In his fictional Los Angeles Times op-ed, arch ID-hater Michael Shermer asserted that "Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require" providing "equal time" for intelligent design in public school science classes. This claim has been popping up elsewhere on the internet as well (see here and here.) But the claim is sheer fantasy on the part of hyperactive Darwinists.

In the interest of bringing out the truth, I hereby issue Mr. Shermer the following challenge: Provide proof for your outlandish claim. Identify the nine states that are supposedly considering legislation to mandate equal time for intelligent design, and cite the legislative language that would actually do this. If you can prove your claim, I will send you a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.com (and I won't even insist that you use it to buy books by intelligent design theorists!). You are invited to send your answer to cscinfo@discovery.org by no later than April 8, 2005.

Posted by John West at 7:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As Jonathan Witt noted in an earlier post, Michael Shermer in his Los Angeles Times opinion piece pretty much made up the comments he attributes to Stephen Meyer in a recent debate. But that's only one example of the science fiction in Shermer's essay. Here are some others.

Consider Shermer's mangled description of intelligent design (ID):

According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force — an intelligent designer.

In reality, ID does not claim that life is simply "too complex to have evolved by natural forces." It proposes instead that some features of the living world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause. As I pointed out in an earlier post:

the underlying argument for design in biology is not that certain things are too complex to be produced by the Darwinian mechanism, but that in our experience of the real world, intelligent causes supply the best explanation for certain kinds of structures. From our own experience, we readily observe that certain kinds of complex and information-rich systems are typically produced by intelligent causes. When we see Mt. Rushmore, for example, we know that an intelligent cause is sufficient to explain its existence, while an unintelligent process of wind and soil erosion probably isn't. Based on our own extensive experience of the natural world, intelligent design argues that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the products of intelligent causation.

Nor does ID claim that life must have been created by a "supernatural force." Whether the intelligent cause detected by design theory is inside or outside of nature is outside the scope of ID as a scientific theory. Design theorists have been very clear on these points, even if Shermer chooses to ignore their comments.

Shermer strays even further from reality in his description of what ID proponents advocate as a matter of public policy:

ID theorists argue that... IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that.

Most leading ID theorists are affiliated with Discovery Institute, and Discovery Institute does NOT claim that ID should be given "equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes." Indeed, Discovery opposes efforts to require the teaching of ID, although the Institute also doesn't think teachers should be forbidden from discussing the topic. As for Shermer's assertion that "Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require" equal time for ID in science classes, that is simply preposterous. Shermer has lived too long inside the Darwinist spin machine. The vast majority of legislative proposals deal with the freedom to teach scientific criticisms of Darwinism, not the teaching of intelligent design.

Posted by John West at 7:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent LA Times op-ed, Michael Shermer distorts the facts of a recent video-taped debate between him and design theorist Stephen Meyer. Dr. Meyer offers a different view of their conversation here.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 4:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Seattle Times has turned its eye to the CSC, sensing a chance to localize the story on the national debate over how to teach evolution.

It was good to see that reporter Linda Shaw included several things that are often left out or misreported: Specifically I was happy to see that she reported Steve Meyer's credentials (which rarely happens), portrayed him personally in a positive light, her tone was not histrionic or conspiratorial, she referenced our dissent list, she acknowledged that Darwinists see the Cambrian explosion as a problem (also rarely reported) and distinguished us from young-earth creationists.

The biggest problem I have with the story is that she inaccurately defines the theory of intelligent design. She simply uses the definition that design critics like to use. For them it's a straw man they put up so they can easily tear it down.

"an opportunity for the Discovery Institute to promote its notion of intelligent design, the controversial idea that parts of life are so complex, they must have been designed by some intelligent agent."

Senior Fellow William Dembski put it this way in The Design Revolution:

"As a theory of biological origins and development, intelligent design’s central claim is that only intelligent causes adequately explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable. To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well defined methods that, based on observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected natural causes."

Instead, leaders of the institute's Center for Science and Culture decided on what they consider a compromise. Forget intelligent design, they argued, with its theological implications. Just require teachers to discuss evidence that refutes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, as well as what supports it.

And as the following excerpts demonstrate, Shaw does a better job than many reporters in conveying our position on key battles such as Dover, Pennsylvania, Cobb Co., Georgia, and the underreported successes of Ohio’s state board of education.

Ohio got it right, [Meyer] says, when its state Board of Education voted in 2002 to require students to learn that scientists "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."

The School Board in Dover, Pa., however, got it wrong, Meyer said, when it required instruction in intelligent design. (The matter is now in court.) Intelligent design isn't established enough yet for that, Meyer says.

[Meyer] also criticizes the Georgia school board that put stickers on biology textbooks with a surgeon-general-like warning that evolution is "a theory not a fact." The stickers were a "dumb idea," he says bluntly. (A Georgia court ruled they were illegal, and the case is under appeal.)

What is most laughable is the quote from the NCSE’s Eugenie Scott:
"They harp and harp on natural selection, as if natural selection is the only thing that evolutionary biologists deal with," says Scott. "Who knows whether natural selection explains the Cambrian body plans. ... So what?"

So what? So what? The natural selection mechanism of Darwinsm is THE controversial point in the biological sciences debate. If it can’t explain things, then Darwinian evolution has nothing left to it.
The article finally wraps up by noting that Kansas is currently reviewing its state science standards and has scheduled a public hearing of expert scientists to debate the scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution.

“Kansas Citizens for Science, however, has urged a boycott of the hearings, saying the proposals have been ‘rejected by the science community at large.’”

He says that Darwinian defenders have two choices: they can either be afraid or they can “accept the challenge and rise to it, even to relish it. That's the approach I would urge.” Why has he broken ranks and decided to endorse a “teach the controversy” approach? He has the faith that many Darwinists often seem to lack; he believes that the theory he supports will win out in the end.

At the level of the students who are, after all, the principles in all this, the study of different explanations for the diversity of life on Earth will make science class more compelling. … The evolution-intelligent design debate will fire the interest of bright kids who will see through the paper-thin arguments being set out to discredit evolution.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times published an opinion piece by Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, titled When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality.

In short, Krauss complains about the "marketing" efforts to reconcile science with religion. While he has a lot of contempt for anyone who expresses a religious belief in a public arena, for Kruass the absolute worst are those who express any doubts about Darwin. Those doubters he compares with the bloody Taliban regime of Afghanistan, though he does seem to think we have more entrepreneurial skills.

“Foes of evolution and the Big Bang in this country do not operate with the direct and brutal actions of the Taliban. They have marketing skills.”

