Darwin's Secret Sex Problem

Darwin’s Secret Sex Problem: Exposing Evolution’s Fatal Flaw—The Origin of Sex, by F LaGard Smith. 

For many years the thing that seemed to me most unanswered in the evolution 'history' - even more than how the eye could have evolved in such complexity by chance - was how a male and female could suddenly appear together at the same time, out of the blue, within the same part of the world, and thus set humanity on its course. There seemed no possibility that all the complex requirements of both male and female could come together at the right time. This was the same for all male/female species, of course. 

And then I came across this book, and found someone else who saw the absurdity of believing that a male and a female had suddenly appeared on the evolution horizon at the same time. Thanks, Mr Smith, for this alone you deserve five stars.

The book, truth to be told, is too long, and certainly in the earlier chapters, seems rather repetitive. But there is so much evidence for Mr Smith's point of view that the more of the book I read, the more I enjoyed it and appreciated his arguments. 

It's been obvious to me for many years that evolution was more of a religion than a science, though there are some science factors to it. There are many religious aspects to it as well, though evolutionists won't admit to this. 

I think the saddest part of this book is the discussion of well-known Christians who somehow manage to keep a Biblical worldview in tandem with an evolutionary one. Mr Smith doesn't see this as possible, and I don't either. You have to make a choice in the end. To my surprise, there was a time when C S Lewis, who for the most appears to have one of the soundest Christian minds of the 21st century, could have for so long contemplated the possibility that evolution was true. 

I wrote on Twitter the other day: "I long for the day in the future when Evolution is remembered as a fairytale our ancestors used to tell us, claiming it held the truth for everything, when in fact it explained almost nothing..." Of course that immediately aroused the sarcasm of evolution believers, as you'd expect, though surprisingly, very little of it. 

Mr Smith makes the point that we no longer regard the earth as being at the centre of the solar system, but that this took centuries to change. And those who were most opposed to the idea were scientists more than Christians. So that gives me hope that one day evolution will go the way of the dodo. It certainly deserves to do so.

Gender-imbalance, light fittings & Ephron

There's a awkwardly-written article on the Guardian website with the headline: Subsidised theatres have too few female roles, Equity says - Actors' union finds male roles outnumber female roles by average of two to one in publicly funded companies. 


I say awkwardly-written not because of its content but because there's one sentence that appears to be unfinished: "But despite contacting the theatres twice, the union received a "disappointing" response, with only eight ." Note the gap between 'eight' and the full stop.  Seems like something's missing there.  And further down we have a paragraph that tells us about various plays currently showing that are dominated by male casts; in the next paragraph we have the same information all over again in a barely rearranged fashion.  Curious. And most unusual for The Guardian, whose online website is one of the best, I find. Or at least one of the best that I actually read.  


The subject of gender inequality in theatre productions intrigues me.  For one thing you can't necessarily blame the production companies, especially those committed to producing classic plays.  If you're going to do Shakespeare, for instance (and two of his plays are among those noted) then you're bound to have a gender imbalance, since the parts for women in these plays are severely restricted.  I went to an evening a while ago in which a group of young people, male and female presented much truncated versions of three Shakespeare plays.  Depending on the director and the casts these worked - the version of Hamlet, in particular was very well done, but the version of Cymbeline was a bit of a mess.  In these the casts were pretty evenly mixed between male and female, with many of the original male parts being played by girls.  However this isn't something you can readily do in a professional theatre production, I don't believe.  


And here in Dunedin, when we were trying to find men for Grimhilda! back at the end of last year and the beginning of this one, we struggled because two other musical societies in the town were producing two very heavily male-dominated productions: Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.  So we had a problem with gender imbalance from a different perspective altogether.  


Two other productions the Guardian writer, Alexandra Topping, mentions are Billy Budd and Chariots of Fire.  Hmm, you'd be hard-pressed to add any women to the roles in those productions.  Billy Budd is set aboard a ship where women weren't present anyway, and Chariots of Fire is about a race in which only men appeared.  It's probably coincidence that so many of these pieces are on at the moment.  


