If Kansas Darwinists continue to be shy about defending their theory in open public hearings, the Kansas State Board of Education can always consider advertising for witnesses to defend evolution. Here is a possible ad:

WANTED: State Board of Education urgently seeks Darwinists unafraid to present the "overwhelming evidence" for their theory in a fair and balanced public hearing. Applicants who regard the democratic process as stupid need not apply. Ditto for those who think open debate in a free society is pointless. Essential Qualification: enough self-confidence to engage one's opponents in a public forum that is not completely stacked in one's favor. Preferred Qualifications: an ability to rationally present evidence without resorting to conspiracy theories and ad hominem attacks; a willingness to answer rather than ignore tough questions posed by one's critics. Reasonable travel expenses will be paid. If such persons exist, please respond immediately to the Kansas State Board of Education.

Posted by John West at 9:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Talk about insecurity. A pro-Darwin columnist for the Johnson County Sun in Kansas has revealed his definition of a fair public hearing on evolution: 10,000 Darwinists vs. 1 supporter of intelligent design. Anything else in his view would be a "stacked-deck" against Darwinists. The columnist urges evolutionists to boycott such events:

Evolutionists should stop appearing at stacked-deck public "hearings" put on… to trap evolutionists. By merely bringing "intelligent design" … to a level playing field with evolutionary science, the ID proponents have managed to upgrade their faith-based theory to a quasi-scientific theory, and they have knocked the science of evolution down to the same level as faith. Furthermore, by presenting these as one-on-one debates, there is a gross misrepresentation. To be accurate, there should be 10,000 evolutionists for each ID proponent. Evolutionists should boycott these farces.

The only "farce" here is the Darwinists' Orwellian claim that any public hearing is "stacked" against them if it is not stacked overwhelmingly in their favor. Don't defenders of Darwin's theory realize how silly and insecure this argument makes them look?

Posted by John West at 8:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A few days ago Washington Post reporter Peter Slevin came to Seattle to interview me and Steve Meyer for an upcoming article about evolution, intelligent design, and politics. I suspect his story will appear soon. After the Post's recent track record editorializing and reporting on the evolution issue, I must admit I was somewhat skeptical about talking with another Post reporter. As the interview started, I made a point of going into detail about the false and misleading statements in previous Post coverage. I also explained how the Post's ombudsman (unlike the ombudsman at the Boston Globe) didn't even bother to respond to a detailed complaint we sent about inaccuracies in one of the Post's articles.

Like most reporters, Mr. Slevin appeared mild-mannered, fair, and genuinely interested in hearing our side of the debate. Despite his impeccable manners, however, some of his comments raised concerns. He mentioned he had read Time's tabloid-style article about intelligent design, but he indicated he was disappointed because the article didn't deliver on its promise to expose the "real" motives behind the design movement. He further said he had interviewed a minister in Kansas who thinks that attacking evolution is a way to win the culture war about gay marriage and presumably a host of other social issues. These comments made me wonder whether his report will ignore the substance of the policy debate over evolution and simply recapitulate the hackneyed Red State v. Blue State storyline being pressed ad nauseum by much of the major newsmedia. At one point, Mr. Slevin even wanted to know whether Discovery Institute is funded by the Unification Church! (We aren't.)

Mr. Slevin's interest in motives and funding seemed somewhat one-sided. While expressing lots of interest about the motives and funding of critics of Darwinism, he seemed uninterested in looking at the motives or funding of Darwinists. I doubt, for example, he ever asked Eugenie Scott whether her group receives funding from such left-wing groups as the Playboy Foundation (Eugenie, after all, once received an award from the foundation.) I also suspect that Mr. Slevin never asked Eugenie about why she is one of the original signers of a document called the "Third Humanist Manifesto." Frankly, I don't care who funds Eugenie Scott's National Center for Science Education, or what her private metaphysical beliefs are. But it seems to me rather telling that most journalists are only interested in motives and funding on one side of this debate. I would prefer that journalists focus on the substance of the debate rather than side issues like motives and funding. But IF they are going to get into side issues, they ought to do so fairly and with an even hand. I stressed this point to Mr. Slevin, and I am curious to see whether he ends up being fair.

I am also interested to see whether Mr. Slevin's article accurately communicates the following points I made during our interview:

1. Discovery Institute does NOT favor requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. We merely recommend that scientific evidence critical of neo-Darwinism be taught along with the evidence favoring neo-Darwinism. We think this is a common ground approach that the vast majority of Americans support. Moreover, we think it is a pro-science approach that will improve student learning about evolution by presenting evolution as a live discipline subject to critical examination rather than as a dead dogma that can't be rationally questioned.

2. There is no national movement to require the teaching of intelligent design in schools. What is being discussed in most states is simply the presentation of scientific evidence critical of Darwinian theory as well as scientific evidence favoring the theory. Thus, the Dover, Pennsylvania school district policy explicitly endorsing intelligent design is an exception (and Discovery Institute opposes the Dover policy).

3. Reporters who are trying to be fair should cover how the debate over teaching evolution has played out in states like Ohio and Minnesota, not just lone school districts like Dover. Reporters seem preocuppied with filing stories that allow them to replay the stereotypes of Inherit the Wind, pitting supposedly intolerant fundamentalists against the enlightened defenders of science. As a result, journalists simply ignore public policy battles that don't fit their preconceived stereotypes. The state of Ohio, for example, has adopted a science standard and a model curriulum promoting the critical analysis of evolutionary theory. But the national newsmedia have virtually ignored what is happening in Ohio, preferring to send their reporters to local rural school districts that they find easier to stereotype. One might think that an entire state adopting a different way of teaching evolution would be considered more newsworthy than the actions of a small rural school district. Not so, according to the major media. Why?

4. The reason why the evolution issue is finally making inroads in the public policy sphere is because of a change in science, not politics: namely, there are a growing number of credentialed scientists who are openly critical of Darwinian orthodoxy. Mr. Slevin seemed to want me to say that the evolution issue has risen to the surface recently because of the religious right. I responded that religious conservatives have existed for much of American history, and they didn't seem to get anywhere on this issue. The key difference today is the growing number of critics of Darwinism within science and academia. Thirty years ago mainstream university presses like Cambridge and Michigan State were not publishing volumes devoted to academic debates over Darwinism. Thirty years ago hundreds of doctoral scientists and science professors at American college and universities were not declaring their skepticism of the central mechanism of neo-Darwinism. If you look at places like Ohio and Minnesota that have adopted a more open-minded approach to teaching about evolution, you will find that they had scientists on both sides of their public policy debates. Even in the recent textbook disclaimer case in Georgia, more than two dozen Georgia scientists (including researchers at the University of Georgia and other state universities) filed a friend of the court brief summarizing various scientific controversies over neo-Darwinism that are well-supported in the scientific literature.

5. If a reporter is going to talk about the strategy and tactics of the evolution debate, he or she should do this for both sides of the debate. Since Mr. Slevin was so interested in exploring the tactics of those critical of evolutionary theory, I urged him to be fair and talk about tactics employed by defenders of evolution as well. For example, evolutionists typically try to steer public debates away from science and onto religion. Rather than respond to the substance of policy proposals made by those with whom they disagree, they simply try to demonize their opponents as motivated by religion and thus unworthy of a response. This tactic of crying "religion!" is designed as a debate-stopper so they won't actually have to answer the main points made by the other side. If evolutionists really want science classes to focus on science, not religion, why are they the ones who are always trying to inject the issue of religion into public debates over evolution?

6. Reporters have an obligation to accurately describe intelligent design theory and how it is explained by its proponents. Intelligent design merely proposes that some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause. This hypothesis is based on our investigation into the natural world, NOT on extrapolations to the supernatural. The design inference is based on both positive and negative evidence from within nature: On the positive side, we know from our own extensive experience of the natural world that intelligent causes are sufficient to produce certain kinds of highly ordered complexity (e.g., we know that an intelligent cause is capable of producing the computer screen you are now looking at). On the negative side, we know from our study of the natural world that non-intelligent causes seem incapable of producing the same kinds of highly ordered complexity. Based on this extensive evidence drawn from our investigation of the natural world, it is rational to infer that certain kinds of complexity are most likely the product of an intelligent cause.

