My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “The fundies [fundamentalists] want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology.”

Mirecki later apologized for the e-mail, noting that he didn't intend for the e-mail to end up in the public square.

Meanwhile,

another class seeking to distinguish science from pseudoscience will be taught not by a philosopher of science or even by a historian of science, but rather by John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology. Journal-World reporter Sophia Maines writes, "In addition to intelligent design, the class Archaeological Myths and Realities will cover such topics as UFOs, crop circles, extrasensory perception and the ancient pyramids."

I wonder if Hoopes will also cover myths like the eternal, self-existent universe, spontaneous generation, the ubiquity of alien life on earthlike planets throughout the galaxy, or the deep-seated faith that secular humanism and polyester fabrics will one day reign supreme (think Star Trek).

An eternal universe, spontaneous generation, and alien life have all been used to support philosophical materialism, the belief that, to quote that great modern mythmaker Carl Sagan, "The universe is all there is, ever was, or ever will be." After all, one doesn't need to explain the origin of a universe that always existed; and if life springs effortlessly from non-life then the thorny problem of the origin of life evaporates; and if the universe spins out habitable planets, habitable star systems, and habitable galaxies with ease, if the universe is teeming with intelligent life, then our existence is hardly remarkable.

But scientific research has exposed each of these as false. Take the eternal universe model. It was widely accepted among scientists a hundred years ago in the face of the second law of thermodynamics. As Paul Davies explains on page 11 of God and the New Physics, if the universe has had an infinite amount of time to drift into disorder, why is it currently so orderly? It must not be infinitely old. This point was ignored not because any scientific evidence supported the eternal universe model but because the model was needed to support the philosophical beliefs of leading scientists. The model wasn't dispensed with as soon as the evidence turned against it, but only after a good deal of kicking and screaming. As philosopher and Privileged Planet co-author Jay Richards explains here:

The trouble started in the 1920s when astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the light from distant galaxies was “red-shifted.” It had stretched during the course of its travels. This suggested the universe is expanding. Reversing the process in their minds, scientists were suddenly confronted with a universe that had come into existence in the finite past. Who knew! Hubble’s discovery, confirmed by later evidence, flatly contradicted the earlier picture of an eternal and self-existing cosmos. The universe itself had re-introduced the question of its origin to a community bent on avoiding the question altogether.

For a discussion of spontaneous generation and the origin-of-life problem, see pages 23-4 of Darwin's Black Box. I could also explain how the polyester future fits in here, but it would involve several pages of close cultural analysis of things like leisure suits and the pros and cons of tight-fitting synthetic uniforms on aging Hollywood actors, so I'm not going to go there.

When I taught at KU back in the '90s, I received good teacher evaluations, but I was reprimanded by the coordinator of freshman composition because two students who happened to be earning abysmal grades complained that I was injecting religion into the classroom. How had I done this? When I taught Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," I explained to the students the religious background of both the author and characters. When I taught Isaac Bashevis Singer, I explained the religious background of the author and characters. When I taught "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane, I described philosophical materialism, the worldview conveyed in the story. Some students asked me what my own belief system was, and I said I was a Christian. We then moved back into a discussion of the literature. For such behavior I was called into an office and reprimanded.

Fortunately, that was not representative of my experience at KU. What I valued about my time as a graduate student there was the genuine diversity of faculty views. Unlike some universities that talk about diversity but fill all of their faculty positions with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish secular humanists, my academic work at KU brought me into contact with a broad range of worldviews, from atheists to pantheists to conservative and moderate Catholics to professors who weren't sure what they believed.

I fear that this KU of ten years ago may be vanishing. Perhaps it was an accident of timing, a university with an older generation of professors, many of whom held to some form of traditional theism, some of them even politically and religiously conservative or moderate, steadily replaced over the subsequent decade by far left wing secular humanists.

This shouldn't surprise us. The radical left believes that all politics are about power, so why should they, when the balance of power tips in their favor, assiduously cultivate intellectual diversity in the various academic departments The puzzling thing is that the taxpapers, voters, and statesmen of deeply conservative states like Kansas appear unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Are they cowed by the charge that taking action would be infringe upon academic freedom? In truth, action is essential for protecting academic freedom.

Over Thanksgiving my brother-in-law told me about a professor who, a generation ago, was appointed editor of the Dartmouth school newspaper. Shortly thereafter he let it be known that he was a political conservative. For this he was sacked from his position as editor. Dinesh D'Souza tells the story in Letters to a Young Conservative. The question is, when things like this occur openly at public universities, in states heavily populated by conservatives and traditional liberals who value academic freedom, why won't the politicians who represent them stand up and do something? And I don't mean token gestures. I'm talking about strategic and sustained efforts at reform, the sort of bold, shrewd leadership that freed Poland from the grip of Communism. I'm genuinely curious.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 5:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In the coverage of the debate over evolution CNN has repeatedly (here, here, here just for a few examples) been unable to curb its tendency to misrepresent intelligent design advocates and mislead the public about the nature of the debate over how to teach evolution.

Last week CNN’s Paula Zahn Now tackled the issue of intelligent design. Right off the mark they misframe the issue. Even though we’ve been clear with these very producers, as well as many others at CNN, as to what our position is, guest host Deborah Collins gives a completely misleading description of intelligent design, which she also claims is how its “backers” (in this case us, through Dr. Behe) describe it:

"Backers of that [ID] say life is just too complicated to be explained by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution."

Because of the mainstream media’s constant misrepresentations through splice-n-dice editing of taped interviews the CSC adopted a policy of only agreeing to live, or live-to-tape (which in broadcast news means the interview is taped, but it will air at a later time as a continuous "live" piece unedited) interviews.

Too many times CSC Fellows have agreed to taped interviews only to see their answers taken out of context, edited to change the emphasis and meaning, omitted altogether, and even used in different stories unrelated to what the original interview was about.

This artful editing was exemplified over the holidays on Paula Zahn Now. The program included several segments about the debate over evolution. CSC was approached to sit for a taped interview, and per our policy we declined. Zahn’s producers opted to use footage of CSC senior fellow Dr. Michael Behe that CNN obtained when he testified in the Dover v. Kitzmiller intelligent design trial last October. At the last minute they also asked Dr. Stephen Meyer to participate in a live-to-tape discussion with the guest host and Dr. Eugenie Scott from the National Center for Science Education. Believing their assurances that the segment would not be edited, Dr. Meyer agreed.

At Night The Editors Come
Three days later we saw the consequences to agreeing to do a taped interview vs. a live interview. Dr. Meyer’s responses were cut down, or in some cases cut altogether. I don’t know how much, if at all, Dr. Scott’s comments were edited, but I suspect not much.

Any sort of taped interview is ripe for manipulation. In their treatment of Dr. Behe, CNN’s editors used short quotes from Dr. Behe interspersed with factually inaccurate voiceovers to mislead viewers about Dr. Behe’s views on intelligent design. Rather than let Dr. Behe in his own words define intelligent design, and his work related to it, CNN correspondent Delia Gallegher puts words in his mouth wrongly stating:

"Michael Behe is a major player behind intelligent design, the movement that's trying to bring the supernatural into science."

"Behe says you only have to look at the details to recognize they were conceived and arranged by a supernatural power."

"Intelligent design holds that life is too complicated to be the result of Darwin's random mutation and natural selection, that some organisms were clearly designed by a supernatural hand, ..."

"The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all the firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer." (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pg. 197)

Q. Do you have an opinion as to whether intelligent
design requires the action of a supernatural creator?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And what is that opinion?
A. No, it doesn't. (Behe Testimony, October 17, 2005)

Dr. Behe and other leading design proponents have been very clear that intelligent design does

not

address metaphysical and religious questions such as the nature or identity of the designer.

This time around they included a story about creationists visitng the Denver zoo and explaining to their children about the veracity of God’s word and young earth creationism, and a Darwinist denouncing their views. Then Collins announces:

"In a minute, supporters of both viewpoints will give you even more ammunition to think about."

To make matters worse, the “live-to-tape” segment featuring Dr. Meyer and Dr. Scott actually wasn’t live-to-tape. It was taped and edited. Dr. Meyer’s answers were cut off –unbeknownst to viewers—and in some cases his responses to Dr. Scott were completely omitted, leaving the viewer to think that he did not have a response. This is one of the more wicked ways of misleading viewers, and CNN is accomplished in their execution.

Where we are talking about science, CNN wants us to talk about the supernatural. When we want to have a civil discourse about science educaiton policy, CNN is only interested in exploring creationism or religion. It is easy to mislead the public with just a few comments which completely change the nature of the debate. And that is exactly what happened here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, the AP put out a short story on the recent lawsuit filed by California citizens against the National Science Foundation and the University of California at Berkeley for its use of sectarian religious doctrines to promote neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory on a publicly funded website about teaching evolution in public schools. Sadly, this article is diseased: it suffers from inaccuritis and false facts syndrome.

The lawsuit, initiated by Jeanne Caldwell (and blogged about previously, here, and here) challenges the segment of the website that deals specifically with evolution and religion. The site links to certain religious denominations that pronounce neo-Darwinian theory completely compatible with their religious doctrines. But the site does not link to any religious denominations that disagree with that view.

The AP wrongly insinuates that attorney Larry Caldwell is arguing that government funding of a website promoting neo-Darwinian theory is itself unconstitutional. It also falsely insinuates that Caldwell is somehow arguing that teaching neo-Darwinian theory is inherently religious or inherently unconstitutional. In reality, Caldwell’s legal arguments are altogether different, and very precise.

Caldwell is not saying that teaching evolutionary theory is itself religious or unconstitutional. It is perfectly constitutional, as Caldwell acknowledges, to teach scientific arguments for (and against) neo-Darwinian theory. The constitutionality of teaching Neo-Darwinism was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1968 case Epperson v. Arkansas.

Rather, Caldwell is simply arguing that when a publicly funded and operated website for use in public schools delves specifically into the issue of religion and advocates one sectarian viewpoint, the government violates constitutionally-mandated religious neutrality. The website chooses one group of explicitly religious doctrines side in a religious debate based upon those organizations' doctrines and advocates for them. First Amendment jurisprudence does not allow this religious endorsement and thus the lawsuit against NSF & UCB is far more interesting than what the AP story leads one to believe.

Thankfully, there is a cure for articles diseased by such inaccuracies. It's called research.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 5:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The recent actions by the Kansas State Board of Education have given a site like Evolution News and Views, which is dedicated to helping to correct misinformation in the media about the debate over Darwin, an endless supply of material. This time, however, the IDEA Center has also posted some good responses to the San Diego Union Tribune's (SDUT) recent anti-ID editorial chastely titled "Voodoo Science." The SDUT piece makes a number of mistakes about the recent events in Kansas.

Firstly, the piece asserts that intelligent design is being taught in Kansas:

"The decision earlier this month of the Kansas school board to adopt new standards that essentially redefine science – so as to allow the teaching of "intelligent design" in science class – was a triumph of zealotry over rationality."

As explained in the IDEA responses, the SDUT also tries to pacify the religious "zealots" by quoting extensively from George Coyne, a Vatican astronomer who opposes ID, while ignoring the fact some other Catholic authorities--including the leading Cardinal Schönborn (see also this link) has been critical of evolution, and the fact that a man who many consider the Pope has at least supported the philosophical notion of design in nature.

The SDUT apparently feels that employing the tactic of "ridicule" is more important than getting their facts straight:

"'Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square," wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer. "But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.' Amen." ("Voodoo Science")

For example, this past June, their science writer Scott LaFee published an unbalanced article against intelligent design in which he interviewed and apparently provided unedited print-space to 13 San Diego area anti-ID scientists but apparently contacted ZERO pro-ID scientists or organizations (and I know there are a good number of them in my prior residence of San Diego) to offer their perspective.

Having apparently consulted only critics, LaFee then called intelligent design an explanation which says that aspects of life "defy scientific explanation and can only be attributed to the handiwork of an unidentified, supernatural creator." Who wouldn't reject such a non-scientific approach? Of course, his characterization of intelligent design was a pure fabrication for 3 reasons: (1) intelligent design says life can be explained scientifically, via intelligent design, (2) intelligent design is not a negative argument against other scientific theories like evolution, and (3) intelligent design is not an argument in favor of the supernatural. This is all responded to in Inaccurate Discussion: A Response to Scott LaFee's "Intelligent Discussion".

Through the efforts of myself and others, IDEA Center did its best to inform Mr. LaFee of the actual nature of ID after the editorial was printed: we sent free complimentary copies of some ID literature and materials at our own expense. When the President made some pro-ID remarks this past summer, we contacted Mr. LaFee hoping he would take the opportunity to correct some of the prior mis-statements about ID in the SDUT.

Mr. LaFee never responded to my e-mail. But suspiciously, a few days later, Mr. LaFee printed an op-ed where he compared teaching ID to teaching alchemy, graphology, or the flat earth. I suppose that was their way of correcting the record: "ridicule."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the last week, two anti-ID editorials have been posted on various major media sites. This includes an article by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post entitled, Phony Theory, False Conflict and an article at Tech Central Station by Uriah Kriegel entitled, Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?.

Both articles critique intelligent design, but Krauthammer's misrepresents the theory quite badly. Kriegel makes some interesting arguments about ID and falsification--if only he would understand that ID theory is structured to disallow explanation by natural selection because natural selection is a fundamentally non-intelligent cause, and then apply his Popperian demarcation criteria to evolution as well.

Citing to Unfriendly Authorities
Krauthammer's line of attack is to imply that ID is nothing more than faith-based opposition to Darwinism. He thus tries to convince the religious reader that religious folk need not oppose evolution. He thus provides examples of famous scientists who were religious. Presumably, these great scientists are supposed to convince us to support Darwinism.

Incredibly, Krauthammer first cites to Isaac Newton, noting that he was a scientist and deeply religious. I suppose Krauthammer was not aware that Newton was a strong adherent of a viewpoint similar to intelligent design. Indeed, a popular internet evolutionist website by Ed Babinski is critical of Newton's position that God sometimes intervened in nature. (Babinski rightly notes that "astronomers no longer invoke 'God' to restore orbital perturbation.") But Newton was indeed a supporter of intelligent design. Newton is reported to have said:

"This thing [a scale model of our solar system] is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you, as an atheist, profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?"

(as described in "The Truth: God or evolution?" Marshall and Sandra Hall)

So I'm pretty sure that Krauthammer was citing the wrong scientist to argue against ID.

Krauthammer also cited Einstein as a scientist we should follow down the eternal path away from ID. I've never heard anything about Einstein's specific views on Darwin's theory, so it isn't clear that he's a good option to cite as a scientist who favored Darwin.

A Straw Definition of ID
Krauthammer then puts forth a very imaginative definition of ID:

“[Intelligent design] is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God.”

What's the reference from an ID proponent for that ID-definition again? Didn't think so.

Apparently Krauthammer could not refute the actual definition of ID so he had to invent one. But how do ID proponents define ID?

“Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. Note that a sign is not the thing signified. … As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence, not intelligence as such.” (William Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 33)

“Design is simply a purposeful arrangement of parts. … Intelligent design does not require a candidate for the role of the designer.”
(Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pg. 193)

“intelligent design: the theory that certain features of the physical universe and/or biological systems can be best explained by reference to an intelligent cause (that is, the conscious action of an intelligent agent), rather than an undirected natural process or a material mechanism.”
(Definition of intelligent design in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, pg. 33, edited by Stephen C. Meyer and John Angus Campbell)

In these actual definitions from ID proponents, 2 things are very different from Krauthammer's straw definition:

(1) ID is based upon positive evidence where we are seeking “signs” that an intelligent agent was at work (i.e. a “purposeful arrangement of parts”) and

(2) intelligent design merely refers to an intelligent cause and does not attempt to name the designer as God or anything else.

Thus, Krauthammer has to invent his own false definition in order to tear down ID. Working under his straw-definition, Krauthammer then poses a straw-question:

“How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur…?”

That’s a good question, because to my knowledge the scientific theory of ID isn’t making the broad theological claim that "God made the Lemur." ID simply says that when we find specified and complex information in the Lemur, we have a valid rationale for inferring that an intelligence was at work. We infer design of that information because intelligent agents produce complex and specified information. Here's how ID works:

ID is based upon positive evidence for design. Intelligent design claims that we can detect in nature biological structures which have the same informational properties we commonly find in objects we know were designed. It’s not just an argument based upon “gaps” in evolution but rather is based upon our positive understanding of the types of systems we have observed that intelligent agents typically make when they design structures. It also doesn’t appeal to non-scientific explanations like God (which we cannot observe) but rather appeals merely to “intelligent causes” (a causal power which we can observe and have much experience with). When we find complex and specified information in nature, we have a valid rationale for inferring that an intelligence was at work. If the Lemur has such information, then we'd infer design for that information.

Kansas: Corrupting Science by Joining 40 other States?
Krauthammer then writes that “Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.”

Actually, Krauthammer has misconstrued what happened in Kansas. When Kansas passed its new definition, it actually joined the way 40 other states define science, akin to “investigating the natural world through the use of observation, experimentation, and logical argument.” Kansas was simply returning its definition to the way the vast majority of educators have defined science.

Only one state has hard-coded methodological naturalism into its state standards: that was Kansas when the pro-evolution board took over a few years ago. Taking out the word “natural” doesn’t open the door for supernatural explanations. After all, the standards do not call for the teaching of “supernatural explanations”: (a) the standards do not call for the teaching of intelligent design and (b) intelligent design is not a supernatural explanation.

Thus Krauthammer simply appears to be misconstruing the facts to heap ridicule and insult upon the brave people of Kansas.

Preaching Evolution to the Masses
Krauthammer ends with a short sermon about why we should accept evolution:

“What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule…”

Nevermind that Krauthammer’s religion-friendly description of evolution contrasts starkly with how some biology textbooks have described Darwinism:

“[E]volutionary change occurs without any ‘goals.’ The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.” (William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, H. Craig Keller, Life: The Science of Biology (2001, 6th Ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co.), pg. 3)

"By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous."
(Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates), pg. 5 (this is the evolutionary biology text I used in college!))

