We notice a trend on the left to denounce scientists who disagree with a social policy objective of the left as “anti-science.” It’s a major theme on the evolution issue. Now it is true, too, on the issue of whether global warming is as big a danger as the Al Gore sorts say and what contribution human activity makes to the problem. And as a Washington Post article shows, the materialist left have decided that medical professors who promote reproductive medicine that doesn’t include abortion or test tube fertilization because of moral scruples are being denounced as “anti-science,” too.

At the same time we hear, a la Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion are properly “non-overlapping magisteria,” that one is about facts and the other values. But it seems that whatever science can do it should do and values ignored. When someone tries to guide science with moral values he is attacked as “anti-science.”

Slowly, the ultimate claims of materialism are made plain, and scientism—the ideology—bares its teeth.

Institute Practices Reproductive Medicine -- and Catholicism
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A14

OMAHA -- Craig Turczynski traveled from Texas to find ways to help infertile women that do not conflict with his religious beliefs. Cherie LeFevre came from St. Louis to learn how to treat her OB-GYN patients in obedience to her Catholicism. Amie Holmes flew from Ohio so she could practice medicine in conformity with church teachings when she graduates from medical school.

On a journey that would blend the aura of a pilgrimage with the ambience of a medical seminar, the three arrived at an unassuming three-story red-brick building on a quiet side street in this Missouri River city.

Their destination was the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, which has become perhaps the most prominent women's health center serving Catholics and other doctors, medical students and patients who object for religious reasons to in vitro fertilization, contraceptives and other aspects of modern reproductive medicine.

"We have built a new women's health science," said Thomas W. Hilgers, who runs the institute. "Our system works cooperatively with the natural fertility cycle and enables doctors to treat women and married couples, especially Catholic married couples, in a way that allows them to live out their faith."

Hilgers and his supporters say the approach, called "natural procreative technology" or "NaProTechnology," can address a spectrum of women's health issues, including family planning, premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression and infertility, without the use of birth control pills, sterilization, abortion or in vitro fertilization (IVF). Instead, Hilgers said, he uses diagnostics, hormones and surgery to identify and treat underlying causes of reproductive ailments that other doctors often miss.

Although the institute is not formally affiliated with the church, Hilgers's work is endorsed by groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Medical Association.

But many mainstream authorities question Hilgers's assertions that his techniques are equal or even superior to standard therapies. They worry that women are being misled and given unproven, ineffective treatments, denying them the best available care.

"This is anti-science," said Anita L. Nelson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Los Angeles. "I respect people's personal values. But I am deeply concerned that they are giving treatments and making claims that are not scientifically proven as safe and effective."

Although some independent experts say that some of the institute's offerings may be acceptable alternatives for religious patients, as long as they are fully informed about their options, others view its work as a disturbing example of religion intruding into secular society.

"Combining medicine and religion is dangerous," said the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. "This tendency is creeping into our health-care system."

The trend will become particularly worrisome, some say, if religiously shaped medicine begins to displace and curtail access to standard medical care.

"If you look at what's happened with abortion services being severely limited in large parts of the country, this is not at all an unrealistic fear," said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The controversy is part of a larger debate over the relationship between religion and medicine, which is being sparked by conflicts between patients and religious health-care workers who refuse to provide care they find offensive, citing a "right of conscience." Such clashes are becoming increasingly common because of the rising religiosity in the United States and the advent of therapies that raise moral quandaries for some, such as the "morning-after" pill, IVF and embryonic stem cell research.

"Many Christians, whether in or out of the Catholic Church, have deep concerns about some of these new technologies," said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. "This is the kind of thing that offers an alternative for those with these values."

Inspired by Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which condemned artificial birth control, Hilgers began by helping to develop, with colleagues at nearby Creighton University, a natural family planning method called the Creighton Model, which involves meticulously charting a woman's monthly cycle. But Hilgers goes beyond simply offering an alternative form of birth control.

An obstetrician-gynecologist and reproductive surgeon who trained at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Hilgers said he combines the charting system with intensive hormonal and ultrasound studies for better diagnoses. He said he can then restore fertility and treat other ailments through individually tailored therapies, such as targeted hormones and surgical techniques he developed for conditions including blocked fallopian tubes, pelvic adhesions and endometriosis.