Because of my past experience with the Post and certain other news outlets, I have to say I'm not optimistic that our side of the debate will be portrayed fairly and accurately in Mr. Slevin's article. But hope springs eternal, and I would be happy to be proved wrong in this case. I liked Mr. Slevin, and I hope his article provides a fair picture of what our side of the debate is actually proposing.

Posted by John West at 7:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Defenders of Darwin's theory of evolution typically proclaim that evidence for their theory is simply overwhelming. If they really believe that, you would think they would jump at a chance to publicly explain some of that overwhelming evidence to the public. Apparently not. The Kansas State Board of Education has proposed ten days of hearings featuring scientists who embrace evolutionary theory along with scientific critics of neo-Darwinism, but according to this article in the Lawrence Journal-World, evolutionists are crying foul:

some evolution proponents are suggesting that scientists shouldn't participate in what they say will be an unfair hearing. "The deck is completely stacked," said Liz Craig, a spokeswoman for Kansas Citizens for Science. "I don't believe anybody's going to participate... because it's just ridiculous."

Darwinists have a rather peculiar definition of an "unfair" and "stacked" hearing, however. The Kansas Board has asked for an equal number of scientists (10) to testify on each side. Scientists favoring evolution would be selected by professor Steve Case, chair of the state committee drafting revised science standards for Kansas and an ardent evolutionist. Scientists critical of evolutionary theory would be chosen by biochemistry professor Bill Harris, another member of the same science standards committee, and a supporter of intelligent design. Case would be allowed to cross-examine scientists critical of evolutionary theory, and Harris would be allowed to cross-examine scientists who defend evolutionary theory. In other words, the ground rules proposed are scrupulously fair and even-handed to both sides of the debate.

What, pray tell, is "unfair" and "stacked" about such a proposal? Absolutely nothing. That's the problem. Darwinists consider the proposed hearings "stacked" precisely because they are not stacked in their favor! Since Darwinists are in the majority in the scientific community, the only "fair" hearing in their view would be one in which they completely outnumber their opponents. Most ordinary people would consider that a stacked deck.

This is strange behavior for people who claim that evidence for their position is so overwhelming that any other view is nonsense. If they really believe the evidence for Darwinism is overwhelming, why aren't they willing to defend their view in a fair public forum? Why do they demand a stacked deck before they are willing to condescend to explain their views to the publicly elected Board of Education? One begins to wonder just how confident these Darwinists are of their theory if they don't think it can be defended in a fair and equal debate.

Posted by John West at 9:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

With some local reporters in Kansas striving to cover the science standards controversy there with fairness and accuracy, it's disappointing to see the Associated Press reporter in Kansas writing science fiction in the guise of news reports. According to the latest salvo from AP's Bill Draper:

Some conservative members of the state board have questioned whether the committee has properly considered views about creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution.

A minority of members on Case's committee have said it's not fair to teach evolution as an explanation of the origin of life without also including the possibility that life was formed by an intelligent being.

Contrary to Draper, there is no debate on the Kansas Board of Education over whether to teach creationism, and there is no debate on the Kansas science standards committee about whether to teach intelligent design. What minority members on the science standards committee have called for is teaching about scientific criticisms of modern evolutionary theory as well as the evidence favoring evolutionary theory. They have not called for the teaching of intelligent design. Has Mr. Draper even read the minority report issued by members of the science standards committee?

Draper continues:

Intelligent design is a secular form of creationism that argues the Earth was created by a series of events caused by some intelligent force, not random chance. Evolution says that species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations.

This is editorializing, not reporting. Intelligent design is not "a secular form of creationism." It is not a form of creationism, period. Draper is taking a tendentious assertion of opinion by evolutionists and reporting it as a "fact." Some defenders of evolution assert that intelligent design is "a secular form of creationism," but proponents of design strongly disagree. Draper simply takes the disputed opinion of ID opponents and presents it as an unquestioned fact. He also seems to misunderstand what intelligent design actually entails. He implies that ID is incompatible with a belief that "species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations," when it isn't. It might help if Mr. Draper read the Top Questions and Answers about Intelligent Design Theory. Tip for Mr. Draper and the AP: In covering a controversial issue, it's usually a good idea to talk to people on both sides of the debate. And it's usually a very poor idea to describe one side of a debate using the talking points of the other side.

Posted by John West at 9:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

From "The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design"
By Stephen Meyer

Unobservables and Testability
[A frequent argument against intelligent design] that appears frequently both in conversation and in print finds expression as follows: "Miracles are unscientific because they can not be studied empirically. Design invokes miraculous events; therefore design is unscientific. Moreover, since miraculous events can't be studied empirically, they can't be tested. Since scientific theories must be testable, design is, again, not scientific." Molecular biologist Fred Grinnell has argued, for example, that intelligent design can't be a scientific concept because if something "can't be measured, or counted, or photographed, it can't be science."

Gerald Skoog amplifies this concern: "The claim that life is the result of a design created by an intelligent cause can not be tested and is not within the realm of science." This reasoning was recently invoked at San Francisco State University as a justification for removing Professor Dean Kenyon from his classroom. Kenyon is a biophysicist who has embraced intelligent design after years of work on chemical evolution. Some of his critics at SFSU argued that his theory fails to qualify as scientific because it refers to an unseen Designer that cannot be tested.

The essence of these arguments seems to be that the unobservable character of a designing agent renders it inaccessible to empirical investigation and thus precludes the possibility of testing any theory of design. Thus the criterion of demarcation employed here conjoins "observability and testability." Both are asserted as necessary to scientific status, and the converse of one (unobservability) is asserted to preclude the possibility of the other (testability).

It turns out, however, that both parts of this formula fail. First, observability and testability are not both necessary to scientific status, because observability at least is not necessary to scientific status, as theoretical physics has abundantly demonstrated. Many entities and events cannot be directly observed or studied in practice or in principle. The postulation of such entities is no less the product of scientific inquiry for that. Many sciences are in fact directly charged with the job of inferring the unobservable from the observable. Forces, fields, atoms, quarks, past events, mental states, subsurface geological features, molecular biological structures all are unobservables inferred from observable phenomena. Nevertheless, most are unambiguously the result of scientific inquiry.

Second, unobservability does not preclude testability: claims about unobservables are routinely tested in science indirectly against observable phenomena. That is, the existence of unobservable entities is established by testing the explanatory power that would result if a given hypothetical entity (i.e., an unobservable) were accepted as actual. This process usually involves some assessment of the established or theoretically plausible causal powers of a given unobservable entity. In any case, many scientific theories must be evaluated indirectly by comparing their explanatory power against competing hypotheses.

During the race to elucidate the structure of the genetic molecule, both a double helix and a triple helix were considered, since both could explain the photographic images produced via x-ray crystallography. While neither structure could be observed (even indirectly through a microscope), the double helix of Watson and Crick eventually won out because it could explain other observations that the triple helix could not. The inference to one unobservable structure—the double helix—was accepted because it was judged to possess a greater explanatory power than its competitors with respect to a variety of relevant observations. Such attempts to infer to the best explanation, where the explanation presupposes the reality of an unobservable entity, occur frequently in many fields already regarded as scientific, including physics, geology, geophysics, molecular biology, genetics, physical chemistry, cosmology, psychology and, of course, evolutionary biology.

The prevalence of unobservables in such fields raises difficulties for defenders of descent who would use observability criteria to disqualify design. Darwinists have long defended the apparently unfalsifiable nature of their theoretical claims by reminding critics that many of the creative processes to which they refer occur at rates too slow to observe. Further, the core historical commitment of evolutionary theory that present species are related by common ancestry has an epistemological character that is very similar to many present design theories. The transitional life forms that ostensibly occupy the nodes on Darwin's branching tree of life are unobservable, just as the postulated past activity of a Designer is unobservable. Transitional life forms are theoretical postulations that make possible evolutionary accounts of present biological data. An unobservable designing agent is, similarly, postulated to explain features of life such as its information content and functional integration. Darwinian transitionals, neo-Darwinian mutational events, punctuationalism’s "rapid branching" events, the past action of a designing agent—none of these are directly observable. With respect to direct observability, each of these theoretical entities is equivalent.