"Evolution works without either plan or purpose" … "Evolution is random and undirected”
(Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine’s Biology (4th ed. 1998), pg. 658)

"Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products."
(emphasis in original; Joseph S. Levine and Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life (D.C. Heath and Co., 1st ed. 1992 pg. 152; this language was not removed for the 2nd ed. in 1994, p. 161)

Nonetheless, Krauthammer is entitled to his theological views of Darwin's theory. Thus I find it interesting that he is preaching about the emotional appeal and glorious wonders of evolution so that we will bow our theology before Darwin. Krauthammer’s statement is clearly religiously motivated evolutionary activism. It’s funny how this debate often finds the Darwinists preaching more about religion than the ID proponents.

Let’s turn the tables for a moment. Imagine if some ID theorist had said:

“What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet and biosphere designed by an intelligent agent”

(this is a satire of Krauthammer, not an actual statement)

You would hear screams (or at least increased volume of screams) from Darwinists across the internet about how design proponents are simply religiously motivated zealots who care nothing for science.

But I’m not asking you to accept ID because of its theological qualities. In contrast to Krauthammer’s mode of publicly promoting evolution, I promote ID as a scientific theory which should be accepted because of the data. Like the way science is supposed to work, intelligent design is about following the evidence where it leads.

One Point of Agreement
I will agree with Krauthammer on one point: Pat Robertson was WAY OUT-OF-LINE to proclaim doom upon Dover simply because of how they voted in their school board election. After being sued by the ACLU and ridiculed by Darwinists around the country, the good people of Dover have had enough trouble. Perhaps now we can agree that schools should follow the evidence where it leads, not one person’s version of the theology.

Kriegel’s Informed Attack on ID:
I will say from the outset that I liked Kriegel’s article. His definition of ID, although imperfect, wasn’t nearly as bad as Krauthammer’s. Moreover, Kriegel at least appears to be slightly informed about the issues and he puts up some arguments which take the issues seriously. I thus respect him for his viewpoint and respectfully disagree with him that ID is not falsifiable.

In fact, Kriegel makes a point I wish the plaintiff’s in the Dover case would listen to:

Opponents dismiss ID's scientific credentials, claiming that the theory is too implausible to qualify as scientific. But this reasoning is fallacious: a bad scientific theory is still a scientific theory, just as a bad car is still a car. There may be pedagogical reasons to avoid teaching bad scientific theories in our public schools, but there are no legal ones.

The plaintiffs’ experts in the Dover case have been testifying extensively that ID is wrong. All this time and court resources could have been saved if they would just take Kriegel's advice: whether or not ID is a valid scientific theory is not a decision for the courts to decide—this is not a matter of constitutional law. Thus, one Appeals Court observed:

“[T]he wisdom of an educational policy or its efficiency from an educational point of view is not germane to the constitutional issue of whether that policy violates the establishment clause.”

(Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 827 F.2d 684, 694 (11th Cir. 1987))

The point of that holding is that apart from constitutional questions, education is supposed to be in the hands of local control. If a school board believes intelligent design is a valid scientific theory, and if teaching intelligent design doesn’t offend the First Amendment, then offended Darwinists who would otherwise waste judicial resources on debates over the scientific merits ID have no recourse.

Kriegel does, however, believe that ID is actually not a scientific theory, and thus sees the merits of this case turning on whether or not ID fits his definition of the nature of science. Kriegel draws his line in the sand using Popper’s demarcation criterion of falsification.

Strike 1: Problematic Popper
But Kriegel’s proscription for the legal criteria of defining science are problematic. Courts can only construct constitutional rules when they have the ability to do so. But it isn’t clear that there are articulable standards by which a legal rule defining science, particularly using Popperian falsification, could be constructed:

“From Plato to Popper, philosophers have sought to identify those epistemic features which mark off science from other sorts of beliefs and activity. Nonetheless, it seems pretty clear that philosophy has largely failed to deliver the relevant goods. Whatever the specific strengths and deficiencies of the numerous well-known efforts at demarcation . . . it is probably fair to say that there is no demarcation line between science and non-science, or between science and pseudo-science, which would win assent from a majority of philosophers.”

(Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism (Westview Press, 1996), pg 210)

Kriegel’s first strike is thus to offer Popperian falsification as a legal standard which courts should use to define science. His second strike is to forget that Popper claimed (at one point) that Darwinism failed the falsification standard. His third strike is to conclude that intelligent design fails Popper’s standard.

Strike 2: Does Popper Disqualify Darwin?
Here is how Kriegel lays out a theory which fails Popper’s standard:

"What Popper noticed was that, in both cases, there was no way to prove to proponents of the [Freudian or Marxist] theory that they were wrong. Suppose Jim's parents moved around a lot when Jim was a child. If Jim also moves around a lot as an adult, the Freudian explains that this was predictable given the patterns of behavior Jim grew up with. If Jim never moves, the Freudian explains -- with equal confidence -- that this was predictable as a reaction to Jim's unpleasant experiences of a rootless childhood. Either way the Freudian has a ready-made answer and cannot be refuted. Likewise, however much history seemed to diverge from Marx's model, Marxists would always introduce new modifications and roundabout excuses for their theory, never allowing it to be proven false."

I can think of another scientific claim just like those of Freud and Marx—common descent! "Family Trees" (called "phylogenetic trees") based off of DNA sequences in genes should make conforming trees if common ancestry is true. However, it is well recognized in systematics that very often a phylogenetic tree based upon one gene or protein will lead to one tree, while a tree based upon some other gene or protein will look quite different. (See references 1-7; 9-22 of this link for details.)

One would think this would falsify or at least challenge Neo-Darwinism, but then we are told that if the pattern isn't explained neatly by descent, then we have all kinds of ad hoc explanations like horizontal gene transfer, differing rates of evolution, or even convergent evolution to preserve the theory. (Statistical methods of making trees based upon multiple genes can average out the discrepancies among individual gene-trees, but this makes the overall claim of common descent much less robust and eminently unfalsifiable.) These epicycles are the epitome of "new modifications and roundabout excuses for their theory, never allowing it to be proven false."

In fact, come to think of it, Popper himself once stated that evolution fails his falsifiability criterion (note: Popper later recanted this view):

"I now wish to give some reasons why I regard Darwinism as metaphysical, and as a research programme. It is metaphysical because it is not testable. One might think that it is. It seems to assert that, if ever on some planet we find life which satisfies conditions (a) and (b), then (c) will come into play and bring about in time a rich variety of distinct forms. Darwinism, however, does not assert as much as this. For assume that we find life on Mars consisting of exactly three species of bacteria with a genetic outfit similar to that of three terrestrial species. Is Darwinism refuted? By no means. We shall say that these three species were the only forms among the many mutants which were sufficiently well adjusted to survive. And we shall say the same if there is only one species (or none). Thus Darwinism does not really predict the evolution of variety. It therefore cannot really explain it. At best, it can predict the evolution of variety under "favourable conditions". But it is hardly possible to describe in general terms what favourable conditions are except that, in their presence, a variety of forms will emerge."

(Popper, Karl R., [Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London], "Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography," Open Court: La Salle Ill., Revised Edition, 1982, p.171)

"However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as "industrial melanism," we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry."

(Popper, Karl R., [Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London], "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind," Dialectica, Vol. 32, Nos. 3-4, 1978, pp.339-355, p.344)

Now I realize that later on Popper changed his view in favor of the testability of evolution, but Popper nonetheless makes some interesting points here: precisely what does natural selection predict? It can explain anything as the result of "selection." And if not selection, then it might be the result of common ancestry, horizontal gene transfer, chance convergence, or genetic drift. Using this grab-bag of explanations, one wonders if there is any set of biological characteristics by which your average Darwinist-on-the-street would stand refuted?

Strike 3: ID can be falsified
Kriegel says therefore that science must make predictions which can be tested. He believes that ID cannot be used to make such predictions:

It is impossible to refute ID, because if an animal shows one characteristic, IDers can explain that the intelligent designer made it this way, and if the animal shows the opposite characteristic, IDers can explain with equal confidence that the designer made it that way. ... For that matter, it is fully consistent with ID that the supreme intelligence designed the world to evolve according to Darwin's laws of natural selection. Given this, there is no conceivable experiment that can prove ID false.

But design theorists have claimed that design theory detects not the apparent design from natural selection, but ACTUAL design by intelligence. So we have actually staked our claim out clearly: intelligent design means origin by intelligent selection--NOT natural selection! Thus Kriegel apparently misunderstands ID theory. If natural selection and intelligent selection are competing explanations for the origin of biological complexity, then we can indeed test between the two hypotheses:

“Closely matched, irreducibly complex systems not only are tall problem for Darwinism but also are hallmarks of intelligent design.” (Michael Behe, “Intelligent Design Theory as a Tool,” in Mere Creation, pg. 179)

"What natural selection lacks, intelligent selection--purposive or goal-directed design--provides. Rational agents can arrange both matter and symbols with distant goals in mind. In using language, the human mind routinely “finds” or generates highly improbable linguistic sequences to convey an intended or preconceived idea. In the process of thought, functional objectives precede and constrain the selection of words, sounds and symbols to generate functional (and indeed meaningful) sequences from among a vast ensemble of meaningless alternative combinations of sound or symbol (Denton 1986:309-311). Similarly, the construction of complex technological objects and products, such as bridges, circuit boards, engines and software, result from the application of goal-directed constraints (Polanyi 1967, 1968). Indeed, in all functionally integrated complex systems where the cause is known by experience or observation, design engineers or other intelligent agents applied boundary constraints to limit possibilities in order to produce improbable forms, sequences or structures. Rational agents have repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to constrain the possible to actualize improbable but initially unrealized future functions. Repeated experience affirms that intelligent agents (minds) uniquely possess such causal powers.

Analysis of the problem of the origin of biological information, therefore, exposes a deficiency in the causal powers of natural selection that corresponds precisely to powers that agents are uniquely known to possess. Intelligent agents have foresight. Such agents can select functional goals before they exist. They can devise or select material means to accomplish those ends from among an array of possibilities and then actualize those goals in accord with a preconceived design plan or set of functional requirements. Rational agents can constrain combinatorial space with distant outcomes in mind. The causal powers that natural selection lacks--almost by definition--are associated with the attributes of consciousness and rationality--with purposive intelligence. Thus, by invoking design to explain the origin of new biological information, contemporary design theorists are not positing an arbitrary explanatory element unmotivated by a consideration of the evidence. Instead, they are positing an entity possessing precisely the attributes and causal powers that the phenomenon in question requires as a condition of its production and explanation."

("Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories" Stephen C. Meyer, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 117(2):213-239. 2004)

By explaining that ID is not natural selection, we can see that a valid argument for natural selection can serve as a mode of falsifying ID. Thus, it is precisely what Darwinism and natural selection lacks that intelligent design provides -- the ability to engage in "intelligent selection" or "purposive or goal-directed design" to produce "[c]losely matched, irreducibly complex systems". Intelligent design is thus eminently falsifiable, for if we fail to find such closely matched, irreducibly complex systems in the cell, then a prediction of design fails, and design can be falsified for that speciific case.

In the end, this issue is debatable, but it is summed up in a compelling way by Stephen Meyer:

“Falsification, for example, in addition to the problems mentioned in part one, seems an especially problematic standard to apply to origins theories. So does prediction. Origins theories must necessarily offer ex post facto reconstructions. They therefore do not make predictions in any strong sense. The somewhat artificial "predictions" that origins theories do make about, for example, what evidence one ought to find if a given theory is true are singularly difficult to falsify since, as evolutionary paleontologists often explain, "the absence of evidence is no evidence of absence." (The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories)

Is Kriegel out of arguments?
Thus, Kriegel can cite Popper against ID all he wants, but he'll have to overcome 3 problems:

1) Popper isn't widely accepted by philosophers of science, and his falsifiability criterion makes a dubious legal standard

2) Popper also claimed at times that evolution fails his falsifiability criterion; though Popper later recanted, some good arguments can still be made.

3) It isn't clear that ID fails as a science given that it provides an observation and experience-based causally adequate explanation for the origin of biological complexity

If only Kriegel would see that design theory has positive value for explaining the origin of biological complexity based upon our present-day cause-and-effect understandings of how intelligent agents operate and the types of information they produce. Kriegel shouldn't bash ID until he's tried to explain the origin of biological information. At that point, he will find natural selection deficient, and will find that the encoded, highly specified and complex information in the cell is a remnant of its actual intelligent design.

[this post was edited a couple times just after being posted]

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Charles Krauthammer's syndicated essay against intelligent design ran opposite mine in today's Seattle Times. The piece is full of problems, which Tom Gilson and Lawrence Seldon explore in loving detail here and here.

Now I would have framed a couple of points in their otherwise fine analysis a little differently. In one place,

Gilson describes agnostic David Berlinski as an ID proponent. It would be more precise to call Berlinski a Darwin skeptic and friendly critic of design theory. Also, Seldon writes that Krauthammer "rants about Dover and Kansas ... writing out of ignorance and knocking down a straw man." To be generous, I would have said that Krauthammer "writes calmly and authoritatively out of ignorance, knocking down a straw man."

I'm rooting for Krauthammer to do his homework and, like British philosopher Antony Flew, change his mind.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 11:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A revealing article by Rebecca James in the The Post Standard describes the growth of IDEA clubs on college campuses (the acronym is "Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness"). She concentrates on Cornell, where the acting president, Hunter Rawlings III, gave a speech devoted to anathematizing ID as "dangerous". He doesn't seem to mind at all teaching science-as-atheism, however, since that is the cause that Cornell's top biology professor, Will Provine, proudly asserts. (At least Provine is candid about it.)

Ms. James quotes a couple of Cornell students--not in the IDEA club-- who express the hope that one can accept Darwin's theory and still hold religious views. But she also quotes Provine in response, blowing that hope away. "One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution," quips Provine, "only if the religious view is atheism."

Faced with a realization that support for "diversity" at Cornell does not extend to academic viewpoints, some 80 students have organized an IDEA chapter on campus and are educating themselves. Classes are free, unlike what Cornell is charging them for Dr. Provine's instruction.

Discovery Institute contributed neither time nor money to setting up the some 30 IDEA clubs that now exist. Rather, rebellious students did it all on their own. Of course, "rebellion" among the Millenial generation, in contrast to their Boomer parents, means disputing the now-stodgy, old guard position that life is meaningless.

The reactionary view that students are up against, moreover,is not just found in biology, or only at Cornell. "There is no meaning or purpose in the laws of physics," Prof. Vic Mansfield of Colgate assured the Post Standard. The growing list of scientists who question that statement will not be cited in Prof. Mansfield's classroom, one also can be assured.

But old-fossil statements like those of Provine and Mansfield are being exploited by contrarian students who, provoking the indignation of their elders, are taking education into their own, inexperienced hands. What outrageous fad will they adopt next, civility and respect for other people's opinions? It's a Darwinist nightmare: survival of the most responsible. Are we not on a slippery slope to ballroom dancing and Sunday dinner with the folks?

At Discovery, we may not have helped start the IDEA clubs, but we finally did recognize the trend last summer and hired one of IDEA's leaders, Casey Luskin, to come to work for us after he graduated from law school in San Diego. This newly-minted lawyer is now the CSC legal advisor. Where else can a guy who just passed the bar in California get a chance to take on the whole ACLU?

People like Casey, and students in the IDEA clubs, have let the ID genie out of the lamp, and not even Eugenie Scott can put it back in again.

The Post Standard (Syracuse)

Evolution debate grows on college campuses Sunday, November 20,
2005 By Rebecca James Staff writer Hannah Maxson is no
intellectual slouch. She is a double major in chemistry and
math at Cornell University.

She's also an advocate for intelligent design - the notion that
biological systems are too complex to be explained solely by
Darwinian evolution and show evidence of a higher intelligence.

She helped found the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness
club at Cornell after hearing from people, including her
teaching assistant in a biology class, who told her she was the
first person he had met at Cornell who had doubts about Darwin's theory.

What particularly frustrated Maxson was that so many of her
classmates and professors, "still believe that no educated
person - no one except hillbilly fundamentalists - questioned
evolution."

The debate over intelligent design, Darwin and God usually
makes news at the public school level, in high profile cases
like recent ones in Kansas and Pennsylvania. But interest in
tackling intelli gent design is growing at college campuses
nationwide and around Central New York. For instance:

Future science teachers at the State University College at
Oswego discuss how they might have to deal with the subject in
their classrooms one day.

Le Moyne College in Syracuse is planning a lecture for next
year with the premise that religion and evolution are not in conflict.

Cornell's president chose the topic of intelligent design as
the focus of his state-of-the-university speech last month.

Several colleges nationwide have introduced intelligent design
courses or seminars, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Still, few places in American society are more skeptical of
intelligent design than college campuses, according to several
recent surveys.
Scientists, from biologists to economists, are less likely than
other Americans to be religious, the surveys show. While a
majority of Americans advocate teaching creationism along with
evolution, most scientists and educators say that is a bad idea.

Our aching backs

Scientists speaking on campus are almost guaranteed a laugh if
they poke fun at intelligent design. Pulitzer-Prize winning
author Jared Diamond, speaking at Hamilton College Sept. 29,
drew chuckles when he said true intelligent design would not
leave him with an aching back.

"Many of us end up with back problems and hip problems and
shoulder problems," Diamond said. "Why? Because we are walking
upright with a body frame that for about 52 million years,
evolved in order to get us going on all fours."

Intelligent design can be defined in many ways. Some say it is
creationism repackaged. Other advocates, like Maxson, and the
80 members of her club, say they take a scientific approach
that looks for complexities and patterns in nature. They don't
dismiss all of evolution, but say some dramatic leaps in
development don't match a theory dependent on incremental change.

But Hunter Rawlings, the interim president of Cornell,
pointedly joined intelligent design critics in an Oct. 21
speech to say that the concept is not scientific and that the
current effort to require it be mentioned in schools is
dangerous. He did welcome discussion of intelligent design in
nonscientific venues.