What Krauss implies is that anyone who voices dissent with St. Darwin’s theory is lying and is the same as the brutal, terrorists of the violent Taliban regime.

Excuse me if I yawn with boredom. I’ve been called the Taliban, and worse, by more creative people than Krauss, and in places like Texas, where they truly meant it.

Krauss then goes on to make a claim that is just plain, factually, wrong.

“The Discovery Institute in Seattle supports the work of several Ph.D.'s who then write books (and op-ed articles) decrying the fallacy of evolution. They don't write scientific articles, however, because the claims they make - either that cellular structures are too complex to have evolved or that evolution itself is improbable - have either failed to stand up to detailed scrutiny or involve no falsifiable predictions.”

But let’s just take one at random and see what we find.

Dr. Henry Schaefer received his B.S. degree in chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1966) and Ph.D. degree in chemical physics from Stanford University (1969). For 18 years (1969-1987) he served as a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is the author of more than 1000 scientific publications, the majority appearing in the Journal of Chemical Physics or the Journal of the American Chemical Society. ... A total of 300 scientists from 35 countries gathered in Gyeongju, Korea for a six-day conference in February, 2004 with the title "Theory and Applications of Computational Chemistry: A Celebration of 1000 Papers of Professor Henry F. Schaefer III."

Just as a little side note:

Dr. Schaefer has been invited to present plenary lectures at more than 180 national or international scientific conferences. He has delivered endowed or named lectures or lecture series at more than 35 major universities, including the 1998 Kenneth S. Pitzer Memorial Lecture at Berkeley and the 2001 Israel Pollak Distinguished Lectures at the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.. … During the comprehensive period of 1981--1997 Professor Schaefer was the sixth most highly cited chemist in the world; out of a total of 628,000 chemists whose research was cited. The Science Citation Index reports that by December 31, 1999, his research had been cited more than 30,000 times.

Krauss ends with this: “If the scientific method is out of the mainstream in our country it is time to take a stronger stand against the effort to undermine empirical reality in favor of dogma.”

Indeed. When the scientific method no longer follows the evidence where it leads, it is sadly out of the mainstream. There’s no doubt that it is time to take a stronger stand as Dr. Krauss suggests, and stand up against the Herculean, last-gasp efforts to undermine empirical reality in favor of dogmatic Darwinism.

One more side note. Here are just a few papers from scientific peer-reviewed journals that relate directly to either design theory or scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution.

• “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”, by Stephen C. Meyer, in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, August 2004
• “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues”, by Michael J. Behe and David W. Snoke, in Protein Science, The Protein Society August 2004
• “Self-Organization and Irreducibly Complex Systems”, By: Michael J. Behe in Philosophy of Science 67 (March 2000), University of Chicago Press

Examples of peer-reviewed books supporting design include The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press) by William Dembski and Darwin’s Black Box (The Free Press) by Michael Behe. Additionally peer-reviewed and peer-edited books addressing design theory have appeared with Michigan State University Press and Cambridge University Press respectively. There is also a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on design theory, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, which has an editorial advisory board of more than 50 scholars from relevant scientific disciplines, most of whom have university affiliations.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last year the producers of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer were seeking out the people hunkered down at ground zero in the debate over evolution: the National Center for Science Education.

As soon as the call to the Darwin defenders at the NCSE was placed and the interviews booked the Newshour turned their sites on the NCSE’s counterparts, the anti-Darwin scientists at the Center for Science Culture. But not without scheduling a lot of interviews and camera time with biblical creationists --and their dinosaur theme parks-- in between.

After months of discussion with the producers of the Newshour about whether or not they would fairly represent the theory of intelligent design, and the larger debate over how to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, Dr. Stephen Meyer agreed to an interview . He spent several hours with Jeffrey Brown as PBS rolled up nearly two hours worth of tape. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer said they were going to do a story on intelligent design and we tried to help make it accurate. Needless to say our legs are tired from pushing uphill.

(ASIDE: The upshot of all this is a lesson to anyone who deals with the media. Meyer got not quite 30 seconds of airtime in a report that lasted 14:32 seconds, or about 13 minutes longer than your average network news segment. To get that thirty seconds he traveled several thousand miles and spent hours preparing and then conducting the interview. Enter into media relations at your own risk.)

Why did Dr. Stephen Meyer, arguably one of the central figures in the national debate over origin of life issues and what we teach in high school biology classes, get only a handful of seconds and a few measly sound bites?

The answer isn’t all that hard to fathom -- it is as simple as alt-ctrl-scopes. That’s the universal macro for journalists reporting on the debate over evolution. Alt-ctrl-scopes brings up the old trope about evolution, that this is just religion vs. science.

If you’re a journalist writing about this issue what more needs to be said than was said at the Scopes Monkey Trial almost a hundred years past? Alt-ctrl-scopes, fill in the names and you’re done.

Apparently, for many modern journalists, nothing in the debate over evolution makes sense except in the light of the Scopes Trial. What was the case then in 1925, must be the case now. Too many reporters stick to this tried and true trope, and unfortunately The Newshour’s Jeffrey Brown did as well.

That’s not to say that Brown didn’t try to do a good story. I don’t think he set out with a nefarious agenda to undermine the theory of intelligent design, or to criticize the Center for Science & Culture. I think he was just incapable of getting past the inordinate amount of misinformation and propaganda that is being thrown at members of the media such as himself each and every day they deal with this story.

Early on in the story he says: “Students learn that natural selection is the key mechanism by which evolution takes place.” What he didn’t do was to define his terms so that viewers knew exactly what he was talking about when he says “evolution” or even natural selection.

The story moves quickly to the typical stereotype of religion vs. science saying that is an issue mostly focused on religion and faith. To bolster that they have lots of high school students who express their doubts about Darwinism in overtly religious terms. The story leaves no doubt that evolution is under an attack led “mostly by religious conservatives.” Interesting. David Berlinski would be surprised to hear that. So would Stanley Salthe. Or, Giuseppe Sermonti. Or any number of other non-religious scientists skeptical of the claims of Darwinism. Contrary to the Newshour’s premise at the outset, doubting Darwinism is not solely a consequence of religious belief.

The next step –after making sure the viewer is aware it’s purely a religious issue—is to use the political environment to keep the focus off of the scientific evidence and instead on peripheral things like the “red state rampage.” Or in this case where historian Ed Larson explains this is all just a part of the typical pattern of evolutionary discontent that arises with the election of a republican presidents.