Each is roughly equivalent with respect to testability as well. Origins theories generally must make assertions about what happened in the past to cause present features of the universe (or the universe itself) to arise. They must reconstruct unobservable causal events from present clues or evidences. Positivistic methods of testing, therefore, that depend upon direct verification or repeated observation of cause-effect relationships have little relevance to origins theories, as Darwin himself understood. Though he complained repeatedly about the creationist failure to meet the vera causa criterion a nineteenth-century methodological principle that favored theories postulating observed causes, he chafed at the application of rigid positivistic standards to his own theory. As he complained to Joseph Hooker: "I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct evidence of one species changing into another, but that I believe that this view in the main is correct because so many phenomena can be thus grouped and explained" (emphasis added).

Indeed, Darwin insisted that direct modes of testing were wholly irrelevant to evaluating theories of origins. Nevertheless, he did believe that critical tests could be achieved via indirect means. As he stated elsewhere: "This hypothesis [common descent] must be tested . . . by trying to see whether it explains several large and independent classes of facts; such as the geological succession of organic beings, their distribution in past and present times, and their mutual affinities and homologies." For Darwin the unobservability of past events and processes did not mean that origins theories are untestable. Instead, such theories may be evaluated and tested indirectly by the assessment of their explanatory power with respect to a variety of relevant data or "classes of facts."

Nevertheless, if this is so, it is difficult to see why the unobservability of a Designer would necessarily preclude the testability of such a postulation. Though Darwin would not have agreed, the basis of his methodological defense of descent seems to imply the possibility of a testable theory of design, since the past action of an unobservable agent could have empirical consequences in the present just as an unobservable genealogical connection between organisms does. Indeed, Darwin himself tacitly acknowledged the testability of design by his own attempts to expose the empirical inadequacy of competing creationist theories. Though Darwin rejected many creationist explanations as unscientific in principle, he attempted to show that others were incapable of explaining certain facts of biology. Thus sometimes he treated creationism as a serious scientific competitor lacking explanatory power; at other times he dismissed it as unscientific by definition.

Recent evolutionary demarcationists have contradicted themselves in the same way. The quotation cited earlier from Gerald Skoog ("The claim that life is the result of a design created by an intelligent cause can not be tested and is not within the realm of science") was followed in the same paragraph by the statement "Observations of the natural world also make these dicta [concerning the theory of intelligent design] suspect." Yet clearly something cannot be both untestable in principle and subject to refutation by empirical observations.

The preceding considerations suggest that neither evolutionary descent with modification nor intelligent design is ultimately untestable. Instead, both theories seem testable indirectly, as Darwin explained of descent, by a comparison of their explanatory power with that of their competitors. As Philip Kitcher no friend of creationism has acknowledged, the presence of unobservable elements in theories, even ones involving an unobservable Designer, does not mean that such theories cannot be evaluated empirically. He writes, "Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobserved particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended."

Thus an unexpected equivalence emerges when design and descent are evaluated against their ability to meet specific demarcation criteria. The demand that the theoretical entities necessary to origins theories must be directly observable if they are to be considered testable and scientific would, if applied universally and disinterestedly, require the exclusion not only of design but also of descent. Those who insist on the joint criteria of observability and testability, conceived in a positivistic sense, promulgate a definition of correct science that evolutionary theory manifestly cannot meet. If, however, a less severe standard of testability is allowed, the original reason for excluding design evaporates.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 6:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A writer for the newspaper of record in Liberal, Kansas (yes, there is a town with that name in Kansas) endorses the truly liberal policy of teaching the scientific controversy over evolution. He argues that opponents of teaching the controversy

should come up with a good argument on why teaching only the evolution theory does not violate the state education science mission statement to make all students lifelong learners who can use science to make reasoned decisions.

Presenting only one life science theory in classes without alternatives breeds ignorance and violates the mission statement.

The author of the essay is wrong to suggest that the Kansas Board of Education is considering adding intelligent design to the Kansas state science standards. In fact, it is merely considering proposals to teach scientific evidence critical of Darwinian theory along with evidence favoring the theory. But the author's basic point about how one-sided teaching breeds ignorance is on the money.

Posted by John West at 12:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

John Derbyshire is on The Corner arguing that we can never safely infer that certain biological structures were designed. To a reader who asserted that organizational complexity cannot arise from impersonal processes, Derbyshire replies, "How do you know it can't? It is true that the genesis of organizational complexity is not currently well understood; but to leap from that to telling me we shall NEVER be able to find a natural-law explanation for it is just dogma."

Derbyshire's argument is worth confronting because it represents the opinion of leading Darwinists. Biologist Kenneth Miller, for instance, routinely makes just such an argument. Design theorist William Dembski responds thus:

Miller claims that the problem with anti-evolutionists like Michael Behe and me is a failure of imagination -- that we personally cannot "imagine how evolutionary mechanisms might have produced a certain species, organ, or structure." He then emphasizes that such claims are "personal," merely pointing up the limitations of those who make them. Let's get real. The problem is not that we in the intelligent design community, whom Miller incorrectly calls "anti-evolutionists," just can't imagine how those systems arose.

The problem is that Ken Miller and the entire biological community haven't figured out how those systems arose. It's not a question of personal incredulity but of global disciplinary failure (the discipline here being biology) and gross theoretical inadequacy (the theory here being Darwin's).

The particular mechanism Miller has in view here is the bacterial flagellum. Click here and scroll down for a good, brief description and animation of the bacterial flagellum, and here for an enlarged view with its parts labeled. Biochemist Michael Behe made this little engine that could famous by showing that it was irreducibly complex, like a mouse trap: "If any one of the components of the mousetrap (the base, hammer, spring, catch, or holding bar) is removed, then the trap does not function." With even four of these parts, it's utterly useless. The mousetrap is irreducibly complex.

What does irreducible complexity have to do with Darwinian evolution? Evolution by mutation and natural selection must proceed by one slight, functional improvement at a time. So how can it build an irreducibly complex propeller motor one step at a time if the motor can't propel at all until all of its parts are in place? It can't. Something else built it.

Behe's argument doesn't assume that none of the other parts could ever be used for anything else. The spring on a mousetrap could be taken and used in some other device. The base with cheese on it could feed a mouse. Several but not all of the parts of a bacterial flagellum--while completely useless as a rotary propulsion machine--can be used to transport proteins across a membrane. But this hardly provides a credible Darwinian pathway.

Imagine if a boy told a girl he could climb to Mars because there supposedly existed a natural ladder stretching from one planet to the other? The girl is skeptical, pointing out that nobody on earth has ever found such a ladder. The boy screams, "That's an argument from ignorance! Scientists are finding all sorts of new things all the time. Look! The moon! The moon is one step along the way. You see, everything is falling into place." The Darwinists' desperate efforts to spin away the clear significance of the bacterial flagellum is strangely akin to this sort of reasoning. Dembski explains:

Darwin's theory, without which nothing in biology is supposed to make sense, in fact offers no insight into how the flagellum arose. If the biological community had even an inkling of how such systems arose by naturalistic mechanisms, Miller would not -- a full six years after the publication of Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe -- be lamely gesturing at the type three secretory system as a possible evolutionary precursor to the flagellum.

Miller and Derbyshire are like the boy convinced of the natural ladder to Mars, who finds the moon and yells "Ah ha! Now who dares to play the skeptic!" Well, design theorists do. Consider this passage from a peer-edited paper by biologist Scott Minnich and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, in which they discuss recent evidence for the delicately orchestrated and information-rich proteins of the bacterial flagellum:

[I]f anything, TTSSs [Type Three Secretory Systems] generate more complications than solutions to this question. As shown here, possessing multiple TTSSs causes interference. If not segregated one or both systems are lost. Additionally, the other thirty proteins in the flagellar motor (that are not present in the TTSS) are unique to the motor and are not found in any other living system. From whence, then were these protein parts co-opted?

Also, even if all the protein parts were somehow available to make a flagellar motor during the evolution of life, the parts would need to be assembled in the correct temporal sequence similar to the way an automobile is assembled in factory. Yet, to choreograph the assembly of the parts of the flagellar motor, present-day bacteria need an elaborate system of genetic instructions as well as many other protein machines to time the expression of those assembly instructions. Arguably, this system is itself irreducibly complex. In any case, the co-option argument tacitly presupposes the need for the very thing it seeks to explain—a functionally interdependent system of proteins.

