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Robert Pollack reviews Francis Collins's new book The Language of God in the latest issue of Science. In the process he conveniently makes it appear that virtually Collins' entire case for the existence of God boils down to the moral law in the human heart. But Collins also makes design arguments based on the Big Bang and the fine tuning of the physical constants of nature for life, comparing the design explanation to purely materialistic explanations and building a case that a design inference is the best, the most reasonable option. Pollack mentions these design arguments in only the most vague and glancing terms, giving the impression that Collins offers them not as formal arguments but more on the level of "that's how the universe feels to me."
Think about the definition of ID. The theory of intelligent design holds that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. Collins, the head of the human genome project and a committed Darwinist, is careful to distance himself from intelligent design in parts of his book, but it's as plain as the emperor's birthday suit that Collins makes intelligent design arguments in chapter three, "The Origins of the Universe." And it doesn't take a genome scientist to figure out why the monolithically anti-ID editors at Science magazine would want to hush up that part of Collins's book.
Collins has been attacked for his design arguments:
Collins is in the pseudo-rationalist branch of liberal Christianity. That's fine, he's welcome to dither about in there…but seriously, it has no credibility and no greater rational foundation than the raving mad branches of fundamentalism. I oppose it. I think the only purpose of this kind of crap is to provide a smiling mask of benign ineffectuality to insanity ...
He has been ignored for these (at least this part of his argument).
We celebrate his willingness to follow the evidence where it leads in physics and cosmology, and hope that his example will lead to a similar openness to the evidence of design in biology.
For a fine review of The Language of God, one that doesn't ignore Collins's design arguments, see Logan Gage's piece in the October issue of The American Spectator.
Tomorrow night in Florida it will be Darwin vs. Design. Three of the leading intelligent design scientists in the country will speak at a conference at University of South Florida Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida, hosted by Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity.
Speakers will include: If you’ll be in the area, you will definitely want to attend. Admission is free for high school and college students and only $5 for all others.
If you can’t attend in person, you can listen to the conference online Friday night, September 29th, 7pm EST at www.860wgul.com, thanks to the C.S. Lewis Society.
Each of the scientists has recently been interviewed on the ID The Future podcast. Click on their names to listen to their interviews: Dr. Ralph Seelke, Dr. Jonathan Wells, Dr. Michael Behe. Visit the podcast homepage at intelligentdesign.podomatic.com and listen to any of the past podcasts archived there free of charge.
We have reported about last year's scandalous denial of tenure to Discovery Institute Fellow and noted legal scholar Francis Beckwith. (See here, here, here and here) Now we are glad to report that in a second look at the situation with the appeal process, Baylor President John Lilley has granted Beckwith tenure. World Magazine blog reports the same here. It is welcome news that academic freedom prevailed and Beckwith received what he is due.
An exciting find was recently reported as scientists discovered what may be the most complete australopithecine fossil specimen ever found. It is reported to be a toddler. Unfortunately, the media is misrepresenting this fossil as if it closely mimics humans. Consider the diagram below which comes from the Seattle Times (“Scientists Find Fossil Child from 3.3 Million Years Ago,” Thursday Sept. 21, 2006, pg. A2):
Does Australopithecus afarensis really look so similar to humans? This diagram is extremely misleading. Consider a diagram from an actual scientific paper which reveals the stark differences between Australopithecus (right) and the earliest members of our genus, Homo (left):
(From http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2000/Jan00/r011000b.html covering the Hawks et al. paper)
The media is calling this baby fossil "a mixture of ape-like and human-like features," yet that description obscures the real picture. A recent study in the Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution found that Homo and Australopithecus differ dramatically:
We, like many others, interpret the anatomical evidence to show that early H. sapiens [H. erectus and H. ergaster] was significantly and dramatically different from … australopithecines in virtually every element of its skeleton and every remnant of its behavior.
(J. Hawks et. al, "Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Evolution," Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17(1):2-22 (2000).)
Noting these many changes, the study called the evolutionary origin of humans, "a real acceleration of evolutionary change from the more slowly changing pace of australopithecine evolution" and noted that this transformation must have included radical changes:
The anatomy of the earliest H. sapiens [H. erectus and H. ergaster] sample indicates significant modifications of the ancestral genome and is not simply an extension of evolutionary trends in an earlier australopithecine lineage throughout the Pliocene. In fact, its combination of features never appears earlier...
These rapid, unique, and genetically significant changes are termed "a genetic revolution" where "no australopithecine species is obviously transitional." One commentator proposed this evidence implies a "big bang theory" of human evolution. Now that “Homo” habilis is best recognized as an australopithecine due to its ape-like skeletal structure (see "The Human Genus," Science, 284:65-71), it is no wonder an article in Nature last year recognized the lack of a clear-cut immediate ancestor for our genus Homo:
H. ergaster marks such a radical departure from previous forms of Homo (such as H. habilis) in its height, reduced sexual dimorphism, long limbs and modern body proportions that it is hard at present to identify its immediate ancestry in east Africa. Not for nothing has it been described as a hominin “without an ancestor, without a clear past”
(Robin Dennell & Wil Roebroeks, "An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa," Nature Vol 438: 1099-1104 (Dec. 22/29, 2005) (internal citations removed) (emphasis added))
This new baby Australopithecine find is surely exciting and will expand our knowledge of the extinct genus of Australopithecine apes (Australopithecus literally means “Southern Ape”). But don’t let misleading diagrams in the media make you think that these apes were clear-cut similar ancestors of our genus Homo.
Dr. Francis Collins will, of course, be remembered as the man who mapped the human genome. In his latest book, a best-seller, the medical geneticist tackles some weighty subjects, namely the relationship between faith and science and the issue of evolution as the backdrop to his entire work. Logan Gage has a thoughtful review in the October issue of American Spectator, in which he says Collins "gives an excellent lay treatment of the argument for design in physics and cosmology," but later "gets hung up on a common misperception about ID in biology." Click here to read the entire review.
Scientific American is carrying a new piece by Michael Shermer on "Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution." Shermer is a libertarian, agnostic Darwinist, so it is curious that he would make this argument. It reminds one of Eugenie Scott's lectures in churches. (Recall that they are both original signatories of Humanist Manifesto III.) But perhaps this is all the more reason to hear Shermer's argument. After all, if ID advocates and their detractors merely speak to their natural constituencies, this controversy-that-does-not-exist will go nowhere. Shermer makes six quick arguments.
First, he argues that "Evolution fits well with good theology." Shermer argues that Christians should not be overly concerned with when God created but merely with the fact that he did so. I'm not a biblical scholar, so I will take a pass on that one, though I heartily recommend C. John Collins's Science & Faith: Friends or Foes? Shermer is probably right that when God created is probably not the most important question for Christians as compared to the question of whether he acted in natural history at all. Phillip Johnson always said as much. But the devil, pardon the phrase, is in the details. Shermer asks, "And what difference does it make how God created life--spoken word or natural forces?" Now I'm no expert on Christian theology. As I understand it, the Christian tradition has always had room for God using natural forces and for direct divine action. But the problem here is not one for theologians; rather it is for logicians. It is all well and good to say "God used evolution," until we get to defining those terms. Serious neo-Darwinists have always claimed that "evolution" happens by random gene mutations natural selection. As should be clear, if God is "using" random mutations, they are not random; and if he is selecting which mutations stay in the gene pool, we have intelligent selection, not natural selection. As one friendly philosopher suggested to me (in jest) yesterday, "It's really simple, you know: God is just directing an undirected process. He does this right after he squares a circle and moves an immovable object."
Second, Shermer says that ID is bad theology because it makes God out to be a watchmaker or "garage tinkerer." Here Shermer follows something Fr. George Coyne said not long ago in a lecture here in D.C. at the AAAS. Coyne claimed that ID belittles God, since he/she is not primarily a designer but a lover. This analogy seems silly to me. One could just as well say that Coyne's quasi-Deism makes God out to be a deadbeat Dad who abandons his creation the moment after birth. This gets us nowhere.
Third and fourth, according to Shermer "Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature," and not only that but "family values," too. Now that is a bold claim. I will leave the doctrine of original sin to the theologians. My guess is they think that humanity was created good and then chose to sin, rather than Shermer's version, which seems to suggest that humanity has always been good and bad. Once again, my problem is with the use of logic. If, as Shermer writes, "As a social primate species, we evolved morality to enhance the survival of both family and community. . . [and] Subsequently, religions designed moral codes based on our evolved moral natures," then morality is a social construction rather than a real fact of the universe. But if the Christian story is true, or even if the mythology of most ancient civilizations were true, then morality is real and not constructed. Religious people everywhere, not merely Christians, would take issue with Shermer here, I believe.
Fifth:
Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts. Much of Christian morality has to do with human relationships, most notably truth telling and marital fidelity, because the violation of these principles causes a severe breakdown in trust, which is the foundation of family and community. Evolution describes how we developed into pair-bonded primates and how adultery violates trust. Likewise, truth telling is vital for trust in our society, so lying is a sin.
It is starting to seem that evolution can account for anything. One question: How is it that our "selfish genes" which desire nothing more than to procreate also account for marital fidelity? Would not natural selection favor those who copulate and reproduce offspring like rabbits? I suppose one could say that the offspring are more likely to survive if the parents are faithful to each other, etc. But the problem here is that evolution explains too much. It explains both why we aren't faithful and why we are. These are just-so stories.
Sixth, "Evolution explains conservative free-market economics" since, as Adam Smith showed, complexity can arise spontaneously out of competition. As I wrote in a letter to the libertarian publication The New Individualist last year, this is really an example of intelligent design.
Order does emerge in a free market. But why? Because intelligent agents are at work—engaged in buying, selling, trading, and producing products. This was George Gilder’s fundamental insight in Wealth & Poverty. The supply-side revolution was ushered in partly because Gilder and others recognized that man is more than matter. He is mind. And mind is the source of all innovation, and hence mind is the resource that creates wealth where there was none before. Order and complexity can emerge “spontaneously”—from intelligent, creative beings, anyway.
Finally, for those of you in the D.C. area, do not forget to check out Michael Shermer and Jonathan Wells at the CATO Institute October 12. They will be discussing Shermer's new book.
 Sept. 23-30 is “Banned Books Week,” sponsored by the American Library Association. In commemoration of this annual event, I’d like to submit my nomination for the top banned book of the past year: Of Pandas and People, published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics.
An early pro-intelligent design textbook, Pandas was at the heart of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the hapless school district in Dover, Pennsylvania. The Dover school board wanted teachers to tell students that if they desired information about intelligent design they could go to the school library and read Of Pandas and People. What an outlandish idea: A school district actually wanted to encourage students to consult a book for more information!
According to the ACLU, this proposal was tantamount to imposing “theocracy.” While I did not favor the Dover policy, the idea that it was an affront to the First Amendment to make Of Pandas and People available to students on a voluntary basis is simply Orwellian. In fact, it was the ACLU that was offending the First Amendment by engaging in book banning. Unfortunately, ACLU attorneys were able to convince federal judge John E. Jones to go along with their efforts.
Evolutionists used to pride themselves on supporting academic freedom. No more. Now they are out to censor any expression of ideas they don’t like.
They’re not just banning books. They are banning curriculum and even people. Earlier this year, Darwin-only activists bullied the Ohio State Board of Education into repealing a model lesson plan encouraging students to critically analyze key evidences used to support Darwin’s theory. Now Darwinists are trying to unseat members of the Kansas State Board of Education because they also encouraged students to study the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory. If you happen to be a teacher or college professor who is skeptical of Darwin, watch out, because Darwinists are trying to ban you too!
At George Mason University, biology professor Caroline Crocker made the mistake of favorably discussing intelligent design in her cell biology class. She was suspended from teaching the class, and then her contract was not renewed.
At the Mississippi University for Women, chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was removed as head of the division of natural sciences in 2003 after merely presenting scientific criticisms of biological and chemical evolution to a seminar of honors students.
