Real Men, Social Cooperation, and the Gap In Jack London's Thinking

Jack London was a brilliant man, brilliant but uneducated.  Although a fiction writer, his own life had more experience in it than many a  rousing novel.

Morality, Wall Street, & Capuchin Monkeys

In Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic, Charleston Heston descends from Mount Sinai to deliver morality from God to His people. The Ten Commandments  indicates that it comes from the top down, from the deity to us. We are told what to do and that is that. But does moral behavior depend on rules from on high?

Darwin's Moral Compass: Mutual Interdependence

In Origin of Species, 150 years ago, Charles Darwin opened a can of worms. Or so it has been to his detractors, who blame society's ills on evolution. Church attendance fell, ethnic supremacists arose, and God got lost somewhere in all of it. With God went man's higher moral purpose. All was a case of nature red in tooth and claw.

They overlook that Darwin described a system of mutual interdependence that "had governed life on Earth for billions of years; a system that managed simultaneously to be incredibly liberal and fiercely restrictive."

In this was Darwin's moral compass. If his guiding principles are followed by later generations, humankind could continue to survive. Ignore mutual interdependence and expect extinction. We will go the way of other species.Unlike other species, we can read the compass. Will we follow it? More at The Australian.

Ann Coulter & Charles Darwin

Ann Coulter & Charles Darwin

Ann Coulter has discovered that shrillness works. Her books consistently make the New York Times Best Seller Lists. The sales have made her rich and her media appearances have made her famous.

As one reader asked, "How can you not love someone who calls for the bombing of newspapers, demands the conversion of non-Christians by the sword, and mocks the grieving of Cindy Sheehan for her son and the 911 widows?" Another says "She brilliantly exposes the most dangerous ideologies that are destroying a once Christian nation. Everything is going down the tube."

In one book she takes on Charles Darwin. You can read a witty and good review of her book at Skeptical Inquirer. More