Now one letter writer, responding to Behe's column in The New York Times, complained that we only describe the bacterial flagellum as an outboard motor because we have no better analogy, not because it is an outboard motor. The letter writer argues that believing this molecular motor was designed is like the astronomer Percival Lowell mistaking Martian canyons for canals. The suggestion is that false design inferences have been made, so surely all of the design inferences in the natural sciences are false. In this case, the fallacious argument--a favorite among Darwinists--is doubly silly because the Martian canyons turned out to be far simpler, far less specified, than engineered canals; while the bacterial flagellum has turned out to be far more sophisticated than our outboard motors.

As Minnich and Meyer note, the discovery of molecular motors is opening a whole new field, where biology and engineering meet:

To paraphrase the original rendition of the Department of Energy’s Genomes to Life web site, ‘the molecular machines present in the simplest cells, produced by evolution, dwarf the engineering feats of the 20th century’. The dissection of the complexity and sophistication of ... machines like the bacterial flagellum are indeed a testimony to the power of modern molecular biological techniques. Yet, the elegant structural properties, efficiency, and the highly controlled genetic programming to produce these machines was neither anticipated nor predicted. The potential applications of this knowledge are legion and have spawned a new discipline focused on nanotechnology.

Derbyshire, Miller and other Darwinists are mixed up about the direction of things. The more we KNOW about the bacterial flagellum, the less and less it is anything the Darwninian mechanism could produce. Moreover, there are strongly affirmative grounds for inferring design from the presence of irreducibly complex machines and circuits. Every time we know the causal history of an irreducibly complex system (like the NASCAR racing engine or an electronic circuit), it always turn out to have been the product of an intelligent cause.

Finally, the list of known biological mechanisms that appear irreducibly complex isn't shrinking, it's growing.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 2:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

BY KEITH PENNOCK
Some school boards seem to have confused their role with that of the FDA, placing warning labels on textbooks as though they were a package of cigarettes that should be kept out of the hands of minors.

Fortunately, there's a better way. Rather than noting the scientific controversy over Darwinism by placing stickers on textbooks, we advise that school boards attempt to teach the controversy by augmenting their curriculum using supplemental materials. Ohio and Minnesota followed this approach, and now students there can learn both the strengths and weaknesses in Darwin's theory. And neither state has been drawn into a legal flap. Smart.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 10:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

John Derbyshire of The Corner, and Darwinists on every street corner, insist that we should never cram God into the gaps of our scientific knowledge.

As if detecting design meant cramming the designer into the work itself: Imagine Leonardo da Vinci trapped inside the Mona Lisa.

Derbyshire proceeds apace: "History shows that these puzzles always get resolved sooner or later in a natural way, ... sending the 'God of the Gaps' traipsing off to find a new place where he can hang his starry cloak for a while."

Bracket off for the moment that this particular history of modern science is an urban legend. Derbyshire's argument falls apart all by itself, apart from the historical record. Because more and more things have been explained with reference to impersonal causes, Derbyshire argues, we can never assume that something in nature cannot be explained thus.

That simply doesn’t follow. Consider an analogy.

Many insisted that no human would ever break the four-minute mile. Then Roger Bannister did it. Probably at the time, some expert could have been found to say, “Well, fine, but no one will ever run under 3:45 seconds." But that barrier too has fallen.

Now what if a highly trained physiologist said, "As much progress as middle distance runners have made over the past century, no modern human will run a sub one-minute mile, certainly not on an ordinary track on planet earth, and certainly not without bizarre drugs, gimmicks or exotic genetic manipulation."

Would it make sense to tell that scientist, "Others said 'never' about the four minute barrier, the 3:45 barrier, and they were wrong. Barriers are made to be broken!" No, that would be a silly argument. It is, in its essence, Derbyshire’s argument. The physiologist can reasonably rule out certain human performance barriers, and the scientist can reasonably rule out impersonal causes for certain phenomena.

Some have incorrectly determined that certain rock formations were shaped by some intelligent agent. This mistake is not even confined to children or primitive cultures. Some insisted that the "Face on Mars," a large rock on the surface of the red planet, had been carved by alien beings to look like a face. Higher resolution images dispelled this fancy. Despite these errors, however, we can still safely infer that Stonehenge was designed.

Let's not beg the question. The question is, were certain natural structures--of far greater complexity and intricacy than Stonehenge--designed? The first self-reproducing cell stands before us, a world of intricate circuits, miniaturized motors and enough digital code to fill an encyclopedia. Was it the product of design? What are the marks of design in the complicated artifacts around us? What can a Darwinian mechanism--that builds by adding one tiny functional improvement at a time--actually build? And what must it have before it can begin to work?

Design theorists make an inference to the best explanation about what we do know—what know about information-rich structures like the simplest self-reproducing cells for instance; and what we know about intelligent causes, that they routinely make information-rich structures like books and motors and software, a causal power like nothing else in our experience.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 6:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State continues to serve in the Ministry of Dis-Information when it comes to intelligent design theory. A dogmatic opponent of intelligent design, the Rev. Lynn recently authored an op-ed that dismisses ID out of hand--not even bothering to take on any of the empirical, scientific claims made by Dr. Michael Behe or any other ID theorists.

Comes now Darrick Dean of Science Watch. Dean gives the Rev. Lynn the full-court press in a very noteworthy blog post. Rev. Lynn wishes to continue playing the motives game instead of assessing the scientific arguments for ID. But as Dean argues, the red herring arguments can cut BOTH ways.

Posted by Seth Cooper at 3:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Secondhand Smoke is the new weblog operated by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith. His voice is a welcome addition to the blogosphere and his new blog is well worth the visit.

An author, attorney and leading voice on many bioethics’ issues, Smith’s work does not involve intelligent design—though he does kindly mention ID and Michael Behe’s recent New York Times op-ed "Design for Living," in a blog post (here).

So while Smith’s work is not the subject of this blog, many readers may be interested in his analysis and commentary on many science-related issues. He has some important and timely articles this week at National Review Online and Daily Standard.

Posted by Seth Cooper at 11:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent post at The Corner, John Derbyshire wrote that "we are actually quite close to a point where we CAN do evolution in the lab." To make his point, Derbyshire cited an article by Carl Zimmer in the February, 2005, issue of *Discover* Magazine: "Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State University Prove Evolution Works."

We don't buy it. Discovery fellow (and Ph.D. biologist) Jonathan Wells found the claims in Zimmer's article laughable, and he was moved to write a satirical review that we are posting here. Although the tone is tongue-in-cheek, the quotes from Zimmer's article are real, as is the force of Wells' argument.

-------------------------------

Darwinists at Michigan State University Prove Computers Work
by Jonathan Wells

For centuries breeders have been modifying existing species by selecting desirable variations, yet this procedure has never produced a new species. Still less has it produced new organs or body plans. In 1859, however, Charles Darwin wrote that variation and selection explain the origin of species and all of life's diversity, and his faithful followers are still looking for evidence that he was right.

Frustrated by the obstinate refusal of real organisms to obey Darwin's dictates, researchers at Michigan State University have turned to computers. Using a software program called Avida, they have now succeeded in proving that if a computer is instructed to generate a program capable of doing basic arithmetic it can eventually ... do basic arithmetic!

Naive amateurs might think that Darwin's theory is supposed to be about the evolution of living things, and that neither computers nor computer programs are alive. But Darwin's followers have cleverly overcome this naive objection by re-defining "life" to mean "that which evolves by mutation and selection." Reporting on the Michigan State research in *Discover* magazine, science writer Carl Zimmer writes: "After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life."

Zimmer backs this up by quoting several of the Michigan State researchers. One of them is philosophy professor Robert Pennock, who said: "More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off." Apparently mistaking a paper checklist for life itself -- as philosophers sometimes do -- Pennock concluded: "Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it."

Another Michigan State researcher is microbiologist Richard Lenski, who has spent decades trying to produce new species of bacteria through artificial selection. Having failed at that, Lenski is now tempted to get rid of his smelly and uncooperative cultures and turn to Avida: "In an hour I can gather more information than we had been able to gather in years of working on bacteria."