"We had Harding and Coolidge in the 20s. We had Reagan in the 80s. And now we have George Bush."

What is different now is the modern scientific evidence that supports the design hypothesis, as well as that which has cast doubt upon Darwin's theory. But, somehow for many journalists that is lost in filling out the macro.

Next in this typical story comes the inevitable –and arguably too long by half— interview and series of clips from fire-breathing biblical creationists like Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. Inevitably, instead of pointing out that creationists like Ham find little to like about design theorists, the story goes on to conflate the two vastly different theories of creationism and intelligent design.

(Is déjà vu setting in? You’ve probably seen this report a hundred times before. But you know what they say about lies repeated . . . . )

Next up is Eugenie Scott of the NCSE teaching teachers about how evolution is not “just a theory” as some textbook stickers would have you believe. “This is how evolution opponents misuse science,” proclaims Scott. Of course, she dodges any of the real issues of the evidence for the theory of evolution, and instead goes for the politically inept jugular of school districts that have relied on such stickers to try and improve the teaching of Darwin’s theory.

Because they are tied to the stereotypes in the old trope about evolution, the Newshour makes an egregious error of omission: the Newshour was doing a story about the teaching of evolution and yet they missed one of the biggest developments in the issue in the past year. In 2002 the state of Ohio adopted science standards that require students to know "how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The Ohio state board of education followed that up last year by adopting a mode lesson plan entitled "Critical Analysis of Evolution." Yet, the Newshour visited schools in Kentucky when they could have just as easily gone to Ohio. And, they used tiny Dover, Pennsylvania's decision to insert the theory of intelligent design into the curriculum as a backdrop to their story. Why focus on a tiny school district, however controversial, without mentioning the great success that an entire state has had in wrestling with such a difficult issue? Because it fits the stereotype.

This all leads inevitably to the point where intelligent design is proclaimed as just another form of creationism.

“The newest attack on evolution claims to come from a strictly scientific perspective.”

Well, unfortunately that student would have failed many classes if their grade was dependent on an accurate description of the theory. Much of design theory is based on the experiential nature of the world and what we know of cause and effect, not on what we don’t know. Rather than being an argument from ignorance as the student defines it, it is an argument from what we do know empirically of the world around us, much more so in fact that Darwin’s theory.

To the Newshour’s credit they finally let Dr. Meyer weigh in on the issue and briefly explain the theory.

“The theory of intelligent design says that life arose as the result of a designing intelligence and you can tell that from certain key indicators … that are present in the cell like the presence of digital information in molecules like DNA and RNA. And the presence of exquisite little molecular machines, little rotary engines and turbines and pumps that we now find in cells.”

Eventually this leads to the CSC's “teach the controversy” approach to science education, and the typically vague criticisms from the NCSE and elsewhere. According to the NCSE’s Scott, there is no debate among scientists. Specifically concerning the controversy over Darwinian evolution’s ability to explain the complexity of life – and that is the controversy – Scott says of the debate: “this is not happening.” She might want to tell that to the relatively small, but extremely courageous, group of nearly 400 scientists who have signed the “Scientific Dissent From Darwinism” statement.

Brown eventually does make clear that ID proponents are distinctly different from creationists saying:

“In fact intelligent design proponents distance themselves from creation scientists. They use only the language of science and avoid speaking of God as the ultimate designer.”

Because of that mistaken presumption there is a glaring error of commission -- the Newshour presents Dr. Steve Meyer's description of intelligent design, without ever presenting his comments about the fact that CSC does NOT favor what the Dover school board has done, and that we do not advocate requiring the inclusion of intelligent design in the classroom. Dr. Meyer made this point repeatedly in his interview, but it was left on the cutting room floor, leaving viewers with the incorrect assumption that he must support that position.

Dr. Meyer gets the last direct quote saying:

“We argue that from the science you can tell that intelligence played a role, but we don’t think that from the science you can tell the nature or the identify of the designer.”

So, what about my original question: Why did Dr. Stephen Meyer, arguably one of the central figures in the national debate over origin of life issues and what we teach in high school biology classes, get only a handful of seconds and a few measly sound bites?

He got little time because the issue for the media isn't about the science involved, it's about making this a culture war issue. This is about blue state vs. red state, atheist vs. fundamentalist, educated vs. uneducated. In order to tell the story without delving into the intriguing world of molecular machines or explaining the cutting edge findings in molecular biology and nanotechnology, the media simply tries to modernize the story of good old Clarence Darrow being trounced by the status quo. Only this time around they don't even recognize who Darrow is, or that they're fronting for the status quo.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Newshour with Jim Lehrer will have Stephen Meyer as one of several taped guests during their story on the evolution debate tonight on PBS. In most markets The Newshour is aired at 6pm on the local PBS affiliate. You can check stations and schedules at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/.

Already the Newshour is off to a rock start focusing on the media's threadbare creation vs. evolution storyline. It will be interesting to see if reporter Jeffrey Brown is as "straightforward" with the viewers as he presented himself to us more than a month ago when he taped his interview with Dr. Meyer.

Creation Conflict
Correspondent Jeffrey Brown investigates how some biology teachers are handling the hot button debate over the theory of evolution, creationism and intelligent design.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

CSC senior fellow Jonathan Wells e-mailed me to point out that in the March issue of BioScience (the magazine of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, not available without subscription), a pro-Darwin / anti-ID article by Oksana Hlodan has provided us with the silliest item of the month.Well's writes:

Hlodan quotes University of Texas - Austin biologist David Hillis as saying "You can't study human diseases without studying phylogenetics."

This would no doubt come as a surprise to the hundreds of pioneers in medicine who have not only studied diseases but also found diagnostic techniques and effective treatments for many of them -- without ever studying phylogenetics. Phylogenetics is the study of the supposed history of descent of a group of taxa from common ancestors. Unfortunately, without a genealogical record it is not possible to verify that any no-longer-living organism was the common ancestor of two subsequent organisms, much less two different taxa; so phylogenetics is limited to formulating more or less plausible hypotheses about possible ancestor-descendant relationships. David Hillis (who vigorously defended flawed biology textbooks in testimony before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003) has made it his profession to formulate unverifiable phylogenetic hypotheses. Now he insists that a medical practitioner can't even STUDY puerperal fever, smallpox or tuberculosis without also studying such hypotheses. Thank goodness Ignaz Semmelweis, Edward Jenner and Selman Waksman didn't wait for Hillis to come along and tell them how to study those diseases.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 3:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Pacific Justice Institute has announced that it has joined (as co-counsel) Sacramento-area parent Larry Caldwell’s federal lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District for the violation of Caldwell’s civil rights. This welcomed news is discussed further in Pacific Justice Insitute's press release (found here).