In Minnesota, high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing doubts about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory."
In Washington state, high school teacher Roger DeHart was driven out of two school districts by Darwin-only activists incensed that he wanted to inform students of some of the scientific weaknesses with Darwin’s theory. (Part of DeHart’s story is told in the Icons of Evolution DVD.)
But it’s not only books and teachers who Darwinists have targeted for reprisals, it is also students.
In 2005, Ohio State University doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard had his dissertation defense placed on hold after three pro-Darwin professors filed a bogus complaint attacking Leonard’s dissertation research as “unethical human subject experimentation.” Leonard’s dissertation project looked at how student beliefs changed after students were taught scientific evidence for and against modern evolutionary theory. The complaining professors admitted that they had not actually read Leonard's dissertation. But they were sure it must be unethical. Why? According to the professors, there is no valid evidence against evolutionary theory. Thus—by definition—Leonard’s research must be tantamount to child abuse.
Of course, the ultimate goal here is to ban ideas. Darwinists want to prevent anyone from hearing criticisms of Darwin’s theory or learning about alternatives to Darwinism such as intelligent design. Indeed, left-wing writer Chris Mooney has tried to convince journalists that they have a duty to censor expressions by ID proponents in the newsmedia.
For all of their rhetoric about the supposedly “overwhelming evidence” in favor of Darwin’s theory, many evolutionists act as if they are extremely insecure. Open debate seems to terrify them. Perhaps they recognize that the scientific evidence for their position isn’t so overwhelming after all.
It is a measure of Darwinists’ insularity that most don’t seem to understand what a losing strategy they’ve adopted. If they truly believe they can stop intelligent design or criticism of Darwin through censorship, persecution, and book banning, they are living in another universe. Most Americans don’t like to be told there are some ideas too dangerous for them to hear. The more Darwinists try to impose their views through coercion, the more they are going to lose in the court of public opinion.
According to Wikipedia, a classic example of the "Correlation implies causation" logical fallacy might assert, "Sleeping with one's shoes on is strongly correlated with waking up with a headache. Therefore, sleeping with one's shoes on causes headache." The way to refute this argument is to point out that it is based upon a logical fallacy which proves causation via correlation, and explain how a third explanation better accounts for the observed data than the mere "correlation." As Wikipedia suggests, "A more plausible explanation is that both are caused by a third factor, in this case alcohol intoxication, which thereby gives rise to a correlation." If the person arguing this logical fallacy still is not convinced, one can simply find people who slept with their shoes on and didn't wake up with headaches. This is the same correction I provide to analyze Barbara Forrest’s rhetoric and expose the logical fallacy of her “correlation equals causation” arguments in her Kitzmiller account.
Philosopher Barbara Forrest uses "correlation = causation" arguments prolifically. In her Kitzmiller response she argued that because (1) five years ago, William Dembski apparently used the phrase "Internet stalkers" in reference to Wesley Elsberry and Richard Wein, and (2) Discovery Institute (DI) apparently called Dr. Forrest a "conspiracy theorist" in a response to her book, that when (3) Thomas More Legal Center (TMLC) wrote a brief using the words “stalker” and “conspiracy theorist,” this proved DI helped TMLC write the brief. She therefore asserts a "correlation = causation" argument regarding a motion made by TMLC before the trial to exclude her as an expert witness:
DI and TMLC had apparently overcome their differences long enough to collaborate on the accompanying brief because it contained clear evidence of DI’s input. Although I was not called as a scientific expert, the defense argued that I should be excluded because I had no scientific expertise and because I am, in their words, “little more than a conspiracy theorist and a web-surfing, ‘cyber-stalker’ of the Discovery Institute . . . and its supporters and allies.”
People who overuse "correlation = causation" arguments are sometimes called conspiracy theorists. Dr. Forrest should therefore realize that (1) different groups might independently observe that she overuses "correlation = causation" arguments in conspiracy theorist fashion, and (2) the fact is that Discovery Institute gave absolutely zero input on this brief from TMLC.
This episode illustrates the bankruptcy of Barbara Forrest's "correlation = causation" arguments. Her arguments that the religious affiliations of ID-proponents make ID religious are similarly fallacious and bankrupt. According to Dr. Forrest, if there's a correlation between ID proponents and religion, then religion must be the only thing causing ID. Her arguments have already been logically refuted in earlier parts of this ten-part response-series, showing that religious beliefs of ID-proponents don't matter when assessing whether ID is science (Part II and Part III) and that motives of ID-proponents don't matter (Part IV) when assessing whether ID is science.
When assessing whether a given claim is scientific, all that matters is that an empirically-based scientific methodology of knowing is given to back the claim. Alleging that a claim is religious and unscientific because of (a) the larger philosophical implications of the claim, (b) the religious beliefs of the claimant, (c) the motives of the claimant, or (d) some historical relationship between certain types of religious persons and that claim uses an irrelevant argument. Evolutionists should consider this carefully because intelligent design and evolution are methodologically equivalent: Any argument invoking (a) through (d) to disqualify intelligent design from being science would similarly disqualify evolution from being science, if the facts and the argument were applied fairly.
But if Barbara Forrest still isn't convinced, a clearer way to refute her argument may be to ask, "What religious reason did the atheist Antony Flew have to say, '[i]t now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design'?" The answer is none, because intelligent design is an empirical argument that anyone can take seriously regardless of their religious beliefs. This demonstrates adherence to intelligent design without any correlation to religion, unambiguously refuting her argument. The actual cause for support of intelligent design must therefore be something other than mere religion: the cause is the scientific data of biological complexity.
Sadly, Dr. Forrest's "correlation = causation" arguments were foundational to the plaintiffs’ case in Kitzmiller. Not only did they use her arguments about the religious beliefs of ID-proponents, but in one egregious instance, plaintiffs attacked Scott Minnich during cross-examination because a diagram from a creationist publication had long ago made arguments about the unevolvability of the bacterial flagellum, and also contained a flagellum diagram similar to the one Minnich used in court. Minnich simply replied that he'd never seen the creationist publication, and explained where he got his diagram: "Right, and again this [my diagram] is, this picture is out of a biochemistry textbook, Voet and Voet." Thus, I reported:
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!
These fallacious "correlation = causation" arguments need to be put to rest, so that the teaching of evolution and other science, like Voet and Voet, does not come under threat.
It used to be that when politicians spoke up against censorship and in support of academic freedom they were applauded. Not anymore, at least in Michigan. Now if you express support for academic freedom and speak out against censorship and dogmatism, you get attacked by rabid Darwinists and their knee-jerk supporters in the mainstream media.
Michigan finds itself the latest ground zero for the debate over evolution and intelligent design thanks in part to a comment from gubernatorial candidate Dick Devos and the state school board’s adoption of new science standards.
First, when legislators modestly proposed that high school biology students should be told that Darwinism may or may not be supported by the evidence, Darwinian activists threw a fit because this didn’t fit their dogmatic “Darwinism only and no questions” approach to science education.
The State Board of Education is about to adopt new science standards. Three state legislators asked the Board to hold off until their next meeting. The three were in a meeting of the House Education Committee and they put a question to the Board as to why some guidelines in state standards which require critical analysis are not applied to evolution. They said the Board was proposing to study evolution dogmatically.
The legislators have merely suggested that the guidelines include language which says the evidence “may or may not” support evolution. Immediately the ACLU and the media jumped all over the legislators with the absurd allegation that they were trying to inject religion into the classroom.
There is nothing religious about acknowledging the scientific debate over Darwinian evolution. The scientific literature is rife with challenges to Darwin’s theory that are based on science, not Sunday school.
The second thing that happened was that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos made the following comment to an AP reporter in an interview earlier this week: "I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design—that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory—that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less." Later he clarified: "Lots of intelligent people can disagree about the origins of life. In the end, I believe in our system of local control," he said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. "Local school boards should have the opportunity to offer evolution and intelligent design in their curriculums." Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific theory of design in the classroom. As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community. And that’s now exactly what is happening here. The candidate’s remarks are being twisted into a political weapon used to attack him by people who are likely supporters of his opponent.
Just as it was with the proposal by the legislators, the media tried to turn this into a discussion of religion. The Lansing Journal pontificated that intelligent design is not science but instead “is an attempt to forge the trappings of scientific inquiry around a fundamental structure of beliefs.” This simply isn’t true (see here for just one response to charges like this).
CSC Senior Fellow Stephen Meyer wrote in the Daily Telegraph (UK) earlier this year: Contrary to media reports, ID is not a religious-based idea, but an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins. … ID holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by a designing intelligence. The theory does not challenge the idea of evolution defined as change over time, or even common ancestry, but it disputes Darwin's idea that the cause of biological change is wholly blind and undirected. Michigan’s media has gone hogwild in piling on anyone who dares to question the dogmatic teaching of Darwinian evolution. There’s little doubt that they are spurred on by the politically correct censors and stiflers of science.
There’s a new player in the United Kingdom in the debate over how best to teach evolution. A new website launched this week, “Truth in Science,” seeks to “promote good science education in the UK.” Because of the different education and policy environment in the UK, versus that of the United States, TiS endorses teaching both the criticisms of evolution and the scientific theory of intelligent design. We consider that it is time for students to be permitted to adopt a critical approach to Darwinism in science lessons. They should be given fair and accurate presentations of alternative views. … Truth in Science promotes the critical examination of Darwinism in schools, as an important component of science education.
In addition to their educational goals, which are clearly outlined on the website and put into context with the educational policies and guidelines of the UK, the site includes examples of lesson plans, as well as insightful examinations of some alleged proofs of evolution – key Icons of evolution, such as the development of biological resistance, the Peppered Moth, horse evolution, Darwin's finches, the Miller-Urey experiment, and homology in vertebrate limbs.
The directors and advisors to TiS include a number of educators and scientists with credentials from places such as Oxford University, University of Leeds, Bristol University and Cambridge University.
Ken Miller recently presented at the University of Kansas against intelligent design, discussing Kansas evolution education and promoting theology as he promoted his theistic evolutionist viewpoint. Indeed, P.Z. Myers has been attacking Ken Miller for promoting his theistic evolutionist views during the talk. For another critical view of Miller's talk, I'd like to share an e-mail recently sent to me by an ID-friendly attendee who saw Miller's lecture:
E-mail report sent to me by a friendly attendee of Miller's talk:
The thing that bothered me the most about Miller’s presentation was that he repeatedly stated that "In ‘99, the Kansas Board of Education took evolution out of the standards”. He even said at one point that they were planning to “take evolution out of the curriculum”. That is blatantly untrue.
I am very familiar with how the ‘99 fiasco went down. I’ve read portions of the ’99 standards, the standards prior to ‘99, and the new standards. Before ‘99, evolution was only mentioned in approximately two lines of the standards. No one “took evolution out of the standards” in ‘99 because prior to ‘99 it had never been included. That certainly didn’t mean that evolution was not taught in Kansas!!
Both the board and the standards committee recommended a set of standards. The standards committee added all kinds of macroevolutionary statements to the set of standards they recommended, but the board preferred to let the districts handle how those issues would be addressed so they did not include as much evolutionary content in the set of standards that they recommended. But, certainly, no one proposed to “take evolution out of the curriculum”. That is a blatantly false accusation. Obviously, that would be a big deal to Miller if it actually occurred because he is the guy writing the textbooks!
Miller made it sound as though ID is a done deal now that Judge Jones has declared ID creationism. He was very clever in how he presented his case to the college crowd. He worked them just right, with lots of humor and derogatory comments about DI fellows. He poked fun of Johnson, Dembski, Behe, and others ~at length~. This seemed like bragging and gloating, and was most uncollegelial.
He also said that the bacterial flagellum has been determined to have arisen through evolutionary processes. He proclaimed that Behe’s book is outdated because of this fact. This is sheer nonsense, as I’ve read the responses from the DI regarding this bogus claim.