This leads Zimmer to conclude that "the Avida team is putting Darwin to the test in a way that was previously unimaginable." Having moved beyond the old-fashioned prejudice that evolution is about living organisms that are actually alive, the team is now "beginning to shed light on some of the biggest questions of evolution." Those questions include:

(1) How did eyes evolve? According to Zimmer, creationists irrationally claim that eyes show "signs of intelligent design." Avida has "hit a nerve in the antievolution movement" by proving that this is false. All we need is "a patch of photosensitive cells" that has "evolved into a pit." By simply plugging the parameters of this pre-existing eye into a carefully designed computer program, we can prove that eyes originated without the need for design.

(2) Why many species instead of one? If one plant in the forest does a better job of capturing sunlight than all the other species, Darwin's theory might predict that it would eliminate all of its competitors; yet this doesn't happen. Avida solves this problem by proving that a computer programmed to find more than one way to do simple arithmetic can (are you ready?) find more than one way to do simple arithmetic.

(3) Why be nice? The existence of altruism has always been a problem for Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest, because an organism can't enhance its own survival by sacrificing itself for another. According to Zimmer, Charles Ofria (director of the Digital Evolution Laboratory)thinks that it may someday be possible to program digital "organisms" to work together if we can "get them to communicate." The result could be an "altruistic" computer code that can solve "real-world computer problems." Who needs Mother Teresa?

(4) Why sex? Sexual reproduction has also been a big problem for Darwinian evolution, because an organism that can reproduce by simply splitting in two seems more fit than an organism that cannot reproduce without the help of another. The standard explanation is that sex increases fitness by mixing genes that enable organisms to deal with different environments. To test this, Michigan State biologist Dusan Misevic has spent the past few years programming Avida's digital "organisms" to "have sex" by exchanging chunks of computer code. Unfortunately, his efforts have met with such limited success that Misevic concludes: "We must look to other explanations to help explain sex in general." Thank goodness.

(5) Is there life on other planets? Cal Tech digital-evolution researcher Evan Dorn has found a pattern common to life on Earth and "life" in Avida that he thinks may help us to recognize extraterrestrial life. According to Zimmer: "If Dorn is right, discovery of non-DNA life would become a little less spectacular because it would mean that we have already stumbled across it here on Earth -- in East Lansing, Michigan." UFO buffs, however, may want to hold out for something more substantial.

(6) What will life on Earth look like in the future? Zimmer writes that project director Ofria "acknowledges that harmful computer viruses may eventually evolve like his caged digital organisms." Ofria himself said: "Some day it's going to happen, and it's going to be scary. Better to study them now so we know how to deal with them." Like, by writing anti-virus programs?

So the Michigan State researchers have proved that a computer can simulate undesigned eye evolution as long as it starts with a functioning eye and a suitably designed program; that a computer instructed to solve a simple problem can sometimes solve it in more than one way; that computer codes programmed to communicate with each other might someday be able to solve real-world computer problems; that computers don't understand sex; that a computer in East Lansing, Michigan, may become the next Area 51; and that our future may be plagued by scary computer viruses.

These Earth-shaking results, according to Zimmer, "prove evolution works."

It is rumored that the Michigan State team tried to sell its stuff to a video game company but was told that its simulations wouldn't fool an eight-year-old. Not to worry, though: Given the publicly funded group's inestimable contributions to science and human welfare, American taxpayers will probably continue to support this important work.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 8:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As we saw in Derbyshire II, the pattern of the fossil record doesn’t fit the Darwinian prediction of a gradually branching tree of life, even where punctuated equilibrium is invoked to shoehorn the transitional intermediates into those gaps John Derbyshire puts such faith in.

The problem gets even uglier when Darwinists try to explain away the fossil record leading up to the Cambrian Explosion. What story do these strata tell? Animals didn't exist; and then they did--not just dozens of species but dozen of phyla. If you want some idea of how large a category phyla is, consider that sharks, mice, humans and otters are all members of the same phylum.

If natural selection working on random genetic mutation built this menagerie of animals, it had to do it one extraordinarily tiny, functional improvement at a time, one generation at a time, over tens and even hundreds of millions of years. If we had even a tiny fraction of a fraction of the Precambrian life forms, we would have so many transitional forms we would be hard-pressed to draw the line between one phylum and another, so thoroughly would they bleed one form into the other. But we find no such fossil pattern in the Precambrian.

Derbyshire suggests that the precursors of the many Cambrian phyla were soft-bodied and so never fossilized: "[S]oft body parts hardly ever get fossilized," he writes. "We are working from a pretty scanty data set here."

The problem is, many soft-bodied creatures did fossilize, and they tell a different story from the one Darwin told. Consider this passage in which Meyer et al., marshall evidence from mainstream evolutionists working in paleobiology:

While clearly the fossil record does not preserve soft body parts of organisms as frequently as hard body parts, it has preserved enough soft body animals and organs to render this version of the artifact hypothesis suspect. Indeed, entirely soft-bodied representatives of several phyla have been identified in the Cambrian. Soft-bodied organisms are also preserved in Precambrian strata around the world. Even so, these Precambrian organisms do not represent plausible transitional intermediates to representatives of the Cambrian phyla. In each case the jump in complexity (as measured by the number of cell types, for example) and the morphological disparity between the Precambrian and Cambrian organisms appears far too great. (See Section IV.B. below). Furthermore, the postulation of exclusively soft-bodied ancestors for hard-bodied Cambrian organisms seems implausible on anatomical grounds.54 Many phyla such as brachiopods and arthropods could not have evolved their soft parts first and then added shells later, since their survival depends in large part upon their ability to protect their soft parts from hostile environmental forces. Instead, soft and hard parts had to arise together.55 As Valentine notes in the case of brachiopods, "the brachiopod Baupl?§ne cannot function without a durable skeleton."56 To admit that hard-bodied Cambrian animals had not yet evolved their hard-bodied parts in the Precambrian effectively concedes that credible precursor animals themselves had not yet evolved. 57 As Chen and Zhou explain: "[A]nimals such as brachiopods and most echinoderms and mollusks cannot exist without a mineralized skeleton. Arthropods bear jointed appendages and likewise require a hard, organic or mineralized outer covering. Therefore the existence of these organisms in the distant past should be recorded either by fossil tracks and trails or remains of skeletons. The observation that such fossils are absent in Precambrian strata proves that these phyla arose in the Cambrian.‚Äù (356-357)

There are other tactics for avoiding the growing body of paleontological evidence against Darwinism. Meyer deals with many of those in a peer-reviewed biology journal article here. A spirited rebuttal is here. Discovery Institute fellows show why the rebuttal lacks force here and here. A short, introductory piece on the controversy over the Cambrian Explosion is here. A collection of eye-opening quotations from mainstream paleontologists is here. Journalists seeking to comment on these issues can quickly distinguish themselves merely by doing their homework.

More to come on Derbyshire and the evidence for intelligent design.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 11:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Finding bias in MSM newspapers like the Houston Chronicle is like finding design in nature, not at all hard to do. Sunday, The Chronicle decided to publish Michael Behe's op-ed that appeared last week in The New York Times.

The headline the Chronicle perched atop Behe's column nicely illustrates the petty biases of the paper's editorial board: "Intelligent design: Creation explained or quackery?"

This didn't surprise me. Two years ago in the midst of the Texas controversy over error-ridden biology textbooks a Chronicle editorial board member sent us one of the tackiest letters we've received from the media. We approached the Chronicle and asked them to meet with us to talk about textbooks and challenges to Darwinian evolution -- much as other major Texas papers like the Dallas Morning News-- did at the time. The editor responded:

"Surely you will admit that the battle in Austin is not between the Houston Chronicle and the Discovery Institute, but between those who believe the species on Earth today are descended from species now extinct and those who do not share this belief. ... The Chronicle Editorial Board will not be neutral as between biologists and members of the modern no-nothing party who have no regard for reason, intellect or even basic honesty.