As we have previously blogged about (here and elsewhere), Caldwell had presented to RJUHSD School Board a Quality Science Education Policy, which simply stated that teachers should "help students analyze the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories, including the theory of evolution.” The policy proposal included the supplementing of existing curricula with scientific materials that included some of the scientific criticisms that have been raised against aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theories by members of the scientific community.

The Quality Science Education Policy, contrary to some earlier, erroneous claims, did NOT call for the removal of evolutionary theory, nor did it call for the teaching of the alternative scientific theory of intelligent design.)

But Caldwell never received a fair hearing on the merits of his proposal. As the Pacific Justice Institute’s Press release states:

For over a year, school officials continually denied him a fair hearing on his proposal, in clear violation of California and federal law, denied other parents the right to speak in favor of the proposal and launched personal attacks.

In fact, one outspoken member of the School Board went so far as threatening to sue Caldwell for his outspokenness about the Quality Science Education Policy.

Caldwell and the Pacific Justice Institute have raised several legal claims against the RJUHSD, including violation of Caldwell’s freedom of speech under the U.S. and California Constitutions, violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause and religious freedom provisions of the California Constitution, violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, as well as a taxpayer’s claim under the California Civil Code.

See Discovery Institute’s earlier press release about this case, here.

Posted by Seth Cooper at 3:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The USA Today has published an article about the chicken littles at the National Academy of Sciences. Apparently, their pet theory hasn't been faring so well of late, and they've decided to circle the wagons.

The article itself isn't so bad. It's the comments from the desperate Darwinists that provide any real entertainment.

The story opens with this not so stupendous news:

"Nearly one-third of science teachers who participated in a national survey say they feel pressured to include creationism-related ideas in the classroom."

What is interesting is the way they interpret these numbers. Typically, a newspaper leads with the majority numbers when a survey is reported. Most people tend to want to know what the prevailing opinion is. That only one-third are expressing this opinion here means that the majority, over two-thirds, don’t feel this pressure. But, of course, that isn't news.

The article goes on (you can refer to any typical article on the subject to catch up at this point).

Another alternative to evolution is called "intelligent design." Proponents believe some cellular structures are too complex to have evolved over time.

Alberts complains that creationists, under the guise of intelligent design, have attempted to push evolution out of textbooks and classrooms in 40 states.

Later the article reports:

"'If there were indeed deep flaws in parts of evolutionary biology, then scientists would be the first to charge in there,' says Jeffrey Palmer of Indiana University in Bloomington."

In his letter, Alberts criticizes Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, as being representative of the "common tactic" of misrepresenting scientists' comments to cast doubts on evolution.

The story wraps up with a quote from an NCSE person who we can completely agree with in this instance:

Susan Spath, of the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit group that defends evolution, says proponents "need to work together more proactively in educating the public about these issues. The silver lining may be that this is an opportunity to enhance public understanding of science."

UPDATE: Alert reader Dave Thomas answered my challenge by pointing out that design proponents Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds have no trouble with young earth viewpoints. Though it should be pointed out that this does indicate that what they've endorsed is more research and they have not been dogmatic about this point.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/whyoe2.htm

"Among proponents of young-earth theories, attitudes span a wide spectrum. Some (such as Ham, Morris, and Morris, in the quotes above) are certain that their interpretation of the Bible is correct, and that anyone who disagrees with them is certainly wrong. Others (such as Paul Nelson & John Mark Reynolds, in Three Views on Creation and Evolution) adopt a more humble approach. Nelson & Reynolds acknowledge the difficulties in current young-earth science, but think there are enough questions (about old-earth theories) to make young-earth theories worthy of further scientific research and development. Although they think a young-earth interpretation of the Bible is justified, and young-earth theology is preferable, they are not dogmatic about these views and are less critical of fellow Christians who think old-earth views are justified and preferable."

I should have said: Name one prominent ID proponent who has ever proposed that the Big Bang concept be removed from science classrooms.

Regardless, there's nothing in ID that even implies the details of young earth creationism, and the prominent IDers --Steve Meyer, Jay Richards, Guillermo Gonzalez, Walter Bradley, et.al.-- who've written extensively on the subject of Big Bang cosmology and an old universe have written in defense of both ideas.

I'm glad I didn't offer a cash prize for that one.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Somebody forgot to get the word to Paul McHugh: Respectable intellectuals don't doubt Darwin--ever! McHugh is a university distinguished service professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former psychiatrist in chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In the new issue of The Weekly Standard, he provides detailed evidence that Darwin's narrative of the origin of species is in crisis, and that civilized discourse about the growing controversy surrounding his theory is all to the good:

Those who would expel all challenges to the Darwinian narrative from the high school classroom are false to their mission of teaching the scientific method.

"Scientists as they engage in dialogue with others should abhor attempts to close off the conversation by excessive claims for any privileged access to truth. Scientists should tell what they actually know and how they know it, as distinct from what they believe and are trying to advance. If all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, accepted that guiding principle, the 80-year history of attempts to use law to stifle the teaching of science--stretching as it does from the courtrooms of Dayton, Tennessee, to those of Cobb County, Georgia--could perhaps finally be brought to a close.

McHugh essay is not pithy. He actually takes the time to wrestle with some specific problem's with Darwin's theory. One example I hope will encourage your reading of the full article:

Darwin himself understood that questions raised about his narrative had substance. In Chapter IX of On the Origin of Species, he noted that the fossil record had failed to "reveal any ... finely graduated organic chain" linking, as he proposed, existing species to predecessors. He called the record "imperfect" and went so far as to say, "This, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." Darwin presumed that the problem rested on the "poorness of our palaeontological collections" and would be answered when more of "the surface of the earth has been geologically explored."

In the same Chapter IX, Darwin also acknowledged that the fossil record does suggest the "sudden appearance of whole groups of allied species all at once." He noted that if this fact were to stand, and "numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life all at once, . . . [it] would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection." He forestalled that fatal blow to his theory by asking his readers not to "over-rate the perfection of the geological record."

Any sympathetic reader of Darwin's history would readily allow him the point--that earlier life forms might have all come and gone elsewhere than where later forms emerged and might have done so without leaving a fossil record to demonstrate the smooth gradation between species. But such a reader should admit, as Darwin did, that the absence of the record is a serious matter--especially when it persists to this day, nearly a century and a half after Darwin's book was published. This imperfection of the historical record was, after all, sufficiently embarrassing to provoke some evolutionary biologists nearly 100 years ago to try to improve on the record by manufacturing the counterfeit fossil Piltdown Man.