In the last 20 minutes, Miller finally confronted the difficult question. How does one accept Darwinism and hold to a particular religious faith? He gave Dawkins rave reviews and declared his science to be impeccable and his books outstanding.
But.... Miller tells us.... the difference between he and Dawkins is that Dawkins believes the universe is a singularly random and meaningless place which arose without the aid of a designer, and Miller holds the opposing view. That was pretty much it. No explanation whatsoever as to why he believes a designer exists, especially in light of the fact that he does not acknowledge that we can observe design in nature.
So essentially, both Dawkins and Miller see no evidence of design, and their philosophy as to how evolution works is the same, yet Dawkins follows that evidence and declares the world is without a designer and Miller claims to believe there is a designer. Bizarre. So Miller apparently, like most TE’s, holds to his religious beliefs on faith ~alone~. That’s the problems with TE’s - they can give you no reason whatsoever as to why they believe what they do in regard to their religious beliefs other than they take it all on faith.
Keep up the good work...
The Darwinists continue to promote theology (as long as it is pro-Darwin-only):
The book, “The Evolution Dialogues,” was written with the input of both scientists and theologians. Meant specifically for use in Christian adult education programs, it offers a concise description of the natural world, as explained by evolution, and the Christian response, both in Charles Darwin’s time and in contemporary America. It has a glossary of terms from both science and religion, with “bacteria” and “Biblical infallibility” defined on the same page.
(Press release on The Evolution Dialogues, emphasis added)
The AAAS's attempt to tell religious people how to view evolution reminds me of quotes from famous Darwinists about "true religion:"
Of course there are some beliefs still current, labelled as religious and involved in religious emotions, that are flatly incompatible with evolution and are therefore intellectually untenable in spite of their emotional appeal. Nevertheless, I take it now as self-evident, requiring no further special discussion, that evolution and true religion are compatible.
(George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, pg. 5, 1949, 1950 Reprint, Yale University Press, emphasis in original)
And another one by Judge Jones:
The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state. As I hope that you can see, these precepts and beliefs, grounded in my liberal arts education, guide me each day as a federal trial judge.
(Judge John E. Jones III, Dickinson College Commencement Address, May 19-21, 2006) (emphasis added))
It appears the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Toledo Blade have both joined the ranks of Ohio papers in need of correction, like the Akron Beacon Journal. Both the Plain Dealer and the Blade ran stories misrepresenting intelligent design and Discovery Institute, and neither chose to publish my letters to the editor, which follow.
Dear Editor,
In his September 7 article, Scott Stephens wrote that the Discovery Institute “promotes the teaching of intelligent design.” In fact, as our website clearly states, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Instead, we think students should learn more about evolution, and that evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned.
In contrast, Campaign to Defend the Constitution wants to insure that evolution is taught as an incontrovertible truth, something that students should accept without further thought or consideration. Censorship is a poor way to teach students science, where the controversy over Darwin’s theory is very real and, more important for engaging young minds, very exciting.
Here’s a suggestion for Lawrence Krauss and his friends at Campaign to Defend the Constitution. Since they are fighting so hard to silence critical analysis in the classroom, perhaps they should try a new name: the Campaign to Protect Fragile Ideas by Censoring Challenging Ones.
Anika Smith
Discovery Institute
While the Plain Dealer misrepresented Discovery Institute’s education policy, the Blade misdefined intelligent design in the familiar tradition of straw-man characterizations.
Dear Editor,
In Ignazio Messina’s September 7 article, he writes that “[i]ntelligent design generally holds that the creation of life on Earth was too complex to have occurred by happenstance.” This may be how our opponents misconstrue our arguments, but that doesn’t excuse Messina from doing his homework. As we have clearly stated on our website, intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Unfortunately for your readers, while critics of ID were quoted time and again, filling the page with inaccurate mischaracterizations of intelligent design theory and attacking the straw-man argument which slopping reporting helps them perpetuate, Messina didn’t seem to care what supporters of ID might have to say on the subject.
Intelligent design is not creationism, but that isn’t even the issue in Ohio. The Ohio School Board is asking students to critically analyze the evidence they are presented. And for allowing students to learn by engaging them in scientific arguments, Patricia Princehouse calls the Board members “extremists.”
What is perhaps more accurate to label extreme is the group that calls itself the Campaign to Defend the Constitution. Instead standing up for scientific inquiry and students’ freedom to think for themselves, the Campaign is working to silence debate and stifle scientific inquiry. Maybe Patricia Princehouse and her friends should try a new name: the Campaign to Protect Fragile Ideas by Censoring Challenging Ones.
Anika Smith
Discovery Institute
Jay Wexler is one of the most published anti-ID legal scholars, but apparently he would agree with our arguments in Traipsing Into Evolution and in our amicus briefs that Judge Jones should not have extended the judicial arm into areas inappropriate for the judicial branch by finding that ID is not science. While I disagree with much of what Wexler argues, I agree with the emboldened portions listed below in the abstract for Wexler's upcoming lecture at Boston University School of Law:
When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District that a Pennsylvania school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the First Amendment, supporters of teaching evolution were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion, which ran to 139 pages in length, was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. To be sure, the opinion is well-written, painstakingly documented, and mostly right. It is not, however, flawless. The opinion's main problem lies in the conclusion that most evolution supporters were particularly pleased with-namely, the judge's finding that ID is not science. The problem is not that ID is science. Maybe it is science, and maybe it isn't. The question is whether judges should be deciding in their written opinions that ID is or is not science-a question that sounds in philosophy of science-as a matter of law. On this question, the answer is "no," particularly when the overall question posed to the Court is whether teaching ID endorses religion, not whether it is or is not science. The part of Kitzmiller that finds ID not to be science is unnecessary, unconvincing, not particularly suited to the judicial role, and even perhaps dangerous to both science and freedom of religion. The judge's determination that ID endorses religion should have been sufficient to rule the policy unconstitutional.
(emphasis added)
Barbara Forrest has posted an article documenting her Kitzmiller experience here. In it, she does a lot of namecalling, saying ID-proponents are "creationists," "legal mincemeat," "jaw-droppingly stupid," “evangelical scholars,” "part of the Religious Right," "mean-spirited," having "contempt for the judicial system," promoting "warmed-over creationism," having "cocksure confidence," using "nastiness," because "they make things up and/or slander their opposition," using "long-discredited pro-ID arguments," reduced to "peddling ID" and "riding the coattails of conservative pundit Ann Coulter," while arguing using "standard creationist canards," which "highlight the bankruptcy of ID and the blustering cowardice of its leaders, who must capture support with brazen deceit and sarcastic punditry." The previous four parts of this ten-part response discussed her arguments about the religious beliefs of ID-proponents (Part II and Part III), motives and "wedge document" (Part IV), and the origins of intelligent design (Part V). This next section discusses a particular portion of her article which puts forth three contradictory theories about why some ID-proponents did not testify during the Kitzmiller trial.
Which of Forrest's Three Contradictory Theories are We Supposed to Believe?
Barbara Forrest offers three contradictory theories (two of which are conspiracy theories) for why some ID proponents did not testify as expert witnesses in Kitzmiller, yet she writes as if they are all true. It’s not my fault that her arguments are confusing; I’m just going to make her respective arguments separately and explain why none of them really make sense. The reader will see that it is impossible for each theory to be true.
Conspiracy Theory #1: They were scared off by my great arguments
Dr. Forrest praises herself writing:
Dembski, Meyer, and Campbell’s exodus is explained by their fear of cross-examination. The public shredding that Irigonegaray had given ID creationists in Kansas one month earlier was still fresh [17]. Moreover, Dembski, Meyer, and Campbell knew what the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses would say in court because they had our reports. DI must have known that our case would be devastating to the defense —and thus to ID— if it was argued before a judge who respected the truth and the Constitution.
[…]
"It probably wasn’t difficult for DI and TMLC to figure out that, armed with my work and that of the other witnesses for the plaintiffs, halfway decent attorneys would make legal mincemeat of them."
So Dr. Forrest accuses Dembski, Meyer and Campbell from not testifying because they were afraid of being proven wrong by attorneys "armed" with her "work." Yet Dembski easily dealt with the claims of the Darwinist Experts in his Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses. If Dembski couldn't handle the arguments in court, then why did he write this rebuttal? I purposefully spent the first five sections of this response dealing with Dr. Forrest's in-court arguments to show that they cite irrelevant evidence to propose rules which, if applied fairly, would threaten the teaching of evolution. Her arguments aren't hard to deal with at all.
Moreover, if Discovery Institute fellows were all scared of the arguments from the plaintiffs, then why did two DI Senior Fellows -- Michael Behe and Scott Minnich -- remain on as expert witnesses for the trial? Dr. Forrest's "DI was scared off by my arguments" theory might make her feel smart, but it is betrayed by the facts. Conspiracy theory #1 is wrong.
But her claim here is even more amazing: She claims that Pedro Irigonegaray gave a "public shredding" of Darwin-skeptics in Kansas, and that ID proponents didn't show up in Kitzmiller--because they feared a "public shredding." Yet in Kansas, the Darwinists did not show up for the Kansas State Board of Education hearings on evolution. She claims at length that the Darwinists didn’t show up because they “boycotted the hearings.” (The only Darwinist who chose to show up was the attorney Pedro Irigonegaray.) Perhaps that's true, but perhaps the reasons some ID-proponents didn't testify in Kitzmiller also had nothing to do with being "afraid" of a "public shredding."
Were I to use Dr. Forrest's style, I would easily argue that the Darwinists were afraid of a “public shredding” in Kansas. But I won’t make that argument about the Darwinists in Kansas because that would be what Dr. Forrest is doing: making false conspiracy theories designed to boost your own ego.
In the end, it's no wonder that Dr. Forrest praises Irigonegaray's methods as “shredding” the ID-proponents: his primary tactic was to interrogate the scientists testifying at the Kansas hearings about their religious beliefs. That's Barbara Forrest's favorite line of argumentation.
Theory #2: They were fired by Thomas More Legal Center
Ironically, Forrest's own words betray her conspiracy theory #1 about why Campbell didn't participate:
Everything was proceeding on schedule until only minutes before the deposition was to begin, when defense attorney Patrick Gillen announced that TMLC would “no longer retain” Campbell as a witness because Campbell had “retained counsel through Discovery Institute” and had “discussed matters [with DI] to which I am not privy.”
But wait—I thought Campbell didn’t testify because he was scared of a “public shredding” by lawyers "armed" with Forrest’s arguments from Creationism’s Trojan Horse (see conspiracy theory #1 above)? But now we learn that Campbell didn’t testify because Thomas More fired him, and it had nothing to do with fear of Forrest.
This theory appears to be true, which is why I haven’t called it a “conspiracy theory.”
So in one breath Dr. Forrest would boast that Campbell withdrew because DI was scared of a "devastating" case that would come from lawyers who read Creationism's Trojan Horse, and in the other breath acknowledges that it was TMLC that fired Campbell. Perhaps, as Pat Gillen stated, Campbell's withdrawal had nothing to do with "fear" but because TMLC was angry that one of their witnesses talked to a group they didn't like (Discovery Institute).
Both theories can't be true, and if Barbara Forrest thinks that Discovery Institute was scared of her arguments, then she hasn't been reading the extensive responses to her on Evolution News (and responses from other ID-proponents).
Conspiracy Theory #3: ID proponents didn’t testify because Kitzmiller was a poor test case
Dr. Forrest writes:
The problem, however, was that DI did not want this case because the Dover board, urged on by TMLC [15], had explicitly crafted its policy to promote “intelligent design.” Having come to view that term as a legal liability after encountering opposition in Ohio, Kansas, and elsewhere, DI tried unsuccessfully to persuade the board to either restate the ID policy in sanitized language or withdraw it [16]. They were scared to death of a case they had not initiated and could not control.