"We can look at a woman's cycles in ways that others simply can't," Hilgers said during an interview in his office, surrounded by images of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. "We work cooperatively with a woman's cycle rather than suppressing it or destroying it. Many women come to us after years of being frustrated by the treatment they received elsewhere."

That was the case for Cami Carlson, 33, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, who came to the institute after five years of futile efforts to become pregnant with the help of her OB-GYN and a fertility specialist. Because Carlson is Catholic, in vitro fertilization was out of the question.

"Life is God's to create," Carlson said, echoing the sentiment of half a dozen other women from around the United States and Mexico interviewed this month while being treated at the clinic. "It's a huge sense of peace knowing that we're going about things in a morally sound manner."

The institute, which is attracting more than 700 new patients a year, melds modern medical facilities with the philosophy and symbols of Catholicism. The waiting room greets patients with a bust of the Madonna and Child and an illuminated stained-glass crucifix. Bulletin boards titled "Miracle Baby Hall of Fame" are filled with snapshots of children. Down the hall is a fully accredited lab for analyzing hormones. An ultrasound suite downstairs is equipped with the latest technology. A large statue of St. Therese stands in a stairway leading to the Chapel of the Holy Family, where Mass is celebrated weekly.

While most of the patients are Catholic, Hilgers accepts anyone. He said they are drawn by his holistic approach, attentive care and superior outcomes.

"Mainstream gynecology and reproductive medicine take a Band-Aid approach. Our success rates tend to be much, much better," Hilgers said.

Those claims are sharply disputed by mainstream OB-GYNs and fertility specialists.

"I don't think he understands what a traditional reproductive endocrinologist really does," said Jamie Grifo, a New York University fertility specialist. "It's simply a myth that we don't look for the underlying disease."

Experts also question how "natural" Hilgers's techniques are if they employ hormonal supplementation, and they criticize him for not publishing studies in medical journals so his methods can be evaluated independently.

"They might as well be advocating prayer for infertility," said Richard Paul, a fertility expert at the University of Southern California. "The reason that this is dangerous is because women have a biological clock, and while they are using up time with less effective therapies, time may run out."

Hilgers countered that his work is based on numerous research papers that he and others published in well-known journals earlier in his career, and that he has compiled the results of his more recent studies in a 1,243-page textbook he produced in 2004.

"The people who publish the journals are all of a certain mind-set, and that mind-set is contraception, sterilization, abortion and IVF," Hilgers said. "They reject things I submit to them and say, 'What value is this?' "

To spread his methods, Hilgers sponsors a multifaceted training program and invites recent medical school graduates to spend a year studying with him.

"This allows me to practice in a way that I see as truly good for my patients and uphold the dignity of life," said Catherine Keefe, who is in the midst of a one-year fellowship at the institute after completing her OB-GYN residency at the University of Illinois at Peoria.

The institute also instructs laypeople on how to teach the Creighton system, and it has more than 1,000 "educators" and more than 100 centers offering the system around the United States and overseas.

In addition, it offers intensive seminars every fall and spring for doctors, residents, medical students and others.

"This place has just been booming. . . . It's just incredible. And we're only at the beginning," Hilgers said. He said he has trained more than 300 doctors in the United States and overseas, including several in the Washington area.

This year's fall immersion course drew Turczynski, LeFevre, Holmes and eight other doctors, residents and medical students. For eight days this month at a hotel near the institute, the participants gathered early each morning for Mass before spending 12 hours in lectures. They will return in the spring for a follow-up session that will certify them as NaProTechnology "medical consultants."

Turczynski quit his job as head of an infertility laboratory in Shreveport, La., because he decided that creating embryos in a laboratory was wrong. He became disturbed that some of the embryos might be discarded or used for research, and that his work might help unmarried or same-sex couples have children.

"I would like to stay in the field in a way that doesn't conflict with my moral beliefs and the church's teaching," Turczynski said.

