The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

In episode 205, Michael Shermer speaks with Richard Dawkins about evangelizing for evolution, science, skepticism, philosophy, reason, and rationality, based on his new book Books Do Furnish a Life: Reading and Writing Science.

Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins discuss: conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, and Christopher Hitchens • Popperian falsification vs. Bayesian reasoning • evolutionary adaptationism • the myth of natural selection as a “force” • E.O. Wilson and group selection, multilevel selection, and other misunderstandings about evolutionary theory • metaphors and analogies in science: artificial selection • convergent evolution • ETIs • Trumpism, and more…

The new science of evolutionary psychology has generated considerable controversy since its rise in the 1990s, with critics and proponents taking shots at one another. Skeptic magazine devoted an issue to the controversy in 1996 (Vol. 4, No. 1), and in 2005 a major critique was published in book form by MIT Press. In Skeptic Vol. 12, No. 1, we ran an excerpt from this book, by David Buller, with a reply to it from Frank Miele, which follows here.