After the speech, the president's office received more than 100
e-mails in response and only about 15 opposed his stance, said
Simeon Moss, speaking for Cornell.

The political debate over intelligent design makes the subject
a topic of dinner conversations at Alpha Delta Phi fraternity
at Cornell, said fraternity brother Kevin Barmish.

Barmish was charged with finding a fall semester speaker for a
faculty lecture series and asked his fraternity brothers to
pick from five topics.

"Intelligent design got nearly all the votes," he said.

Classroom conundrum

Those college students with a particular stake in the issue are
those who expect to be leading science classrooms eventually.

Eric Olson, a professor in curriculum and instruction in the
education school at State University College at Oswego, said
his students have always had 7

6 some concerns about handling challenges to evolution in
class. But the subject has come up more often this semester.

"I think that maybe there is a little more urgency, more of a
desire to understand how they're going to want to grapple with
the issue," Olson said.

This month, the issue has seen mixed developments.

The school board race in a Pennsylvania town became
international news on Election Day, when voters in Dover
replaced eight incumbents who supported teaching intelligent
design in the science classroom with eight newcomers who disagreed.

The Dover school board's policy - which required teaching about
gaps in Darwin's theory - was challenged in federal court in a
trial that ended Nov. 4. The judge has said he expects to rule
by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, on Nov. 8, the Kansas Board of Education jumped into
the evolution debate for at least the third time in recent
years. The board approved new standards that encourage teachers
to teach evolution, but urges them to include a discussion of
challenges to the theory.

'No basic contradiction'

Many college leaders who may have thought it made more sense to
ignore the intelligent design debate are now considering
tackling it to make a larger point.

Le Moyne College President Rev. Charles J. Beirne, who said it
is absurd to consider teaching creationism in schools, said
colleges need to encourage people to avoid simplistic thinking.

"We're trying to understand the bigger reality in more
sophisticated ways," Beirne said. "There are ways of
understanding religious experience and scientific experience as
two very valid ways of coming at reality.
There is no basic contradiction."

Le Moyne's Sanzone Center for Catholic Studies and Theological
Reflection is planning a public forum on the subject for this
spring or next fall, said Nancy Ring, the center's interim director.

"The Catholic Church generally has in recent years stood behind
evolution," Ring said. "Part of the purpose of the lecture is
to say a belief in God doesn't require a belief in intelligent design."

But not everyone on campuses agrees that evolution and religion
are compatible.

'Biology breeds atheism'

The speaker that Cornell's Alpha Delta Phi chose to speak Oct.
26 is famous for saying that studying biology breeds atheism.

Will Provine, a Cornell professor of the history of biology,
has said, "One can have a religious view that is compatible
with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable
from atheism."

Scientists and theologians end up at odds when theologians
dwell on finding meaning in life.

As Colgate physicist Vic Mansfield put it at an Oct. 14 Cornell
conference on Buddhism and science: "There is no meaning or
purpose in the laws of physics."

At the quantum level, action is random with no purpose or
structure, Mansfield said.

That idea disturbs even religious leaders who generally support
Darwinian evolution, including the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan
Buddhist leader who recently authored, "The Universe in a
Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality."

The meaning of life

"The Buddhist perspective, the idea of these mutations being
purely random events is deeply unsatisfying for a theory that
purports to explain the origin of life," he wrote.

Pure randomness isn't always a popular idea among young adults either.

"Nineteen- and 20-year-olds are interested in the purpose and
meaning of life," said Joe Hoffmann, a professor of religious
studies and human values at Wells College.

But the tough questions that challenge both science and
religion are the ones that students should be considering, he said.

"The Buddhist perspective, the idea of these mutations being
purely random events is deeply unsatisfying for a theory that
purports to explain the origin of life." The Dalai Lama,

Tibetan Buddhist leader, in "The Universe in a Single Atom: The
Convergence of Science and Spirituality"

"One can have a religious view that is compatible with
evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from
atheism." Will Provine, Cornell professor of history of biology

"There is no meaning or purpose in the laws of physics." Vic Mansfield, Colgate physicist

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 11:25 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It is hard to trust recent MSM reporting on the evolution debate, as I observed here only two days ago. Most media seemed to ignore the Pope's own words a week ago Wednesday when he embraced "intelligent design" (or "intelligent plan" or "intelligent project", depending on your pick of translations -- see here). Instead, some of them tried to elevate the ID-dissing Dr. George Coyne, Vatican astronomer, to the position of official voice of the Vatican. But maybe that is changing.

A new Reuters story on Cardinal Schoenborn--based on an interview by Tom Heneghan -- deserves a respectful reading.

Cardinal Schoenborn, as quoted in the Reuters story, is laying out in broad strokes the philosophical issues that must inform the science debate.

This is refreshing because most Darwinists and most MSM don't want to acknowledge that a serious controversy over the philosophy of science is going on. For them, it's simply "science vs. religion." In the interview, the cardinal distinguishes between real science and ideology and charges "evolutionism" with exclusionist ideological claims. He is respectful toward the achievements of Darwin (as Discovery Institute scientists are, too, please note), but not toward Darwinism and the materialism it promotes in science and culture. And he insists that it should be acceptable to debate Darwin's theory in science class.

He avoids commenting on whether ID should be taught in US schools, but thinks the topic at least should be broached in Austrian schools, both public and private. (For reporters, please note once more Discovery Institute's own position: we do not support requiring ID in US public schools, a la Dover, only a fair airing of scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory. We also, of course, do not want discussions of ID by instructors or students to be prohibited, especially in universities.)

One other point: in the Reuters interview Cardinal Schoenborn again appears serene and "good humored" in the knowledge that he has the Pope's support for the direction he has taken. Indeed, the Pope has "inspired" him.

So, one now asks, why are some leading media still touting Dr. Coyne as the voice of "the Vatican"? Don't his other unusual views--for example, the theological contention stated in a recent article that God is not omnipotent or omniscient--suggest he might not be a reliable spokesman for the Pope?

Here is another topic a more enterprising reporter might take up: Do you suppose that Pope Benedict and the churchman he chose as senior editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Schoenborn, might be pleased that partly as a result of the present controversy people in Europe are beginning to notice and discuss the scientific materialism that has played a large role in the demoralization of Europe and much of the West?

Are there no editors out there, at least, who are more interested in reporting what is actually happening than they are in finding means to air as "news" opinions that simply agree with their own?

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 8:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

One reads with astonishment the major stories written by the AP and various news and broadcast outlets the past two days; to wit, "Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design." There is even a ham-fisted attempt by the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World to use the anti-ID statement of junior Vatican official Dr. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, to pound the Kansas State Board of Education for their new standards on teaching evolution--standards that don't even require ID.

Soon we'll have editorials and cartoons asserting that the Catholic Church has attacked intelligent design and defended dear old Darwin. The only problem is that this is sheer spin--irresponsible, reckless and untruthful. Dr. Coyne, who resides in America, is an astronomer who has attacked intelligent design (it "belittles God", he declares) repeatedly. He is entitled to his opinion, but the media now have him quoted as "the Vatican".

The story is not just incorrect, it is almost topsy turvy from reality.

The Vatican has tried to correct Darwinist claims like this that seek to put the Catholic Church in league with neo-Darwinism. After several such highly publicized events last spring, Cardinal Schönborn of Austria--former pupil of Dr. Karl Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and the senior editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church--wrote a highly publicized essay for the New York Times, "On Design in Nature." Among other things, Cardinal Schönborn reminded readers that the new Holy Father, upon his recent election and installation as successor to the Throne of St. Peter, stated in his first homily that "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." The Cardinal, who later told the New York Times that he had been encouraged in his representations by the Pope personally, complained that "neo-Darwinists recently have sought to portray our Pope, Benedict XVI, as a satisfied evolutionist." He also cited a frequently abused and misquoted recent statement of the Vatican Theological Commission that "An unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist.'" He also quoted the late Pope John Paul II and he quoted the Catechism.

Then, last month, when the Cardinal followed up his essay with the first of what are to be nine catechetical lectures in Vienna on evolution and creation, and made a pleasant statement early in his lecture about what a great thinker Darwin was, the English language media tried to spin this as his having "recanted" his earlier critique. So the cardinal put up on his diocesan website a full English translation of his lecture and a droll notice that the English language media didn't seem to understand it in the original German, and assured them that he had not changed his position at all.

"Annotation: It has come to our attention that the content of Cardinal Schönborn's first catechesis has been mis-reported in the English-speaking press as somehow drawing back from his essay in The New York Times. This is inaccurate, as will be apparent from the full text. In order to clear up this misunderstanding, we are posting here an initial draft of an English translation."

The US media seem serenely uninterested in any of this. Instead, Cardinal Schönborn's New York Times essay, when it wasn't being wished away, was being attacked by lesser figures, such as Dr. Coyne--and of course, those attacks did get coverage. Even anodyne statements about the important value of religion and science talking to one another--the theme of a different cardinal's talk in Rome recently--was blown up in some press accounts to represent a Vatican embrace of Darwin and rejection of design!

That is where the situation stood until last week, when Cardinal Schönborn and the Austrian bishops happened to be in Rome to visit the Pope, and when Pope Benedict just happened to preach on creation--using a text of John Paul II--and when he just happened to end his remarks with a warm tribute to "this intelligent design of the Cosmos". (The full translated text is found in the current National Catholic Register for November 20-26, here.)

It seems obvious to me (and to much of the European press, it appears) that the Pope was showing his support for Cardinal Schönborn and his continuing exposition of the issues of evolution, creation and design. In effect--most gently--he was also separating himself from figures who have presumed to speak on the Vatican's behalf in ways that contradict not only Cardinal Schönborn, but Pope Benedict's own previous statements.

This important endorsement simply was not very newsworthy, you see. Some translated the phrase as "intelligent project", others as "intelligent plan". Some European outlets got it right and saw the significance. (It was clear even if "intelligent project" or "plan" was correct.) But few US media even noticed such a yawner from the Pope.

In one humorous case of a paper that did notice, the Chicago Sun Times ran a story on November 13 under the headline, "Pope Sides with 'Intelligent Design' Advocates." But then the paper turned around on November 16 to comment editorial pages (concerning the Dover, PA school board election) that "many religious leaders" are fully content with evolution. The examples were two Catholic leaders--a Cardinal and a Monsignor, neither of whom really said much on the topic, despite the breathless extrapolations made from their remarks. What did NOT rate notice in the Sun Times editorial was what the POPE had to say on the subject on the paper's own pages three days earlier. After all, who cares what the mere POPE says on Catholic teaching?

Let me be clear. The scientific issues surrounding Darwin's theory, and alternative theories such as intelligent design, are not inherently religious, and religious authorities, even the Pope, can't dictate specific scientific doctrines, and Pope Benedict is not attempting to do so. The Pope, like Cardinal Schönborn, plainly is making a point about the PHILOSOPHY that underlies any scientific proposition, as, for example positivism and materialism undergird most of what is described as neo-Darwinism. Philosophy is treated now as a child of science, but the matter is rather the reverse historically. It is a fascinating subject that deserves extensive discussion, the kind that is going on in First Things magazine right now.

But, the reason this all matters to this blog and blogger, is that Darwinists--and their credulous followers in the mainstream media--seem intent on misrepresenting the Catholic Church in order to isolate and stigmatize the opponents of neo-Darwinism--including ID proponents--and to brand them as "extremists" and "fundamentalists." As Prof. Lawrence Krauss made clear on NPR recently, the purpose of invoking official Catholic backing for neo-Darwinist orthodoxy--even if that backing doesn't exist--is to lull an unparalleled billion believers worldwide. It is a propaganda stunt.

The Pope did not endorse specific intelligent design theories, nor did he say that evolution in all senses is wrong (neither does Discovery Institute, by the way). He did express a traditional Catholic orthodox PHILOSOPHY that should guide science--and plainly does not guide neo-Darwinism. He did speak up for design in nature.

Many in the media may not like that, but it is time to be honest about it.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 7:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (5)

The New York Times report that Kansas state has redefined science is in fact false and the reporting misleads the public in regards to how science is defined by most states across the country.

In a Science Times article echoing other mainstream media's misreports, the New York Times today reports that Kansas has "redefined science," stating:

In the course of revising the state's science standards to include criticism of evolution, the board promulgated a new definition of science itself.

Kansas reinstated a traditional definition of science which reads: "Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory-building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." This is nearly identical to the definition of science adhered to in 40 states across the country (nine states do not define science at all). Kansas is the only state that did not have a traditional definition of science.

In May of this year Discovery Institute issued a study examining the definitions of science used by all states in the nation which found that:

The definition of science ... is fully consistent with definitions used by all other states in the U.S. By contrast, the definition of science currently used in the Kansas standards ... is idiosyncratic and out of step with current educational practice.

The Discovery Institute study was conducted by biologist, Dr. Jonathan Wells, a senior fellow with the Institute's Center for Science & Culture, and later sent to the Kansas State Board of Education. The complete text of the study is published below so that readers can see for themselves what the definitions of science are like in all states.

Definitions of Science in State Standards
Research by Jonathan Wells, Ph.D

Summary

The definition of science proposed in the Minority Report [note: the minority report is what the Kansas state board of education adopted as its new science standards] is fully consistent with definitions used by all other states in the U.S. By contrast, the definition of science currently used in the Kansas standards and defended by the Majority is idiosyncratic and out of step with current educational practice.

Reviewers Dennison and Miller claim that the Minority Report proposes a radical re-definition of science. Yet a comprehensive survey of state science standards (attached below) shows that all other states in the union that define science in their standards define it in a way similar to the Minority.

Dennison and Miller, along with reviewers Heppert and Theobald, also claim that the revised definition would open the door to supernatural explanations in science. This is simply false: No one is proposing that supernatural explanations should be included in science.

The definition of science in the current Kansas science standards is unlike any other in the U.S. By defining science first and foremost as "seeking natural explanations," the current standards subtly shift the emphasis in science education from the investigative process to the end result. This shift is out of step with modern science education, which gives priority to the activity of formulating and testing hypotheses. The Minority's definition is consistent with science as an open-ended inquiry that follows the evidence wherever it leads. The Majority's definition, by contrast, shortcircuits this process of inquiry and encourages premature answers to scientific questions -- the sort of "just-so stories" criticized by scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould.

The only other state in the U.S. that explicitly limits science to naturalistic explanations is Massachusetts. In the Massachusetts science standards, however, this limitation comes at the end of a detailed description of the scientific enterprise that begins by defining science more generally as "attempts to give good accounts of the patterns in nature." Only Kansas currently defines science primarily as "seeking natural explanations." As the comprehensive survey attached below shows, the Minority's proposed revision would bring the Kansas science standards back into the mainstream of the U.S. science education community.

A Comprehensive Survey of State Science Standards
Of the fifty states, nine include no definition of science or explicit description of scientific inquiry in standards accessible through the Internet. The standards of forty states include a definition of science or explicit description of scientific inquiry that is consistent with the one proposed in the Minority Report. Only Kansas defines science as "seeking natural explanations."

Here is a sampler of science definitions used by other states:

Arizona: "Science is a process of gathering and evaluating information, looking for patterns, and then devising and testing possible explanations."

Arkansas: "Science is a way of knowing that is characterized by empirical criteria, logical argument, and skeptical review."

Connecticut: "Scientific inquiry is a thoughtful and coordinated attempt to search out, describe, explain and predict natural phenomena."

Idaho: "Science is a human endeavor that seeks to understand the universe by observation, experimentation, and rational interpretation of observations."

Louisiana: "Science is a way of thinking and a system of knowledge that uses reason, observation, experimentation, and imagination."

Montana: "Science is an inquiry process used to investigate natural phenomena, resulting in the formation of theories verified by direct observations."

Nevada: "Scientific inquiry is the process by which humans systematically examine the natural world."

New Hampshire: "Science is, above all, a problem-solving activity that seeks answers to questions by collecting and analyzing data in an attempt to offer a rational explanation of naturally-occurring events."

Ohio: "Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, based on observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, and theory building, which leads to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

South Dakota: "Science is a process of gathering and evaluating information, looking for patterns, and then devising and testing possible explanations."

Utah: "Science is a way of knowing, a process for gaining knowledge and understanding of the natural world."

DEFINITIONS OF SCIENCE IN STATE STANDARDS
No definition or explicit description found on the Internet.
Alabama
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Iowa
Missouri
South Carolina
Vermont
Wyoming

Science investigates the natural world through the use of observation, experimentation, and logical argument.
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Science seeks natural explanations through the use of observation, experimentation, and logical argument.
Kansas

Details by State, with URLs

Alabama
http://www.alsde.edu/html/sections/section_detail.asp?section=54

Alaska
http://www.educ.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/mathsci/ms3cntn3.htm

"The processes of science [include] observing, classifying, measuring, interpreting data, inferring, communicating, controlling variables, developing models and theories, hypothesizing, predicting and experimenting… Scientific inquiry often involves different ways of thinking, curiosity and the exploration of multiple paths."

Arizona
http://www.ade.state.az.us/standards/science/rationale.asp

"Science is a process of gathering and evaluating information, looking for patterns, and then devising and testing possible explanations."

Arkansas
http://bob.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/2.html#perspectives

"Science is a way of knowing that is characterized by empirical criteria, logical argument, and skeptical review… Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work… The goal of science is to understand the natural world." (National Science Education Standards, 1995.)

California
http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fd/documents/sci-stnd.pdf

"Science is an organized body of knowledge and a method of proceeding to an extension of this knowledge by hypothesis and experiment… Students will formulate explanations by using logic and evidence."