LeFevre, the St. Louis OB-GYN, decided after her daughter's first communion that she could no longer prescribe birth control pills, do sterilizations or participate in IVF. Holmes, the medical student, converted to Catholicism and pledged to devote her practice to her new faith when she graduates.

Some trainees took vacation time and paid for the course themselves. Others received funding from their schools or residencies and will get credit toward their medical education. The course is certified through Creighton University.

"In those areas where the culture of medicine differs from what the church teaches," said Karen Saroki, who is incorporating Hilgers's training into a family-practice residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "this will enable me to follow what the church teaches."

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 6:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This past Thursday, October 26, Dr. Leon Kass, learned intellectual and former Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, presented a paper before an excellent group of intellectuals at the American Enterprise Institute (Stephen Barr, Eric Cohen, Joseph Bottum, Charles Murray, and Marcello Pera, among others). Dr. Kass had many good things to say about the false nature of scientific reductionism and how it goes against everything we know about reality from everyday life. He also denied that random mutations and natural selection were the whole story to life’s evolution. That said, I took umbrage with one major point Kass made.

Dr. Kass embraced a sort of NOMA approach to origins questions, claiming that scientific findings in this area would not affect humanity’s special status at the apex of nature. He claimed that science has a “metaphysical neutrality,” and hence a scientific finding is “indifferent to questions of being, cause, purpose, inwardness, hierarchy, and the goodness or badness of things, scientific knowledge included.” So for instance, scientists don’t ask what happened before the Big Bang; they just describe the Big Bang.

When I had the opportunity to ask a question, I first said that I found myself in an odd place that day, agreeing more with Dr. Dawkins than Dr. Kass on this supposed neutrality. For Dawkins would claim that scientific findings on origins should affect our view of what it is to be human, and therefore such findings are not metaphysically neutral. (And I would only add that, if we understand that evidence in science can bolster the claim for a world devoid of purpose and teleology, we must also acknowledge that evidence from science could bolster the case for a world with purpose and teleology.)

I mentioned two examples. First, if the Big Bang was somehow overturned by new evidence, and it then looked like the universe was eternal rather than finite. I think this would have HUGE implications for who we are and where we came from. Second, I continued, if, as the Darwinists say, evolution has no discernable goal or direction, and a different random mutation could have made a totally different species than Homo sapiens, this too is more than just a material description and should certainly affect our view of humanity and whether we are intended to be here. That is, it affects a question of purpose.

To all this, it seemed to me, Dr. Kass did not really provide a counterargument. He simply said that if I did not know the monumental difference (presumably by natural reason) between humans and lower species, then there was nothing more he could say to me; and no scientific discovery could possibly take away our natural perception that humanity is of a different status than other species.

Dr. Kass is right, of course, that we can know through the use of our everyday perception that humanity is exceptional. But then how odd if scientific discovery did not back this up? How odd if our natural perception would be at odds with our scientific exploration? Our natural perception of humanity’s unique status should only serve to highlight that the Darwinian theory is wrong since it implies that, contrary to our everyday observations, we were not intended to be here. That is, we were only a few random mutations away from being something totally different.

Scientific discoveries certainly can affect our view of what it is to be human. My hope is that Dr. Kass can find harmony between his common sense perception of the world and the scientific enterprise. ID offers just such an explanation. For ID argues that nature, by showing signs of intelligent agency, is likely the product of intelligence—not just chance material forces. And these scientific observations lend themselves to a view of the world in which humanity was intended and purposed to be here. Thus scientific theories of origins are not metaphysically neutral. There is more going on here than a just-the-facts-ma’am, descriptive science.

Posted by Logan Gage at 12:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I might have titled this post, “Eastern Mystics Join Western Fundamentalist Conspiracy,” except that there are those out there that would howl to the highest that I had finally admitted we are fundamentalists with a secret conspiracy. (First, I’m fundamentally not a fundamentalist, and the so-called “secret conspiracy” is neither secret nor a conspiracy.) Instead, I have a title that neatly sums up the point made in the Asian Tribune today, titled Is our evolving universe an intelligent design?, by essayist Vasantha Raja. It is an excellent article in which Raja shows that following the evidence where it leads isn’t a fundamentalist conspiracy to convert the world in whichever direction at all, it is rather what the scientific method should really be about.