Even among committed Darwinists, the imperfection of the fossil record has been a source of huge argument. The Darwinian fundamentalist Richard Dawkins of Oxford believes in smooth and gradual evolutionary processes. He became a vicious antagonist to Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, who championed "punctuated equilibrium," with abrupt species generation after millennia of stability.

The problem is so acute that a biology journal recently peer-reviewed and published this essay arguing that intelligent design was a better explanation than the Darwinian narrative of undirected evolution by natural selection.

Oh but high school biology stduents wouldn't find any of this interesting, would they? Don't they prefer their science handed to them pre-digested, in the form of settled dogma, every mystery settled, all of the intellectual ferment safely buried in the past?

And we wonder why more of our kids aren't pursuing careers in biology and medicine. McHugh has the right idea: It's time to teach the controversy.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 10:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews is a courageous man to be sure to write an article ("Who's Afraid of Intelligent Design?") that goes against the crusade of his employer.

Specifically, Mathews argues that it would be good for science education to teach the scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution. This is exactly the approach that CSC has always advocated.

But after interviewing supporters and opponents of intelligent design, which argues among other things that today's organisms are too complex to have evolved from primordial chemicals by chance or necessity, I think critiques of modern biology, like Ladendorff's contrarian lessons, could be one of the best things to happen to high school science

Why not enliven this with a student debate on contrasting theories? Why not have an intelligent design advocate stop by to be interrogated? Many students, like me, find it hard to understand evolutionary theory, and the scientific method itself, until they are illuminated by contrasting points of view.

He lets CSC Fellow John Angus Campbell have the last word:

"John Angus Campbell, who teaches the rhetoric of science and speech at the University of Memphis, has been trying to coax more of them into letting their students consider Darwin's critics. Like me, Campbell reveres the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who said good ideas should be questioned lest they degenerate into dogma.

Turning Darwin into an unassailable god without blemishes, Campbell said, doesn't give student brains enough exercise. "If you don't see the risks, if you don't see the gaps," he said, "you don't see the genius of Darwin."

I hope that Mr. Mathews is prepared for the onslaught of nasty hate mail he will get for having the temerity to suggest such a radical idea.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:34 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you for your patience as we've been working to upgrade software and hardware for this blog. For several days running we've been unable to keep the blog up and running properly, but I'm happy to say that we've turned a corner and should soon be running at 100%.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Berlinski sent me the following e-mail this morning and encouraged me to share it here. The exchange below comes after the recent publication of David's op-ed in the Wichita Eagle.

Someone named PZ Myers posted an indignant response to my op-ed piece to the Panda's Thumb. Our correspondence follows. By all means post it to the Discovery Institute's web site. Best, D

Dear Dr. Myers:

I read with interest your criticisms of my little op-ed piece for the Wichita Eagle; and very indignant they were. Your references to my most recent book, “The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky”, were, however, in error, the result, no doubt, of the fact that you have not read the book, and, I am sure, do not plan to do so. Please allow me to quote the book's first words: "Astrology is a failed science in the simple but inescapable sense that in this country and in Europe, it is no longer taken seriously by scientists." My book is hardly a defense of astrology, as every careful reviewer has taken pains to note. The very idea is absurd. Neither is it a critique of astrology. It is, instead, a history of astrological doctrine and an account of the lives of various astrologers from Babylonian to modern times. Quite fascinating, if I do say so myself. And instructive as well, since, like Darwinian theories, astrological theories were once treated with immense respect by serious and responsible scientific figures like Johannes Kepler. Although psychological advice is not in my line, the example of Kepler's life might suggest some self-scrutiny on your part. Here is a man of evident genius, and one moreover prepared to discard with great ruthlessness what he considered the vulgar aspects of 15th century astrological doctrine. No one could have been more contemptuous of what Kepler considered the abuse of astrology. What he was unable to do was free himself of the conviction that astrological theories were fundamentally correct. That act of intellectual liberations was beyond him.

As for field studies reporting weak to non-existence selection effects in the wild, do have a look at J.G. Kingsolver, et al, "The Strength of Phenotypic Selection in Natural Populations (/The American Naturalist/, March 2001), a paper which must now be considered more up-to-date than Endler's well-known 1986 monograph on the same topic.

I would be as prepared as the next man to believe that in Darwinian theories you are in possession of theories worth defending if only you would do a better job defending them.

Sincerely yours, David Berlinski

PZ Myers wrote:

Yes, I am justifiably indignant. Your editorial was a slurry of misconceptions, deceptions, and lies; have you no shame at all?

David Berlinski wrote:

Dear Dr. Myers --All that indignation might be put to better effect had it not crossed my desk advanced by absurd criticisms of a book you have never read, and supported neither by argument nor a rational appeal to the evidence. A defense like yours does more to speed Darwin's theory toward the undertaker's parlour than any criticism I might make. Add just a few more words -- something I am persuaded you can do -- and you will cover the cost of Darwin's eternity slippers as well as his burial plot. A sense of shame? My poor baffled booby. I am quite sure that in the faculty lounge where you take coffee, your colleagues are apt to slap you on the back collegially and assure you that this is all very fine stuff -- just swell; but the universe, thank God, is not the university, and men and women who have read more than ten good books and are not afraid of ghosts will consider the rhetorical force of your words and simply chuckle to themselves. When you have an argument to make, or specific evidence from the literature to cite, you may by all means write back, and I will answer with all of my well-known equanimity of spirit.

DB

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Apologies for the blog's outages yesterday. We're updating our servers and software and some downtime is inevitable.

Previously, this blog was accessible at both http://www.evolutionnews.org, and at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/blogs/csc.php.

However, only http://www.evolutionnews.org now points to this page so be sure to update any bookmarks you may have.

Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last week U.S District Court Judge John E. Jones III issued a memorandum and order in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Kitzmiller is the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the school board in Dover, PA, for its policy requiring students in science class be read a statement by administrators mentioning both intelligent design and problems with evolution. Discovery Institute’s prior press release concerning the Dover School Board policy can be found here.

Judge Jones’ memorandum and order concerned two pre-trial motions, namely; (1) a motion of the Rutherford Institute to intervene as a third-party in the lawsuit on behalf of Dover parents; and (2) the motion to dismiss by the Defendant Dover Area School District (represented by the Thomas More Law Center). Continuation of the lawsuit to trial did not directly hinge one way or the other upon the Judge’s ruling on these motions.