Colorado
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/standards/pdf/science.pdf

"Science presumes that the things and events in the universe occur in consistent patterns that are comprehensible through careful, systematic study. Scientists believe that through the use of the intellect, and with the aid of instruments that extend the senses, people can discover patterns in all nature. Science is a process for producing knowledge. Change in scientific knowledge is inevitable because new observations may challenge prevailing theories. In science, the testing and improving and occasional discarding of theories, whether new or old, go on all the time." (AAAS, Science for All Americans, 1990)

Connecticut
http://www.state.ct.us/sde/dtl/curriculum/currsci.htm

"Scientific inquiry is a thoughtful and coordinated attempt to search out, describe, explain and predict natural phenomena. Scientific inquiry progresses through a continuous process of questioning, data collection, analysis and interpretation. Scientific inquiry requires the sharing of findings and ideas for critical review by colleagues and other scientists."

Delaware
http://www.doe.state.de.us/Standards/Science/science_toc.html

"Scientists’ curiosity about the natural world leads them to ask questions about how things work… Scientific investigations in many cases follow no fixed set of steps. However, there are certain features of a valid scientific investigation that are essential and result in evidence that can be used to construct explanations… The close examination of evidence is necessary to construct logical scientific explanations and present arguments which defend proposed explanations."

Florida
http://www.firn.edu/doe/curric/prek12/pdf/science9.pdf

Georgia
http://www.georgiastandards.org/science.asp

Hawaii
http://www.pgd.hawaii.edu/kaams/standards/nstatable.htm#G2

"Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Although all scientific ideas are tentative and subject to change and improvement in principle, for most major ideas in science, there is much experimental and observational confirmation. Those ideas are not likely to change greatly in the future. Scientists do and have changed their ideas about nature when they encounter new experimental evidence that does not match their existing explanations."

Idaho
http://www2.state.id.us/adm/adminrules/rules/idapa08/0203.pdf

"Science is a human endeavor that seeks to understand the universe by observation, experimentation, and rational interpretation of observations. At its core, science is a method of asking questions, a method that may be extended to problem solving in many areas of life. An observation leads to a hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests experiments that might be done to further understand the phenomena. These observations and hypotheses are published in scientific literature whereupon they may be replicated, extended, or disproved by others. Hypotheses that prove capable of explaining observations and making predictions about additional phenomena are retained while those that fail this test are discarded. Only those hypotheses that have proven to be successful over considerable periods of time are referred to as 'theories,' and even these theories may be supplanted should they prove incapable of explaining new observations."

Illinois
http://www.isbe.net/ils/science/standards.htm

"Science is a creative endeavor of the human mind. It offers a special perspective of the natural world in terms of understanding and interaction."

Indiana
http://ideanet.doe.state.in.us/standards/standards2000_science.html

Iowa
http://www.state.ia.us/educate/index.html

Kansas

http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/sciencestdsintro.pdf
"Science is a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. Throughout history people from many cultures have used the methods of science to contribute to scientific knowledge and technological innovations, making science a worldwide enterprise. Scientists test explanations against the natural world, logically integrating observations and tested hypotheses with accepted explanations to gradually build more reliable and accurate understandings of nature. Scientific explanations must be testable and repeatable, and findings must be confirmed through additional observation and experimentation. As it is practiced in the late 20th and early 21st century, science is restricted to explaining only the natural world, using only natural cause. This is because science currently has no tools to test explanations using non-natural (such as supernatural) causes."

Kentucky
http://www.education.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/embzghscyi2tfsxvfhcwo424g2nhaew3x2tjpos3iy3gt32dathwbvxqgn7l3exuyxn57w5ckyvgybnern6gzbqef3f/sciencecc30.pdf

"Scientific knowledge comes from empirical standards, logical arguments, and skepticism, and is subject to change as new evidence becomes available."

Louisiana
http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/uploads/2911.pdf

"Science is a way of thinking and a system of knowledge that uses reason, observation, experimentation, and imagination. The goal of science is to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena and processes. Science shares some characteristics with other forms of scholarly inquiry, but it is unique in several important ways. Science attempts to meet the criteria of testability, objectivity, and consistency. Scientific information is continuously open to review and modification; science is not a static body of knowledge."

Maine
http://www.state.me.us/education/lres/st.htm

"Science includes processes and a body of knowledge. Processes are the ways scientists investigate and communicate about the natural world. The body of knowledge includes concepts, principles, facts, laws, and theories."

Maryland
http://www.aacps.org/aacps/boe/INSTR/CURR/scien/mscs.html

"Science is a body of knowledge developed through the process of investigating that is combined with thoughtful reflections guided by critical thinking skills."

Massachusetts
http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/scitech/2001/0501.pdf

"Science may be described as attempts to give good accounts of the patterns in nature. The result of scientific investigation is an understanding of natural processes. Scientific explanations are always subject to change in the face of new evidence. Ideas with the most durable explanatory power become established theories or are codified as laws of nature. Overall, the key criterion of science is that it provides a clear, rational, and succinct account of a pattern in nature. This account must be based on data gathering and analysis and other evidence obtained through direct observations or experiments, reflect inferences that are broadly shared and communicated, and be accompanied by a model that offers a naturalistic explanation expressed in conceptual, mathematical, and/or mechanistic terms."

Michigan
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Updated_Science_Benchmarks_27030_7.pdf

"Science is a way of making sense of the natural world. Science seeks to describe its complexity, to explain its systems and events, and to find patterns that allow for predictions… Scientific questions can be answered by gathering and analyzing evidence about the world…The process of scientific investigations [includes] test, fair test, hypothesis, theory, evidence, observations, measurements, data, conclusion."

Minnesota
http://education.state.mn.us/content/072583.pdf

"Scientific knowledge must meet certain criteria including that it: be consistent with experimental, observational and inferential evidence about nature; follow rules of logic and reporting both methods and procedures; and, be falsifiable and open to criticism."

Mississippi
http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/acad/id/curriculum/Science/science_curr.htm

"Scientific inquiry involves making observations; posing questions; examining sources of information for facts; planning investigations; reviewing experimental evidence gathered by the student; using tools; proposing answers, explanations and predictions; and communicating results."

Missouri
http://dese.mo.gov/standards/science.html

Montana
http://www.opi.state.mt.us/pdf/Standards/ContStds-Science.pdf

"Science is an inquiry process used to investigate natural phenomena, resulting in the formation of theories verified by direct observations. These theories are challengeable and changeable. Data used to support or contradict them must be reproducible. Although science as a body of knowledge is ever changing, the processes of science are constant. In scientific inquiry, a problem is identified, pertinent data is gathered, hypothesis is formulated, experiments are performed, the results are interpreted, and conclusions are drawn."

Nebraska
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/ndestandards/sciencedrft.htm

"By the end of twelfth grade, students will develop an understanding of science as a human endeavor… [and] recognize science as one way of answering questions and explaining the natural world… Students will develop an understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge: demonstrate the use of empirical standards, logical arguments, and skepticism in science; create scientific explanations consistent with experimental and observational evidence; make accurate predictions; strive to be logical; respect the rules of evidence; accept criticism; report methods and procedures; and make knowledge public; [and] understand that all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available."

Nevada
http://www.doe.nv.gov/sca/standards/standardsfiles/science/DraftDec10.pdf

"Scientific inquiry is the process by which humans systematically examine the natural world. Scientific inquiry is a human endeavor and involves observation, reasoning, insight, energy, skill and creativity. Scientific inquiry is used to formulate and test explanations of nature through observation , experiments and theoretical or mathematical models. Scientific explanations and evidence are constantly reviewed and examined by others. Questioning, response to criticism and open communication are integral to the process of science."

New Hampshire
http://www.ed.state.nh.us/education/doe/organization/curriculum/Assessment/Science.htm

"Science is, above all, a problem-solving activity that seeks answers to questions by collecting and analyzing data in an attempt to offer a rational explanation of naturally-occurring events… Students will perceive that scientific knowledge is the result of the cumulative efforts of people, past and present, who have attempted to explain the world through an objective, peer-tested, rational approach to understanding natural phenomena and occurrences…Inquiry in science follows no single pathway. It involves imagination, inventiveness, experimenting, and the use of logic and evidence to support results."

New Jersey
http://www.state.nj.us/njded/cccs/s5_science.pdf

"Science is not merely a collection of facts and theories but a process, a way of thinking about and investigating the world in which we live… [Science students will] raise question about the world around them and be willing to seek answers through making careful observations and experimentation."

New Mexico
http://www.nmlites.org/standards/science/glossary_5.htm

"Science is both a body of knowledge and a set of processes for advancing that knowledge. More specifically, science is mankind's interconnected, internally consistent, growing body of knowledge about natural and man-made objects and phenomena of the past, present, and future; a body of knowledge that is based on repeatable experimentation with, or observation of, these natural and man-made objects and phenomena, that is organized and extended using logic and mathematics, and that is validated by the testing of hypotheses."

New York
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/pub/intersci.pdf

"The central purpose of scientific inquiry is to develop explanations of natural phenomena in a continuing, creative process… Beyond the use of reasoning and consensus, scientific inquiry involves the testing of proposed explanations involving the use of conventional techniques and procedures and usually requiring considerable ingenuity… The observations made while testing explanations, when analyzed using conventional and invented methods, provide new insights into phenomena."

North Carolina
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/science/standard/downloads/science.pdf

There "are different ways to define science. A lay person might see it as a body of information, a scientist might define it as a set of procedures by which hypotheses are tested, and a philosopher might regard it as a way to question the truth of what we know. Each of these views is a valid, but only partial, definition of science… Science is a way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are limited to those that can be inferred from confirmable data -- the results obtained through observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists (NAS). When observations of a phenomenon have been confirmed or can be repeated, they are regarded as a fact. Any scientific confirmation is, however, tentative, because it is always possible that the results occurred by chance."

North Dakota
http://www.dpi.state.nd.us/standard/content/science.pdf

"Science: (1) a process which attempts to understand the order in nature and which uses that knowledge to make predictions about what might happen in nature; (2) knowledge resulting from scientific investigations… [Students will understand] characteristics of scientific knowledge (e.g., consistent and repeatable data, best explanation for natural phenomena, shared methods and results, open to question and reexamination, probability greater than chance, logical, often allows predictions)."

Ohio
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/academic_content_standards/ScienceContentStd/PDF/SCIENCE.pdf

"Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, based on observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, and theory building, which leads to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

Oklahoma
http://www.sde.state.ok.us/acrob/pass/science.pdf

Scientific inquiry "can be defined as the skills necessary to carry out the process of scientific or systematic thinking. In order for inquiry to occur, students must have the opportunity to ask a question …; use systematic observations, make accurate measurements, and identify and control variables; use technology to gather data and analyze results of investigations; review data, summarize data, and form logical conclusions; [and] formulate and evaluate explanations proposed by examining and comparing evidence, pointing out statements that go beyond evidence, and suggesting alternative explanations."

Oregon
http://www.ode.state.or.us/teachlearn/specialty/pre-post/sci-tlss200405.pdf

"Science is a human endeavor practiced by individuals from many different cultures. Understand that scientific knowledge is subject to change based on new findings and result of scientific observation and experimentation. Understand that scientific knowledge distinguishes itself through the use of empirical standards, logical arguments, and skepticism."

Pennsylvania
http://www.pde.state.pa.us/k12/lib/k12/scitech.pdf

Science is "the search for understanding the natural world and facts, principles, theories and laws that have been verified by the scientific community and are used to explain and predict natural phenomena and events."

Rhode Island
http://www.ridoe.net/standards/frameworks/science/philosophy.htm

"Science is a particular way of learning about, looking at, and knowing the world. Science includes: asking questions about how the world works; collecting and analyzing relevant data; formulating ideas which draw upon the work of others, both past and present; testing these ideas through prediction and controlled experiments; communicating the results of one's labor to colleagues around the world for their critique and further refinement; developing a frame of reference and general disposition toward investigations of the natural world which can be thought of as "habits of mind and affect;" [and] examining the implications of scientific discoveries on social, economic, and political systems. Explanatory frameworks for the natural world that prove fruitful to practicing scientists are accorded the status of theories. Theories are considered temporary and are therefore continually retested and revised (for example, theories of an earth-centered versus a sun-centered universe). Thus, science is a never ending quest to explain the natural world."

South Carolina
http://www.myscschools.com/offices/cso/standards/science/course_standards.cfm

South Dakota
http://www.state.sd.us/deca/OCTA/contentstandards/science/standards/index.htm#vision

"Science is a process of gathering and evaluating information, looking for patterns, and then devising and testing possible explanations."

Tennessee
http://www.state.tn.us/education/ci/cistandards2001/sci/ciscistandardsguide.htm

"Inquiry is the driving force behind scientific discovery… [It] is the process scientists use to build an understanding of the natural world based on evidence. Students can learn about the world using inquiry. Although learners rarely discover knowledge that is new to human kind, current research indicates that when engaged in inquiry, learners build knowledge new to themselves. Learner inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations; posing questions; examining multiple sources of information to see what is already known; planning investigations; reviewing what is already known in light of the learner’s experimental evidence; using tools to gather, analyze and interpret data; proposing answers, explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results. Inquiry requires identifications of assumptions, use of critical and logical thinking, and consideration of alternative explanations."

Texas:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112c.pdf

"Science is a way of learning about the natural world. Students should know how science has built a vast body of changing and increasing knowledge described by physical, mathematical, and conceptual models, and also should know that science may not answer all questions."

Utah
http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/curr/science/core/7THGRD/html/7_8_ESSCORE_2003.HTM

"Science is a way of knowing, a process for gaining knowledge and understanding of the natural world. The Science Core Curriculum places emphasis on understanding and using skills. Students should be active learners. It is not enough for students to read about science; they must do science. They should observe, inquire, question, formulate and test hypotheses, analyze data, report, and evaluate findings."

Vermont
http://www.state.vt.us/educ/new/pdfdoc/pubs/framework.pdf

Virginia
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/go/Sols/science.html

"The purposes of scientific investigation and discovery are to satisfy humankind's quest for knowledge and understanding and to preserve and enhance the quality of the human experience. Therefore, as a result of science instruction, students will be able to … develop and use an experimental design in scientific inquiry, [and] develop scientific dispositions and habits of mind including: curiosity, demand for verification, respect for logic and rational thinking, consideration of premises and consequences, respect for historical contributions, attention to accuracy and precision, [and]patience and persistence."

Washington
http://www.k12.wa.us/curriculumInstruct/science/pubdocs/ScienceEALR-GLE.pdf

"Science [is] the systematized knowledge of the natural world derived from observation, study, and investigation; also the activity of specialists to add to the body of this knowledge."

West Virginia
http://wvde.state.wv.us/policies/p2520.3_ne.pdf

"Science is a process of discovery. Students will engage in active inquiry through investigations,… These investigations explore the natural world, require critical thinking and develop process skills."

Wisconsin
http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/standards/scistanb.html

"Scientific knowledge is developed from the activities of scientists and others who work to find the best possible explanations of the natural world. Researchers and those who are involved in science follow a generally accepted set of rules to produce scientific knowledge that others can confirm with experimental evidence. This knowledge is public, replicable, and undergoing revision and refinement based on new experiments and data… [Scientific inquiry] should include questioning, forming hypotheses, collecting and analyzing data, reaching conclusions and evaluating results, and communicating procedures and findings to others."

Wyoming
http://www.k12.wy.us/eqa/nca/pubs/standards/science.pdf

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (4)

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has some interesting comments about the ID/Darwinism debate. He is not an ID proponent--he says he tends toward taking the word of the majority, in favor of Darwinism. But he notes:

The Intelligent Design people have a not-so-kooky argument against the idea of trusting 90%+ of scientists. They point out that evolution is supported by different branches of science (paleontologists, microbiologists, etc.) and those folks are specialists who only understand their own field. That’s no problem, you think, because each scientist validates Darwinism from his or her own specialty, then they all compare notes, and everything fits. Right?

Here’s where it gets interesting. The Intelligent Design people allege that some experts within each narrow field are NOT convinced that the evidence within their specialty is a slam-dunk support of Darwin. Each branch of science, they say, has pro-Darwinists who acknowledge that while they assume the other branches of science have more solid evidence for Darwinism, their own branch is lacking in that high level of certainty. In other words, the scientists are in a weird peer pressure, herd mentality loop where they think that the other guy must have the “good stuff.”

Is that possible? I have no way of knowing.

But let me give you a little analogy.

But this NPR story on the harassment, firing, and intimidation of scientists and academics who support intelligent design, or even seem like they might, is pretty appalling. (More accurately, the story is very good, but what it reports is appalling). This is pretty much scientific McCarthyism, and it ought to be stopped.

Listen to the story, and read this letter from the Office of Special Counsel on the Smithsonian Institution's behavior in a particularly disgraceful episode.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 2:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Is opposition to ID based upon science or politics?

Lisa Anderson recently reported that:

Every major scientific organization in the United States has issued a statement opposing intelligent design as non-scientific and denying any debate over the validity of evolution.

(Kansas school board approves changes to science standards)

Anderson is a well-established reporter, so it's safe to assume her facts are correct. So, I could end this blog post right here and just say "enough said," the answer to the question posed above is "YES!" Against what other theory do science organizations release condemning press edicts? This is completely political and unscientific behavior for these "scientific" organizations.

In particular, what business does the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, or Soil Science Society of America have in threshing ID? Why should groups like this get involved--why can't organizations that have highly tenuous connections to ID just let the issue lie fallow? Read an exerpt from their collective statement against ID below:

Intelligent design is not a scientific discipline and should not be taught as part of the K-12 science curriculum. Intelligent design has neither the substantial research base, nor the testable hypotheses as a scientific discipline.

But it doesn't take much dowsing with ID literature to know that it does make testable predictions and it does have a research base (see also Dembski's 2003 ID FAQ).

But seriously, why do aggie science organizations care the slightest bit about ID? This opposition to ID is not scientific but has its roots in politics! What their edict didn't tell you is that they actually issued their release at the political request of the AAAS, which planted this idea in their heads with its 2002 anti-ID edict:

"Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS encourages its affiliated societies to endorse this resolution and to communicate their support to appropriate parties at the federal, state and local levels of the government."