I will give Forrest credit for correctly stating that Discovery did not initiate the policy in this case, as it was started by TMLC. Unfortunately, Judge Jones and the plaintiffs “superb” attorneys disagree with her on this point who stated in closing arguments, “[t]his is the Discovery Institute that advised both William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell before the board voted to change the biology curriculum.” (Day 21 Pm, pg. 28) Judge Jones accepted the plaintiffs’ argument and canonized into legal cannons the false history that Discovery Institute initiated Dover’s policy by writing, "The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC."
Thus commentators on this issue have [wrongly] stated that Discovery Institute helped Dover pass its policy and that Dover “worked with the Discovery Institute to promote the institute’s agenda of intelligent design”:
To determine the purpose of the requirement of teaching intelligent design, the judge examined the statements and actions of the members of the school board, which showed that the members who sponsored the new rule had religious motivations and worked with the Discovery Institute to promote the institute’s agenda of intelligent design, including arranging for science teachers to watch a Discovery Institute film entitled Icons of Evolution.
(Intelligent Judging — Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom)
But of course the Icons of Evolution video is not about ID at all, but simply provides scientific critique of evolution. Former Discovery Institute employee Seth Cooper, mentioned by Judge Jones in the opinion, explained what really happened:
To be clear, prior to the filing of the lawsuit I never advised the members of the Dover Board in a privileged, attorney-client capacity. Further, I never advised members of the Dover Board to mandate the teaching of the theory of intelligent design or to adopt the ID policy at issue in the case. Rather, I strongly urged members of the Dover Board to either drop entirely the issue of alternatives to the teaching of evolution, or to only present scientific arguments both supporting and challenging the contemporary version of Darwin's theory and the chemical evolutionary theories for the origin of the first life. The Dover Board had their own legal counsel in their Solicitor and the public-interest law firm that they later hired. Members of the Dover Board who adopted the ID policy acted completely contrary to my strongest suggestions.
(Statement by Seth L. Cooper Concerning Discovery Institute and the Decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board Intelligent Design Case)
But Forrest's statement here shows that the Dover Board did not rely upon the advice of Discovery Institute. Perhaps Judge Jones was wrong and Forrest was right (more on Judge Jones misstatements of facts in the next sections).
But what about the conspiracy theory here? Forrest thinks that Discovery Institute feels that ID is unconstitutional and that it is a "legal liability" so we abandoned the case. But the reasons we recommend not requiring the teaching of ID are distinct from concerns over "legal liability" because they are policy related. This is explained in Discovery Institute's Science Education Policy:
As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community. Furthermore, most teachers at the present time do not know enough about intelligent design to teach about it accurately and objectively.
Nonetheless, we make it clear that, "Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific theory of design in the classroom."
We don't think ID is unconstitutional, but we do think it should not be required because the political climate makes it dangerous to pro-ID scientists when ID is mandated.
For example, when Scott Minnich testified as an expert witness at trial, he immediately faced harsh attacks at his home university--the University of Idaho. An evolution-only speech-code was imposed by the university president, threatening his academic freedom, and Eugenie Scott was brought in by the science faculty to single out Minnich and make him feel uncomfortable during a public lecture. All this occurred despite the fact that Minnich had never even taught his students about ID. Incidents like this threaten the research and careers of pro-ID scientists and validate our claim that the political climate makes it unsafe for school boards to mandate ID and turn it into a political debate, rather a scientific one.
But what of Dr. Forrest's intimation that Discovery feels ID has legal problems? We submitted an extensive amicus brief arguing that ID is constitutional, and two of DI senior fellows still participated. We don't think ID is unconstitutional.
Dr. Forrest is right that from the beginning, Discovery Institute realized that this case was a bad set of facts for teaching intelligent design: it started with a school board that didn't even understand the theory and railroaded an unwise policy past protesting science teachers while having clear religious, and not scientific motives, for passing their ID policy. These are not the kind of cool-headed school board members who genuinely care about science education that we typically encounter. But this conspiracy theory also fails.
The truth
If Forrest wanted to know what really happened and why some witnesses chose not to testify, all she had to do was ask, or look at Discovery’s plain explanation on our website:
Setting the Record Straight about Discovery Institute's Role in the Dover School District Case:
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.
Final Charges of Abandonment
Finally, Dr. Forrest writes that “like Dembski, Meyer, and Campbell, neither DeWolf nor Cooper was anywhere in sight when they had a chance to defend ID in court.” Is this a fair charge? Firstly, as an attorney of record for Discovery Institute, David DeWolf submitted over 80 pages of amicus briefs to Judge Jones; it seems that David DeWolf was indeed quite busy during this case. Secondly, given that Dr. Forrest admits that there was a falling out between Discovery and TMLC, one would not expect a Discovery lawyer to work on the case with TMLC in the courtroom. Thirdly, Seth Cooper was not even working at Discovery Institute during the time of the trial, as he had accepted a new job wherein he would not have been able to attend the trial, even if he had wanted. Even if Discovery was assisting TMLC in the courtroom (which they were not), Cooper would not have been there because he was no longer employed by Discovery Institute at the time the trial started.
Apart from her accurate intimation that TMLC fired John Angus Campbell, Dr. Forrest's theories are bankrupt. They contradict one-another, betray the facts, and make unfair allegations of abandonment against people like Seth Cooper who was not even working at Discovery Institute at the time of the trial. One of her theories claims that DI fellows didn't testify because they were scared of attorneys "armed with my work." Her theories seem like an exercise in ego-boosting rather than anything relating to reality.
“It’s official, men have higher IQs than women.” Incredibly, that was an actual headline last week. Some others were a bit more objective, but make no mistake: the latest study by white nationalist J. Philippe Rushton (a fellow of the AAAS) will be used (as he perhaps intended) to “prove” male superiority via Darwinism. Today’s story in the Daily Mail trumpeted the “battle of the sexes” and quoted Rushton making the ridiculous claim that men are smarter than women:
He claims the ‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon is probably due to inferior intelligence, rather than discrimination or lack of opportunity.
According to Rushton, evolution holds the key to explaining the differences he sees between men and women:
It is thought the difference may date back to the Stone Age, with women seeking out men who are more intelligent than them in a bid to pass on the best genes to their children.
"Some people have suggested it evolved because women prefer men who are more intelligent than they are for husbands," said the professor.
Because of Rushton’s blatant and unapologetic chauvinism, many will dismiss him as an outlier, an aberration who misuses the authority of Darwin’s theory in order to support his agenda.
In fact, this is only the most recent example of a long tradition of Darwinists who claim that science supports their sexism, a lineage that goes back to Darwin himself.
For Darwin, it was a mistaken view of genetics which lead him to claim in The Descent of Man that “the characters thus gained will have been transmitted more fully to the male than to the female offspring.” It’s an interesting story, but one without any scientific credence. Darwin never understood how genetic traits are inherited. We still don’t understand fully, but we do know that children receive genetic traits from both parents, refuting any sexual selection theory that assumes otherwise.
The lack of data supporting his theory of sexual selection didn’t stop Darwin’s imagination, or his own sexism, from running ahead of the science. The very next sentence declares it outright:
Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.
Hopefully, the recent misogyny of Darwinists like Rushton will alert women to the past misogyny of Darwin himself. If there were ever a time or a reason for women to reject Darwin, it's now.
Today NPR covered an exciting archeological find. It appears to be the oldest writing known in the Americas. Although archeologists do not know the meaning of the symbols on this newly found stone block in Mexico, they are certain it is designed and not the product of, say, wind and erosion. How do they know this?
"When I saw the block, as did the rest of us, we knew we were in the presence of something very special…. It had completely unknown signs, but they were arranged in these long sequences we felt just had to be a new form of writing…. It's not just a set of symbols that might be placed together the way you might see on, let's say, a medieval French or English painting," Houston [an archaeologist from Brown University] says. "Rather, they are arranged in a sequence that is meant to reflect a language with grammatical elements and with a word order that makes sense."
So not only is it obvious to common sense that these glyphs are designed, but it is actually objective, empirically detectable factors like gramatical structure which cry out for a design inference—even if we do not know who, why, or exactly when the glyphs were made.
Once again, these sorts of examples serve to show that detection of design is an empirical matter, and all the hand waving about “who designed the designer?” and “science can’t study the supernatural” do nothing to dismiss this point.
I just returned from hearing Chris Mooney speak at The Elliott Bay Book Company in downtown Seattle (which is a very cool place!). As discussed in this press release, tomorrow I will be posting live my complete response to Mr. Mooney's chapter in The Republican War on Science against intelligent design. I'd like to give a brief account of the talk and commentary on my exchange with Chris Mooney.
I was impressed by Chris Mooney. He's clearly intelligent, articulate, and has spent a lot of time immersed in the issues he writes about. As will be documented tomorrow, his attacks against intelligent design unfortunately are based upon a straw-man version of the theory. Much of Mr. Mooney's talk was about preventing misinformation: I wish he would consider whether he needs to amend his chapter in order to prevent doing that himself (see below).
After the talk, I felt that it would be kindest if I introduced myself to Mr. Mooney. I was cordial, and so was he. While I was dialoguing with another attendee, he soon sharply attacked me for a question I asked in the press release:
Why do so many people eagerly listen to a journalist with neither scientific nor legal training discuss a complex scientific and legal issue like intelligent design?
Chris Mooney called this an inappropriate "personal attack" on his credentials? On the ~15 hours of sleep, I've had over the past 3 days, I answered his question as best as I could. But during the walk uptown back to the office just now, I've been thinking about my reply, and would like to amend it as follows:
Chris Mooney asked me if a person has to have a degree in a subject in order to write a book about it. After thinking about it more, I firmly convinced the answer is no. If Chris Mooney so desires, he can write a book about whatever he wants. I even praised him in our personal dialogue, saying that he clearly is an intelligent person and I was extremely impressed with the broad range of issues and topics he writes about. I also conceded that he probably knows much more about some of these subjects than I do. (Yet as I will document in my response, his characterization of intelligent design is completely flawed.)
But this isn't about an attack upon Chris, and the question I asked in the press release was not aimed at Chris. It was aimed at those who listen to him. The interesting point has nothing to do with Chris Mooney. The interesting point has to do with the scientific community, academia, the intelligentsia, and many in the media who have overwhelmingly embraced him and his words about intelligent design.
Chris Mooney has every right to write a book and talk about whatever he wants. That's what journalists do, and that's not an interesting point. The interesting point is how many academics and well-credentialed members of the intelligentsia crave his words about intelligent design, despite the fact that he has no formal credentials in neither science nor law. As a sneak preview of what is in my rebuttal to Chris, I answer that question posed above with another question: Is it perhaps because Mr. Mooney tells ID-critics in academia exactly what they want to hear, even if it isn’t true?
[Later note: this entire section about people listening to Mooney was removed in version 1.5 of my response] Explaining why much of what Mr. Mooney writes about intelligent design isn't true is what the balance of my response is devoted to. It isn't devoted to attacking Chris Mooney personally. I'll also throw out a quote from the ending, which legitimizes my earlier point that Chris Mooney has every right to write any book he wants: If Mr. Mooney wants to critique ID, that is fine and he has every right to do so. But he should critique the actual theory of ID, and not promote the false, straw-man version described in his book. Mr. Mooney is urged to either retract or rewrite his chapter on intelligent design so it does not promote a false, straw-man mischaracterization of intelligent design which is only put forward in argument by critics, but never the scientific proponents of ID. Fairness would also suggest he should recognize that the real travesty in the intelligent design debate is the attack upon the academic freedom of pro-intelligent design scientists and scholars. Stay tuned tomorrow for the final version! And be sure to tune in tomorrow to the Michael Medved Show to listen to Chris Mooney and Jonathan Wells debate about intelligent design from 1-2 pm PST. (Apparently Medved is one of those journalists who still applauds " balance.")