According to Raja:

What follows below does not approve or reject the visions of any particular religion. But the point I want to make is that scientists can seriously consider the Intelligent Design model without committing to the existence of a personal God; also through it science can enhance the scientific enterprise's heuristic power and overcome the ongoing creationist/evolutionist dichotomy.

However, the problems seem to occur at least from two sources: one, the naturalist tendency to resort to chance, random or accidental processes of unthinking matter to explain mystifyingly complex phenomena; two, dogmatic adherence to 'gradual evolution' when the processes in the world have clearly defied it in favour of 'qualitative leaps'.

The idea here is that science is a method for investigating nature and that to understand nature scientists must only invoke ‘natural processes.’ In this context the term ‘natural processes’ means processes operating entirely according to unbroken natural laws and characterized by chance and necessity. … One of the consequences of methodolocial naturalism is to exclude intelligent design from science.

Franklin M. Harold wrote in The Way of the Cell, (Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 205)

We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity (Behe 1996); but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations. (emphasis mine)

Raja points out the same simple fact that we have been emphasizing for years whenever we ask scientists to simply follow the evidence where it leads.

It’s not whether a theory has religious or anti-religious implications that determines its scientific validity, but whether it is grounded in evidence. The more we learn about the evidence, the more it points to intelligent design as a better explanation than Darwinian evolution for many features of living things.

As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, "Information habitually arises from conscious activity." A computer user who traces the information on a screen back to its source invariably comes to a mind, that of a software engineer or programmer. Similarly, the information in a book or newspaper column ultimately derives from a writer—from a mental, rather than a strictly material, cause. Thus, what we know about the present cause and effect structure of the world suggests intelligent design as an obvious explanation for the information necessary to build living systems.

As he relates the insistence of the scientific community to adhere to methodolifical naturalism as the scientific method, Raja continually hits the nail on the head:

Thus, the restriction on our legitimate capacity to abstract from what is externally given to us seems to me to be a major problem in science. This seems to be another limitation of scientific methodology as it stands today. …

The point I am trying to drive home is this: The 'Intelligent Design' hypothesis needs not in any way hamper the scientists' effort to develop a convincing model that explains the evolving universe through itself. But the scientists may well have to get rid of their own prejudices originating primarily from the empiricist world outlook to do so.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This past Tuesday, Richard Dawkins spoke at DC's famous Politics & Prose bookstore, reading from his new book "The God Delusion." One philosophically astute questioner, American Enterprise Institute's Joe Manzari, had the following exchange with Dr. Dawkins:

Manzari: Dr. Dawkins thank you for your comments. The thing I have appreciated most about your comments is your consistency in the things I've seen you've written. One of the areas that I wanted to ask you about, and the place where I think there is an inconsistency, and I hoped you would clarify, is that in what I've read you seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out; but on the other hand it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn't to be funny, that the consistent position would be that necessarily the authoring of this book, from the initial conditions of the big bang, it was set that this would be the product of what we see today. I would take it that that would be the consistent position but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Dawkins: The philosophical question of determinism is a very difficult question. It's not one I discuss in this book, indeed in any other book that I've ever talked about. Now an extreme determinist, as the questioner says, might say that everything we do, everything we think, everything that we write has been determined from the beginning of time in which case the very idea of taking credit for anything doesn't seem to make any sense. Now I don't actually know what I actually think about that, I haven't taken up a position about that, it's not part of my remit to talk about the philosophical issue of determinism. What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, "Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules." Maybe we should… I sometimes… Um… You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won't start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that's what we all ought to... Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is "Oh they were just determined by their molecules." It's stupid to punish them. What we should do is say "This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced." I can't bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. And so again I might take a …

Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue.

Manzari: Thank you.