As previously blogged about (here), the Rutherford Institute filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of parents who were concerned that the arguments the ACLU was advancing in the suit and the remedy that the ACLU was seeking from the court would prevent students’ “…access to information and ideas in an academic setting.” Several Dover parents were concerned that if the ACLU were successful in its lawsuit that the result would be a censoring and shielding of students from all criticism of biological evolutionary theory.

Although Judge Jones noted that the Rutherford Institute’s intervention application was submitted in a timely fashion, the motion to intervene was DENIED under Rule 24(a) and (b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. (It may be of interest to readers that the Judge noted in his ruling that the ACLU does not seek to remove the intelligent design textbook Of Pandas and People from the Dover School District’s school libraries, but only from its science classrooms.)

The Defendant School District’s motion to dismiss concerned the standing claims of a small handful of Dover parents being represented by the ACLU. In essence, the Defendant argued that certain parents experienced no “injury in fact” sufficient to be a party to the suit. Certain ACLU-represented parents have children well below the ninth grade and certain other ACLU-represented parents have children above the ninth grade. Judge Jones DENIED the Defendants’ motion to dismiss from the case the parents of children several years to young to be directly affected by the Dover Board policy. The Judge found it premature (at this stage of the lawsuit) to dismiss certain parents of children who had already advanced beyond the ninth grade in Dover Schools.

As Judge Jones noted in his memorandum and order, pre-trial discovery as to the actual merits of the legal claims and defenses has not yet begun in this case. Accordingly, a trial is still some months away.

Posted by Seth Cooper at 12:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In a blog post a couple of weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether the Washington Post's Peter Slevin would fairly report on our lengthy conversation about public policy battles over evolution. Well, Slevin's article is out, and now I know. In my previous post, I listed six main points from our interview and asked whether Slevin would accurately convey the points. Slevin basically ignored most of what I told him (in fact, I'm not even quoted in the story). Instead, he misleadingly stitched together some quotes from my colleague Steve Meyer all the while ignoring most of what Steve told him as well. (See here for a discussion of how Slevin mischaracterized Steve's comments.) As I indicated earlier, I liked Slevin. He seemed like a nice guy. But I don't like his one-sided reporting. True, he does make clear that Discovery Institute is NOT trying to require the teaching of intelligent design. But that's about the only good thing in his lopsided potpourri of stereotypes that completely ignores the substance of the science education controversy and only delves into motives and funding on one side of the debate. If you want to see just how slanted Slevin's report is, please read my previous blog post. Here I want to focus just on one point, because it relates to the central claim of Slevin's piece.

Slevin tries to assert that the the evolution issue is gaining traction now because of the forces of the so-called religious right. He takes this talking point straight from the mouth of Eugenie Scott at the NCSE, whom he quotes in his article. What Slevin neglects to report is Discovery Institute's response to Scott's assertion. When Slevin asked me about this, I pointed out that the religious right has been around for a long time, so that really doesn't explain why scientific criticisms of evolution finally seem to be gaining traction. What is different from the past is that today there are growing numbers of scientists at American academic institutions who are challenging evolution for scientific reasons. As I explained in more detail in my previous blog:

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 legitimate scientific controversies over neo-Darwinism well-supported in the scientific literature.

Now, then, why didn't Mr. Slevin present our view on this point? Why did he simply adopt Eugenie Scott's spin as his own point of view for his article? Even in a slanted article, aren't readers entitled to hear the response of both sides to the central claim made by the article?

Perhaps this wasn't a case of bias. Perhaps Mr. Slevin simply forgot what I said or took poor notes during our interview. You might think so if you read his comments in an online discussion about his article earlier today. In answer to a question about why critics of evolution have been gaining "traction" recently, Slevin responded:

Peter Slevin: ...As for the traction, that's a very good question, one worth a long essay.

If you asked Rev. Terry Fox, I think he would say it is because large numbers of people doubt, as an act of faith and belief, the explanatory power of evolution.

If you asked the Discovery Institute's Steve Meyer, I think he would say that evolutionary theory leaves too many riddles unsolved, and that science is poking holes in it.

There is a strong political component, as I suggested in the story, but there is much more to be said.

Hmm. Slevin speculates here about what he thinks Steve Meyer MIGHT say to this question, but he neglects to reveal what I DID tell him in answer to this question! Again, perhaps Mr. Slevin is absent-minded and just forgot. Except that Discovery Institute sent Slevin a copy of my blog post reiterating this point, and he later responded that he had received the message and hoped that he had avoided some of the "pitfalls" I warned about. Slevin's response makes it sound as if he had actually read my blog post before finishing his story--which again raises the question as to why he did not even allude to my answer. Might it be because my answer didn't fit his predetermined storyline? You be the judge.

Posted by John West at 10:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Associated Press (AP) in Kansas must have hired the National Center for Science Education to edit news reports on that state's evolution controversy. Why else would the Kansas AP continue to pass off the following biased and inaccurate definition of intelligent design theory as an impartial description of the differences between design and Darwinian evolution:

Evolution says species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations. Intelligent design, a form of creationism, holds there's evidence of an intelligent design behind the origin of the universe, the formation of the Earth and biological change.

There are at least two things egregiously wrong with the above paragraph. First and foremost, intelligent design is NOT "a form of creationism." While some Darwinists certainly try to categorize design theory in this way, intelligent design proponents vigrously disagree. (For some of the reasons why, read my article here.) By presenting the Darwinists' biased assertion about ID being a form of creationism as a fact (and ignoring what the proponents of design say about their own theory!), the Kansas AP has left the realm of impartial reporting and entered spin zone of the NCSE.

Second, the AP implies that intelligent design rejects the idea that "species change in response to environmental factors over the course of many generations." FALSE. Intelligent design rejects the idea that all biological complexity can be explained as the product of an undirected material cause such as random mutations and natural selection. It does not deny that species can change and adapt in response to environmental factors.

Posted by John West at 9:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post today published on their front page the latest in a series of drive-by reportings on intelligent design. Not surprisingly the reporter, Peter Slevin, sees this more as a political issue than a scientific issue. He's much more concerned with how religious zealots may try to use ID theory in the political realm than whether or not peppered moths really rest on trees. Are Heaeckel's embryo drawings less fake because the Post wants to make this a political issue? They're missing the point, which is a scientific one.

