Celebrate Your Inner Mammal! - New Evidence and a Comment on American Fundamentalist Politics



Fossil Redefines Mammal History
Mammals' Large Brains Evolved for Smell
Dinosaur Demise Allowed Mammals to "Go Nuts"

The relationship between humans and other animals is too often ignored or downplayed.  Many focus on our species' accomplishments in art, music, literature, philosophy, and architecture and conclude that such feats are far beyond the capability of nonhuman animals.  Therefore, they say, these abilities make us very different from other animals - a difference of kind rather than degree.

Creationists, particularly those who follow the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, likewise claim we are very special and therefore must be of supernatural origins.  Contemporary American politicians such as Texas governor Rick Perry bolster their fundamentalist followers' supernatural beliefs by expressing the view that evolution is "only a theory with many gaps" and that "God put us here."  (See "Rick Perry, Evangelicals and Evolution As a 'Theory's That's Out There'." See also "Republicans Against Science." by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Opinion Pages, August 28, 2011.)

What does Perry know about evolution, the foundation of biological science, and what convinces him that God put us here?  A. Apparently little and B. Faith in the two thousand-year-old beliefs of a Bronze Age, Middle Eastern sheep-herding tribe.



Either Perry is profoundly ignorant about science and has special knowledge of our origins from God, or he is knowledgeable about science, including the evolutionary history of our planet, and is nevertheless deceitfully pandering for votes among Christian fundamentalists.  More worrisome, maybe he really believes evolution to be unproven and that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing supernatural being (akin to a human-like male) who created all and is watching over us on this very, very tiny speck of matter we call Earth.  I am shocked that we would for an instant tolerate such a man asking the American people to allow him to occupy the most powerful office on Earth, and fear that we just might vote him in.

Scientists and scientific free-thinkers are often criticized as being arrogant for their evidence-based extrapolated postulate of the Big Bang origin of the Universe, and their evidence-based acceptance of the emergence and evolution of Life on Earth.  The truth is such thinkers go to great lengths to acknowledge the limits of their provisional knowledge.  Likewise, they almost never assume expertise in areas outside their evidence-based knowledge.  Skepticism and agnosticism are among their virtues.  Perry, in commenting on something he obviously knows very little about (evolution) and his refusal to acknowledge that he really has no way of knowing for certain if in fact God placed us here on earth, proves himself and his ilk to be those who are arrogant in these matters.

Scientific secularists, on the other hand look at human physical and behavioral characteristics and see great similarities between us and other living organisms on Earth, the mammals being the group with which we have the most in common.  These characteristics include: cellular makeup, tissues and organs, bilateral anatomical symmetry, four-limb body structure, homeothermy, body hair, nervous and skeletal systems, cardio-vascular blood system, the five senses, respiration, movement, and sexual reproduction via live birth by means a uterus and placenta, to mention only a few of the most basic traits.  There are many more characteristics we have in common with other mammals, including genetic material, chemical composition and physiological functioning.

Global Cultural Tectonics

Our use of language, symbols, beliefs and values is not changing.  What is changing is the scale and speed at which certain values and beliefs - democracy, equality, justice - are finding adherents in nations and societies that otherwise have little in common.  I have also included related links in this list.  See below.

We are "grinding" the cultural "plates" of Humankind - the values and beliefs within politics, economics, philosophy, etc. - against each other along ancient fault lines, with greater and greater intensity.

This is not a revisitation of early 20th century superorganic (mostly American anthropological) approaches to "culture."  Rather, it is a consideration of how certain ideas and values have found common ground and traction globally, how they are transforming societies, and how they are underscoring the emergence of a new world order that transcends nationality, politics and economics.  I do not believe that cultures have a life of their own.  However, current world events do provide examples of how "culture," especially beliefs and values about democracy, equality, freedom, wealth distribution, and humanism, are motivating individuals and groups to lash out at and, I think, demand a transformation in the structures and functions of the respective societies they live in.  More broadly yet equally importantly, these actions are furthering the ongoing emergence of a new global worldview, morality and civilization.

This clash between beliefs and values is exposing patterns of extreme and widespread discontent, especially among the world's young and poor, all focusing on the same issues - inequality, hopelessness, inhumanity. An indicator of the seriousness and the depth of this frustration is that it is more and more often being expressed violently throughout the world.