AAAS anti-ID press release

It is clear that these agricultural organizations have have cropped all their ideas from their superiors at the AAAS who farmed out a mandate to issue anti-ID edicts. In fact, just like the AAAS edict, these subordinate edicts contain:

a famine of references or discussion of any scientific criticisms of intelligent design

a drought of references or quotations from any thing written by a single ID proponent to bolster their claims that ID has no research base and their claim that ID is not testable

instructions for philosophy courses, which these societies are apparently experts in, claiming that "The discussion of life's spirituality is most appropriate for philosophy or religion classes."

No explanation for why the peer reviewed published scientific research of ID proponents never address "spiritual questions" despite the edict's contrary insinuations

Complete reliance upon other authorities:

There are at least 70 resolutions from a broad array of scientific societies and institutions that are united on this matter. As early as 2002, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) unanimously passed a resolution critical of teaching intelligent design in public schools.

who also have produced a rich harvest of statements without discussion of the evidence. If they continue down this path of purely evidence-less political opposition, then these science organizations will reap what they sow! Science organizations will not be taken seriously when they make broad pronouncements against ID.

The soil science edict also didn't divulge that the agronomists who issued the edict probably didn't speak for everyone down on the farm. More on this can be read on this here (the original poll is viewable here).

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

The good people of South Africa have been grossly misinformed about Kansas. Below is a slightly edited (for grammatical purposes) version of a letter I submitted to Independent Online:

Dear Editor,

Maxim Kniazkov's article, "Conservative US state pushes Darwinism aside" contains numerous factual errors.

Firstly, the article implies that evolution will not be taught in Kansas under the new science standards. This is not true, as the standards themselves contain over 30 references to teaching evolution. The change is that evolution will not be taught DOGMATICALLY. Evolution is still taught in great detail, but now students can learn about the evidence which supports evolution, but also now they will learn about the scientific evidence which challenges evolution. (see http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/11/oops_head_of_national_associat.html for a discussion)

Secondly, the article claims that creationist theories will be taught. This is also an incorrect claim. There is absolutely nothing in the standards about creationism, and there is absolutely nothing which requires the teaching of intelligent design. In fact, the standards contain a disclaimer specifically stating that the standards do not require the teaching of intelligent design. (see http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/11/chicken_little_why_the_sky_is.html for further analysis)

The final major error is that the article claims that "'intelligent design' that is largely based on the Bible's book of Genesis." This is also a fallaciously wrong claim. Intelligent design begins with empirical data which indicates that the complexity of life has many of the same informational properties we find in objects we observe being designed by humans. Intelligent design is not a creationist theory because it derives its support from the empirical data, not from Genesis. This is simply not a debatable point: even our critics acknowledge that intelligent design is something distinct from Genesis literalism.

All of this is easily verifiable if one simply reads the standards adopted by the Kansas State Board of Education, which are available freely online at "http://www.ksde.org/outcomes/sciencestd.pdf".

I hope you will correct these factual errors in your article. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Casey Luskin

Posted by Casey Luskin at 4:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ignorance is apparently bliss for Wayne Carley, head of the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT). On Wednesday, he issued a statement to members of his group blasting the Kansas State Board of Education for "removing the mention of evolution from their state science education standards." The most notable problem with Carley's statement is that the Kansas Board of Education did not remove "the mention of evolution" from its state science standards. Indeed, the terms "evolution" or "evolutionary" appear more than thirty times in the new Kansas Science Standards, most importantly in the following benchmark:

Benchmark 3: The student will understand the major concepts of the theory of biological evolution.

Either Carley has a problem with reading comprehension, or he never bothered to read the Kansas Science Standards before condemning them. Yesterday I e-mailed Carley about whether he had actually read the Kansas standards before issuing his denunciation. I also sent him the text of the benchmark on evolution and asked whether he was going to issue a corrected statement. He responded that a corrected statement had been issued. But he didn't answer my question about whether he had read the standards before issuing his initial statement.

Carley's ignorant attack on the Kansas Science Standards is a good example of the alternate universe inhabited by some dogmatic defenders of the Darwinian establishment. So sure they are right, they smugly condemn those they disagree with without even bothering to check their facts. Such Darwinian fundamentalists aren't disinterested scientists or educators searching for the truth. They are ideologues who blindly defend Darwinism no matter what the facts are, and who get irate when anyone tries to hold them accountable.

For the record, here is the rest of Carley's inane denunciation originally sent to NABT members on Nov. 9:

The National Association of Biology Teachers is deeply disappointed by the decision of the Kansas State Board of Education to undermine the teaching of science in the state of Kansas. Evolution is more than a single concept in science; it is the very framework of modern biology. By ignoring the recommendations of their esteemed panel of scientists and educators and removing the mention of evolution from their state science education standards, the Board members have not only weakened the quality of education received by students in Kansas, they have eliminated teaching subject matter that has significant impact on the health and welfare of the citizens of their state, and they have opened the door for a serious breach of the separation of church and state that has been a defining principle of our nation's democracy.

Posted by John West at 12:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Much of the reporting on the new science standards adopted by the Kansas Board of Education this week has been remarkably thin on substance. For one thing, the reports have all but ignored the Kansas Board's own statement as to why its new science standards cover the scientific debate over evolution. As a public service, I thought I'd reprint here the excellent explanatory statement the Board included at beginning of the standards:

Rationale of the State Board for Adopting these Science Curriculum Standards

We believe it is in the best interest of educating Kansas students that all students have a good working knowledge of science: particularly what defines good science, how science moves forward, what holds science back, and how to critically analyze the conclusions that scientists make.

Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution, the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory. These curriculum standards reflect the Board’s objective of: 1) to help students understand the full range of scientific views that exist on this topic, 2) to enhance critical thinking and the understanding of the scientific method by encouraging students to study different and opposing scientific evidence, and 3) to ensure that science education in our state is "secular, neutral, and non-ideological."

From the testimony and submissions we have received, we are aware that the study and discussion of the origin and development of life may raise deep personal and philosophical questions for many people on all sides of the debate. But as interesting as these personal questions may be, the personal questions are not covered by these curriculum standards nor are they the basis for the Board’s actions in this area.

Evolution is accepted by many scientists but questioned by some. The Board has heard credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theory. All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered. We therefore think it is important and appropriate for students to know about these scientific debates and for the Science Curriculum Standards to include information about them. In choosing this approach to the science curriculum standards, we are encouraged by the similar approach taken by other states, whose new science standards incorporate scientific criticisms into the science curriculum that describes the scientific case for the theory of evolution.

We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design, the scientific disagreement with the claim of many evolutionary biologists that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion. While the testimony presented at the science hearings included many advocates of Intelligent Design, these standards neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about this scientific disagreement. Finally, we would like to thank the Science Standards Committee for their commitment and dedication in their work toward the standards.

Finally, we would like to thank the Science Standards Committee for their commitment and dedication in their work toward the standards.

By the way, you can download a copy of the entire Kansas Science Standards here.

Posted by John West at 12:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Finally a mainstream media organization--and would you believe it is NPR?--is covering the glaring cases of viewpoint discrimination on America's campuses, and even at the Smithsonian Institution. The report on contemporary abuses of academic freedom aired today on All Things Considered and in it NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty describes the way Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education have organized attacks on scientists known to harbor sympathies for intelligent design and to doubt Darwinism.

Scott probably thought that she could count on NPR to edit out remarks of hers that make her sound like Madame DeFarge, the execution-relishing Dickens character from A Tale of Two Cities. But they did not. Apparently, there are still some editors at NPR who think academic freedom means something.

Hagerty reports that NPR spoke with:

"18 university professors and scientists who subscribe to intelligent design, most would not speak on the record for fear of losing their jobs. One untenured professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia wrote that talking to NPR would be 'the kiss of death.' Another said there is no way I would reveal myself prior to obtaining tenure."

The first segment is about Richard Sternberg, the Smithsonian scientist with two doctorates in evolutionary biology who has been hounded by the NCSE and perfervid Darwinists at the National Museum of Natural History--deprived of his office, research materials and even his key to the building. Why? Because he had the temerity to publish a peer-reviewed article on intelligent design by Stephen Meyer, senior fellow of Discovery Institute.

(The after-the-fact censorship of Meyer's article didn't work; you and thousands of others have read it HERE.)

The Smithsonian's response to NPR's inquiries about the Sternberg case was to stonewall the reporter. Is anyone on Capitol Hill noticing this kind of behavior?

The story includes other organized efforts to get suspect professors fired or denied tenure or simply sent to Coventry, including biologist Caroline Crocker at George Mason University and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State, among others.

Next question: will the NCSE and Co. try to get Ms Hagerty fired? You just can't have reporters going around, you know...reporting.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 5:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Critics have been loudly proclaiming that the sky is falling because Kansas is daring to teach lines of scientific evidence which challenge Neo-Darwinism (evidence which is based in mainstream peer-reviewed literature). These critics have provided a parade of horribles that these standards will lead to everything from "teaching creationism," to "teaching religion," to "teaching intelligent design," to ridicule, and worst of all, God. Yet the latest draft posted on the Kansas State Board of Education website (from August 9, 2005) says the following about teaching intelligent design:

We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design, the scientific disagreement with the claim of many evolutionary biologists that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion. While the testimony presented at the science hearings included many advocates of Intelligent Design, these standards neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about this scientific disagreement."

Kansas Science Education Standards DRAFT 2(d) August 9, 2005

If Darwinists are going to continually claim that the new standards "open the door" for teaching intelligent design (or creationism, or religion, etc.) then I challenge them to produce language in the standards which sanctions the teaching of such. From what I can read, the standards specifically disclaim endorsement or prohibition of teaching ID. The standards explicitly go out of their way to be neutral on the subject.

Darwinist Namecalling and Scare Tactics
When I was a graduate student at UCSD doing coursework at Scripps Institution for Oceanography, I once attended a seminar by UCSD biochemist Russell Doolittle who was attempting to rebut Michael Behe's chapter on the blood clotting cascade in Darwin’s Black Box. Doolittle did make various scientific arguments (which were entirely based upon sequences similarities of genes), but during the told my class he told us that the best tactic he had in fighting creationists was “ridicule.” This advice has apparently been taken to heart by Darwinists who want to shame Kansas into submission.

Various recent articles about Kansas have recounted that in 1999, when Kansas removed some references to macroevolution from its standards, critics of Kansas said the following:

Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said that was akin to teaching "American history without Lincoln." Bill Nye, the "Science Guy" of children's television, called it "harebrained" and "nutty." And a Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: "Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, OK?"

'Intelligent Design' Wins In Kan.

Now granted, if there is a solution to this problem, the solution is NOT to remove macroevolution. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: students need to learn more about evolution, not less. Evolutionary theory is an extremely important concept in biology, and learning about evolution without talking about macroevolution would be like learning about intelligent design without talking about the bacterial flagellum. The current Kansas standards do mention macroevolution (and allow for critical analysis), and that is good.

Namecalling should be avoided by all on all sides in this debate. I’m sure that both sides are guilty of it, but right now all I’m talking about is Kansas. Thus I was particularly intrigued by the comments of one board member who was quoted as follows:

"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat. Kan. school board OKs evolution language

Now there’s a good reason to oppose a policy: because people will laugh at you. After all, we know that America was founded by pushovers and yes-men (or yes-women) who simply did what the tyrannical majority wanted them to do, regardless of whether it was good, just, or right. I hope my sarcasm is coming through loud and clear.

Don't people get it? Ms. Waugh has either (1) caved in to Darwinist namecallers who used ridicule as a tactic to psychologically beat Kansans into submission or (2) is a Darwinist herself and wants to inflame namecalling and social fears of such because she knows it will cause more public opposition to the new standards (which she opposes).

In fact, the namecalling has already started, exemplified in this brilliantly original and witty piece entitled Kansas Education Board Touts Flat Earth Curriculum (note again: sarcasm). But Kansans should not be scared off by Darwinist namecalling. One Ohio Education Board member wrote a letter to Kansans retelling how she experienced precisely the same scare tactics in Ohio after they passed their standards providing for accurate and critical analysis of Neo-Darwinism. As she explains below, these scare tactics turned out to be nothing but mean-spirited misconstruals, dogmatism, and empty threats:

"So you see that what is now being proposed in Kansas, and other states is not so radical. Indeed it is in line with how evolution is being taught in other states, such as Ohio, which did not cave in to the evolutionary dogmatist. Indeed the efforts of many in the self designated elite scientific community have been to preach chemical and biological evolution as the total explanation for everything. This is one of the central issues in this controversy.

These same dogmatists will likely use their scare tactics in Kansas, and elsewhere just as they did in Ohio. They will try and tell you that challenging any aspect of evolution will lead to turning the science classroom into a bible study on Genesis. They will contend that it will make states appear backward, and companies will flee, along with much needed investments in science and technology.

Rest assured that virtually none of this has happened in Ohio.

letter from Deborah L. Owens-Fink, Ph.D., member of Ohio State Board of Education

My encouragement for Kansans is thus this: stand united against those who would subject you to namecalling and mockery. That’s all they have going for them, and it’s just a scare tactic. Kansans: Stand united, be American, and reject the empty sting of namecalling tactics, and follow the lead of this board member:

“We are being very brave. We are brave enough to have all areas discussed,” said board member Kathy Martin, a Clay Center Republican. “Students will be informed and not indoctrinated.”

(extremely biased article that uses a totally straw-version of ID in the Colorado Daily)

Kansans have my empathy if now they must suffer the consequences from those who have no better arguments than to use Russell Doolittle’s “ridicule” tactic to attempt to shame and humiliate you into opposing these new, excellent standards.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (7)

Geoff Brumfiel with Nature has a news article on the recent decision in Kansas to teach scientific criticisms of evolution. I like Mr. Brumfiel and I think he is a good reporter. His April 28, 2005 piece in Nature on students and ID was fair and consciously non-inflammatory, albeit at times emphasizing religion over science. In his most recent article, I am quoted saying the following:

"This is a huge victory for students in Kansas," says Casey Luskin, a programme officer in policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think-tank in Seattle. Luskin says that the standards will help students to recognize legitimate scientific criticisms of evolution. He notes that they make no direct reference to intelligent design: "Critics say that the school board is bringing religion into the classroom, but they're not."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

On Tuesday the Kansas State Board of Education adopted new science standards. According to the Board, these new standards "call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory." These standards do not require the teaching of intelligent design. That fact didn't stop some major media outlets, including Bloomberg News and the Washington Post, from erroneously claiming otherwise. The Bloomberg story began:

Kansas State Board Votes to Teach Intelligent Design in Schools

Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Kansas State Board of Education approved a proposal to teach intelligent design along with evolution as a scientific explanation of how life began.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, carried a fanciful headline announcing: "Kansas Education Board First to Back 'Intelligent Design.'"

What do the Kansas Science Standards say in reality? Read for yourself the following statement by the Kansas Board contained in the new standards:

We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design... While the testimony presented at the science hearings included many advocates of Intelligent Design, these standards neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about this scientific disagreement. (emphasis added)

Which part of this statement that the Kansas science standards "do not include Intelligent Design" is so hard for reporters to understand? Or can't they read?

Posted by John West at 9:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In order to cash in on the nation's current interest in the debate over evolution --thanks to Kansas' adoption of new science standards and the Dover school board trial-- this evening ABC's World News Tonight strung together disparate clips and previous footage to once again spin out the old yarn that this is just a religious issue. Yawn.

(If you're still interested see our report on the original airing of this story back in September.)

But, if you're interested in seeing a report that truly delves into the issue --from both sides-- check out CBS's News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. Here's an objective report from a crew that took the issue seriously and rather than repeat the media hype they researched issue, interviewed the experts, and gave viewers solid information on the debate over evolution.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: It turns out to be an "intelligent plan"

The Pope's statement (see below) at his weekly address was even stronger than first reported. ZENIT reports:

"When the Pontiff finished his address, he put his papers to one side and commented on the thought of St. Basil the Great, a Doctor of the Church, who said that some, "deceived by the atheism they bear within them, imagined the universe deprived of a guide and order, at the mercy of chance."

"I believe the words of this fourth-century Father are of amazing timeliness," said Benedict XVI. "How many are these 'some' today?"

"Deceived by atheism, they believe and try to demonstrate that it is scientific to think that everything lacks a guide and order," he continued. "The Lord, with sacred Scripture, awakens the drowsy reason and says to us: In the beginning is the creative Word. In the beginning the creative Word -- this Word that has created everything, which has created this intelligent plan, the cosmos -- is also Love."

Seattle – Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman hailed an impromptu statement Wednesday by Pope Benedict XVI embracing the "intelligent project" that lies behind nature. “Fooled by atheism,” the Pope said, many people today “think, and try to demonstrate, that everything is without direction and order...”

Instead, said the Pope, "Through sacred Scripture, the Lord awakens the reason that sleeps, and tells us that in the beginning is the creative word, the creative reason, that has created everything, that has created this intelligent project of the cosmos."

In attendance at the Pope's regular Wednesday audience where the comments were made was Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Austria, a friend and collaborator of the Pope who has written a number of articles critical of scientific materialism and defending traditional Catholic concepts of the intelligibility of design in nature. "It may be that the Pope was implicitly showing support for the Cardinal's work," said Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman in Seattle. Many of the scientists active in the intelligent design movement are affiliated with Discovery Institute.

“Scientists exploring the idea of design in nature," said Chapman, "are bound to be encouraged by yet another indication that Pope Benedict is standing firm on the church's traditional opposition to materialist philosophy in science and other fields. The Pope’s statement about ‘the reason that sleeps’ shows that he, like Cardinal Schönborn, sees the crucial issue as not whether one can know the order in nature by faith, but whether human reason is capable of grasping design.”

“Further, he seems to be cautioning those who have been claiming Church endorsement of the full-bodied, design-defeating version of Darwin's theory of evolution, which, after all, is often little more than philosophical materialism applied to science,” added Chapman.

Chapman noted that in his very first homily as Pope, Benedict XVI had rebuked the idea that human beings are mere products of evolution, and that, like his predecessor, John Paul II, the new Pope has a long record of opposition to scientific materialism.

