Theology redux, evolutionist style

Not a long post today, I just had to mention this article from NPR on whether we're really computer programs. Lookout John Calvin, here come the atheists on the predestination bandwagon. Except it isn't God who programmed us, it's a bored green nerd with a lot of terrabytes and time on his hands ... or tentacles.

The evolved male

Closely related to anthropomorphizing blind chance, is the tendency to laud it, much as theists laud their creator. A livescience.com story discusses the findings of a study of the Y chromosome of eight European and eight African males, presented Nov. 9 at the American Society of Human Genetics' annual meeting. The study disputes the notion that the Y chromosome is mostly junk. This finding is in line with many other recent findings, that what once was thought to be junk DNA isn't really junk at all.
The laudatory word is found in the headline. "The Y chromosome is an 'evolutionary marvel.'"  A "marvel" is defined by Mr. Webster as "one that causes wonder or astonishment <her talent is a marvel to behold>"
You'll note that the example Mr. Webster uses is the talent of a(n ostensibly intelligent) woman. The word "marvel" does not appear in the report, but the headline is put in quotes so we are left to believe that one of the geneticists did indeed refer to the Y chromosome as an "evolutionary marvel." Aren't undirected mistakes of nature marvelous?
Among the actions evolution is supposed to have taken toward the Y chromosome: it "weeded out a lot of variation"; "cull(ed) harmful gene changes"; and "reduced .. highly repetitive strings of letters." I generally thing of intelligent beings weeding, culling and reducing. I've never seen a mindless, uncreated force do so.

Again, I digress

This blog is supposed to be about the maddening frequency of science types saying that evolution created anything.
First of all, let me point out the irony of a man named Noe trying to explain away the existence of all life on earth.
But this NPR story on the author and "philosopher" (are there any mis-sophists out there?) Alva Noe must be commented on.
It starts off with a stunning admission. "Science has produced no standard account of the origins of life."
I don't know about you, but I was fed standard  primordial soup fare in my high school biology class, and I'm sure that passed as a "standard account" for any malleable mind who desired an acceptable explanation for the Godless advent of life on earth. But Noe admits that quasi-explanation doesn't cut it.
The story goes on to admit that there is no explanation for consciousness, which to me is less of a problem than the emergence of life. I guess one can argue that life is the inevitable consequence of the right combination of dendrites. (That is pretty much that Kantian argument cited at the end of the story. But the story implies that the same argument applies to the life question in the same way it applies to the consciousness question, but it clearly does not. The life question is a question of science. We see machines called cells on earth and have thus far seen them nowhere else. How did they come about? Life is not a "cognitive illusion.")
How those nerve cells came about in the first place is the real conundrum.
The core of the story is a call to arms by Thomas Nagel in his book Mind and the Cosmos. Nagel argues that we need a new way of thinking, outside of the traditional scientific model, that can explain the conundrums of life and consciousness. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, the answer is shockingly simple for the vast majority of mankind who have ever lived, looked around and said, "Hey, someone must have put us here."
Alas, that is not a good enough answer for the science types.
In explanation of the reticence of philosophers to search for this "new" non-scientific solution to life and consciousness, this amazing statement appears: "we don't want philosophers washing science's dirty laundry in public in a way that runs the risk of allowing anti-naturalistic religious dogmatism to get a foothold." (Italics his)
So here's what Noe is saying. "Science hasn't come up with a good explanation of the existence of life and consciousness. So we have to sit around and guess up a new solution. But if we do that, those pesky religionists will come around with their 3.5 millienia old solution that a Higher Power designed us. Phooey on them."
I wonder if the irreligious, philosophizing, science-types they will call their invented solution for the existence of life and consciousness the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Time for a digression, already

When you see the word may in a headline, do not willingly suspend disbelief. May is a wiggle-word for a story that doesn't say anything conclusively, but just opens a possibility. So now we have a small papyrus, tentatively dated to the fourth century with a partial sentence that reads "“Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”

We don't know, can't know who wrote it or under what circumstances. But we'll all have to deal with a bunch of ignoramuses who just know it's been proven that Jesus was married. They'll probably make a History Channel marathon out of this one.

And our first anthropomorphism ...

Our first anthropomorphism is from our friends at NPR.

We love NPR. It is radio for the 115-125 IQ. It is radio that doesn't involve Christina Aguilera or anyone who has been on "American Idol." And it is radio for people who may be "people of faith" but would never deign to be so small-minded as to be orthodox in any religion or or eschew something as universally avowed by people with 135+ IQs as the theory of evolution or believe something as infantile as that we all come from Adam and Eve.
So we are especially exasperated when stories on NPR seem to say that evolution has an intelligent force behind it.
So we were very disappointed on Sept. 11, 2012, to find this NPR story about the Pollia condensata, a plant with a berry that has been found to be the most reflective of any natural substance yet known. It reflects about 30 percent of the light that strikes it, but wait, there's more. The berry itself has no pigment, but it reflects light in such a way that the majority, but not all, of reflected light is in the blue range, giving it an intense blue color, but that which is outside the blue range makes its glow slightly pixilated. In the midst of this wonderment, come this gem.

Of course, you're wondering why a plant would go to all this effort. Well, it needs birds to take the fruit and spread its seeds.

So, not only does this mindless (I assume) plant have needs, it gives good effort. Kind of makes you wonder how long it took to coil all it's color-reflecting cells when it realized it not only had an inedible fruit, but also a blase color.