Yours sincerely,

James Gibbons"

Posted by Robert Crowther at 5:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Barbara Forrest is at it again. In her latest review of Meyer & Campbell’s Darwinism, Design & Public Education Forrest substitutes strident affirmation for science and scorn for reasoned argumentation. Forrest never chooses to engage the arguments of design theorists but rather questions their qualifications: “John Angus Campbell, who also serves on the journal's editorial board, is a rhetorician. Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher." What pray tell was your Ph.D. in Barbara? And why is it you don’t apply that same standard to Robert Pennock when he deigns himself fit to comment on evolution?

What Forrest more often than not fails to comprehend is that merely asserting that “there is no argument “and “ID is not science” doesn't settle the issue when the nature of science itself is under question. Like a species of medieval inquisitor, Forrest will brook no debate on this issue. Instead of appeals to evidence or logic, she appeals, ad naseum, to authority. Could it perhaps be because where logic and evidence come into play, and where the game is not rigged, Forrest will lose?

And the wedge again Barbara? (Yawn) That is such old news that has already been dealt with here. For the record I don’t know of a single ID theorist who refers to himself as “the Wedge” nor do we do so collectively. And your sad tactic of calling us “Intelligent Design Creationists” is just a ploy to hang the albatross of creationism around our necks when there are appreciable differences that any historian of science would recognize.

First and foremost is that many ID theorists have no problem with the “Big Bang." In fact, we often point to it and the accompanying “fine tuning” of the laws of physics and chemistry as evidence of design. Meanwhile, the sort of creationist that Forrest wants to equate us with bristles at the notion of a Big Bang.

Next is the fact that creationists by definition start with a prior commitment to defend holy writ and yet there are several fellows of the Institute that are agnostic and have no religious commitment whatsoever.

Such distinctions cannot be easily glossed over and won’t be intellectually settled by appending the label “creationist” to the end of ID. At best it is intellectually dishonest. At the very least it's misleading. Is it a fair representation to append “atheist” to the end of “evolutionist” Barbara? No doubt some evolutionists like you and Richard Dawkins are atheists, but others like Ken Miller are not. So let’s go beyond the name calling and have an honest intellectual debate over the evidence.

Posted by Keith Pennock at 5:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Times today ran with a straight news piece on the plight of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, who has been under fire recently for allowing a pro-ID paper to be published in his former journal the peer-reviewed "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington."

The Times reports that there is now an investigation underway:

"I was singled out for harassment and threats on the basis that they think I'm a creationist," said Richard Sternberg, who filed the complaint with the federal Office of Special Counsel. ... Mr. Sternberg, who holds two doctorates in evolutionary biology, says he's been told by the Office of Special Counsel that "they take my complaint seriously and are investigating." The special counsel's office said it cannot discuss the case."

The story goes on to clarify that the paper was peer-reviewed, countering the insinuation that's been circulating that it had not gone through the peer-reviewed process.

"The report was 'peer-reviewed' by three outside scientists, Mr. Sternberg said, 'but employees at the Smithsonian, who had a sharply negative reaction to the report, insinuated that editorial malfeasance occurred on my end. I protested vigorously.'"

The most telling thing is the quote that finishes the story off:

"'Research associates are here at our pleasure ... but every effort was made to ensure there was no discrimination, even though he (Mr. Sternberg) published something a lot of people didn't agree with,' Mr. Kremer said."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

John Derbyshire recently rebutted a series of objections against Darwinism and, in the process, leveled a series of objections against intelligent design. He dismisses design by ignoring the actual arguments of its theorists and shadowboxing with letter writers instead. He shows, thereby, a lack of seriousness on his own part by trivializing and demeaning scholars whose views he apparently has not really bothered to understand.

One problem is that Derbyshire's objections against design theory often state the positions of leading design theorists--in other words,he agrees with leading design proponents without even realizing it.

For instance, one of his blog visitors tried to refute Darwinism by asserting, "The fossil record is incomplete." Derbyshire responded, "Well, duh. Fossilization only happens under extraordinary circumstances." That's correct.

He then goes on to assert that the fossil record is nevertheless complete enough to make inferences about the origin and history of species. Still agreed.

Then Derbyshire parts company with leading design theorists. He thinks the gaps in the fossil record protect the theory of common descent by natural selection. But the gaps don't. The fossil record is a growing problem for neo-Darwinism because attempts to explain away the absence of transitional intermediates between phyla and even lower groups have failed.

University of Chicago paleontologist Michael Foote notes that we continue to find many new fossil beds around the world, but again and again the fossils we find there belong to phyla and other major groups that we already knew about. This strongly suggests that the fossil record's pattern of sudden appearance, stasis, and yawning chasms between the orders does truly represent the history of life. In other words, it's not just an artifact of an incomplete sample of the data.

Suppose you find a dumpster mostly full of beads (an IPO for Bead World tanked). You watch the garbage truck pick up the dumpster, shake it every which way,thoroughly shuffling the beads. Then the lid is removed and the garbage man tells you to help yourself. The dumpster opening is too tall for you to see into, but you can reach over the top and scoop beads out at random. When you remove a handful of beads, you find that they are all red, green, or blue.

Can you reasonably infer that the dumpster principally contains just these colors? Not yet. This sample is so small that it may not be representative of all the colors in the dumpster. Plus, the garbage man insists that every tenth bead in the dumpster is an intermediate color between red, green, and blue. In fact, he says, you'll find that this transitional tenth--when arranged in order--forms an infinitesimally gradual movement from red to green to blue.

You nod and continue to reach in, bringing back handful after handful. Each time they are just red, green, or blue. You climb into the dumpster. All the beads on the surface are red, green, or blue. You plunge your arms in and pull up more and more handfuls. You're positively wallowing in beads, and all of them are red, green, blue.

"Were they thoroughly mixed together?" you ask the garbage man. He assures you they were. You politely inform him that uh, no doubt, there are a few other bead colors--rare ones--but there's no way that every tenth bead is a transitional color, much less a rainbow of transitional colors.

Since it just so happens that you're a probability theorist, you run the numbers for him and show that the chances that every tenth bead is a transitional color is vanishingly small. He shakes his head. "Oh, so you've looked at every bead, have you?" He jumps in with you. After a few minutes, he finds an old yellow marble stuck in the lid hinge. "Ah ha!" he yells. "The missing link!" Now it's your turn to just shake your head.

This is the situation with the global fossil record. As Foote concludes, "We have a representative sample and therefore we can rely on patterns documented in the fossil record."

He doesn't mean we will find no more species. He does mean that we have enough of the fossil record to see the basic pattern before us. It's one of sudden appearance of phyla, stasis, and yawning chasms of morphological space between them. And the pattern simply doesn't fit with Darwin's gradually branching tree of life.

Meyer et al. elaborates in Darwinism, Design and Public Education:

Foote develops a method by which evolutionary models can be tested against several variables. Foote shows that “given estimates of [a] completeness [of the fossil record], [b] median species duration, [c] the time required for evolutionary transitions, and [d] the number of ordinal- or higher-level transitions, we could obtain an estimate of the number of major transitions we should expect to see in the fossil record.” His method provides a way to evaluate, as he puts it, “whether the small number of documented major transitions provides strong evidence against evolution.”

Because variables [a], [b] and [d] are reasonably well established, [c] the time required for plausible mechanisms to produce macro-evolutionary transitions, stands as the crucial variable in any such analysis. If the time required to produce major evolutionary change is high, as it is for neo-Darwinian mechanisms of change, then given current estimates of [a], [b], and [d], neo-Darwinism fails to account for the data of the fossil record.

Conversely, for punctuated equilibrium to succeed as an explanation for the data of the fossil record, [c] must be very low. In other words, the explanatory success of punctuated equilibrium depends upon the existence of a mechanism that can produce rapid macro-evolutionary change. As Foote and Gould note elsewhere, the punctuationalist model of Cambrian evolution requires a mechanism of unusual “flexibility and speed.”

As yet, however, neither Foote, nor Gould, nor anyone else has identified such a mechanism with any genetic or developmental plausibility. Thus, given the current empirical climate, the logic of Foote’s statistical methodology tends to reinforce the earlier work of Valentine and Erwin who concluded that, “neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new body plans” and thus, we now require “a [new] theory for the evolution of novelty, not diversity.” (343-4)

Derbyshire suggests that only "hypotheses that can be mathematically modeled" are truly science. That's wrong. Much good science is done without mathematical modeling. The irony is that Foote and others are doing mathematical modeling on the fossil record, and the implication isn't Darwinism. It's design.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 4:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

John Derbyshire keeps reburying the design argument over at The Corner, with evidence he assures us is elsewhere. By assembling a host of misconceptions about design theory into a single, compact essay (generally unencumbered by supporting evidence), Derbyshire has done us a great service, providing us a forum to respond to each misconception in a series of posts over the next several days.