I tried to get Slevin to focus more on the science than the politics, but he was determined to do a political piece. So he decided to come to Seattle and I encouraged him to interview both John West (see West's blog about the interview here), our main policy person, and Steve Meyer as the director of the CSC and one of the main scientists involved in design theory. Slevin spent a day in Seattle and interviewed each of them at length. I sat in on the interviews and took notes myself, as well as helped to clarify certain issues when they came up.

The upshot is that John West spent nearly two hours with Slevin talking about the policy and politics of ID, and Steve Meyer spent equal time with Slevin and focused almost solely on what the case for ID is and how it is not an argument from ignorance as the Washington Post, and others, has persisted in defining it.

What does Slevin do? He does not quote John West at all. He does quote Steve Meyer -- but he strings together different thoughts on different issues from different points in the conversation and presents them as if they are one single quote:

"It's an academic freedom proposal. What we would like to foment is a civil discussion about science. That falls right down the middle of the fairway of American pluralism," said the Discovery Institute's Stephen C. Meyer, who believes evolution alone cannot explain life's unfurling. "We are interested in seeing that spread state by state across the country."

Notice that the quotes from Steve Meyer come under the subhead "Not Science, Politics." That is Slevin's slant -- he starts off with the mistaken belief that ID is politics not science and so he crafts an article to fit that presupposition. In order to prove the point he simply misquotes his primary source.

I don't remember Steve saying "It's an academic freedom proposal" though he may have said something similar when the discussion turned to the case of Richard Sternberg at one point. (now that's certainly political, I wonder why it wasn't discussed here?)

In discussing the situation in Dover, Pennsylvania Steve told Slevin that it seems to him the two parties in the lawsuit -- the school board and the ACLU -- have a different agenda than Discovery Institute.

"They want to have a battle over the first amendment and we want to have a civil discourse about science."

The final two parts of that quote refer to Ohio. In conversing with Slevin Steve explained that the solution in Ohio did fall right down the middle and was one that most reasonable people could agree with, and we do want to see that spread to other states.

This mish mashed quote then is used to make Slevin's point that the issue is politics, not science. But, that's not how the interview went with Steve Meyer. Rather that interview was largely about science and less about policy, but policy is what Slevin wanted to show Steve talking about.

Slevin's article has other misleading parts to it.

In Seattle, the nonprofit Discovery Institute spends more than $1 million a year for research, polls and media pieces supporting intelligent design.

You have to get to nearly the end of the article though before that misstatement about our budget is corrected:

"The Discovery Institute devotes about 85 percent of its budget to funding scientists, with other money going to public action campaigns."

Slevin finally gets around to what we think is an important issue -- namely the success of Ohio's adoption of an objective set of science standards and a model lesson plan that critically analyzes both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. We have never shied away from talking about Ohio, and taking some credit for the adoption of a curriculum that didn't cause an ACLU seizure and eventual lawsuit. But, the way that Slevin presents the issue makes it sound as if Discovery engaged in some nefarious scheme, which is absolutely not true.

Meyer said he and Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman devised the compromise strategy in March 2002 when they realized a dispute over intelligent design was complicating efforts to challenge evolution in the classroom. They settled on the current approach that stresses open debate and evolution's ostensible weakness, but does not require students to study design.

"Also, by deferring a debate about whether God was the intelligent designer, the strategy avoids the defeats suffered by creationists who tried to oust evolution from the classroom and ran afoul of the Constitution."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Science journalist Denyse O'Leary in an e-mail to me summed up today's Washington Post story this way.

Who published this story?

Answer: The Washington Post

What is true about Washington D.C.?

Answer: It is the biggest concentration of political/military power in the
world right now.

What tends to be true of the Beltway folks?

Answer: They see everything in terms of politics.

Here's a useful gauge for assessing a story like this: Don't look only at
what it does say.

Look also at what it DOESN'T say.

Nowhere does the story address the main points I would make myself, if asked
to account for the growing popularity of ID:

O'Leary's main points: Current science evidence does NOT support Carl
Sagan's view of the universe or PBS Evolution's view of life forms. Current
evidence reasonably suggests intelligent design instead.

Religious groups can, of course, exploit this situation. But they did not
and could not create it.

That is the huge fact that this story does not address.

No story from the Beltway is going to address it.

That's what's wrong with Beltway thinking, by the way. They are so focused
on power in the present and the very immediate future that they cannot
possibly see even imminent changes in a slightly further term. Plus, they
are totally blind to the past and can learn nothing from it. Also, they know
nothing about a world of ideas where people do not even aim at power
particularly and are bored by it.

So Beltway stories will simply record the fact that some (not many)
religious groups are moving into a favorable position on account of ID. And
that is the only story the Beltways can see.

How would the Beltway have handled Copernicus's redrawing of the solar
system map?

Answer: They would have seen the entire controversy as a subset of the
international row about calendar reform.

How should you address this story and similar ones?

Answer: Do you have a cat? Put the story down on the floor in a darkish corner and see what the cat does with it.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Kansas Board of Education is thinking about implementing science curricula that would teach the controversy over neo-Darwinism. The ultra-Darwinists insist that there is no scientific controversy, that opponents of Darwin's theory of common descent by natural selection are Christian fundamentalists conspiring to establish a global theocracy.

Piercing this smokescreen of ad hominem rhetoric comes the wry voice of Jewish agnostic David Berlinski. In today's Wichita Eagle he writes:

The suggestion that Darwin's theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences -- quantum electrodynamics, say -- is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin's theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.

Will the ultra-Darwinists try to duck the hearings? Will inquiring minds wonder why so many Darwinists are unwilling to defend a theory they claim has overwhelming evidence in its favor? The plot thickens.

Update: The Wichita Eagle cut roughly 300 words from Berlinski's piece. The longer and better version is here.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 10:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

An AFP news agency article about the growing controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design was almost balanced. Darwinist Barbara Forrest was allowed to peddle her conspiracy theory, the gist of which is that many scholars exploring the scientific evidence for intelligent design are theists! And they want to renew our culture!

Then design theorists like biologists Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells were allowed to briefly explain the scientific evidence for intelligent design. So far so good.

But then, near the end, so close to the finish line, the article stumbles badly:

Amid growing animosity, both sides agree that proving intelligent design in traditional scientific terms is next to impossible.

"Can science show you whether God exists? No," said Dr Wells.

"It is difficult to reconcile science with Christian philosophical questions," said Vittorio Maestro of Natural History magazine.