Chapman also said that the Pope's latest statement is likely to call further attention to the series of nine catechetical lectures on evolution and creation that Cardinal Schönborn is in the midst of delivering.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

Kansas today became the fifth state in the nation to adopt science standards that encourage students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution.

“This is a big victory for the students of Kansas, providing them with full-disclosure of the scientific debate about Darwinism going on between scientists and in the scientific literature, so we’re very pleased” said Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.

The science standards adopted in Kansas emphasize that they do not include teaching of intelligent design. Instead they require students to learn the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution. Discovery Institute strongly believes that schools should require only that the scientific evidence for and against neo-Darwinism be taught, while not infringing on the academic freedom of teachers to present appropriate information about intelligent design if they choose.

“In every case Darwinists have tried to say there is no controversy and in every case they were wrong,” said Luskin. “Kansas now joins Ohio and three other states in recognizing that there is a legitimate scientific controversy and there are credible scientific criticisms of evolution.”

In 2002, Ohio became the first state to require students to learn about scientific evidence critical of neo-Darwinian theory, adopting a benchmark that says students should know "how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Mexico have also adopted similar standards calling for critical analysis of the scientific evidence both for and against neo-Darwinian theory, as have individual school districts around the country.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Seattle – Kansas will become the fifth state in the nation to allow students to learn about the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution if the Kansas State Board of Education adopts proposed science standards tomorrow as expected.

Discovery Institute praised the proposed science standards because they expand the information presented to students about biological and chemical evolution by including some of the scientific criticisms of these theories. The standards also recommend the adoption of a definition of science that is consistent with the definition of science used by most by other states. The standards do not propose teaching intelligent design theory.

“Under these standards students will learn more about evolution not less as some Darwinists have falsely claimed,” said Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “Anyone who reads the proposed science standards will see that they deal solely with science, are based on scientific debates in mainstream scientific literature and do not include any alternative theories.”

One big improvement that Luskin pointed out is the traditional definition of science in the standards which reads: "Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory-building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

“Until now Kansas was the only state that did not have a traditional definition of science, the only one,” said Luskin. “This definition is nearly identical to the definition of science adhered to in over 40 states across the country, and gets Kansas back into line with the rest of the country.”

Discovery Institute supports teaching students more about evolutionary theory, including introducing them to mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific debates over key aspects of modern evolutionary theory (known as neo-Darwinism). The Institute does not favor requiring that students learn about the scientific theory of intelligent design.

Discovery Institute published an exhaustive report of all US state’s definitions of science in May of 2005. According to that report, the definition of science proposed in the science standards is fully consistent with definitions used by all other states in the U.S. By contrast, the definition of science currently used in the Kansas standards and defended by Darwinists is idiosyncratic and out of step with current educational practice.

In 2002, Ohio became the first state to require students to learn about scientific evidence critical of neo-Darwinian theory, adopting a benchmark that says students should know "how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Mexico have also adopted similar standards calling for critical analysis of the scientific evidence both for and against neo-Darwinian theory, as have individual school districts around the country.

NOTE: The Discovery Institute report, “Definitions of Science in State Standards” by senior fellow Dr. Jonathan Wells, is available on the Discovery Institute website at: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2573

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the November-December edition of Harvard Magazine in an article titled “Forum: Intelligent Evolution” E.O. Wilson recites the long debunked mantra of Darwinists accusing ID of merely being “God-of-the-Gaps”. In Wilson’s own words:

Many who accept the fact of evolution cannot, however, on religious grounds, accept the operation of blind chance and the absence of divine purpose implicit in natural selection. They support the alternative explanation of intelligent design. The reasoning they offer is not based on evidence but on the lack of it. The formulation of intelligent design is a default argument advanced in support of a non sequitur. It is in essence the following: There are some phenomena that have not yet been explained and that (and most importantly) the critics personally cannot imagine being explained; therefore there must be a supernatural designer at work.

This statement is pretty ironic given the prefatory statement to the piece which said:

At a moment when discussion of evolution and “intelligent design” preoccupies American political discourse to a surprising degree, shedding more heat than light on the nature of life and life science, Wilson invites the serious public to do what far too few of us have done: to read what Darwin wrote.

If E.O. Wilson and the good people at Harvard Magazine want to shed more light than heat then they would have done their homework on ID, and in doing so found that this charge was long ago debunked decisively by Center Director Stephen Meyer in First Things in April 2000:

Of course, many scientists have argued that to infer design gives up on science. They say that inferring design constitutes an argument from scientific ignorance--a "God of the Gaps" fallacy. Since science doesn’t yet know how biological information could have arisen, design theorists invoke a mysterious notion--intelligent design--to fill a gap in scientific knowledge. Many philosophers, for their part, resist reconsidering design, because they assume that Hume’s objections to analogical reasoning in classical design arguments still have force.

Yet developments in philosophy of science and the information sciences provide the grounds for a decisive refutation of both these objections. First, contemporary design theory does not constitute an argument from ignorance. Design theorists infer design not just because natural processes cannot explain the origin of biological systems, but because these systems manifest the distinctive hallmarks of intelligently designed systems--that is, they possess features that in any other realm of experience would trigger the recognition of an intelligent cause. For example, in his book Darwin’s Black Box (1996), Michael Behe has inferred design not only because the gradualistic mechanism of natural selection cannot produce "irreducibly complex" systems, but also because in our experience "irreducible complexity" is a feature of systems known to have been intelligently designed. That is, whenever we see systems that have the feature of irreducible complexity and we know the causal story about how such systems originated, invariably "intelligent design" played a role in the origin of such systems. Thus, Behe infers intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of irreducible complexity in cellular molecular motors, for example, based upon what we know, not what we don’t know, about the causal powers of nature and intelligent agents, respectively.

Similarly, the "sequence specificity" or "specificity and complexity" or "information content" of DNA suggests a prior intelligent cause, again because "specificity and complexity" or "high information content" constitutes a distinctive hallmark (or signature) of intelligence. Indeed, in all cases where we know the causal origin of "high information content," experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role.

Design theorists infer a past intelligent cause based upon present knowledge of cause and effect relationships. Inferences to design thus employ the standard uniformitarian method of reasoning used in all historical sciences, many of which routinely detect intelligent causes. We would not say, for example, that an archeologist had committed a "scribe of the gaps" fallacy simply because he inferred that an intelligent agent had produced an ancient hieroglyphic inscription. Instead, we recognize that the archeologist has made an inference based upon the presence of a feature (namely, "high information content") that invariably implicates an intelligent cause, not (solely) upon the absence of evidence for a suitably efficacious natural cause.

Second, contra the classical Humean objection to design, the "DNA to Design" argument does not depend upon an analogy between the features of human artifacts and living systems, still less upon a weak or illicit one. If, as Bill Gates has said, "DNA is similar to a software program" but more complex, it makes sense, on analogical grounds, to consider inferring that it too had an intelligent source.

Nevertheless, while DNA is similar to a computer program, the case for its design does not depend merely upon resemblance or analogical reasoning. Classical design arguments in biology typically sought to draw analogies between whole organisms and machines based upon certain similar features that each held in common. These arguments sought to reason from similar effects back to similar causes. The status of such design arguments thus turned on the degree of similarity that actually obtained between the effects in question. Yet since even advocates of these classical arguments admitted dissimilarities as well as similarities, the status of these arguments always appeared uncertain. Advocates would argue that the similarities between organisms and machines outweighed dissimilarities. Critics would claim the opposite.

The design argument from the information in DNA does not depend upon such analogical reasoning since it does not depend upon claims of similarity. As noted above, the coding regions of DNA have the very same property of "specified complexity" or "information content" that computer codes and linguistic texts do. Though DNA does not possess all the properties of natural languages or "semantic information"--i.e., information that is subjectively "meaningful" to human agents--it does have precisely those properties that jointly implicate an antecedent intelligence.

Posted by Keith Pennock at 1:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Harrisburg, PA — Yesterday I sat in the Federal Courthouse observing the Kitzmiller trial where the ACLU is trying to ban intelligent design from the science classroom. Many of the plaintiffs' closing arguments sounded like they were taken directly from Pandamonium (click “Pandas Gallery” to hear the “objections” without playing the game). I’m actually serious: this silly, satirical game captures nearly all of the central arguments of the NCSE-assisted plaintiffs in this case.

First, Some Compliments:
But before I delve into critique, I want to say some kind things about the “opposing side” in this case. While in Harrisburg this week, I interacted with a number of very nice people from the ACLU, NCSE, and even plaintiffs’ counsel and staff (from Pepper Hamilton, LLP). I felt that all present at the trial, including all those I met from the Darwin-only side, were extremely courteous to their opponents and were generally nice people.

I am grateful to have had numerous friendly conversations with individuals from the Darwin-only side over the past few days. Wesley Elsberry (NCSE staffer) and I spent some time shooting the breeze and taking-in the spectacle together while engaging in friendly conversation outside the courthouse waiting to watch the media feeding frenzy as the attorneys walked out of the courtroom. Nick Matzke and I shook hands and joked about our recent radio debate as I consoled (and respected) him for having to spend so much time away from home in Harrisburg. Because this was a “legal thing” it was somewhat inappropriate to go out with the ACLU / NCSE folks for some Harrisburg Hefeweizen, but if there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s that everyone on all sides of this trial genuinely cares about students and what they learn in schools. We all have different solutions for those questions, but I know we share the common denominator of care and concern for students and the quality of their science education. For this, I tip my hat with respect to the plaintiffs, their counsel, and their support staff.

Rewriting History
Within minutes of beginning their closing argument, the plaintiffs’ counsel made an incredible (and false) claim: namely, they insinuated that it was the Discovery Institute who had given the school board the advice which led to them passing a disclaimer which mentioned ID and Pandas. The truth couldn’t be further from their “facts.”

The facts: From the very beginning, Discovery counseled the Dover Area School Board to pass a policy which focused on teaching scientific strengths and weaknesses of Neo-Darwinism. We specifically encouraged them not to pass a policy which mandates the teaching of ID. One of our main reasons for this is that many teachers don’t currently understand ID, and so we should not require the teaching of a theory which many teachers misunderstand (and might also wrongly oppose). This advice was validated in that one testifying teacher demonstrated that he was unfamiliar with ID and Pandas, yet opposed its teaching anyways.

In reality, both before and after Dover passed its policy, Discovery was consistent in urging the Board not to adopt a policy which mandated teaching ID without teacher understanding or approval. Why would plaintiffs rewrite history to blame Dover’s policy on Discovery? It’s actually incredibly simple. If they can connect (with or without any evidence) Dover’s enacted policy to Discovery, then they can insinuate that it is connected to the allegedly evil “wedge strategy”. But the history of Discovery’s involvement in Dover indicates that their final policy was precisely what we suggested that they not do.

Plaintiffs then turned to their next fallacy, which was that ID is a form of creationism that appeals to God and a supernatural creator. Their evidence is based upon 2 quotes by ID proponents who are social commentators who have done essentially nothing to formulate the scientific theory if ID (Phillip Johnson and Nancy Pearcey) and a complete out-of-context usage of Dembski’s infamous (and, once properly understood, innocuous) “Logos quote”. I guess they didn’t mention a mass of ID technical literature because it doesn’t quite fit with their case-theory.

Their creationist-conspiracy-theory is also based upon a false claim that Pandas is a fundamentally creationist textbook. Never mind that all published versions of Pandas, including the one actually mentioned in Dover’s disclaimer, don’t use “creation” terminology but specifically make it clear that “if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science.” (Pandas 126-127). Never mind that the pre-publication drafts of Pandas which did use “creation” terminology also, in the same breath, said that “observable instances of information cannot tell us if the intellect behind them is natural or supernatural. This is not a question that science can answer.” This shows that the Pandas project, even in the pre-Edwards era, was already fundamentally distinct from the rule given in Edwards v. Aguillard which said that “creationism” was unconstitutional because it addressed unscientific religious questions like the existence of the “supernatural.”

Also, never mind that under the rules of statutory (or constitutional) interpretation, removing language from a draft bill (or amendment) is usually taken as evidence of precisely what the authors did NOT intend for the bill to mean. Oh yeah, and did I mention that plaintiffs’ expert Dr. Ken Miller published numerous textbooks which used religious language to promote evolution (which he removed). And finally, never mind that origin of the term intelligent design” goes back to the Greeks, and was used by late nineteenth century natural philosophers.

Plaintiffs then went on to say that the scientific (and often peer-reviewed) case for ID based upon empirical evidence documented in the references provided in this link doesn’t exist. Finally, they claimed that ID makes no positive case for ID and is just a negative argument against evolution, despite the fact that both Behe and Minnich specifically testified otherwise (see also the positive arguments from ID proponents documented here). In fact, plaintiffs’attorney Steve Harvey found it impossible to pin down Scott Minnich this morning during Minnich’s cross examination. Mr. Harvey thought he had Minnich pinned but Minnich simply proclaimed what he’d been saying all along: that we have experience that software-like codes imply a coder was at work, and purposeful arrangement of parts in a machine implies actual engineering. Finally, plaintiffs asserted that no ID proponents have done any research supporting their theory despite the fact that Dr. Minnich testified extensively about his mutagenesis experiments showing irreducible complexity in the bacterial flagellum, his published research bearing on the question of whether or not the Type Three Secretory System is a viable intermediate, and despite the fact that Behe published in Protein Science documenting his theoretical computer research bearing on the question of whether or not there is irreducible complexity in protein-protein interactions.

Endgame
The Honorable Judge Jones III told the courtroom that he hoped to issue his decision before the beginning of 2006. I have great respect for the Judge as I felt that he conducted the trial in a fair manner and kept a sense-of-humor amidst some pretty boring testimony about the flagellum. But if the plaintiffs’ fallacious arguments carry the day, then I have only 2 things to say:

1) The earth still turns.
2) In this Kitzmiller case, the opponents of design will only have won their Wake Island.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

ACLU ends Minnich’s Cross-Examination by Making the Points ID Experts Were Trying to Make All Along
Harrisburg, PA — Dr. Scott Minnich endured nearly 2.5 hours of cross-examination Friday and did an excellent job of fending off the assertions of plaintiffs’ attorney Mr. Stephen G. Harvey. Minnich runs a lab at the University of Idaho, which studies the bacterial flagellum, and has been teaching biology at the college level for 18 years.

I want to first give Mr. Harvey credit for his bravery to go against a well-credentialed and well-published tenured microbiologist who runs a lab that studies a biomolecular machine at the very heart of this litigation. Given the circumstances, Mr. Harvey didn’t do too bad against a formidable opponent. However, I’d like to look behind the rhetoric and style and go to the substance and strategy of the questions asked of Dr. Minnich. A repeated theme throughout the cross exam reemphasized and proved Minnich’s important points about the scientific nature of intelligent design.

(I note that it is possible that I missed questions, or sequences of questions, as it was difficult to take notes by hand as fast as the talking went. In fact, the talking was at points so fast that even the court reporter had to ask the participants to slow down. So I apologize and concede at the outset that my notes are probably somewhat incomplete. Below are some of the highlights I was able to write down.)

The Questioning
Mr. Harvey started the day continuing his questions from the previous day employing the genetic fallacy that if creationists talk about something, and you talk about that same thing, that therefore you must be promoting creationism. Apparently a creationist had talked about the flagellum in some publication from the 1980’s which Minnich knew nothing about. I personally didn’t see any relevance of that point to anything.

The flagellum line of questioning then led into a question about if Minnich had ever published on the flagellum and ID based upon his research. He explained how he had done so. He explained how his paper was reviewed by the Wessex Institute and presented at a conference where biologists, engineers, and physicists explored design in nature.

Not getting anywhere, Harvey then turned to the Type Three Secretory System (TTSS), the existence of which Minnich’s research helped to predict and discover in the mid-early 1990’s. Harvey tried to claim that Dr. Milton Saier’s 2004 paper implied that the TTSS could have been a precursor to the flagellum. Minnich then explained how Saier’s work implies that the TTSS is not a precursor to the flagellum because the TTSS is found only in a narrow group within gram-negative bacteria, whereas the flagellum is widespread among many different prokaryotes. He explained that the TTSS is used for interaction with Eukaryotes, which implies that it is a relatively late arrival in prokaryote history.

That line of questioning wasn’t going so well for Mr. Harvey, so he tried something new. The previous day Minnich had quoted mainstream biologists such as the eminent cell biologist (and NAS president) Bruce Alberts recognizing that there are biomolecular machines in the cell which bear an uncanny resemblance to human-designed machines. Minnich had also quoted Carl Woese regarding deficiencies in our knowledge of evolution. Minnich specifically acknowledged that these biologists were in fact not ID-proponents but were, as far as he knew, fully committed evolutionists. Apparently forgetting Dr. Minnich’s testimony overnight, Mr. Harvey started off by finding quotations where some of these biologists (such as NAS President Bruce Alberts) specifically rejected ID or pledged allegiance to evolution. But Minnich had already acknowledged that Alberts or Woese were not ID proponents, so this was no surprise to Minnich or anyone who was paying attention the previous day. I’m not sure what Mr. Harvey was trying to prove.

None of this was really winning the day for Harvey, so he turned to peer-reviewed ID literature. Mr. Harvey highlighted the “publish or perish” line that Michael Behe used in Darwin’s Black Box. Minnich first responded that publishing about ID comes with a great risk because it goes against the consensus of scientists. This quote has been repeated in various news articles. Nonetheless, Minnich testified that he believed that about 10 peer-reviewed papers had been published which were by ID proponents and supported ID arguments. Minnich specifically mentioned papers by Axe, Behe, and Meyer. Harvey tried to take apart the papers by Axe and Behe by noting that they didn’t specifically mention ID. But Minnich explained that the point of these papers is to find specified complexity in sequence space—a prediction of ID. Meyer’s paper remained the “elephant in the living room” against which Harvey apparently could muster no argument.