It appears to me that reality is biting back at Dr. Dawkins. As Mr. Manzari pointed out to me in a recent interview (which will be featured here on the ID the Future podcast), Dawkins is finding it hard to live out his worldview with consistency. It is just plain hard to act as though one does not possess agency. It reminds one of the attempts of materialists to purge their language of "folk psychology," claiming for instance, "the C-fibers in this left lobe are firing like crazy," rather than saying, "I feel a headache." It is simply hard to speak this way, which should prompt one to ask, "Why?"

For those interested in the cross section of Darwinism and free agency, I heartily recommend Angus Menuge's "Agents Under Fire."

Posted by Logan Gage at 11:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We've recently discussed the media bias against intelligent design (ID) (see here and here). As also reported, the British Independent published a harshly anti-ID article adopting the rhetoric of ID-critics as if it were reportable fact. This same article made much ado about the alleged religious motives of proponents of intelligent design. Yet The Independent relies upon the British Humanist Association (BHA) as an authority which opposes teaching ID. This BHA has an anti-religious agenda which instructs people to live “without religious [belief]”. The BHA seeks “an end” to the “privileged position of religion – and Christianity in particular” in society. For The Independent to harp upon the alleged religious motives of ID-proponents and ignore all potential anti-religious motives of ID-critics is not only poor scholarship and biased journalism, it is blatant hypocrisy. However, as discussed below, what matters is the scientific evidence, because motives are irrelevant in scientific discourse.

More Anti-Religious Motives of British Darwinists
On its web page defining humanism, BHA links to the Third Humanist Manifesto, which claims that “[h]umans are … the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing.” The manifesto is published by the American Humanist Association, which in 1996 named Britain’s own Richard Dawkins as its “Humanist of the Year.” During his acceptance speech, Dawkins announced that “[f]aith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” Indeed, according to the current cover of Wired Magazine, Dawkins is presently part of a "Crusade Against Religion":

Meanwhile, pro-ID British bloggers have revealed that the recently formed British Center for Science Education (BCSE) was founded by a group of secular humanists with anti-religious agendas and was born out of a group called “BlackShadow” run by vocal atheists. BlackShadow’s website has clear political and cultural goals: it solicits explicit support from a peculiar collection of groups as it invites those who are “gay, liberal, a single mum, a cohabitee, a believer in evolution, or an atheistic or agnostic” to oppose ID.

Clearly some British Darwinists have an anti-religious agenda associated with various political and cultural goals, one of which seems to be to eradicate religion from the public sphere.

Motives Don't Matter
Evolution is a legitimate scientific theory which deserves to be taught in schools. If some of Britain's leading evolutionist advocates are avowed atheists with an agenda to eradicate religion, so what? That doesn’t make evolution any less scientific. Similarly, ID is an empirical argument about the cause-and-effect relationship between intelligence and information in cells which uses the scientific method to make its claims. If some believe it has larger religious implications, so what? Evolution is apparently being used to advance analogous anti-religious political agendas in Britain.

The personal religious—or anti-religious—beliefs or motives of scientists do not disqualify their bona fide scientific views from the classroom. But The Independent selectively harps upon the supposed religious motives of ID-proponents in Britain, while ignoring the blatantly anti-religious motives of the very authorities it quotes against ID.

If The Independent wants to play the motive-mongering game, it should consider how the teaching of evolution in Britain’s biology classrooms would be affected in light of the anti-religious agenda of leading evolution advocates in Britain, such as Dawkins, the BCSE, and The Independent's preferred authority opposing intelligent design: the British Humanist Association.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Rob Crowther speculated that wording attributed by New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean to Ohio State Board of Education member Dr. Deborah Owens Fink was in fact wording that came from Ms. Dean, not from Dr. Owens Fink. We have just received confirmation of that fact from Dr. Owens Fink herself.

According to Dean’s article, “Dr. Owens Fink...said the [Ohio] curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.” But Dr. Owens Fink did not call intelligent design “an ideological cousin of creationism,” even though Dean’s misleading wording makes this appear to be the case. Those words represent Dean’s own biased editorializing (in what was supposed to be a news article, not an editorial). According to Dr. Owens Fink, “the reporter... put words in the article that may represent her view but not mine.”