In closing, Chris: you're a smart, articulate guy who knows a lot of stuff and you can write about whatever you want, and I'm sure you believe everything you say--all that should be obvious enough. But this isn't about you, for it is the adoration which academia and the intelligentsia heap upon you that intrigues me the most.
Two of the leading skeptics of Darwin's theory of evolution will be appearing at a major event in Florida on September 29.
Jonathan Wells, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, explains who is fighting whom, the root of the conflict, and the evidence for and against Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, shows how intricate machines inside living cells have presented a challenge to Darwinian evolution. Both are Discovery Institute senior fellows.
Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity invite you to hear Behe and Wells discuss "Darwin or Design?" at the USF Sun Dome, Friday night, September 29th, at 7 PM. After the presentations there will be a Q&A session with priority given to professors and students.
High school and college students and teachers are free; all others are just $5. Each student will receive a free copy of the DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
Tickets may be purchased now at the Sun Dome box office from Monday through Friday, 9AM – 6 PM, or by calling (727) 736-4662.
For more information visit the PSSI website here.
Every American should be troubled by this statement by a federal judge:
I think that some of the cross-examination was absolutely fabulous," said Jones. "It will endure, and I think it will be excerpted for advocacy classes. ... I would say, in particular, Eric Rothschild's cross-examination of Professor [Michael] Behe -- the intelligent design proponent -- that might be as good a cross-examination of an expert witness as I have ever seen. It was textbook. (quoted in Pennsylvania Lawyer, July/August, 2006)
This statement was made, of course, by Judge John Jones who presided over Dover v. Kitzmiller. And if Rothschild's cross-examination was indeed "textbook," then legal textbooks must be as filled with moral error as most high school biology textbooks are with errors of fact.
I was there. The cross examination was pure sophistry. Rothschild did nothing more than twist Behe's words. He then proceeded to do a theatrical literature dump on Behe--piling up the papers and books before the professor--and act as though because many scientific papers had the words "evolution" and "immune system" in the title then evolution by natural selection must have built the immune system. This was not an argument refuting Behe's work. This was a stunt. As one thoughtful ENV reader noted, this stunt reminds him of the scene in Miracle on 34th Street where the judge rules that Kris Kringle really is Santa Claus after piles and piles of letters are brought into the courtroom. After all, the letters addressed to Santa were delivered to Kris. So even the federal government (USPS) accepts that Kris is Santa!
To this stunt Behe responded appropriately:
Eric Rothschild, a lawyer for eight families suing to have intelligent design removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum, presented Behe with a stack of more than a half-dozen books written about the evolution of the immune system.
"A lot of writing, huh?" Rothschild said.
But Behe was unmoved, noting that "evolution" has multiple meanings.
"I am quite skeptical that they present detailed, rigorous models of the evolution of the immune system through random mutation and natural selection," he said.
Every discerning person in attendance that day was surely asking himself, "If one of these papers or books has a piece of overwhelming evidence that the immune system was built by random mutation and natural selection, then why doesn't Rothschild just open one of them and point to such a passage?" The fact that the plaintiff's lawyers, who had months to prepare and had the advice of the NCSE and probably other Darwinist organizations as well, failed to point out any detailed, testable models for the evolution of the immune system through random mutation and natural selection speaks volumes. Such detailed accounts of Darwinian evolution do not exist, and I was more convinced of it than ever after watching this stunt.
But the worst part of the cross-examination was that Rothschild was absolutely snide, talking down to a kind man smarter than himself. It was embarrassing to watch. Let's not forget that Dr. Behe is a tenured biochemistry professor at a prestegious university with many peer-reviewed publications. Whole books have been written by prominent scientists trying to refute his breakthrough scientific work. Think for a minute about his chief interlocutors. Here is just one example of Behe's give-and-take with scientists from Brown University, the National Academy of Sciences, and Harvard University.
The fact that Judge Jones singled these actions out for praise is incredible. The complete disregard for truth was and still is breathtaking. Americans who care about the search for truth--wherever they come down on the issue of evolution--should be embarrassed. Somewhere Plato is gently shaking his head, lips pursed, beard waving side-to-side.
A recent editorial entitled "They're Back" in the Akron Beacon Journal (ABJ) is chock-full of false and misleading information about how evolution has been taught in Ohio Public Schools. The title seems intended to imply a sense of ominous doom (read it "Theeeeeyyyyy'rrreeee Baaaaaaccck") because apparently re-considering teaching students about both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution is extremely scary in the eyes of some Darwinist journalists who would rather that students don't learn about the scientific problems with evolution. Regardless, the real record looks far different from the ABJ editorial's alternate reality.
The editorial's opening line that "[s]ome members of the state school board appear obsessed with wedging creationism into high school biology classes" is a scare tactic with no grounding in reality. Creationism has never been a part of their policy, and for good reason. The only possible exception might be that the Ohio Board's most vociferous pro-Darwin-only proponent has also loudly proclaimed herself a creationist.
Moreover, the ABJ editorial strangely states that Ohio Board members "sought a clear path to discussion in class of intelligent design." Yet in 2002, the Ohio State Board of Education adopted science standards that included a benchmark requiring that students be able to "understand how scientists continue to critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The benchmark followed with an explanatory parenthetical stating that "[t]he intent of this benchmark does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design."
To further justify its false narrative, the ABJ editorial ignores the fact that the benchmark language was followed by the Ohio Board's 2004 adoption an optional Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan that simply presented scientific criticisms of various aspects of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. The lesson plan only contained scientific challenges to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that were already present in mainstream scientific publications and peer-reviewed literature. Some of the citations included:
4. Carroll, Robert L. “Towards a New Evolutionary Synthesis.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15 (2000): 27-32.
11. Erwin, Douglas. “Macroevolution is More Than Repeated Rounds of Microevolution,” Evolution & Development 2 (2000): 78-84.
23. Martin W., and M. Muller. "The Hydrogen Hypothesis for the First Eukaryote." Nature 392 (1998): 37-41.
28. Pennisi, E. “Direct descendants from an RNA world.” Science 280 (1998): 673.
29. Philippe, Herve, and Patrick Forterre. “The Rooting of the Universal Tree of Life is Not Reliable.” Journal of Molecular Evolution 49 (1999): 509-523.
The lesson plan was hardly the "clear path" to intelligent design that the ABJ editorial imagines. Actually reading the CAE lesson plan would have clarified things for the ABJ. Neither the term "intelligent design" nor any of the key concepts or arguments related to the theory of intelligent design were contained in the CAE lesson plan. If the CAE lesson plan really did include the theory of intelligent design—as the ABJ editorial insinuates—why didn't the ACLU ever sue the Ohio State Board of Education, like it immediately sued the Dover, Pennsylvania school board after they passed an ID-policy? The ABJ editorial obviously ignores this glaring point because it refutes its false history.
Unfortunately, the optional CAE lesson plan was repealed in February, 2006 by a slim majority of the Ohio Board. As a result, students in Ohio can only learn less about evolution than before. Ohio's model science curriculum is now thoroughly pro-Darwin-only. Sadly, the ABJ editorial applauds this one-sided and incomplete science instruction.
Finally, given the incorrect retelling of Ohio Board's actions in the ABJ editorial, it is unsurprising that the editorial also falsely defines the theory of intelligent design. Contrary to the ABJ editorial's distorted definition, as propounded by design theorists the theory of intelligent design simply holds that certain aspects of the universe and living things can best be explained by intelligence. This inference is justified because we find in nature structures with the same types of informational properties which, in our experience, come only from intelligence.
Since the ABJ is concerned with education, it might want to better educate itself about the history of evolution-education in Ohio, and also with the differences between teaching intelligent design and teaching critical analysis of evolution.
Toady's story about the Pope’s latest remarks on evolution is very positive. It is based on an appearance before a huge crowd of 300,000 in Regensburg, Germany. The Pope also gave a scholarly address at the University there on Christianity and hellenism that makes some interesting philosophical points that bear further study.
In the larger gathering covered in this “ANSA” article, Pope Benedict seems to indicate that it is Darwin’s theory that is the form of “evolution” he is talking about. So one doesn’t have to worry any more that people in the Vatican are failing to distinguish between the bland idea of “evolution” as mere “change over time” or micro-evolution and, on the other hand, Darwinism. The pope has no problem with micro-evolution. Neither do we. Evolution as mere change over time is not Darwinism, no matter how the NCSE apologists try to spin it to the plain folk. The key is that Darwin’s theory posits an unguided process of life’s development. That is what the Pope apparently can’t accept. And if you pretend it’s the same process, but somehow still guided, you may get theistic evolutionism, but it ain’t Darwinism or neo-Darwinism! (It also doesn’t make much sense.) If it is guided, it is not Darwin’s theory. It could well be ID, depending on whether the design is detectable.
Please note in this piece, however, that once again a reporter falsely conflates intelligent design with Biblical creationism, and gets the definition of ID wrong. At this point in the debate, reporters who do this have to be counted as hostile, not simply erroneous.
The piece also is speculating without reason that the Pope is endorsing the scientific theory of intelligent design, per se. He doesn’t say anything like that -- read the text and see for yourself right here. We at Discovery are not claiming that, and people who attended the Pope’s recent seminar with his former students say ID as such didn’t even come up.
It is altogether possible that the Vatican will not get into the question of ID. So why keep indicating that it will? I think it is to deflect attention from the growing awareness that Darwin’s theory—properly understood in its implications, as, say Richard Dawkins or P.Z. Myers fully do—does challenge serious theism. More importantly, the press teasers that ID may be embraced as scientific theory by the Vatican also distracts from the realization that the Vatican and many others are indeed recognizing that Darwin’s theory is false on scientific grounds, or at least is highly doubtful. Once that emphasis gets through to people, not only in the Church but in society as a whole, the sooner people will demand that the scientific claims of Darwin and his followers be examined fairly and openly. No more hand waving and bullying as scientific arguments.
The piece also tries to pit the Pope against “Catholic scientists”. Well, we know some Catholics who are scientists who think the Pope is right.
As a member of the Kansas Science Standards writing committee last year, Stephen B. Case adamantly opposed critical thinking in high school biology classes. A Darwinist, Case was furious when the Kansas State School Board decided that students should learn the evidence and scientific arguments both for and against evolutionary theory.
Intelligent design (ID) was not included in the state science standards, but Darwinists feel threatened by it anyway. Case writes: "One thing is clear: The scientific community has not embraced the explanation of design because it is quite clear that on the basis of the evidence, it is just wrong. Beyond the clarity that design is not science, the smoke is hiding an attack on the religious faith and beliefs of many people."
This short paragraph reveals why Case could benefit from a little critical thinking. First, he argues that scientists have tested ID against the evidence and shown it to be wrong. Without skipping a beat, he goes on to state that ID is not science -- presumably because it can't be tested against the evidence. So like many Darwinists, Case claims that ID is untestable -- and it has been tested and proven wrong. Breathtaking.
(Edited) Next, Case criticizes ID (which claims that evidence points to design in some features of the natural world) for allegedly attacking the religious faith of many people. Presumably, he's referring to the 'religious' faith of atheists, since most Christians, Jews, Muslims, deists, and even Hindus (among others) find intelligent design compatible with their faith. On the other hand, prominent ID critics such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett regularly appeal to Darwinism to attack the religious faith of billions of people, yet Case doesn't appear to regard that as grounds for criticizing modern evolutionary theory.
Last month, apathetic Kansas voters allowed the Darwinists to reclaim a majority of the Kansas State School Board. So the state science standards will probably be revised next year to eliminate critical thinking. Then Kansas students can all be trained to think just like Steve Case.
Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice this week has an excellent segment discussing the legal and policy issues related to evolution and intelligent design in public schools. With a panel of legal experts from the ACLJ, Sekulow’s segment is informative and accurate.