In 1919, Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, a non-theist, speculated that "The Second Coming" was at hand. He wrote not of Jesus's return rather asked "what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" Elsewhere he explained the new impending 2000 year cycle as follows: "All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating heterogeneous civilisation belongs to the outward gyre (of history) and prepares not the continuance of itself but the revelation as in a lightning flash ... of the civilisation that must slowly take its place."

The Driving Forces Of Human Evolution - A Reading List

The following is a selection of readings on the key events and circumstances that have influenced the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens.  It is an incomplete and non-comprehensive list.  However, it nevertheless covers many of the topics having to do with the emergence of the human lineage from mammalian primate origins, and that distinguish the evolutionary history of our species in terms of our social and cultural abilities and material and technological achievements.  I will be adding to it from time to time and drawing from it while writing my book From the Unknown Into Uncertainty:  The Origin, Evolution and Future of Humankind.  I hope you find the readings useful and I welcome any comments you may have on them.

• Earliest Porotic Hyperostosis in 1.5 Million-Year-Old Hominin, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, PLoS ONE 7(10), October 3, 2012
• Anthropologist Finds Evidence of Hominin Eating Meat 1.5 Million Years Ago: Eating Meat May Have "Made Us Human," ScienceDaily, October 3, 2012
• Early Humans Began Eating Meat Earlier Than Thought, ScienceDaily, October 3, 2012
• Subtle Shifts, Not Major Sweeps, Drove Human Evolution
• Adaptation Plays Significant Role In Human Evolution
• Evolution Rewritten, Again And Again
• Global Warming Could Be Reversing A Trend That Led To Bigger Human Brains
• The Descent of Man? (Are we still evolving?)
• New Views of How Humans Moved Away From Apes
• The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture by Evelyn Fox Keller, reviewed by Richard C. Lewontin, The New York Review of Books, May 26, 2011
• Teeth of Human Ancestors Hold Clues to Their Family Life by Nicolas Wade, The New York Times, SCIENCE, June 1, 2011
• Cutting Edge Training Developed the Human Brain 80,000 Years Ago, ScienceDaily, Science News, June 22, 2011
• Stone Age Humans Needed More Brain Power to Make Big Leap in Tool Design, ScienceDaily, Science News, November 4, 2010
• Sediba Hominid Skull Hints At Later Brain Evolution, ScienceDaily, September 8, 2011
• Human Brain Evolution, New Insight Through X-rays: Experiment Reveals Brain Shape of an Early Human Ancestor, ScienceDaily, September 9, 2011
• Brain Images Show Similarities and Differences In Thoughts of Chimps and Humans, ScienceDaily, October 16, 2007
• Language Feature Unique to Human Brain Identified, ScienceDaily, March 24, 2008
• Chimps May Have a "Language-Ready" Brain, ScienceDaily, February 29, 2008
• Interaction is Critical for the Evolution of the Language, ScienceDaily, July 5, 2011
• High Population Densities Trigger Cultural Explosions, ScienceDaily, Science News, June 5, 2009
• Modern Humans Emerged Far Earlier Than Previously Thought, Fossils From China Suggest, ScienceDaily, Science News, October 28, 2010
• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama (2011) reviewed by Adam Kirsch, City Journal, Spring 2011, Vol. 21, No. 2
• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukyyama (2011)
• The Believing Brain:  From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Consruct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths by Michael Shermer reviewed by Ronald Bailey, The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2011
• 6 Million Years of Savannah, PhysOrg, August 3, 2011.  See also Science Daily report on same research.
• Charting Brain Growth in Humans and Chimps, The New York Times, Science, August 12, 2011
• Team Claims It Has Found Oldest Fossils, The New York Times, Environment, August 21, 2011
• Born, and Evolved, to Run, The New York Times, Science, August 22, 2011
• The Evolution of the Human Head by Daniel E. Lieberman (2011)
• Earliest Signs of Advanced Tools Found, The New York Times, Science, August 31, 2011
• Exciting Stone Tool Find in Kenya, BBC, September 1, 2011
• Evolution and Risky Decisions by Clark Barrett and Laurence Fiddick, Trends in the Cognitive Sciences, 1999
• What Defines a Meme?, Smithsonian.com, May 2011
• Female Orgasm Remains an Evolutionary Mystery, Wired Science, September 6, 2011
• Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans, Live Science, February 22, 2011
• 8 Human-Like Behaviors of Primates, Live Science, July 29, 2011
• How Many Leaves on the Tree of Life?, The New York Times, Opinion Pages, September 5, 2011
• How Many Species? A Study Says 8.7 Million Species, but It's Tricky, The New York Times, Science, August 23, 2011:
• "The Sugary Secret of Self-Control" by Steven Pinker, a review of the book Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney (2011)
• Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead by Paul Raskin, et al., Stockholm Environment Insitute - Global Scenario Group, 2002
• The Century Ahead: Searching for Sustainability by Paul D. Raskin, et al., Sustainability, August 20, 2010
• Evolution of Narcissism:  Why We're Overconfident and Why It Works by Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic, September 14, 2011
• How Life Arose on Earth, and How a Singularity Might Bring It Down by George Musser, Scientific American, September 23, 2011
• "The Mystic Chords of Violence's Memory" by Michael Shermer, eSkeptic, a review of The Better Angels of Our Nature:  Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (2011), September 27, 2011
• "Twilight of Violence, an Interview with Steven Pinker" by Sam Harris, The Blog, regarding The Better Angels of Our Nature:  Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (2011), October 3, 2011
• "Is Violence History?" by Peter Singer, The New York Times, Sunday Book Review, October 6, 2011, a review of The Better Angels of Our Nature:  Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (2011)
• "The Origins of Religion, Beginning with the Big Bang" by Alan Wolfe, The New York Times, September 30, 2011, a review of the book Religion in Evolution:  From the Neolithic to the Axial Age by Robert N. Bellah (2011)
• "Did Human Pregnancy Evolve Because of an Infection?" by Amanda Shaffer, Slate, September 30, 2011
• Innovation Starvation by Neal Stephenson, World Policy Institute, Fall 2011
• US Intelligence Unit Aims to Build a "Data Eye in the Sky" by John Markoff, The New York Times, Science, October 10, 2011
• Sexual selection by Sugar Molecule Helped Determine Human Origins, Say Researchers, Science Daily, October 11, 2011
• Climate Fluctuations Drove Key Events in Human Evolution, Researchers Find, Science Daily, September 26, 2011
• Destiny of Species:  Have we sidetracked evolution? by Faye Flam, philly.com, October 10, 2011
• How Africa Became The Cradle of Humankind by Erin Wayman, National Geographic, October 17, 2011
• The DNA of Human Evolution by Katie Pollard, PBS NOVA, November 30, 2009
• The Evolution of Motherhood by Sally Hrdy, PBS NOVA, October 26, 2009
• The Adaptable Human by Rick Potts, PBS NOVA, October 26, 2009
• End of the Big Beasts (North American 13,000BP) by Peter Tyson, PBS NOVA, March 1, 2009
• First Primates by Mary T. Silcox, PBS NOVA, July 15, 2008
• How Bipedalism Arose by Donald Johanson, PBS NOVA, October 1, 2006
• Origins of Bipedalism by Rima Chaddha, PBS NOVA, October 1, 2006
• The Dinosaurs Were Not Alone by Kate Hudec, PBS NOVA, February 25, 1997
• Timing Is Everything by Joe Levine, PBS NOVA, January 1, 1996
• New Phylum Sheds Light on Ancestors of Animals, Humans, Science Daily, November 3, 2006
• New Study Finds First Links Between Genes And Moral Judgments, Georgetown University, October 5, 2011
• Japanese Scientist Unveils 'Thinking' Robot, Psyorg.com, October 11, 2011
• The Architecture of Motivation by Leda Cosmides, Edge, October 5, 2011
• 'A Toad-Eat-Toad World,' and Other Tales of Animal Cannibals by Natalie Angier, The New York Times, Science, October 31, 2011
• Google's Lab Of Wildest Dreams, The New York Times, Technology, November 13, 2011
• Biology's Big Bang Had A Long Fuse by Susan Milieus, Sciencenews.org, December 3, 2011
• Cooking May Have Driven Human Evolution, Smithsonian.com, December 1, 2011
• Our Animals, Ourselves by Justin E.H. Smith, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 27, 2011
• Spooky Action at a Distance by Brian Greene, NOVA PBS, September 22, 2011
• Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans, Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, February 22, 2011
• The Case of the Missing Polygamists by Eric Michael Johnson, Scientific American, The Primate Diaries, January 6, 2012
• Survival's Ick Factor by James Gorman, The New York Times, January 23, 2011
• The False Allure of Group Selection by Steven Pinker, Edge, June 18, 2012

The "Seven Mountains of Culture" - In Need of Reclamation or Secular Protection?