This is not the first time a Times’ reporter has invented a comment by someone critical of Darwinism. For an amusing example from last year involving Dr. Stephen Meyer, read here and here.

Posted by John West at 11:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean continues to misinform the public about the debate over evolution, and I think she does so deliberately.

First, Dean mistakenly refers to intelligent design as the “ideological cousin of creationism.” It is not. Second, she makes this incredible assertion without anything to back it up:

Although researchers may argue about its details, the theory of evolution is the foundation for modern biology, and there is no credible scientific challenge to it as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth.

There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth.

So, I’ll cut and paste my original response, as well.

This claim turns on a profound ambiguity. What does “evolution” mean when asserted to be a “fact”? If it simply means changes in species over long periods of time, there seems to be little doubt the claim is true. If it means universal common ancestry (UCA), the claim is more controversial; reasonable scientific evidence exists both in favor of and against it. But, if “evolution” means UCA plus the Darwinian mechanism of unguided natural selection acting on ran-dom mutation—together giving rise to all the complexity and diversity of the living world—then “evolution” is certainly not a “fact.” There is very limited scientific evidence supporting this view, and powerful evidence against it. (Six Myths About Evolution)

There are numerous scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution. Scientific literature is full of them. Those familiar with the debate in Ohio will remember that Discovery Institute submitted the “Bibliography of Supplementary Resources” to the Ohio State Board of Education:

“These 44 scientific publications represent important lines of evidence and puzzles that any theory of evolution must confront, and that science teachers and students should be allowed to discuss when studying evolution. … The publications represent dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism (the prevailing theory of evolution taught in biology textbooks), discuss problems that evolutionary theory faces, or suggest important new lines of evidence that biology must consider when explaining origins.”

As for whether or not evolution is the foundation for modern biology, like Dean I will turn to the National Academy of Science--specifically to Dr. Phillip Skell of the NAS, who has written on this subject extensively. Here’s what he wrote in the New Scientist last year in an essay titled “Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology”:

I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.

I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.

Skell concludes by saying:

Darwinian evolution--whatever its other virtues--does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit. None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however, mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.

In spite of the New York Times’s glowing record as a news outlet above reproach, I think I’ll side with the scientist over the science writer on this one.

What else does Dean have to report? Seemingly quite a bit, since apparently she is able to get inside the mind of one of her sources, Dr. Deborah Owens Fink.

Dean writes: “But Dr. Owens Fink, a professor of marketing at the University of Akron, said the curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.” Hmmm. I suspect that Owens Fink did not say that ID is the ideological cousin of creationism, but Dean wrote this in a way that you might think she did.

Referring to the National Academy’s official stand against ID, Dean writes, “But the academy’s opinion does not matter to Dr. Owens Fink, who said the letter was probably right to say she had dismissed it as ‘a group of so-called scientists.’” Did Owens Fink actually say the academy’s opinion doesn’t matter? Probably not. At best that is unclear, since Dean writes in such a way as to try to make us all privy to many things that Owens Fink thinks. But these are just assertions on the part of the reporter.

Am I nitpicking here? Yes, but for a reason. This is a perfect example of media bias in action. Dean has made her own views on evolution and intelligent design quite clear in the past. She is completely biased against intelligent design, and so her reporting on the subject has to be suspect.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last December I wrote a series of blog posts critiquing Judge Jones’ decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Most of the articles analyzed the text of the Kitzmiller opinion and explained why I thought it was an example of judicial activism. However, in a final post, I also criticized the newsmedia for inaccurately portraying Judge Jones as a political and religious conservative, which I viewed as an effort to shield his judicial opinion from legitimate criticism.

While I emphasized that “I don’t care whether Judge Jones is either conservative or religious. My concern is whether he is fair and accurate as a judge,” I noted that there was scant evidence that he was a political conservative. I also stated, based on public information available at the time, that there was little evidence that Jones was especially religious or even an official member of a church since he graduated from college. That latter claim turns out to be wrong. According to an article in this month’s issue of The Lutheran, Jones has been a member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Pottsville, Pennsylvania since 1982, and previously he was a member of a Presbyterian congregation.