This line of questions seemed to be going nowhere for Harvey. So he started a line which rattled off the religious beliefs of many ID proponents. Minnich was happily open about the fact that he believes the designer is God, but explained that this belief does not come from ID theory. Harvey then began listing off the religious beliefs of many ID proponents who are Christians. It wasn’t clear precisely what these ad hominem insinuations were supposed to mean. The lack of relevance became especially clear in light of Minnich’s testimony about the famous British atheist Antony Flew who became an ID proponent after being a prominent proponent of atheism, but didn’t have any particular religious commitment even after publicly stating his support for ID.

This line of questions definitely didn’t get much out of Minnich. So Mr. Harvey decided to try to get Minnich to talk about the mechanism for ID. Minnich explained that ID doesn’t say much in terms of the mechanism the designer used. (As Mr. Harvey would say, “we’ll look at this in more detail later.”) Somehow this fact was supposed to count against ID, as if because ID is silent on some questions, then it couldn’t make statements about other questions. It also seems odd to criticize ID for limiting its claims to what can be inferred from the data. But I digress. Harvey’s line of questioning inadvertently brought out the fact that ID is not an appeal to miracles, and isn’t about “creation ex nihilo.” It seemed like Harvey helped Minnich to prove a key point which weakened the plaintiffs’ arguments against ID.

Harvey then tried to resurrect the debate between Paley and Hume talking about watches by making it into a modern debate between Minnich and Harvey talking about cell phones. Harvey’s strategy was to get Minnich to admit that the ID argument is like Paley so he could take it down with the classical objections from Hume. Here’s what happened:

Minnich explained that biologists recognize design in nature, and said that the important question is “if the design is real”—not necessarily “how the design was implemented” [paraphrased]. Minnich explained that ID is based upon a purposeful arrangement of parts and molecular machines. Harvey tried to twist this into a Paley-like argument, to which Minnich responded that his argument today is much more sophisticated than Paley’s because today we have a more acute knowledge of the machine-like nature of structures in nature than did Paley.

Harvey then tried to use a Humean objection, explaining that since we have no experience with designers making biological machines, therefore Minnich’s inference breaks down. Minnich then made a very compelling argument that we recognize that the algorithms and information processing in biology are more sophisticated than anything made by a human software engineer. We see an alphabet, numbers, information storage, and this all points to design. He said if anything this makes the inference to design in biology EVEN STRONGER than the inference to design that Paley tried to use!

Harvey then tried to characterize the ID argument as finding a “mouse in a field” but Minnich never took it to the level of the “mouse” and simply kept his inferences to design at the strong analogical level of inferring design due to the presence of machines and information processing systems which closely resembles those made by humans.

The net effect of this line of questioning actually was to bring out the strong nature of the positive arguments for design. Harvey’s Humean objections also implied precisely why ID theory can only infer intelligence (which we do have observation-based experience with) but can’t tell you if the designer is supernatural (because we don’t have observation-based experience with the supernatural). Once again, Harvey helped prove Minnich’s points.

Mr. Harvey was doing his best against a biochemist, and to his credit, wouldn’t give up. Harvey tried to claim that a purposeful arrangement of parts didn’t imply design. Minnich, who had repeatedly explained why this implied design then tried to pull a Clarence Darrow on Harvey by asking him “Tell me why it isn’t a valid inference?” Harvey then started to say “luckily for me, I don’t [have to answer your questions]” but stopped midway and instead decided to say “unluckily for you, you have to answer the questions.” Harvey’s Freudian slip was revealing: Harvey was lucky, because he had nothing to say in response to Minnich. He was speechless, and turned to another line of questioning.

Harvey then tried to get Minnich to explain that ID was just a negative argument for evolution. This attempt completely failed. Minnich had been providing positive arguments for ID all day long! Harvey tried to fit Minnich into making the “2-model” false dichotomy that “if it ain’t evolution, then it must be ID.” But Minnich explained that ID is fundamentally based upon a positive argument for ID—that the information processing in irreducibly complex systems in the cell implies that there is an intelligence associated with it. Having failed to pin Minnich down to making a purely negative argument for ID, Harvey decided it was best to take a break.

It was right at the end of this break that an elderly woman sitting next to me on the plaintiff’s side said, “The witness is smarter than the lawyer.” Again I have to give Mr. Harvey some credit. Minnich is a trained and experienced biochemist and Mr. Harvey was obviously a highly skilled and impressive advocate. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Scott Minnich was smarter than Mr. Harvey, because I was impressed with Harvey’s ability as a non-scientist to be fairly conversant with the technical arguments over ID. Dr. Minnich is smart too, and I have no desire to render verdicts comparing anyone’s intelligence, so my point is that I don’t want to slander the skilled attorney’s intelligence. The one thing that was clear up to this point: one person seemed to have more compelling arguments, and my lady friend’s intuition knew who it was.

Note to Future Attorneys: Mid-Cross-Exam Breaks are Great for Regaining Composure
One advantage to being a cross-examining attorney is that you are in control of the questioning. It goes where you want it to go, it stops when you want it to stop, and then it resumes when you want it to resume. You call the shots. If you need a break, you take it and regain your composure. So that’s what Harvey did.

After the break, Mr. Harvey regained his composure and did better, stylistically. But whatever Harvey gained in rhetorical style and emotional appeal, he continued to lack in actual substance. In fact, I found the fundamental weaknesses of the plaintiffs’ arguments most revealing in this second half. If the arguments and articles Mr. Harvey and his NCSE support-staff thrust at Minnich were the best they could muster against ID, then as my colleague Logan Gage said after witnessing the day’s cross examination, we have good reasons indeed to be confident in ID.

As a strictly rhetorical analysis, however, I’ll say this: Minnich still scored a few points before Harvey built up emotional momentum to the point that he glamorously ended by making all the points for Minnich that ID proponents have been making all along in this trial. The eye that looks beyond the rhetoric will see who won.

Harvey started off with an admittedly tough question for Minnich: “are there objective, quantitative measures for design?” This is a hard question for Minnich to answer because Minnich’s arguments were analogical. But that doesn’t mean the evidence for ID couldn’t be there, and Minnich replied that the argument is more intuitive than quantitative. Other ID proponents (like Dembski) might make more quantitative arguments, but Minnich’s arguments are more analogical in nature. But I wish that, again, Harvey had been in the “unlucky” position of being the questionee, and could have been asked for quantitative arguments for evolution. That would have been quite interesting.

Next, Harvey turned to the Lenski paper. Minnich explained that the Lenski paper doesn’t model biological reality because it pre-specifies the target it is supposed to evolve (and they knew it was evolvable before they started). As further evidence that this computer program was different from real biology, Minnich had explained that Lenski’s lab has overseen tens of thousands of generations of real bacterial growth and seen very limited change—much less than in Lenski’s computer simulation.

But the big paper Harvey trotted out to try to rebut Minnich's claim that there are no detailed Darwinian accounts of how complex systems or pathways arose was about "Mitochondrial Evolution" (from Science in 1999). It claimed to bear out the monophyletic nature of the alleged origin of mitochondria. Minnich countered that we want a true phylogeny--not just one possible phylogeny based upon sequence analysis. Harvey retorted that Minnich doesn't accept such studies out of personal incredulity; that the science just doesn't meet his personal standard. But Minnich noted that claims about common ancestry as such were mere inferences—similar to how we infer ID, and that the alleged phylogenetic history of the mitochondria wasn’t hard fact. Harvey seemed to miss Minnich’s point that these phylogenies are based upon the assumptions that “similarity should imply ancestry” which are not necessarily valid. I guess Harvey’s ignorance was his bliss, because if he realized how right Minnich was then Harvey’s confidence might have been shaken for the next paper.

Harvey then pointed to a paper about the alleged evolution of a complex biochemical pathway. The pathway allows bacteria to metabolize DNT (similar to TNT), which is a man-made compound. Obviously DNT doesn’t exist naturally, so if bacteria can metabolize it, then obviously it had to have evolved very recently. Apparently some air-force scientists found a way to get DNT to be metabolized as part of a project to decompose this waste product using microorganisms. (This is similar to the project to use bugs to eat oil slicks. A little claim once made by a professor of mine once said that the oil-eating microorganisms have never been used in the real world because of fears that they might get into the world’s oil supply, and eat it all.) In any case, Harvey tried to claim that this paper showed some important example of evolution. Minnich replied to Harvey “you don’t understand my position.” Minnich, who had previously read the paper, explained that to evolve this pathway required the modification of maybe 2 or 3 preexisting enzymes. There was really nothing new here, and certainly nothing approaching an irreducibly complex biomolecular machine. Minnich called this microevolution.

Harvey later challenged Minnich's assertion about Bruce Alberts' paper "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines" (1999, CELL). Harvey claimed that Alberts does not advocate using design engineering in molecular biology but read a quote at the end which recommends that students learn more basic biology, physics, and chemistry. But Minnich pointed to two other passages in the paper which bore out his argument that the point of Alberts’ paper was to use those basic subjects in a combined manner so students could understand systems biology, which Minnich says implies they should learn principles of design engineering.

Having been out-quoted by Minnich, Harvey then asked if there is any ID research going on. But Minnich had already answered this question by talking about his own work on the TTSS, Behe’s research published with David W. Snoke in Protein Science on IC in protein-protein interactions, and also Axe’s work on specified complexity in the cell. Harvey called the argument for ID an argument from ignorance at which point Minnich confidently proclaimed that it isn’t because “from our experience, a code implies a coder behind it.”

Minnich then talked about predictions of ID such as functionality for Junk-DNA, and finding irreducible complexity in biological systems. Minnich explained that IC systems are evidence for design because they are a hallmark of intelligence.

Harvey then asked Minnich if ID talked about the age of the earth. Minnich answered “yes” and acknowledged his belief that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Harvey then read a quote from the Pandas where it apparently alleges that ID doesn’t take a stand on the age of the earth (pg. 92). Minnich apparently wasn’t aware of this quote but if anything, Harvey’s line of questioning here just showed how Minnich clearly was not a Genesis literalist, revealing that ID is far removed from creationism.

Harvey then claimed that a methodologically naturalistic definition of science would have to be changed in order to accommodate ID. Minnich agreed at first, but then explained that ID requires abandonment of methodological naturalism not because it excludes supernatural causes but rather because it excludes intelligent causes a priori. Thus, Minnich didn’t claim that redefining science implies that ID is making supernaturalistic explanations. He simply claimed that ID explains via reference to intelligent causes.

The grand finale came when Mr. Harvey came up with a list of a bunch of questions ID can’t address, and asked them sequentially of Dr. Minnich in a rhetorically powerful but substantively vacuous manner. The answer to these questions was generally “no” so Minnich came off as negative.

The questions asked were: if ID identifies the designer?; if it tells you the specific mechanism used by the designer?; if ID tells you when it was designed?; if ID tells the moral purpose of the designer?; or if ID implies a family of designers?.

Harvey actually proved Minnich’s point that ID doesn’t postulate supernatural explanations. In fact, Harvey proved all of Minnich’s points that ID isn’t talking about miracles, young earths, identities of designers, or moral purposes like intended “evil design.” Harvey ended by saying something about that when the line crosses into “philosophy or theology,” that is where the scientific theory of ID stops talking. Ironically, Harvey was exactly right. Harvey’s ending helped Minnich prove many important points about intelligent design.

Minnich vs. Harvey: Who is the master intellect?
As the attorney in control of the questioning, Mr. Harvey had the option to end it here. So he did so when, by his own tone and rhetoric, he had built the questioning to an emotional high for his side. Harvey framed the questions in a way which emotionally and rhetorically disparaged and denigrated ID when all he was doing substantively was demonstrating that ID respects the limits of real scientific inquiry. This might pull the wool over the eyes of a jury, but to the trained ear of a learned Judge, all Harvey did was help Dr. Minnich demonstrate that ID doesn’t get into any theological, religious, or philosophical questions which can’t be based upon scientific evidence.

At this endpoint Harvey also employed a logical fallacy: he seemed to imply that if ID can’t address some things, that therefore it can’t provide answers to anything. The fact is, ID is not a theory of “everything.” In reality, even if ID can’t study questions like “is the designer supernatural,” that doesn’t mean it can’t still address the question of whether there is real, actual design in nature. Unfortunately, Mr. Harvey got sucked in by the NCSE’s preached-and-practiced advice to be an unpacifiable skeptic of ID and not take anything ID proponents are saying seriously. This attitude is well-exemplified in Pandamonium. Such Darwinists are impossible to please because they aren’t interested in being pleased. They’re only interested in playing rhetorical games to keep the evidence for real design in nature at a safe psychological (or, as in this case, legal) distance.

Here are some examples of NCSE-esque-rhetoric:

• If ID does postulate the designer is God, then it isn’t science. But if it is silent on that question and leaves completely open the possibilities (and doesn’t rule out stuff like a ‘family of designers’), then it is ridiculed as deficient.

• If ID tells you that the design was good or bad, it is talking about moral purposes, which is improper for science making ID unscientific. But if it can’t tell you if the design is evil (or good), it is ridiculed as deficient.

• If ID tells you that there were miracles, then it is not scientific. But if it doesn’t tell you if the mechanism was a “miracle” because science can’t study that, or if it can’t tell you about the mechanism because the data isn’t telling us anything about this question, then ID is ridiculed as deficient for not providing a mechanism.

At this point, the plaintiffs’ tactic was revealed. Here’s how it works:

(1) Try to get ID theory to make some claim that goes beyond the realm of science so you can call it unscientific;
(2) If the ID proponent is respecting the limits of scientific inquiry and won’t give in (like Scott Minnich) then emotionally and rhetorically ridicule his theory for not providing an answer to that question, or for remaining silent and thus not ruling out ridiculous options; or make some claim that it is vacuous as a theory.
(3) This last point is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: NEVER ever EVER acknowledge that ID proponents are right in noting that the claim you are trying to get them to make would go beyond the scope of science or what can be inferred from the data. And also DON’T acknowledge that there is a valid rationale for inferring design from the data. If you do either of those, you’ve lost.
(4) And whatever you do, don’t let them put you on the defensive by letting them ask you “Well, how do you propose to use empirical evidence to address that question?” because then you’re checkmated. If you try to answer the question you concede that the design inference can be based on legitimate empirical evidence; but if you recognize that empirical evidence cannot establish the claim, then you legitimatize that the claim is beyond the scope of science. Thus, it’s safest to only use this tactic when you are “lucky enough to not be the person answering the questions.”

Namecalling or a Bluff?
Later in the day, an ACLU attorney apparently called Minnich-ian observations that the genetic code contains an information processing system far more advanced than anything any human has ever created, “a meager little analogy that collapses immediately upon inspection”:

His opponent, a lawyer for the 11 parents suing the school board, dismissed intelligent design as dishonest, unscientific and based entirely on "a meager little analogy that collapses immediately upon inspection." (Closing Arguments Made in Trial on Intelligent Design by Laurie Goodstein, NY Times)

As an ID proponent who believes in academic freedom to learn about science, I’ll say something here that the Darwinists’ counsel was afraid to let students hear about ID: you weigh the evidence and decide for yourself.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

In today's LA Times, Josh Getlin discusses biochemist Michael Behe's testimony in the Dover trial:

Even some of Behe's strongest critics believe he may have scored important points in his mid-October court appearance.

Like many Roman Catholics, he had believed in God and Darwinism. "I didn't think the two were exclusive," Behe said. He remembers learning about Darwin's theory of evolution.

"In the seventh, eighth grades, I recall nuns teaching that God can make life any way he wants," Behe said. "If he wants to create life by the outplaying of natural laws, well, who were we to tell him otherwise? Here was Darwin's theory, and it looks like God set up the world to begin producing life. I remember thinking, 'That's cool.'"

Then Getlin allows Behe to explain how he eventually came to diverge from the party line:

"I came to realize that a pillar of my thinking was supported not by evidence but by sociological factors, what other people think."

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 9:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Recent news stories have led to confusion about Discovery Institute's role in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, which challenges a Pennsylvania school district policy requiring students to be notified about the theory of intelligent design. The lead attorney defending the Dover district, Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, has made several statements inaccurately characterizing both the position and the actions of Discovery Institute regarding the Dover case. We are issuing the following statement in order to correct the record:

1. Discovery Institute's science education policy has been consistent and clear. We strongly believe that teaching about intelligent design is constitutionally permissible, but we think mandatory inclusion of intelligent design in public school curricula is ill-advised. Instead, we recommend that schools require only that the scientific evidence for and against neo-Darwinism be taught, while not infringing on the academic freedom of teachers to present appropriate information about intelligent design if they choose.

Although we believe teaching about intelligent design is constitutionally permissible, we think mandating intelligent design politicizes what should be a scientific debate and harms the efforts of scientists who support design to gain a fair hearing in the scientific community.

Our science education policy is a matter of public record. We have explained it repeatedly to reporters and to school board members, and it is clearly stated on our website.

2. Discovery Institute repeatedly advised the Dover School Board and Thomas More that the board's intelligent design policy enacted in the fall of 2004 was problematic and should be replaced. The Dover Board and Thomas More chose to reject Discovery Institute's advice.

Discovery Institute first learned about the controversy in Dover through a news media account in June 2004. At that time, a Discovery Institute representative contacted a Dover school board member to explain why we favored teaching evidence for and against neo-Darwinism, but opposed efforts to require the inclusion of intelligent design. After the school board adopted its policy in the fall of 2004, we continued to communicate with board members and district officials about our concerns and urge that the policy be replaced. After Thomas More Law Center entered the fray, we made our concerns known to its attorneys, including Richard Thompson. Our objections to the Dover policy were clearly communicated to board members and Thomas More well before any lawsuit was filed.