It is refreshing to see quality legal analysis on this issue. Usually the nuances of the debate are lost; but not here. As just one example, Sekulow’s segment reminds his audience that intelligent design was not even being taught in Dover, PA. Rather, there was a statement read to kids saying there was a book in the library about ID if students wanted to take the time to learn more. Now this particular fact may or may not have legal relevance, but it is refreshing to see an informed discussion of the issues down to the details. Sekulow and his panel did their homework.
Go here to watch.
Ten years ago, biochemist Michael Behe helped to launch the modern intelligent design movement. when he outlined the theory of irreducible complexity in his book Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, which dared to question the basic tenets of Darwinism. Simon & Schuster have now published an updated version of Behe’s seminal work with a new afterword by the author reflecting the current debate, which has been substantially buttressed by new scientific research and exposition.
Arguing that unintelligent accounts failed to explain the development of irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the human immune system and the bacterial flagellum, Darwin’s Black Box was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and named one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century by National Review and World magazines. There are now a quarter million copies in print.
“While Behe is best known for his irreducible complexity hypothesis, I admire him more for his willingness to take a public stand for academic freedom in the face of withering attacks on his person and his record,” said Forrest M. Mims, III., chair of the Texas Academy of Sciences Environmental Science Section. “Open-minded readers will soon learn that Behe raises questions that his opponents have yet to adequately answer."
Behe’s argument entered the mainstream with Cambridge University’s 2004 publication of “Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA”, which had prominent scientists present their views of intelligent design based on Behe’s arguments from Darwin’s Black Box.
In her Kitzmiller account, Barbara Forrest makes the strange argument that "Phillip Johnson had master-minded creationism’s transformation into ‘intelligent design’ after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed creationism in public schools in its 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling." This conspiracy theory sounds nice because Johnson is a lawyer, but it makes no sense. Paul Nelson's story about Johnson, which Dr. Forrest cites, picks up with Johnson reading the Edwards v. Aguillard briefs post-1987. Yet the term "intelligent design" existed and was essentially in its present form (see graphics below) prior to the Edwards ruling. Johnson's work surely inspired many people who later joined the ID movement. But how could Phillip Johnson have “masterminded” the origin of something that existed prior to his involvement with the issue? Regardless, Judge Jones did not seem to buy this argument–I can find nothing in the Kitzmiller ruling adopting Dr. Forrest's argument that Johnson allegedly "master-minded" the formulation of ID out of "creationism."
What About Pandas?
But if ID existed before Phillip Johnson got involved (making Dr. Forrest’s theory wrong), then from whence did it come? To understand this, we have to turn to Charles Thaxton, academic editor for the pro-ID textbook Of Pandas and People (Pandas) who explains how he coined the term when helping to write Pandas:
I wasn’t comfortable with the typical vocabulary that for the most part creationists were using because it didn’t express what I was trying to do. They were wanting to bring God into the discussion, and I was wanting to stay within the empirical domain and do what you can do legitimately there.
(Deposition of Charles Thaxton 52-53, Kitzmiller, No. 4:04-CV-2688 (M.D. Pa., July 19, 2005))
Dr. Forrest writes that in Pandas, "creationist terminology had been replaced by 'intelligent design' and other design-related terms, suggesting that the Edwards decision prompted this change." But she leaves out that pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas ALSO did contain the phrase "intelligent design," and thus the origin of intelligent design stemmed not from "legal strategies" but as Thaxton explains, it came from an honest effort to limit statements to scientific claims that can be made based upon the empirical data. ID is about respecting the limits of the scientific data–not hiding religion for legal purposes. In other words, even in its pre-publication form Pandas offered a theory that was conceptually distinct from what the courts have defined as "creationism."
This leads to the final point made by Dr. Forrest—she implies that the "creationist" terminology pre-publication drafts of Of Pandas and People makes the final published version unconstitutional. Yet the early drafts of Pandas actually rejected "creationism" as defined by the courts:
When certain pre-publication drafts of Pandas used terms such as "creation" and "creationist," they used them in a way that rejected "creationism" as defined by the courts and popular culture. In Edwards v. Aguillard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared creationism to be a religious viewpoint because it required a "supernatural creator":
The legislative history therefore reveals that the term "creation science," as contemplated by the legislature that adopted this Act, embodies the religious belief that a supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind. (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 591-592, emphasis added)
Thus, what the Supreme Court found was religion and therefore unconstitutional was not the word “creationism,” but the teaching that a “supernatural creator” was responsible for life. “Creation science” was how the Louisiana Legislature described that religious concept.
Yet pre-publication drafts of Pandas juxtaposed the word "creation" with statements to the exact opposite effect, noting that science cannot scientifically detect a supernatural creator. Consider these important excerpts from pre-publication drafts of Pandas, making it clear that from the beginning, their project did not advocate what the courts have defined as "creationism":
---
---
In each of these excerpts from pre-Edwards v. Aguillard drafts of Pandas, it is clear that the idea of "creation" discussed was specifically NOT trying to postulate a supernatural creator. The concepts advanced by even pre-publication, pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas were sharply different from what the courts have defined as "creationism." These early drafts were not trying to study the supernatural.
ID was formulated in its present form–an empirically based argument that would not stray into the supernatural–before the Edwards case was decided. Thus, even before Edwards v. Aguillard, ID lacked the very quality that caused creationism to be declared unconstitutional: it did not postulate a "supernatural creator." ID was not "masterminded" by an attorney, but formulated by a scientist who understood information theory and "want[ed] to stay within the empirical domain and do what you can do legitimately there."
Barbara Forrest's theory about the origins of ID was wrong. Stay tuned for the next five posts in this series which will provide further critique for Barbara Forrest's style of argumentation.
During the Kitzmiller trial, Barbara Forrest testified at length about the "wedge document," insinuating that motives can disqualify a view from being scientific. Discovery Institute responded to these arguments long ago. Dr. Forrest recounts her testimony in her Kitzmiller account:
My first slide made its significance clear: “[C]ould I have the first slide, please? This is the first page of the Wedge Strategy, and this is the opening paragraph of it. Quote, ‘The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which western civilization was built.’ This . . . states very well the foundational belief behind the intelligent design movement and the reason that they have rejected the theory of evolution.” [32] As I continued, the judge heard the strategy’s explicitly Christian goals: “Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialistic worldview and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”
As noted, a full response to Dr. Forrest's comments cannot be seen unless one reads Discovery Institute's The "Wedge Document": "So What"?. But let's assume that everything Barbara Forrest says here is correct. So what if some ID-proponents believe that human beings are created in the image of God and that motivated them in their work? Even Ken Miller, a notable defender of theistic evolution, would probably agree with the doctrine of "Imago Dei."
Yet as is the common theme, these types of arguments can also cut against evolution, if applied fairly.
Suppose that during the Kitzmiller trial, an ID-proponent who was brought into court as an “evolution expert” (we'll call him Jack) and testified about a key passage from the Third Humanist Manifesto. Jack explained that this humanist manifesto includes the "notable signer" Eugenie Scott, who is executive director of the National Center for Science Education and “is perhaps the nation’s most high-profile Darwinist” (Nature, 434:1065). Yet Jack explains that this manifesto states a view in contention with the theistic perspective stated in the “wedge document”:
Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life [] without supernaturalism ... Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing.
(Third Humanist Manifesto)
Does Jack's testimony imply some anti-religious motives on the part of some secular humanists like Eugenie Scott? Most likely. Does this mean that evolution is therefore unscientific and unconstitutional? Absolutely not.
My point here is not to harp upon Eugenie Scott’s religious (or a-religious) beliefs, but to explain that the metaphysical views of a scientist have no bearing upon the validity of her scientific viewpoint or whether her viewpoint constitutes a scientific theory.
If desired, it would be easy to use Dr. Forrest’s logic against her. We could construct conspiracy theories about the anti-religious aims of Barbara Forrest and her affiliated groups without any great effort. Consider this quote from the Amici Curiae brief submitted in Kitzmiller by 85 scientists in support of academic freedom for intelligent design:
Plaintiff’s expert Barbara Forrest is on the Board of Directors of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association (NOSHA). NOSHA is also an affiliate of the Council for Secular Humanism which it describes as “North America’s leading organization for non-religious people.” NOSHA’s links page boasts “The Secular Web,” whose “mission is to defend and promote metaphysical naturalism, the view that our natural world is all that there is, a closed system in no need of an explanation and sufficient unto itself.” Most notably, NOSHA is an associate member of the American Humanist Association, which publishes the Humanist Manifesto III. In 1996, this American Humanist Association named Richard Dawkins as its “Humanist of the Year.” To help underscore the anti-religious mindset of these organizations, in his acceptance speech for the award before the American Humanist Association, Dawkins stated “faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”
(Brief of Amici Curiae Biologists And Other Scientists In support of Defendants, internal citations omitted for clarity)
My point is not that Dr. Forrest’s views are therefore disqualified, but to show that anyone can spin motivation theories if they want. Motives are irrelevant, and claiming that religious (or anti-religious) motives disbar a theory from being scientific is not a valid form of argumentation, for an idea must be judged apart from the motivations or personal beliefs of its proponents. Again, this was explained in the amicus brief:
The motivations and religious views of scientists have nothing to do with the scientific validity of their discoveries. For example, the eminent scientists Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler were devoutly religious and believed God created a rationally comprehendable universe. Despite their religious motivations, their scientific investigations led to accurate explanations of motion which became the bedrock of physical mechanics. Amici thus assert that motivations for conducting scientific investigations have no bearing upon the empirical validity or scientific nature of the conclusions theirin. ... Amici detail these [anti-religious] affiliations [of ID-critics] not because religious (or anti-religious) beliefs are relevant to a scientific argument, but to demonstrate that the legal rule proposed by the plaintiffs would jeopardize the scientific contributions of many critics of intelligent design just as much as the contributions of some intelligent design proponents.
(Brief of Amici Curiae Biologists And Other Scientists In support of Defendants)
Regardless, it is most unfortunate that Judge Jones seems to have adopted Barbara Forrest's "ignore the ID-science, only talk about religious beliefs of ID-proponents" methodology. He wrote, citing to Dr. Forrest, "A careful review of the Wedge Document’s goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones. (11:26–48 (Forrest); P-140)" (pg. 29 of online version). But is that a true statement? Consider these plainly stated scientific goals from the "wedge document":
"Five Year Goals ... To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory. ...
Twenty Year Goals ... To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
The scientific research goals here are plainly stated. Why did Judge Jones therefore claim "the Wedge Document’s goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones"?
When assessing if an idea is science, motives don't matter, but Judge Jones failed to recognize the scientific goals of the "IDM" as he puts it. He was purely incorrect on this point, and made this false statement while implying a dangerous rule-of-law which scrutinizes religious beliefs or motives of the proponents behind an idea as a test for whether that idea is scientific. Sadly, this rule, if applied fairly, could prohibit the teaching of evolution.
...and be sure to read The "Wedge Document": "So What"? for a complete commentary regarding Dr. Forrest's allegations on this topic.
There is a great deal of newsworthy items this week in regards to the debate over evolution and intelligent design. Here are links to a few.
Over at the Whitepath.com, muslim science writer Mustafa Akyol takes on --and bests, in my opinion-- the NCSE's Nick Matzke.
Check out the ID The Future podcast about academic freedom and the Baylor Tenure Scandal.
There's been much talk about the Pope's conclave on evolution last weekend. At Darwinia.com, Nemo points out: "The status of science is at risk from the confusions of Darwinists. If they need to be reminded of this by evangelicals, so much the worse for scientists, who should never have let this situation develop from their own obsessive dogmatism."
Denyse O'Leary at Post-Darwinist blogs on the recent claims that obesity is a result of evolution. "Apparently, we are assured, the obesity pandemic is to be blamed on the twin sacred bulls of "evolution" and the "environment", not on sedentary lifestyles, self-indulgence, or an aging population. And, you guessed it, research funds are urgently needed to combat the growing mountains of pudge."
