Alfred Russel Wallace’s Bicentennial Year: A Cause for Celebration and for Sadness

Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrew Berry, Arthur Conan Doyle, bicentennial, Charles Smith, Chemistry, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, cosmology, Darwinism (book), Elusive Victorian, Evolution, George Beccaloni, Heretic in Darwin’s Court, In Darwin’s Shadow, intelligent cause, Intelligent Design, intelligent evolution, James T. Costa, Lord Rayleigh, Man’s Place in the Universe, Martin Fichman, Michael Shermer, Nature's Prophet, Origin of Species, Peter Raby, Radical by Nature, Revolt of Democracy, Richard Dawkins, Ross A. Slotten, Social Environment and Moral Progress, spiritualism, that biology, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Wonderful Century, The World of Life, Tropical Nature, Usk, Wales, William Crookes, William Fletcher Barrett, William James, William Paley
All the hyperbole shows the fix is in — Wallace has been made safe for scientism and Darwinian reductionism. The academy can breathe easy. Source
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The Problem of Pain: Julian Huxley, Magnus Carlsen, and the Meaning of Life

Atheism, atheists, Charles Darwin, chess, chessboard, Evolution, Faith & Science, fossils, Intelligent Design, Julian Huxley, Lex Fridman, Magnus Carlsen, Meaning, meaning of life, meaninglessness, Norway, origin of life, Origin of Species, pain, paleontologists, religion, Thomas Henry Huxley, University of Chicago
In a conversation with Lex Fridman, Magnus Carlsen betrays no sense of empathy for how his view that life is an accident might negatively impact others. Source
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Old Wine in New Bottles: How Darwin Recruited Malthus to Fortify a Failed Idea from Antiquity

abiogenesis, Alphonse de Candolle, Aristotle, atheists, atomism, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, complexification, David Hume, Edward Aveling, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Friedrich Engels, Georges Cuvier, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greece, Homo sapiens, Intelligent Design, Karl Marx, Law of Correlation, Lucretius, Matthew Arnold, Middle Ages, natural selection, Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, Plato, Poor Law, Rome, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Malthus, transhumanism, Unmoved Mover, Victorian England, William Paley
It was undoubtedly a tremendous philosophical coup for Darwin whose knowledge of formal philosophy was limited. Source
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William Wordsworth’s Posthumous Challenge to Darwinian Nihilism

"survival of the fittest", Alvar Ellegard, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Christianity, Culture & Ethics, Ebenezer Scrooge, evolutionary processes, Faith & Science, Higher Criticism, logic, nature, nihilism, Origin of Species, philosophy, poetry, Robert Ryan, Samuel Butler, spirituality, Thomas Malthus, Victorian England, William Wordsworth
Paradoxically, Wordsworth's theology may have formed a more effective counterforce to Darwin's ideas than Biblical orthodoxy itself. Source
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Darwin and the British Secularist Tradition

Adrian Desmond, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anglicanism, Baron d’Holbach, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Crisis of Doubt, Culture, Dover Beach, Edward Aveling, Erasmus Darwin, Faith & Science, In Memoriam, James Moore, John Henry Gordon, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Leslie Stephen, Matthew Arnold, Origin of Species, Oxbridge, Robert Chambers, Secularism, The Oracle of Reason, The Rights of Man, Timothy Larsen, Tom Paine, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Victorian England
The arresting historical vignette of Darwin’s fraught meeting with Bradlaugh and Aveling at his country retreat would doubtless make for a good TV docudrama. Source
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Evolution With and Without Multiple Simultaneous Changes

Arthur Hunt, bacteria, BIO-Complexity, biological adaptations, chloroquine resistance, Darwinian gradualism, Darwinian processes, Darwinism, Douglas Axe, enzymes, Evolution, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, Guide to Reading Jason Rosenhouse (series), hypercube, Intelligent Design, James Shapiro, Jason Rosenhouse, Kenneth Miller, Leo Kadanoff, Michael Behe, Nature (journal), Origin of Species, Plasmodium, Plasmodium falciparum, probabilities, The Edge of Evolution, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism, The Third Way, University of Chicago
Darwinism is committed to evolution happening gradually, one step at a time, by single mutational changes. Source
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Charles Darwin’s “Intelligent Design”

Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Bridgewater Treatises, British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, British Quarterly Review, Charles Darwin, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, London Review, M. J. Berkeley, natural history, natural selection, natural theology, orchids, Origin of Species, R. Vaughn, Richard Dawkins, Saturday Review
"To those whose delight it is to dwell upon the manifold instances of intelligent design which everywhere surround us, this book will be a rich storehouse." Source
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