Mr. Thompson recently cited language from a legal guidebook written by Discovery Institute Fellows in 1999 suggesting that it somehow sanctioned Dover's policy on intelligent design. But Mr. Thompson cited the language of the guidebook out of context. The guidebook focused on supporting teachers who wanted to teach about intelligent design, not on the defensibility of requiring teachers to teach about intelligent design. This is a crucial distinction. Indeed, the guidebook clearly states that "to summarize, the safest course is one in which a school board permits [not "requires"] a biology teacher to teach the full range of scientific theories about origins." (emphasis added) Discovery Institute's central concern of protecting the academic freedom of teachers was further emphasized in a Utah Law Review article in 2000, which was written by the same authors as the legal guidebook. That article discussed a hypothetical "John Spokes" who wanted to teach about intelligent design, and addressed whether the school board would be legally required to prevent him from doing so. Nowhere did it suggest that a school board would be on legally safe ground to require unwilling teachers to address intelligent design. In addition, both the legal guidebook and the Utah Law Review article stressed the need for school district policies to be based on science, not religion, and to have a secular purpose.

When Mr. Thompson cited Discovery Institute's legal materials in support of the Dover board in his communication with Discovery Institute representatives in November of 2004, he was told that he was misapplying those materials. Discovery Institute also expressed concerns about whether the factual record demonstrated that the Dover board had acted with a clear secular purpose. Although Discovery Institute believes that there are a number of secular purposes in teaching students about intelligent design, it was not evident whether the Dover board had based its policy on these purposes. Given our clear statements to Thomas More about our views (again, expressed before any lawsuit was filed), we find it difficult to understand why Mr. Thompson has mischaracterized Discovery Institute's record and position.

3. Mr. Thompson blames Discovery Institute for the non-participation of Discovery Institute Fellows Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, and John Angus Campbell as expert witnesses on behalf of the Dover board. However, the non-participation of these scholars was due to Thomas More, which discharged them.

Meyer, Dembski and Campbell were all willing to testify as expert witnesses. They simply requested that they have their own counsel present at their depositions in order to protect their rights. Yet Thomas More would not permit this. Mr. Thompson has been quoted in media accounts as stating that to permit independent counsel to assert the witnesses' rights would create a "conflict of interest"--a claim for which he can offer no legal justification. When the witnesses refused to proceed without legal counsel to protect them, Thomas More cancelled the deposition of Prof. Campbell and effectively fired all three expert witnesses. After dismissing its own witnesses, Thomas More made an 11th-hour offer to Dr. Meyer alone to allow him to have counsel after all. But Meyer declined the offer because the previous actions of Thomas More had undermined his confidence in their legal judgment.

Since Meyer, Dembski, and Campbell were discharged, it has been reported that two other expert witnesses for the school board have withdrawn from the case. These two witnesses are not affiliated with Discovery Institute, and Discovery Institute had nothing to do with any decisions surrounding their withdrawal.

4. Discovery Institute continues to believe that teaching about intelligent design is constitutional when appropriately framed, and that the ACLU lawsuit against Dover is little more than an effort at censorship.

Although Discovery Institute does not support the particular policy adopted by Dover, it has been clear in supporting the principle of academic freedom when it comes to intelligent design. That is why the Institute supported filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of 85 scientists who sought protection of the freedom to research and write about intelligent design. That is also why the Institute itself filed its own brief defending the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design.

Regardless of the particular outcome of the Dover case, Discovery Institute believes that support in the scientific community for the theory of intelligent design will continue to grow. This is because the case for intelligent design is ultimately based on scientific evidence, and that evidence cannot be ruled out of existence by the courts.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (4)

Harrisburg, PA-Microbiologist Scott Minnich testified Thursday at the Dover trial. Most of the afternoon was taken up by direct examination. Minnich pounded home the point that microbiological machines such as the bacterial flagellum resemble human-designed machines. In particular, Minnich testified that the bacterial flagellum has a similar design structure to that of a rotary engine. Minnich quoted from a paper by David J. DeRosier which observes that “More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human.”

Whether you are an ID proponent or not, there is no denying that these microbiological machines bear an eerily purposeful arrangement of parts we typically find in human-designed machines. There’s also no denying Minnich’s data, which shows that mutagenized flagella do not function properly. He claimed that mutagenesis (i.e. knockout) experiments on all the genes in the flagellum show that it is rendered nonfunctional. This tends to indicate that, with respect to its genes, it is irreducibly complex.

Just after 4 pm, the direct examination ended, letting the plaintiffs have their first shot at cross-examination. I then sat in the courtroom watching the plaintiffs’ counsel Stephen G. Harvey begin the cross-examination of Minnich.

You’d think that the ACLU / NCSE-assisted-plaintiffs were just itching to get their best shots in against a living, breathing, pro-ID biologist. I observed NCSE staff members busily taking notes in the courtroom and handing scribbles to the counsel for the plaintiffs. I was ready for something really good this afternoon. Are you ready for it? Here was their best opening shot:

The Opening Return Fire Against Scott Minnich
One of the first questions Harvey asked Minnich was “who coined the term irreducible complexity?” Minnich said that to the best of his knowledge, it was Michael Behe, but noted that he might not have an exhaustive knowledge of the etymology of the term.

Then Harvey showed Minnich a paper from a creationist journal called “Creation Research Society Quarterly” (“CRSQ”). Harvey then proceeded to point out similarities between the paper’s characterization of the flagellum and Minnich’s characterization in his talk. Harvey showed a diagram of the flagellum and compared it to Minnich’s:

- Both showed an S-ring.
- Both showed an axle
- Both showed a drive shaft
- Both showed a filament
- And there were various other similarities.

To which Minnich replied “Well, I didn’t take this diagram from a creationist text, I took it from Voet and Voet.” (paraphrased)

Voet and Voet of course is a widely used secular textbook in biochemistry. So, if the plaintiffs’ insinuations have any constitutional meaning then the implication that if a creationist document says something, and then you say the same thing, then what you have said is therefore religious and unconstitutional. Teachers who use Voet and Voet should watch out for the ACLU – you might be next! (Of course, you’ll probably be spared by the ACLU’s highly selective advocacy.)

All Harvey actually showed is that when ID proponents make their arguments, they use empirical data, and that when they compare biomolecular machines to human-designed machines, they do so in a manner which is consistent with the mainstream microbiological literature. He also showed that the only argument he had against Minnich was to use the genetic fallacy (i.e. attack the origin of the claim, not the claim itself). This is a typical Darwinist tactic.

The Real Origin of the term “Irreducible Complexity”
Minnich probably answered truthfully when he stated that he thought Behe had probably coined the term “irreducible complexity,” and also when he acknowledged that he isn’t exhaustively familiar with the etymology of the term. I’d like to fill in some obscure information that Minnich apparently wasn’t aware of.

The term “irreducible complexity” has its origin neither in Behe nor in any creationist source. My understanding is that the first usage of the term “irreducible complexity” comes from a 1986 Cambridge University Press book entitled “Templets and the explanation of complex patterns” by theoretical biologist Michael J. Katz.

In Katz’s book, “irreducible complexity” occurs as an index entry, and is explained in the text as follows:

“In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but the final patterns that they produce are so heterogeneous that they cannot effectively be reduced to smaller or less intricate predecessor components. As I will argue in Chapters 7 and 8, these patterns are, in a fundamental sense, irreducibly complex...” (pp. 26-27)

As explained in Discovery’s Bibliography of Peer Reviewed Papers which Challenge Evolution, Katz uses the term “irreducibly complex” in more or less the same manner as Behe:

In context, it is abundantly clear that by “irreducible complexity,” Katz refers essentially to the same phenomena as does Behe. “For some natural phenomena,” he writes, “there simply is no reduction to smaller predecessors. In these cases, the companion rule to ‘order stems from order’ is that ‘complexity stems from complexity’” (p. 90).

“...the unique characteristics of organisms are pattern characteristics. The first of these fundamental pattern characteristics is complexity. Cells and organisms are quite complex by all pattern criteria. They are built of heterogeneous elements arranged in heterogeneous configurations, and they do not self-assemble. One cannot stir together the parts of a cell or of an organism and spontaneously assemble a neuron or a walrus: to create a cell or an organisms one needs a preexisting cell or a preexisting organism, with its attendant complex templets. A fundamental characteristic of the biological realm is that organisms are complex patterns, and, for its creation, life requires extensive, and essentially maximal, templets.” (p. 83)

“Today’s organisms are fabricated from preexisting templets -- the templets of the genome and the remainder of the ovum [egg] -- and these templets are, in turn, derived from other, parent organisms. The astronomical time scale of evolution, however, adds a dilemma to this chain-of-templets explanation: the evolutionary biologist presumes that once upon a time organisms appeared when there were no preexisting organisms. But, if all organisms must be templeted, then what were the primordial inanimate templets, and whence came those templets?” (pp. 65-66)

“Self-assembly does not fully explain the organisms that we know; contemporary organisms are quite complex, they have a special and an intricate organization that would not occur spontaneously by chance. The ‘universal laws’ governing the assembly of biological materials are insufficient to explain our companion organisms: one cannot stir together the appropriate raw materials and self-assemble a mouse. Complex organisms need further situational constraints and, specifically, they must come from preexisting organisms. This means that organisms -- at least contemporary organisms -- must be largely templeted.” (p. 65)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Discovery staffers Casey Luskin and Logan Gage are in Harrisburg observing the final days of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Logan Gage has this report on some of Thursday's courtroom activity.

Harrisburg, PA -- The Dover, PA trial resumed this morning with defense attourney Patrick Gillen calling a Dover high school teacher to the stand. Robert Linker, now in his twelfth year of teaching biology at Dover high, testified that he is firmly against the mentioning of intelligent design in his classroom. Linker was a co-signer of a letter to the Dover Area School Board saying it was unethical to teach intelligent design to his students, for his conscience would not allow him to knowingly present false information. (Keep in mind the ironic word "knowingly" as we proceed.)

When asked if he had ever taken the time to fully read Of Pandas and People, the reference book on intelligent design available for students in the Dover library, Linker responded "no"--after all, he said, it was summer when he was asked to do so.

Had Linker ever even heard of intelligent design before the current controversy in Dover? Again, no.

Thus, Linker's signature on the statement saying it was unconscionable to mention intelligent design since, as the statement said in bolded letters, "INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE," appears to have come after little consideration.

By all appearences, Linker is a kind man who coaches high school wrestling and football for tots. But, it was difficult to swallow such a pronouncement as "INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE" knowing that Mr. Linker gave it such little consideration. Further, Linker's vehement proclamation was even harder for this court observer to swallow given that it was followed by the testimony of University of Idaho professor of microbiology Scott Minnich. Minnich argued convincingly from the evidence of molecular machines that ID proponents make a compelling case, and ID is indeed science.

Finally, let me note that Mr. Linker's consideration of the evidence for ID and the dogmatic statement he signed reminded me of a similar incident. Not long ago, the AAAS similarly asserted that ID is not science. When later a poll asking AAAS directors turned up the fact they had read almost nothing about intelligent design in making their decision. Seems that the AAAS gave about as much thought and spent as much time reading about intelligent design as Mr. Linker.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (3)

American Scientist Online has posted a nice review of The Best American Science Writing 2005 (Edited by Alan Lightman, Harper Perennial) from the Nov-Dec issue of the magazine, which features CSC senior fellow David Berlinski's article "On The Origins of the Mind."

David Schoonmaker, managing editor of American Scientist found Berlinski's piece to be his favorite, and at the end of his review says this about the piece:

Having devoured the physical-science pieces (nine in all), I came face to face with the anthology's structure: physical science first, followed by biology, medicine, social sciences and artificial intelligence. Uh-oh. Seventeen more to digest.

Of these, my favorite turned out to be David Berlinski's "On the Origins of the Mind," wherein he takes on (or, perhaps more aptly, takes apart) evolutionary psychology. If I were, through some miracle (or catastrophe), to find myself teaching freshman composition, it's an essay my poor charges would read. Supremely logical—no surprise given that Berlinski has taught philosophy and logic—it is at the same time exceedingly wry. I found myself breaking out in laughter even more often than when reading Jim Holt's piece.

In brief, Berlinski describes what he refers to as the three similes of evolutionary psychology: that "the human mind is like a computer in the way that it works," that "the individual human mind is like . . . any other organ of the body in the way that it is created anew in every human being," and that "the universal human mind—the expression in matter of human nature—is like any other complicated biological artifact in the way that it arose in the human species by means of random variation and natural selection." Then, taking differential equations as his model (they give one the task of determining "the overall, or global, function from its local rate of change"), Berlinski proceeds to analyze the similes. All three succumb to a variety of logical faults, but a crude summary is that evolutionary psychology's charge is to determine initial conditions, which it has thus far failed to do. Evolutionary psychologists find themselves in the position of trying to run a differential equation backward. Berlinski comments, "Inverse problems are not in general well posed."

Evolutionary psychologists may have their rejoinders to Berlinski's analysis, and I certainly know too little to declare it the definitive put-down. But as sound argumentation and exemplary writing, it has few equals that I'm familiar with.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Microbiologist Dr. Scott Minnich is scheduled to testify on Thursday in behalf of the Dover School Board as an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design trial.

It is fitting that Minnich follows Michael Behe as an expert witness in the Dover trial, since much of his work over the past decade has built on Behe's, just as his testimony is likely to do. Often, Darwinists will try to claim that Behe's theory of irreducible complexity has been falsified because of the TTSS secretory system. Minnich's work has shown this not to be the case. In fact, in 2004 he presented this paper rebutting many of Behe's critics at The Second International Conference on Design & Nature sponsored by the Wessex Institute of Technology.

Just today, Dr. Chris Macosko explains in an excellent op-ed how Minnich's lab research has directly supported Behe's predictions, and has shown that the challenge of the TTSS has not been proven.

At the third biannual Bacterial Locomotion and Signal Transduction (BLAST) meeting in January 1995, University of Idaho microbiologist and intelligent design theorist Scott Minnich presented a radical idea. “Is the TTSS lethal injector apparatus an example of inverse evolution — the transformation of one information-rich system to another not-quite-as-information-rich system?”

Minnich’s idea was picked up by several of the conference attendees. For example, Rasika Harshey and Adam Toguchi wrote in their 1996 Trends in Microbiology review, “some nonmotile pathogens [without flagella], such as Shigella and Yersinia pestis (S. Minnich, personal communication), appear to contain flagellar genes. Could these be a vestige of formerly motile species? Is it likely that pathogens have exploited the flagellar secretory mechanism to transfer proteins directly into a target host cell?” This radical idea, fleshed out by Minnich’s publications over the past decade, has ended up being correct.

So who is Scott Minnich? While he is not yet as widely known as Michael Behe, it is certain that he will be one of the leading design scientists for years to come.

Minnich holds a Ph.D. from Iowa State University and is currently associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho and is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He is also a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.

Previously, Dr. Minnich was an assistant professor at Tulane University. In addition, he did postdoctoral research with Austin Newton at Princeton University and with Arthur Aronson at Purdue University. Dr. Minnich's research interests are temperature regulation of Y. enterocolitca gene expression and coordinate reciprocal expression of flagellar and virulence genes.

Biochemist Michael Behe used the flagella to illustrate the concept of irreducible complexity and Minnich takes the argument to the next level crediting the design paradigm to leading to new insights in his lab research at the University of Idaho.

In 2004 Minnich served as part of the United State’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) tasked with reviewing captured mobile weapons laboratories, and determining what role if any they played in microbial weapons production.

Minnich is widely published in technical journals including Journal of Bacteriology, Molecular Microbiology, Journal of Molecular Biology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Microbiological Method, Food Technology, and the Journal of Food Protection.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In today's Philadelphia Inquirer , Steven Salzberg argues that "the current assault on the teaching of evolution" undermines our efforts to protect ourselves against diseases like the bird flu. Why? Because flu viruses evolve.

Salzberg is repeating a new talking point against intelligent design, a modified version of an older tactic. Defenders of Neo-Darwinism again and again present non-controversial microevolution (change within species) as proof of macroevolution. They have long traded on the ambiguity in the word "evolution" to accomplish this. Now they're also trading on Americans' fear of a bird flu epidemic.

Microevolution says a microorganism can change over time; macroevolution says it can change into a marsupial. People were aware of microevolution long before Darwin, and even today mainstream biologists debate whether microevolution provides convincing support for macroevolution.

Salzberg also urges readers to "drop the artificial debate about evolution and intelligent design." But he himself encourages just such an artificial debate, for no design theorist questions microevolution, the sort of change that produces new flu viruses. Also, leading design theorists aren't leading an "assault on the teaching of evolution" but instead are encouraging schools to teach students more about Neo-Darwinism, both the strengths and weaknesses of the theory.

Why do so many Darwinists mischaracterize intelligent design in this way, use equivocation to defend macroevolution with microevolution, and do both in the service of frightening people into rejecting intelligent design? Is this how people argue who are defending a theory supported by overwhelming evidence? Of course not.

"Why has the debate about evolution reemerged?" Salzberg asks. "Perhaps because few people see the obvious effects of evolution that geneticists and evolutionary biologists see every day."

Or perhaps it has reemerged because most Americans recognize the bait-and-switch tactics and fear mongering that many Darwinists are using in place of sound argument.

For a detailed look at the issue of bird flu, evolution and ID, go here.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 9:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial continues, with the ACLU and its witnesses arguing that to briefly mention the theory of intelligent design just before spending several days teaching Darwinian evolution constitutes an establishment of religion and should not be allowed. There are some secularists, however, who take a very different view of the matter. Comments Dean Esmay, self-proclaimed liberal and atheist:

There are people right now in Dover, Pennsylvania fighting to ban a completely harmless book called Of Pandas And People from public school science classes, against the express wishes of a majority of the parents. Tap-dance around it all you want, that is an attempt to ban a book from the classroom and censor ideas. You can put all the lipstick you want on this pig, with armwaving generalizations about "separation of church and state," but the pig won't get any prettier. It is censorship that is being advocated here, period. It will belong right on the ALA's Banned books list, alongside The Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn. If the Stalinist ACLU and the self-proclaimed "defenders of science" have their way, anyhow.

And if they do get their wish and manage to get the book banned, the message will be loud and clear once again: believers in evolution are intellectual tyrants, and science teachers are liars who hide ideas from their students.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 10:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)