And at Uncommon Descent, Dave Scott challenges a forthcoming article by Nick Matzke et. al. on a supposed evolutionary pathway for the bacterial flagellum. Readers might also want to read Stephen Meyer and Scott Minnich's related paper on the "co-option" argument, "Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits in Pathogenic Bacteria," as presented to the Second International Conference on Design & Nature, Rhodes Greece.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=232&program=CSC&isEvent=trueHuman Events this week published a review of Jonathan Wells' new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, by another author from the Politically Incorrect Guide series of books, Tom Bethell. Bethell is a senior editor at the American Spectator, is author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," and "The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages." Bethell writes: "The story he tells is remarkable. Open-minded readers will surely conclude that the propaganda campaign on behalf of Darwinism has become so furious precisely because the scientific evidence for it is so weak."
Tomorrow, Sept. 7, Wells will speak about the book at release party in Seattle. As there will be lots of Wells' colleagues and supporters in attendance Discovery Institute will be filming the event for one of its future film projects. and TVW will be broadcasting the discussion on television throughtout the Pacific Northwest (and you'll be able to watch it on their website if you can't attend or are from outside the area).
Even if you are well versed in the evolution debate you can learn a thing or two from Wells. As Bethell points out in his recommendation of the book: "Even those already conversant with the subject will learn a hundred new things, all tending to persuade us that life is a matter of design, not chance."
We received this e-mail recently from a friendly engineer. He gave us permission to post his letter but only if we put his name in bold.
I am an engineer. I am not a biologist. I became interested in Intelligent Design recently and decided to investigate it a bit. Naturally I consulted Wikipedia for information on the subject and was stunned by the one sided tone of the material I found there. When I was in college I learned that the best way to defeat an opponent in a debate is to take on their strongest arguments demonstrate the flaws in them.
If evolutionists truly believe in "survival of the fittest", they should have employed this tactic rather than those methods I saw in the ID article on Wikipedia. The proponents of ID were not allowed to even present their arguments, rather, they first attempted to kill the messenger, and then only arguments against ID were presented.
May I suggest that you would be better served to use a debate format for subjects of controversy.
Let each side present their case, sticking to the facts, and afford both sides the opportunity to engage in rebuttal and to rebut the rebuttal. Rulings from a judge ... will not impress any who don't already agree with it.
If evolution is indeed the fittest, it will survive such a test. The fact that other tactics were employed to defeat ID indicates to me that perhaps the ID folks have the stronger argument, an argument that established scientific circles do not care to face.
May the strongest argument survive!
Regards,
Paul R. Stone
Materials and Process Technology I know of numerous people who have tried to suggest changes to Wikipedia to lessen the current bias of the ID entries -- including staff of Discovery Institute. They were rebuffed. The moderators of Wikipedia's ID-pages have repeatedly rejected and censored changes that would provide some semblance of balance or objectivity to the discussion. Basic accuracy on dates and names have suffered, never mind the downright falsehoods about the science.
If you would like to contact Wikipedia to express your feelings about the biased nature of the entries on intelligent design, e-mail them at: "info-en@wikimedia.org".
The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) has disclosed new information in the continuing scandal over Baylor University’s denial of tenure to gifted conservative scholar Francis Beckwith (a Discovery Institute Fellow). According to the Chronicle, Beckwith alleges that his former department chair, Derek Davis, worked to undermine his tenure application. But now it turns out that Davis himself “resigned under a cloud” because of charges that he plagiarized another scholar’s work:
Mr. Davis... resigned from the university at the end of the spring semester following allegations that he neglected to properly cite sources for two of his articles. In one case, Mr. Davis closely paraphrased passages from a 1986 book by Ronald L. Numbers, a professor of the history of science and of medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Davis acknowledges the improper citation, calling it "human error," not plagiarism. Mr. Numbers, who notified Baylor officials about the passages and later exchanged e-mail messages with Mr. Davis, says he is not satisfied with that explanation.
If it’s true that Davis helped push for Beckwith’s denial of tenure, then the whole tenure process at Baylor is tainted. Beckwith has appealed his tenure denial, but Baylor president John Lilley has been sitting on the appeal for months. The Chronicle reports that a decision is now promised “this month.”
In the meantime, a sense of outrage is apparently building among some of Beckwith’s colleagues, who believe Beckwith was shafted because of his conservative views, including his defense of the constitutionality of intelligent design. According to the Chronicle,
C. Stephen Evans, a professor of philosophy and humanities, says he will consider resigning if the decision is not reversed. Mr. Evans, who calls himself a liberal democrat, says Mr. Beckwith is being "railroaded for his conservative views, even though he clearly merits tenure on the basis of his scholarly work and teaching."
Given that Baylor's president John Lilley is apparently about to make his decision regarding Beckwith's appeal, those who want stand up for Beckwith's academic freedom might consider weighing in with an e-mail to Dr. Lilley at John_Lilley@baylor.edu. Alumni, donors, and parents of potential Baylor students are particularly important voices for the Baylor administration to hear right now.
When assessing whether a person is promoting a scientific theory, the simple answer to the question posed in the title is "no." Yet in her Kitzmiller testimony, as recounted in the Kitzmiller account Barbara Forrest recently posted at CSICOP, she seems to think the answer is "yes." Dr. Forrest recounts some of the religious beliefs of intelligent design-proponents, as if this implies that intelligent design (ID) is therefore not science. This response will assess her argument that the religious belief of ID-proponents are relevant to whether ID is science. Dr. Forrest writes:
But I had much more, such as CSC fellow Mark Hartwig’s 1995 Moody Magazine article in which he referred to a 1992 ID conference at Southern Methodist University as a meeting of “creationists and evolutionists,” calling Dembski and Stephen Meyer “evangelical scholars.” [29] During these early years, when they needed money and supporters, ID proponents openly advertised both their religiosity and their creationism.
Hmmm. So now being a "creationist" or an "evangelical scholar" disqualifies you from promoting your views as a legitimate scientific theory, even if your scientific views have empirical justification outside of your religious beliefs? And having a "creationist" religious belief (i.e. believing that God created) doesn't mean that you can't support other viewpoints which are indeed completely scientific--Don't "creationists" fully support scientific concepts like gravity, Newton's laws of physical mechanics, of the germ theory of disease?
If some "creationists" support intelligent design, so what? Indeed, not all ID-proponents are creationists, and ID is distinct from creationism in many ways. To respond to Dr. Forrest, it's best to quote from an amicus brief submitted by 85 scientists during the Kitzmiller case in support of [intellectual freedom for discussing] intelligent design:
As this litigation demonstrates, opponents of intelligent design frequently resort to ad hominem attacks, asserting that because some scientists hold religious views, their scientific work should be dismissed as merely “religious.”15 Creationism’s Trojan Horse, co-authored by Dr. Barbara Forrest (one of plaintiffs’ experts), epitomizes the argument that because many intelligent design theorists are devoutly religious, therefore intelligent design proponents intend to pass off religion as science and are not offering design as a scientific theory.16
[...]
This “Trojan Horse” method of critique encourages discrimination against intelligent design proponents by fostering a stereotype among academics that supporters of design are incompetent scientists who use deceitful methods to peddle religion as though it were science.17 Such a prejudicial tactic would never be permitted if the alleged agenda of the accused group were, say, feminism or gay rights. Indeed, no other group of academics face attacks on their professional careers based primarily on their alleged personal beliefs.18 Arguments employing such ad hominem attacks on the supposed religious beliefs of design theorists should be decisively rejected by this Court.
(Brief of Amici Curiae Biologists And Other Scientists In support of Defendants)
It’s easy to spin false arguments theories based upon the religious beliefs of people. Let’s turn this argument around: Dr. Forrest herself serves on the Board of Directors of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association (NOSHA), which describes itself as “an affiliate of American Atheists, and [a] member of the Atheist Alliance International.” Is she clearly an activist for a particular metaphysical belief system? Absolutely. Do her religious (or anti-religious) beliefs disqualify her views on evolution from being scientific, or scientifically valid? Absolutely not. To again quote from the Brief of Amici Curiae Biologists And Other Scientists In support of Defendants:
These anti-religious motivations are cited here not because they disqualify anyone from making a scientific argument, but to demonstrate that the personal beliefs of theists should similarly be ignored in determining whether their scientific claims will be given a fair hearing. Our contention is that religious or philosophical motivations, however strongly held or expressed, should have no legal significance in determining the scientific standing of a theory.
If only Judge Jones and Barbara Forrest had heeded those words. Unfortunately Dr. Forrest's testimony in Kitzmiller, largely adopted by Judge Jones, threatens the teaching of other scientific theories (even including evolution) because apparently now, the personal religious (or anti-religious) beliefs of scientists supporting a theory do matter when undertaking constitutional inquiries. This is an alarming development in the law.
[Editors note: bracketed words "intellectual freedom for discussing" added a day after posting for clarity.]
Ian Fisher of the New York Times Rome bureau had a valuable Saturday story on the discussion at Castel Gandolfo between Pope Benedict XVI and his former theology students (“Professor-Turned-Pope Leads a Seminar on Evolution”). He does err in his description of intelligent design (“life is so complex it requires an active creator”--where do they get these lines?), but he is right, I think, in balancing two probable facets of the Pope’s own thinking: 1) that the problem is not so much evolution, as the way it is applied; and 2) there may really be problems with the science of evolution.
I had a nice telephone visit with Mr. Fisher Friday, but not much of it showed up in the paper. (I wasn’t able to call him back until near his deadline.) I suggested that there aren’t merely two or even three sides on the evolution issue, but several, and that sorting them out is going to take time. (He said he agreed with that.) I also suggested that all these news stories, and maybe the discussion at Castel Gandolofo, suffer from confusions of terms. I mentioned that I had listed several cases on this blog a couple of days ago (“creation,” “evolution”, “intelligent design”, notably). But I also said that the very definition of “science” also is subject to varying interpretations, and therefore you can’t really be sure what someone is saying—or what he knows, for that matter—until you go through a kind of Socratic dialogue.
I’m not sure that anyone, including the Catholic Church, is adequately prepared for that yet. And I am not sure that the rest of the intellectual world is ready for the kind of natural law perspectives that theologians will bring to the dais. (Have you picked your favorite Thomist?) But at least this admirable pope is expanding the discussion, and that was the essence of my comment in the article.
The prospect is exciting, actually. Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, the subject of life’s origins and development is too important to be left solely to the scientists—especially when so many of them are quick, as the pope has noticed, to apply their a priori materialist ideology to all sorts of science related issues, such as cloning and euthanasia, that have profound moral consequences.
I liked the statement quoted in the Times article by Laurence Krauss of Case Western warning the Church that if it brings evolution into question it is going to “do huge damage, just as it did when they went against Galileo.” I liked that in the same way that I liked the sarcastic declaration by Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago on the Today show Friday that if the Church goes against Darwin’s theory, “They will lose.” Such threats present to onlookers a beautiful display of the Blustering Darwinist members of the species in full plumage.
As to poor Galileo: Whatever his travails, I think he probably got better treatment in the end than ID scientists today who are targeted for “huge damage” by the Darwinists. And, by the way, wasn’t the Church back then mostly wrong because it insisted that Galileo conform to the “science consensus” of the time? The way to repeat in our day the medieval error of censoring Galileo would be to throttle ID scientists on behalf of the Krauss’ and Coynes (and Dawkins and Kenneth Millers and NCSE’s) of the world. If the Church wants to get over Galileo, on the other hand, it should stand up for academic freedom and insist that science relate its standards to evidence, not faculty lounge cant and The Humanist Manifesto.