Rick Perry, Conduit to a Radical Overthrow of the US Government?
Reclaiming the 7 Mountains of Culture:  "The seven mountains of culture are business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion."
New Apostolic Reformation Movement

Clearly, the New Apostolic Reformation movement has found its man - Rick Perry.  The first link above, especially the tone and tenor of the rally speakers, strengthens my belief that secular-religious polarization is increasing exponentially, in the US and globally.  "People of faith," or mainstream believers are finding it more and more difficult to hold their moderate, middle ground.  It is being quickly eroded from under them from both sides.  Many are becoming secularists based on a careful, personal consideration of scientific evidence and reason.  Many others are becoming fundamentalists, based on their willful ignorance and/or laziness and the fear that is fomented by the likes of those that spoke at Perry's gathering.

A country led by unscrupulous, lying secularists is bad enough.  Remember Nixon?.  Fortunately, we can fairly easily identify, expose and purge them under the law based on the evidence of their own misdeeds.  But leaders who believe and "trade" in the supernatural command a following that cares less for evidence and reason than they do for an imaginary "higher" absolute truth of a single bronze age, sheep herding people from the Middle East.  For them efforts at purging such leaders is a blasphemy.

Supernaturally motivated leaders and their deeds are far harder to purge from the hearts and minds of the people and the government "of the people, by the people and for the people."  A political perversion is one thing, it comes with the job. But perversions of the values and beliefs of a society such as the separation of church and state, and subversions that undermine the ability of a society's people to think freely and value evidence and reason are both crimes against humanity.

A sane, thinking, patriotic person will vote against supernaturally deluded candidates, and speak out against them and their supporters' and followers' intrusions into public education and governance, every time. I will.

From The Unknown Into Uncertainty

From The Unknown Into Uncertainty

The wading great blue heron is ignorant.
So are the lake's fish, frogs,
Its turtles, kingfishers, sparrows.

Arrogant domination, greed, supernaturalism
Infest our politics, economics, our truths.
A crippling, deadly concoction, served cold.

Our political process implodes,
The global economy collapses.
Religions keep most in tribal warfare,
Absolute delusion, willful open-eyed darkness.

A secular global morality and civilization?
Earth stewardship?  All urgently required.
If achieved, they may succeed,
Or fail, from within or without.

The heron stands in the island shallows,
Facing the breeze, the setting sun.
The fish, frogs, turtles forage.
The kingfishers and swallows hunt.
Night falls, day breaks.

From the unknown we create the known,
Ever into uncertainty.
With or without us,
Ever the evolving All.

Onward Christian Soldiers - After Two Decades, God No Longer a Foundation of USAF Nuke Launch Ethics Training

UPDATE
Top Air Force Official Issues Neutrality Policy in Wake of Truthout's "Jesus Loves Nukes" Expose by Jason Leopold, Truthout, September 14, 2011

ORIGINAL POST
Air Force Pulls Christian-Themed Ethics Training for Nuclear Missile Officers After Publication of Truthout Report by Jason Leopold, Truthout, July 30, 2011
Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons by Jason Leopold, Truthout, July 27, 2011

This is good news. When in the USAF years and years ago I served in a "launch" role. That was before the AF started the Christian-centric ethics training discussed in the above links. I'm amazed it's taken so long to review and hopefully purge this guidance from their training on ethics. Launching nukes is never good especially under MAD theory. But I'd rather have our men and women with their hands on the buttons/keys thinking about it (and they do think about it, I did) patriotically, neutrally or humanistically rather than religiously. God's approval, hastening their rapture, and eternal life might be too much temptation to push the button or turn the key for those already deluded by Abrahamic supernaturalism. Having the AF condone Christian ethics might be all it takes to tip the thinking of a "two-person control team" and launch a preemptive strike.  I wonder what ethics the AF will now turn to to justify the job and bolster the nerve of our men and women in blue....