I’ve never met John Derbyshire. I love his name. It makes me think of England and Middle Earth. I imagine him wearing a stylish derby and living in a tasteful shire somewhere, an articulate conservative with strong opinions--but who just might stop and take a second look at a position with a much older pedigree than Darwinism, one that has gotten a boost in recent years from discoveries in molecular biology, big bang cosmology, astrobiology, information theory, and physics.

Derbyshire begins with a rhetorical flourish: "I like a good knock-down argument as much as the next person, but I must say, ID-ers are low-grade opponents, at least if a bulk of my e-mails are any indication."

Hmmm. If Derbyshire likes a “good knock-down argument,” why is he arguing with his inbox instead of with the best design arguments (of which he appears oblivious)?

I don’t think Derbyshire likes to have his cherished opinions knocked down at all. Most of us don’t. So we have to fight our tendency to guard our pet scientific theories from contrary evidence. We have to put our theories in empirical harm's way, and see if they continue to stand when assailed with fresh evidence. It's called "The Scientific Method."

But for Derbyshire, Darwinism is the damsel and he will not have her virtue besmirched, will not have her dragged into the dock to be cross-examined, will not have her competing for our affections like a common harlot. Intelligent design, he writes, “is, by the way, not a scientific theory though it may be a metaphysical one.”

Rhetorically punchy, but is it a scientific way to defend a theory—victory by definition?

Derbyshire also informs us, “All the ID arguments have been patiently refuted many times over.” Were they refuted exclusively with metaphysical arguments? No. Leading Darwinists often rebut ID arguments with scientific arguments. Then when a design theorist rebuts the Darwinist’s scientific arguments by pointing to contrary evidence in the natural world, suddenly (according to Derbyshire) it’s no longer a scientific argument.

Such desperate efforts to keep design theory out of the ring should impress no one.

Notice, too, where Derbyshire retreats to the dogma that design theory isn’t science. It’s right after he states, "A good scientific theory fits the data better than a poor theory." Hear! Hear! But Derbyshire immediately senses the danger. You see, Darwinism does a horrible job of explaining all sorts evidence in biology and paleontology (e.g., irreducibly complex devices like the mammalian eye, the bacterial flagellum, and blood clotting, the sudden appearance of numerous animal phyla in the Cambrian Explosion, the lack of any examples of macroevolution).

On these points, Darwinism is the aging boxer, past his prime. In contrast, the design hypothesis fits these data points nicely. Sensing this, Derbyshire quickly tries to get Darwinism’s strongest contender, intelligent design, out of the ring. "That other guy’s not a boxer. He’s a slugger, a ninja street fighter. I saw him down at the dojo last week! Watch out or he’ll use some of that Kung Fu voodoo on you!"

OK, that isn't a Derbyshire quotation, but neither have leading design theorists made some of the silly arguments Derbyshire lists to the exclusion of strong design arguments. Consider what philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has to say about the Darwinist habit of defining intelligent design out of the competition:

As [Michael] Ruse and Richard Lewontin have argued, miraculous events are unscientific because they violate or contradict the laws of nature, thus making science impossible.

... But why is this the case? Surely the point at issue is whether there are independent and metaphysically neutral grounds for disqualifying theories that invoke nonnaturalistic events--such as instances of agency or intelligent design. To assert that such theories are not scientific because they are not naturalistic simply assumes the point at issue. Of course intelligent design is not wholly naturalistic, but why does that make it unscientific? What noncircular reason can be given for this assertion? What independent criterion of method demonstrates the inferior scientific status of a nonnaturalistic explanation? We have seen that "must explain via law" does not. What does?

Some say it isn't science because the proposed design isn't observable. Well neither is common descent. Others say design theory isn't science because it can't be tested in a lab. On this point, Derbyshire and design theorists are in agreement. As Derbyshire puts it, "For heaven's sake. That criterion would invalidate most of science. The theory of continental drift, for example--how are you going to get Eurasia in through the lab door?" Stay tuned for more on observability and testability. In the mean time, the old saying is apropos: "He who lives in glass houses ..."

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 5:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Kansas is busy reviewing, and proposing revisions to, the standards by which it will measure what students know or don’t know about science. Regardless of the tin-ear reporting of some journalists, students in Kansas will continue to learn about evolution. The question is will they know ALL about evolution including the scientific evidence against it? Or, will they learn only about the evidence that supports it?

Reporting on the issue has run the gamut from good, to bad, to ugly. We remarked on the good previously, an article by Diane Carroll of the Kansas City Star. And, there was today another good article, by Elaine Bessier in the Johnson County Sun. In fact, Bessier’s article was more than good, it was downright fair and balanced.

Rather than conflate the revisions being proposed with intelligent design theory Bessier correctly reports:

”The revisions would open the door to questioning the theory of evolution by permitting teachers to discuss evidence for and against the theory in a neutral way and making it clear that evolution is a theory, not a fact.

Several professionals and students in the science field warned against impeding Kansas' biosciences initiative by de-emphasizing evolution in the schools.”

Bessier goes on to show that Darwinists are throwing intelligent design in where no one else has proposed it: “

Although the revisions don't include intelligent design, which holds that the universe is so complex it could not have been created by an undirected process, several people argued against bringing intelligent design into the science classroom.”

Interestingly, Bessier’s story gives equal time to both those critical of including the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory, and those who wish to foster critical thinking by including the scientific criticisms. "

Terry Devine, a former biology teacher, said that, for years, he taught evolution as the only theory (of where life came from). "We know we should have presented other things so students can make the decisions for their lives. This has not been done in the past. I think of all the things I taught as fact that have been proven to be not fact." Eugene Stohs of Shawnee, an adjunct professor of philosophy, spoke for "academic freedom of science teachers and students, the freedom to examine everything for and against any theory." He said the proposed revisions would allow greater academic freedom.”

Other media, as NPR did today, have painted all people critical of evolution as religiously motivated creationists, and report as if criticism of Darwin is indeed the same as intelligent design theory. (Note to NPR: Reading from the Eugenie Scott playbook and calling it a news story isn't journalism.)

NPR isn’t alone. The Associated Press’ man on the scene in Kansas, John Hanna, is peddling the red-state-on-a-rampage treatment of the evolution debate:

“Emboldened by their success getting a proposal to ban gay marriage before Kansas voters, some clergy leading that fight say they will tackle other issues, including the teaching of evolution in public schools.”

"I sure think there's a conservative agenda at work here," he said. "It's to control minds and thinking."

Then he trots out the trusty vague-as-fog definition of evolution:

“And evolution - which describes species changing over time to adapt to their environments and avoid extinction - is a perceived threat.”

To his credit, Hanna does get around to giving some straight facts:

“With the Board of Education, evolution critics aren't yet seeking equal status for creationism, which declares God created the universe, or intelligent design, which says evidence suggests change can't be attributed only to random chance.

Instead, critics want to encourage more criticism of evolution in the classroom.

Bill Harris, a University of Missouri-Kansas City professor of medicine, a leader of the effort, said clergy's support could cloud the issue. People don't have to be religious to see validity in intelligent design, and the goal is a balanced teaching about evolution, he said.

"Clearly, the question of what you teach about origins has religious implications," said Harris, who helped found the Intelligent Design Network.”

Alas all this ugly reporting, and worried opining, has resulted in opinion pieces based on fallacies and misrepresentations. Now, thanks to the ugly reporting, Sunday the Kansas City Star ran two opinion pieces, one supporting the mythical proposed inclusion of intelligent design in the classroom, and the other making a case for dropping the teaching of either evolution or design.

William Gregor suggests:

“Pairing intelligent design with the theory of evolution in Kansas' science standards would be a positive step toward improving critical reasoning skills among Kansas' children.”

