evidence of design and shows instead that man is the product of a purposeless process that did not have him mind. Fortunately, discoveries in modern biology have challenged this perspective and vindicated Jeffersons thinking.

Since 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, biologists have increasingly come to recognize the importance of information to living cells. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code. As Bill Gates has noted, DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software weve ever created.

No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on earth. Yet we know from repeated experience the basis of all scientific reasoning that information invariably arises from minds rather than from material processes.

Software programs come from programmers. Information whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in radio signals always comes from a designing intelligence. So the discovery of digital code in DNA points decisively back to an intelligent cause as the ultimate source of the information in living cells.

The growing evidence of design in life has stunning and gratifying implications for our understanding of Americas political history and for our countrys future. On the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the evidence for Natures God, and thus for the reality of our rights, is stronger than ever.

Photo credit: Jefferson Memorial romanslavik.com stock.adobe.com.

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We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident - Discovery Institute

The Financial Conduct Authority concluded its two-year investigation into the U.K. asset management industry by ordering investment firms to provide customers with an "all-in fee." It's a welcome attempt to eliminate the hidden costs that undermine people's efforts to save for their old age. Far more effective than an increase in regulation, however, is the financial Darwinism already wreaking change on the industry.

The FCA move, announced Wednesday, obliges fund managers to tell investors how much they charge for managing assets, as well as how much is paid to intermediaries and an estimate of transaction costs. While knowing what the fees are is clearly important, achieving lower fees is even more essential to delivering better returns that will let pensioners retire comfortably.

British fund managers oversee almost 7 trillion pounds ($9 trillion) of assets, including more than 1 trillion pounds for U.K. retail investors and about 3 trillion pounds for institutional investors including pension funds. Almost three-quarters of the money is invested in active funds, which charge an average fee of 0.9 percent of assets under management, compared with just 0.15 percent levied on passive funds.

As things stand, customers aren't getting value for money from active funds, according to the FCA. "There is no clear relationship between charges and the gross performance of retail active funds in the U.K.," it said. "There is some evidence of a negative relationship between net returns and charges. This suggests that when choosing between active funds, investors paying higher prices for funds, on average, achieve worse performance."

The FCA calculates that, after fees, a typical low-cost passive fund would deliver almost 25 percent more in returns than an active fund over a 20-year investment horizon, assuming it matched the performance of the benchmark U.K. FTSE All-Share index. Once transaction costs are included, that outperformance of passive versus active investment soars to almost 45 percent.

Yet the growth of passive funds is already driving fees down across the industry -- and there's more to come. A survey published this week by State Street Corp. showed the vast majority of industry players expect more downward pressure on fees in coming years.

Under Pressure

Looking ahead to the next five years, to what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement that fee compression in the asset management industry will intensify?

Source: State Street industry survey of more than 200 asset managers, more than half of which manage more than $10 billion

As a result, 76 percent of the funds surveyed anticipate more consolidation in the industry, as my Bloomberg News colleague Sarah Jones reported earlier this week. Mergers and acquisitions are seen as an "essential strategy" for survival, especially for smaller managers, the State Street survey showed.

Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, for example, is merging with Standard Life Plc to create the U.K.'s biggest active fund manager. Aberdeen suffered about $85 billion of net outflows in the past two years, and it has seen a drop in the fees it can charge.

Getting Cheaper

Aberdeen's blended average management fee

Source: Company filings

In its interim report in November, the FCA highlighted that asset managers "have consistently earned substantial profits" in recent years, with an average profit margin of about 36 percent since the start of the decade. Little wonder, then, that U.K. fund management firms have outperformed the broader stock market since the financial crisis.

Fund Managers Outperform

Source: Bloomberg

Those days of outperformance may be drawing to a close, and not just because of increased regulatory scrutiny. The rise of cheap exchange-traded funds continues apace; active funds will have to fight harder for market share, by lowering fees as well as proving to investors that they really can outperform their benchmarks on a consistent basis. Darwinism, not tighter rules, will produce a healthier asset management industry.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.net

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Darwinism Will Fix the Investment Industry - Bloomberg