What are production companies to do?  Certainly there are plays in which there are plenty of women's roles, and good ones, but theatre has tended to reflect a society where men have the active roles and women don't.  That society has changed is certainly true, but it seems that playwrights aren't yet reflecting that enough.  I can't think of any play, off the top of my head, that's female-dominated in terms of roles, and certainly there aren't that many plays that have only females in the cast.  


Perhaps it's an issue as to what producers will put on.  Although playwright Stella Duffy [at right] says that women make up the majority of the audiences - 70% according to her - producers still produce plays in which men take the leading roles, or, if the women have leading roles, there are also plenty of males roles as well.   It may also be indicative of a society in which men take the leading 'active' role in stories, like it or not.  There are female superheroes, but not as many as there are males.  And if you really want to check out inequality in gender, look at the movies that are made.  Males dominate there too.  Except perhaps in so-called 'chick flicks'.  But are chick flicks addressing gender imbalance, primarily?  And what is the theatrical equivalent of a chick flick?  


Looking a totally different question altogether, I'm intrigued to see metal switch plate covers being advertised.  These are things that you put over light-switch fittings to stop the children playing with the wires - or to prevent adults inadvertently plugging themselves in instead of the electrical device.  Metal seems an odd choice for this.  I haven't seen metal fittings for years (we used to have old-style round ones in the house) - plastic seems to be the norm.  I guess metal is less likely to go on fire if anything goes wrong, but equally isn't it likely to pick up an electrical charge more readily than a plastic cover?


Just a thought - it made me go and check out a couple of the round switch plate covers in our bedrooms.  It just occurred to me that we might have metal ones after all.  Nope, they're some other material, but they aren't metal.


And one final thing.  Nora Ephron, a screenwriter whose movies balanced out male and female roles with ease and delight, has died - this is already 'old' news, I'm sure.   The Guardian wrote an article about her too, but it linked to a list of things Ephron said she wouldn't miss, and things she would miss. The two lists are a great deal of fun, and warmth and humanity.  Just like Ephron's stories.

Up steps homo habilis; in comes a harem

I know I’m considered dumb when it comes to discussing things evolutionary, but let’s consider the following and see who‘s dumb. I’ve just come across a headline in The Times newspaper for the 9th August, 2007. It states Evolutionary theory overhauled after the discovery of ‘handy man’ fossil. All I can say is, I wish. I wish the Evolutionary theory was being overhauled, but regrettably it’s not.
What the report was about was that two human fossils have been found in Africa, by Mrs Leavey and her daughter. From the way the report reads you’d think that these were full blown skeletons, possibly complete with various anatomical parts. Nope. The two fossils are a jawbone and a skull.
From the first fossil, the scientists have deduced that the idea that two previously ‘discovered’ species of humans, one called homo erectus and the other called homo habilis (he’s the tool-maker) has to be reconsidered. Now, as a result of finding said jawbone, they have come (rather quickly, I feel) to the conclusion that instead of one descending from the other - descending in evolutionary terms that is, which means millions of years, they actually lived side by side for a long time. (You know all that time evolutionists have to play around with - it’s very convenient.)
But if the finding of a jawbone brought us to this overhauling of the theory, the finding of the skull brought us even further. I have to quote this bit: “The second fossil is significant for what it reveals about the probable sexual habits of Homo erectus.” Keep that stuff about the sexual habits in your head for a minute and remember that this is nothing more than one skull.
Apparently it’s the smallest skull ever found, but do the scientists just say that? No, they say, it’s the smallest homo erectus ever found. Pardon me? They then go on to tell us that it’s an adult skull, almost certainly that of a female. Now because they think it’s a female they deduce from this that the males of the homo erectus group were much large than the females. I think Homer Simpson has it right when he says, Duh. Haven’t you noticed that the males of the currently existing homo erectus happen to be larger than the female? Obviously this has been overlooked by the scientists writing the discovery up. .
You could forget this point if they didn’t go on to burble on about the disparity between male and female gorillas and between modern male and female apes and monkeys. Because the latter are monogamous, and the gorillas tend to have a male who has a form of harem, therefore - wait for it - the homo erectus was a male who kept a harem. This is deduced from the small size of the discovered skull. Which is almost certainly a female.
Oh, dear. Evolutionists can get away with anything, because no one can actually prove them wrong.
You can read an article that's almost identical to the Times on here.