Even worse is this idea from Deborah Phillips:

“This may be the most radical proposition you'll hear in this debate: Kansas science standards should emphasize neither intelligent design nor macroevolution. … Debating science standards is a waste of time; neither side will convince the other.”

“I don't worry what my children are taught in biology class. It is my responsibility to teach them truth; it is the school's responsibility to impart information and teach them to think critically. Their job is to get good grades by putting down the desired answers; they don't have to believe them.

Darwin did not know what we know about DNA. He didn't know the instructions for humans are roughly three billion letters long. It takes a lot more faith to believe this infinitely complex blueprint happened by chance, than to believe an intelligent designer created it. But either one takes faith; neither belongs in the science classroom.

K. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute at Zurich, says it well: “We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time that we cry: ‘The emperor has no clothes.'”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Remember Calvin Ball? Calvin and Hobbes played a ball game where the victor was the one who could most nimbly change the rules to assure victory. Well, they're playing Calvin Ball over at USA Today again. Gerald L. Zelizer writes:

Can intelligent design and evolution reside in the same school building? Yes. In the same curriculum? No. Intelligent design belongs in history or social science class. Evolution belongs in science class.

If one merely defines the scientific evidence against Darwinism as not-science, then, presto, you've cleared the field of all those stubborn, uncooperative facts that are better explained as the product of intelligent cause. Science writer Denyse O'Leary wrote USA Today, commenting thus:

Regarding Rabbi Zelizer's comments (February 6, 2005), could you please provide some real coverage of the intelligent design controversy instead of the usual uniquack [i.e., uninformed groupthink]?

Imagine my amazement at reading, "Among its most prominent spokespeople are scientists such as Michael Behe of Lehigh University, who point out major flaws in Darwin's theory of a continuous evolutionary chain from a few original forms. For example, many of the necessary transitional fossils that would link ancient forms to their contemporary ancestors are missing. Therefore, only design (or God) and not evolution could create the intricate diversity of life, he says."

Concerning Zelizer's underinformed commentary, Discovery Institute senior fellow Jay Richards has this to say:

Nonsense. Behe has never argued any such thing. Quite the opposite. In his best selling book "Darwin's Black Box," Behe says that he does not question the common ancestry of life. Rather, he challenges Darwin's mechanism of natural selection at the biochemical level. In particular, he points to features of certain microscopic molecular machines, which he argues are best explained by intelligent design rather than natural selection and random variation.

What this means is that Rabbi Zelizer is criticizing intelligent design, which he goes on to assert is unverifiable, without bothering to verify his own knowledge of the views of one of its chief proponents.

O'Leary concludes her letter to USA today:

Please, no more rubbish about religion and science. It is the SCIENCE issues that cause increasing numbers of people to turn away from Darwinism. Bloviating from science boffins is increasingly ineffectual when so many people can find out so much from the Internet.

In a personal note to Discovery Institute, O'Leary adds, "My letter has a better chance of ending up on Saturn than being considered [for publication at USA Today], but it would be nice. In any case, it's the legacy media's own fault if they don't listen. I did not advise them to go be road kill on some information highway. I have repeatedly warned them to do the opposite."

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 9:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Behe’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times seems to have hit a nerve. Or two. Or three. Or perhaps all of them, if you’re a Darwinian dogmatist. Here’s a few. ID Hits the Times Op-Ed, Science Tuesday, De-Sign of the Times, ID is a "rival theory".

There were some blogs cheering Behe’s piece as well, most prominently the Evangelical Outpost. EO writes:

ID in the NYT -- Today’s New York Times presents an editorial by Michael Behe that does what no major media outlet has bothered to do: allow a prominent advocate of the theory to explain what Intelligent Design really is.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Behe's op-ed "Design for Living" from today's New York Times is the third most e-mailed article from today's Times.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Michael Behe has an opinon piece in today's New York Times briefly laying out key aspects of the theory intelligent design. To date the MSM has been sadlly deficient in reporting what intelligent design theory is, and what it is not. This piece marks one of the first times that a major news outlet has let design advocates explain the theory in their own words. Hopefully other media will follow suit and instead of just regurgitating definitions from elsewhere they will accurately describe the theory itself.

Let’s roll the highlight reel:

“the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments. … Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.”

“the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic.”

“The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.”

"the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too."

“The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. … although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.”

“Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.”

"The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. … Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Unjust criticisms of Dr. Richard Sternberg have been flying around the internet since the story of his harassment by Darwinists became public when David Klinghoffer wrote about it in The Wall Street Journal little more than a week ago. Sternberg you will remember is the former biology journal editor under attack for publishing a pro-ID paper by CSC Director Steve Meyer. CSC Senior Fellow and Gonzaga law professor David DeWolf has written a response correcting the campaign of misinformation now being waged against Sternberg.

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In "Shooting the Messenger Indeed," and the resulting followup, Balta argues that the treatment of Rick Sternberg as described by David Klinghoffer in the WSJ article is much ado about nothing. If anything, Balta argues, it is Sternberg who violated the canons of science rather than those who attacked him. Balta’s points can be summarized in the form of questions:

• (1) What is Meyer's piece doing in a journal of taxonomy?


• (2) Shouldn't we be skeptical of Sternberg's claims based upon his association with known creationists?


• (3) Was there any real peer review of the Meyer paper?

Let's examine each of these:

(1) What is Meyer's piece doing in a journal of taxonomy?
Balta states that the Meyer article "was completely out of place within that journal." This claim is based upon the observation that all of the other articles in that particular issue dealt with "new species" and that Meyer's article did not report any new data, but instead proposed an explanation for the origin of new information observed in the fossil record. This observation should be tempered by a review of previous issues of the journal, which include articles on the origin or evolution of new taxonomic groups.

This is only logical: a journal of taxonomy should include not only observations and data based upon existing taxonomic categories, but articles that discuss the basis for the taxonomy.
Moreover, the journal itself describes its mission (on the inside page of the journal) in broad terms:

"The Proceedings . . . contains papers bearing on systematics in the biological sciences (botany, zoology and paleontology)."

The statement of the Council bears this out. Rather than identifying why the topic didn’t fit in the journal or wasn’t worthy on scientific grounds for publication, the Council simply asserted that there is no "credible scientific evidence" to support ID as an explanation for organic diversity, and then defers to an ex cathedra statement from the AAAS that ID is unscientific by definition. In Alice in Wonderland you have the verdict first and the trial later, but science deserves better.

(2) Shouldn't we be skeptical of Sternberg's claims based upon his association with known creationists?
The ad hominem attack -- that an argument from a bad man is a bad argument -- should have no place in science. But guilt by association, a la Joseph McCarthy, is even worse. Sternberg is condemned for having his name appear on the website of a study group composed of creationists. Sternberg shouldn’t have to respond to this kind of attack, but for the record, let’s see what Sternberg says about this relationship, and what the Baraminology Study Group (“BSG”) says (both can be gleaned from Sternberg’s website): Sternberg was invited to act as a reviewer of papers for BSG because one of their members “believed that it would be good to have a reviewer who did not share the mainstream BSG’s young-earth position.” It is one thing for a scientist to be punished for refusing to pay homage to the reigning paradigm; it is another thing for the long arm of political correctness to regulate those with whom he may consort. If Michael Ruse presents a paper at a conference on ID (which he has done), it is doubtful that he would be attacked. But when Rick Sternberg agreed to comment on papers generated by a group with which his disagreement is public, it was used as Exhibit A for the prosecution.

The method of science is to examine data, ideas, and theories, in a constant interchange questioning the accuracy of data and the merits of the interpretation of those data. It is a vice, not a virtue, that scientists naturally resist attempts to challenge the reigning paradigm. As Robert Conquest has observed,

"In principle, the scientific approach is to advance a general theory with a view to testing it against every possible sort of evidence that might tell against it. In practice, even in the hard sciences, there are reservations to be made. Even good scientists who have risen right to the top of their profession become attached to, and partisan about, the theory they have created or helped create, and obstinate in defending it. Second, their students and acolytes at a lower level, while in a general sense 'intelligent,' are inclined to an acceptance of the last generation's breakthrough and novelty, and treat them as a barely criticizable orthodoxy. This is particularly true when academic advancement becomes dependent on validating the last theory."