This is extraordinarily misleading. The central tenet of design theory is that design is scientifically detectable in nature. By studying a bacterial flagellum we can see that the bacterial flagellum was designed but not who designed it. This latter point is what the design theorist means when he says science cannot tell us "whether God exists."

Perhaps the reporter simply misunderstood this point. But if so, why was the news agency clear-headed enough to produce the following portion halfway through the article?

Jonathan Wells, a senior Discovery fellow with doctorates in both cell biology and religious studies, said the debate is mainly about the "limits of Darwinism".

Scientists can conclude intelligent design exists through empirical evidence, he said.

But defining the "intelligent designer" is "beyond the scope of science," he said.

Perhaps the piece had multiple writers. Perhaps also the AFP's next story about Darwinism and design will be balanced from first to last.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 4:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Cobb Co. textbook disclaimer has finally been cleverly parodied by Steve Mirsky in the latest issue of Scientific American. And not a moment too soon.

Let's see, the first disclaimer sticker case was a decade or more ago in Louisiana. The Cobb Co. case originated just after the turn of the millennia, and it was over three years ago that the school district authorized the use of the disclaimers. About time someone at long last humorlessly skewered it.

Never mind that in December 2004, The New York Times op-ed page published a chart by Colin Purrington, The Descent of Dissent that poked fun at disclaimer stickers and criticized anyone at all critical of evolution. Purrington of course had been satirizing the textbook disclaimers for some time on his Swarthmore U website.

Mirsky, though, was not put off by waiting nearly two months since the decision was handed down by a federal judge to see his original idea finally published.

Such sort of rapid response from Darwinists at Scientific American should come as no surprise. There have been known problems with Darwinian evolution for over 100 years that they still haven't recognized.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Casey Luskin from the IDEA Center sent the following report on a recent news story that aired on San Diego's Fox affiliate. Amazingly, the station devoted over four minutes --an eternity in TV news time-- to looking at what ID is. An MPEG of the story is available for download from the IDEA Center at http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1298. (newly updated link)

I wanted to report some good news on a small media victory we had here in San Diego yesterday. On February 28th and March 1st, the local San Diego area Fox 6 station station aired a ~6 minute segment on ID that, in my opinion, was "fair," "balanced," and clearly showed the strenghts of ID in the face of its critics. The funny thing is that all the segment did was simply accurately represent the views of both sides. And guess what happened when the media was fair? We came out looking like the winner! In early January, a reporter from the local Fox 6 San Diego news station contacted me regarding a story he was doing on ID. I did a short interview with him and soon afterwards I learned that Eugenie Scott was coming to town. I told him that it probabably wasn't in my best interests to tell him she was in town, but that she is a prominent evolution advocate and he wouldn't want to miss her for his story. Additionally, I gave him a detailed handout on the common misconceptions people will tell about ID, as well as copies of Unlocking the Mystery of Life, and Icons of Evolution documentaries. Although the segment started off comparing ID with creationism, and the Bible, in the end the segment dispelled the notion that ID is unscientific religion. Additionally, the segment made it clear that ID is not just an appeal to God, but a scientific approach. Amazingly, the segment even included a couple short clips from Unlocking the Mystery of Life which discussed the complexity of the flagellum! To make a long story short, this incident has taught me that being friendly, kind, and helpful to a reporter (by giving him videos, books, and personalized letters about the debate) can pay off. This reporter evidently took the materials we provided to him to heart and it showed in the accuracy of the segment. On the down side, the segment showed Eugenie Scott (and briefly, Mark Perakh) saying ID was "creationism lite" which says that "it's too complex and therefore God did it" and that we "circumvent" the scientific process by going straight to schools without doing any research. But the good news was that he used all of that as a foil for a variety of statements I made rebutting the "ID is creationism" or "ID = God did it" claims. Additionally segment he included segments of Dr. Tom English, a physics professor who teaches his students about ID at a San Diego area junior college, also in the segment. Finally, he even included a few brief visually-pleasing segments from Unlocking the Mystery of Life talking about the complexity of the flagellum, and how it provides evidence for ID. Overall the segment was very satisfying. I was very happy to see that the reporter emphasized some scientific claims from ID, and made Eugenie Scott into a foil for comments about the actual nature of intelligent design. In this sense, I consider the story a decided victory for accuracy in reporting about intelligent design. I was really happy to see that the reporter accurately reported both sides of this issue. I think he gave us the last word because he recognized that we had valid answers to the objections of Scott and Perakh. If there is any lesson to be learned from this story, it is that when you take the time to get to be kind to a reporter, and give him/her a lot of resources, and try to help him/her find good people on ALL sides of an issue, they appreciate that and it vastly increases your chances of getting a story that is more balanced and perhaps. And in this debate, "fair" and "balanced" will always mean a victory for ID. If only more reporters would be like Greg Todd. A more detailed response to Scott can be found at "http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1298".

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In response to Michael Behe's case for intelligent design in a recent edition of The New York Times, two letters to the paper's editor charged design theory with being untestable. Design theory has failed to produce "statements that are susceptible to testing," wrote Karen Rosenberg. Similarly, Donald Terndrup asserted , "Design will be a real science" when and only when "we have testable answers for these questions."

But as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has explained, the methodology used for intelligent design is strikingly similar to that used by Darwinists to argue for common descent. An 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.'

Meyer continues:

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.

Meyer adds:

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 6:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To the Editor:

Jim Holt's piece "Unintelligent Design" is filled with the usual Darwinist canards about how various designs found in living things are suboptimal according to the writer's undefined and untested opinions on optimality. That's all standard fare--chock full of unexamined theological presuppositions (of the "God wouldn't have done it that way" variety) and not worth a response.

Holt also trots out the usual nonsense about Pope John Paul II somehow accepting Darwinian evolution. The Pope's 1996 message on evolution simply states that evolution (in the sense of common descent, not the materialist Darwinian mechanism) is "more than an hypothesis," which is certainly a true statement about modern biology. Yet in the same message the Pope explicitly questioned the Darwinian/materialist explanation of human evolution, calling it "incompatible with the truth about man."

But Holt does add one brand new and exciting element to the debate: a fabricated quotation from the Pope! No where in the writings of John Paul II has he ever said that evolution (that wonderfully ambiguous word) has been "proven true." Indeed, the Pope has explicitly rejected the purposeless Darwinian mechanism that Mr. Holt seeks to defend:

The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality [i.e., final cause or design] which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.

To all these "indications" of the existence of God the Creator some oppose the power of chance or of proper mechanisms of matter [i.e., Darwinism]. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements, and such marvelous finality [design or purpose] in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it ap