Jonathan Witt understates the significance of his new book, “A Meaningful World,” for the meeting Pope Benedict XVI is holding this weekend at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome. Like George Gilder’s fine treatment of intelligent design in relation to information theory and technology, the new book by Witt and Benjamin Wiker, a Catholic philosopher and science writer, expands the scope of ID and effectively opens it to an examination of genius as evidenced in nature and art, in addition to science. This approach doesn’t negate or replace the scientific claims of ID, obviously, but enlarges the lens for looking at them, so to speak. This makes the topic especially inviting for Thomists and other natural philosophers in the Catholic Church and various other Christian traditions, as well as theists generally
Tom Gilson reviews the book here . He begins:“The subtitle to this marvelous book by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt recalls that of Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Dawkins's book was a highly influential polemic (though deeply flawed, as we'll see--once again--in a moment) against design in the cosmos. Wiker and Witt's book deserves equal or greater attention, as a thoughtful and most original argument in favor of design.
“Wiker and Witt play a number of variations on the contrasting themes of meaninglessness and meaningfull-ness, introduced in the first chapter with a quote from physicist Steven Weinberg. The key phrases of the quote are taken from the last two paragraphs of Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe:
"’The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless . . . . The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that gives human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.’
“The authors quite sensibly ask how a pointless universe could also be comprehensible and attain a measure of grace. But the tenor of our age is so uniformly bent toward missing the contradiction there, so as they play their variations, Wiker and Witt show what they mean by the question and why it is such a telling one.
“Their first variation comes from an unusual source for this topic: human genius as embodied by William Shakespeare. Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, had claimed to show that a computer program analogous to evolution could, after a few generations of trial and error, produce a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel." Wiker and Witt pause briefly to point out how far that program really is from the reality of what evolution is supposed to be; it is for one thing intelligently guided, and for another thing, very dependent on a host of pre-built structures in which it is processed. But for them that is low-hanging fruit, easy to point out and then move on.
“They focus instead on what "Methinks it is like a weasel" really means. In isolation, in fact, it means almost nothing. Who said it? Why? What does the "it" refer to? What does it reveal about the characters? How does it advance the plot? In the context of the entire play, and of Elizabethan culture, this brief line takes on significance of surprising depth. The whole is required to give meaning to the part.
“Freud, Marx, and hundreds of literary theorists looking for something original to say about Shakespeare have taken the meaning of his plays apart, down to the nuts and screws, reducing them to nothing. Freud pronounced Hamlet to be nothing but Oedipal and death-wish drives in disguise. Wiker and Witt return repeatedly to this matter of reductionism, which C. S. Lewis called "nothing-buttery:" Hamlet is nothing but . . . (fill in the blank).” Read the full review here.
In this part of my response to Barbara Forrest, I will assess Dr. Forrest's usage of quotations from ID proponents supposedly talking about intelligent design in religious terms. Dr. Forrest's Kitzmiller account discusses what she argued during the Kitzmiller trial about intelligent design:
I included the words of two leading ID proponents, Phillip E. Johnson and William Dembski. Under direct examination by Eric Rothschild, I related Johnson’s definition of ID as “theistic realism” or “mere creation,” by which he means “that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology.
Forrest is trying to argue that because of these quotes, therefore intelligent design is a religious viewpoint. While Phillip Johnson's work inspired many people to investigate scientific deficiencies of Neo-Darwinism, Johnson is not a scientist and has done not been one who has formulated the actual theory of intelligent design. The theory of intelligent design was first formulated by scientists like Charles Thaxton and Dean Kenyon, and further developed (and popularized) by the research and writing of Michael Behe and William Dembski. If one wants to understand the theory of intelligent design, one has to study the writings of people like people like biochemist Michael Behe:
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)
The most important difference [between modern intelligent design theory and Paley's arguments] is that [intelligent design] is limited to design itself; I strongly emphasize that it is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God, as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. This while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. (Michael Behe, "The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis," Philosophia Christi, 2(3)(1) (2001), pg. 165)
Or they should turn to William Dembski, who makes it clear that ID is inferred using an empirical methodology:
Natural causes are too stupid to keep pace with intelligent causes. Intelligent design theory provides a rigorous scientific demonstration of this long-standing intuition. Let me stress, the complexity-specification criterion is not a principle that comes to us demanding our unexamined acceptance–it is not an article of faith. Rather it is the outcome of a careful and sustained argument about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design. (William Dembski, No Free Lunch, pg. 223)
Dr. Forrest ignores Dembski's empirical methodology and Behe's unwillingness to make intelligent design into a theory which treads into religious questions, and instead turns to Dembski’s commentary about how he interprets intelligent design within the context of his own Christian faith. Dr. Forrest recounts what she said in court:
To that I added Dembski’s definition: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
Is that actually Dembski's "definition" of intelligent design? Dr. Forrest's “Logos quote” was taken from an article in Touchstone, a Christian magazine, at the end of an article in a section titled “Design, Metaphysics, & Beyond.” Clearly Dembski is looking at design in a much broader context for a Christian audience, "beyond" its formulation as a science. Previously in the article, however, Dembski explained his methodology for formulating design using purely empirical arguments:
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Figure 1: Dembski's Explanatory Filter from his 1999 Touchstone article: He argues that we infer design based upon our observation-based understanding that complex and specified events are caused by design. In light of this methodology, is Forrest correct to have testified that "Intelligent design is, in essence, a religious belief"? It seems that at essence, ID is an empirically-based scientific argument.
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Given that Dembski is a trained theologian (he holds an m-div. from the prestigious Princeton Theological Seminary), in addition to holding doctorates in mathematics and philosophy, he has every right to evaluate ID in the context of his Christian religious faith (theistic evolutionist scientists often do the same thing for evolution—see below). This information was omitted in Dr. Forrest's testimony, allowing her to twist Dembski’s words by taking them out of context.
While Dr. Forrest calls the Logos quote Dembski's "definition" of intelligent design, it would be more accurate to use the actual definition he provides his section entitled "What is intelligent design" from his book, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design:
Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. Note that a sign is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of the designer and figure out what a designer is thinking. Its focus is not a designer's mind (the thing signified) but the artifact due to a designer's mind (the sign). What a designer is thinking may be an interesting question, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is thinking from the designed objects that a designer produces (provided the designer is being honest). But the designer's thought processes lie outside the scope of intelligent design. As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such.
(William A. Dembski, "Chapter 1: Intelligent Design: What is intelligent design?" in The Design Revolution, pg. 33, The Design Revolution (InterVarsity Press, 2004)
Thus the scientific theory of intelligent design does not even focus on studying any intelligence responsible for life's design, but focuses upon studying natural objects to determine if they were designed. To accurately understand how Dembski thinks the theory of ID interfaces with the identity of the designer, Dr. Forrest should have quoted Dembski from a religious book Dembski wrote for a Christian audience entitled Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, where he explains this point:
By contrast, intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature, nor does it prescribe in advance the sequence of events by which this intelligent cause had to act. . . . Intelligent design is modest in what it attributes to the designing intelligence responsible for the specified complexity in nature. For instance, design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the remit of science. As Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis remark in their text on intelligent design: ‘Science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy.’
(William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, pg. 247-248 (InterVarsity Pres, 1999).)
Why didn't Dr. Forrest give these quotes that provide a full picture of Dembski's view of how intelligent design interfaces with the question of the designer? Is she right to call the Logos quote from the "Design, Metaphysics, and Beyond" section of an article in a Christian magazine Dembski's "definition" of intelligent design?
Theistic Evolutionists Say The Same Kinds of Things
But I can spin false arguments myself. Christian theistic evolutionist Keith Miller wrote "Seeing the history of life unfolding with each new discovery is exciting to me. How incredible to be able to look back through eons of time and see the panorama of God’s evolving creation!” (Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, pg. 205.) Similarly, Catholic Christian and theistic evolutionist Ken Miller wrote, "Given evolution’s ability to adapt, to innovate, to test, and to experiment, sooner or later it would have given the Creator exactly what He was looking for—a creature who, like us, could know Him, and love Him." (Finding Darwin’s God, pg. 238-239.) Do these mean evolution is therefore a religious theory? Would I be correct to call these Ken Miller's and Keith Miller's "definitions" of evolution? Of course not. These quotes simply demonstrate that theistic evolutionists can interpret the scientific theory of evolution in the context of their Christian faith--something these two theistic evolutionist scientists have every right to do. And that's precisely what the trained-theologian Dembski was doing in the Logos quote with respect to intelligent design. Dembski was not "defining" intelligent design, nor was he even describing how the theory operates as as science; writing in a section entitled "Design, Metaphysics, and Beyond," he was clearly only interpreting intelligent design within the context of his own religious faith.
Dembski never said that ID is simply theology. But the difference here is that at trial, the Judge accepted Miller's statement that "Everything that a scientist writes or says is not necessarily a scientific statement or a scientific publication." But Judge Jones (and Barbara Forrest) only extended such courtesy to the Darwinists when they made such religious statements.
A Closing Thought:
In closing, I want to propose what I call the principle of methodological equivalence:
The Principle of Methodological Equivalence:
Science is a way of knowing. When assessing whether a given claim is scientific, all that matters is if an empirically-based, scientific methodology of knowing is given to back the claim. Alleging that a claim is religious and unscientific because of (a) the larger philosophical implications of the claim, (b) the religious beliefs of the claimant, (c) the motives of the claimant, or (d) some historical relationship between certain types of religious persons and that claim, uses an irrelevant argument. Evolutionists should consider this carefully because intelligent design and evolution are methodologically equivalent: Any argument invoking (a) through (d) to disqualify intelligent design from being science would similarly disqualify evolution from being science, if the facts and the argument were applied fairly.
Thus, if ID is disqualified from being science because some of its proponents have assessed ID in the context of their personal faith, then if we are to be fair, then such assessments by evolutionists would cut against evolution being science. The best approach is to recognize that personal religious statements or religious assessments do not count against whether a theory is scientific. Dr. Forrest should not have used these types of arguments.
With the approach of Pope Benedict's informal gathering at his summer palace outside Rome this weekend to discuss Darwinism and intelligent design, an increasing number of public figures have taken to standing up, waving their hands, and saying, "Pope Benedict, please oh please come to such-and-such a conclusion." It's all just a little bit silly, but I want to get in on the action. First I want to say that Darwinist Kenneth Miller, a leading hand waver, doesn't seem to even know what intelligent design is (or at least pretends not to).
In his new piece in The Guardian he dismisses ID and then turns around and offers a condensed form of an intelligent design argument, one developed with sophistication and rigor in The Privileged Planet, a book co-authored by Discovery Institute senior fellows Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards.
Second, Miller, of Brown University, apparently lives in some other country than I do. From his lead paragraph, one would think most Americans embrace Darwinism and do not see clear evidence of design in the biological realm. But in fact, polls that distinguish the vague term "evolution" from Darwinism repeaetedly show that only about 10-20 percent of Americans accept Darwinism, and the vast majority of Americans see strong evidence of design in the living world.
Third, Miller reassures Catholics that Darwinism poses no metaphysical challenge to orthodox Christianity. But three separate editions of his high school biology textbook contain the following sentence:
“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected.” Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.) At the Dover intelligent design trial, I witnessed him explain that his co-author, Levine, inserted this into an early edition, and as soon as it was brought to his attention, Miller successfully pressed to have it removed.
Miller added, "That statement was not in the first edition of the book, it was not in the second edition, it was not in the fourth edition." But in fact it was in the 1st, 3rd and 4th editions (Check yourself on the pages noted above). More fundamentally, the sentence isn't saying anything that leading Darwinists don't routinely say about their theory, whether it's the great majority of them who are atheists, like Richard Dawkins, or the odd religious one like Miller.
Next I want to encourage those meeting with the pope to actually study first hand the design arguments put forward by scientists and scholars like Michael Behe, William, Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells and others. I also would recommend, somewhat immodestly, that they look at the newly released A Meaningful World, co-authored by Benjamin Wiker and myself.
If intelligent design is worth investigating at an informal gathering of the pope's former students, it's worth going directly to the proponents of intelligent design to study their best arguments.
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