So what was the basis for my earlier statement? The most important reason was information Jones submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation proceedings in 2002. When asked to disclose “all memberships... currently and formerly held in professional, business, fraternal, scholarly, civic, charitable, or other organizations since graduation from college," Jones did not list any religious organizations. Because of the all-encompassing wording of this question, and the fact that other judicial nominees considered at the same time listed their religious memberships, I concluded—wrongly—that Jones had not officially joined a church. In reality, he simply chose not to list his membership on the form.

Since Judge Jones turns out to have been a long-time church member, does that mean he must have been fair and impartial in the Kitzmiller case as the media suggested? I don't think so. The underlying point of my original post was that it is the content of the Kitzmiller decision that provides the best evidence for whether Judge Jones was fair-minded, not his personal affiliations. Did he summarize the evidence fairly and accurately? Did he apply the same standards of evaluation to both parties before him? Did he faithfully and without bias consider the arguments offered by both sides? I think the record of the case provides a clear answer to these questions, and the answer is “no.” That assessment is based on the objective record of the case, not on Judge Jones’ personal affiliations.

Posted by John West at 12:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Almost lost by the MSM are two new statements by Pope Benedict XVI that speak of intelligent design, in contrast to (Darwinian) evolution. First was a homily in Regensburg that was eclipsed in the news by the other, more famous address there that mentioned Islam. The second statement was made only a few days ago in Verona, as covered by the Vatican Information Service (VIS). As someone familiar with A Meaningful World (IVP Academic, 2006) by Discovery senior fellows Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, I am amazed at how closely Pope Benedict's statements about science and rationality resemble the arguments by Wiker and Witt. The pope's recent address to the Italian Ecclesial Congress sounds like it came right out of chapter 4, "The Geometry of Genius." Here's an excerpt from Benedict (translated from the Italian by VIS):

Verona, Pope Addresses Italian Ecclesial Congress: "At the roots of being a Christian, there is no ethical decision or lofty idea, ... but a meeting with the person of Jesus Christ," said Benedict XVI. "The fruitfulness of this meeting is apparent ... also in today's human and cultural context," he added, using the example of mathematics, a human creation in which the "correlation between its structures and the structures of the universe ... excites our admiration and poses a great question. It implies that the universe itself is structured in an intelligent fashion, in such a way that there exists a profound correspondence between our subjective reason and the objective reason of nature. It is, then, inevitable that we should ask ourselves if there is not a single original intelligence that is the common source of both the one and the other….This overturns the tendency to grant primacy to the irrational, chance and necessity.”

For scientists, the greatest and most peculiar intellectual exhilaration occurs when they find that the order of mathematics illuminates the order of reality. This is not a passionless, accountant-like correspondence of lines and legers, but a participation in an ethereal union of beauty and truth, the beauty and truth of the mathematical order matching some aspect of the natural order. It is interesting that, as biologists (following Darwin) have become more reductionist in regard to beauty, physicists had come to a new appreciation of the centrality of beauty in regard to the relationship of mathematical equations to reality.

We have spent some time focusing on beauty because our appreciation of mathematical beauty extends to the most abstract intellectual realms, including those inhabited by theoretical physicists. We may now ask a crucial but frequently overlooked question: What right have we to expect that our human capacity for mathematical abstraction and our human appreciation of elegance would yield any knowledge of nature? If, after all, the universe itself were randomly produced and did not have us in mind, and if our own reasoning capacities and love of beauty were likewise randomly produced, could we reasonably expect mathematics to be an effective tool for us in ‘working out the meaning of the data’?

As we have argued, if the order of nature preexists our attempts to grasp it, and consequently, if the strange effectiveness of mathematics depends upon the preexistent order of nature to be effective, then nature is intelligibly and ingeniously ordered. Exemplifying both surprising depth and a stunning harmony and elegance, such ingenious design necessarily implies a designing genius.

the only meaningful language is mathematics; and since our everyday language and experience are not governed by mathematics, then our everyday language and experience are not meaningfully related to reality. As a consequence, deep reflections based on our everyday language and experience are taken to be groundless.

The world of mathematics is a world of abstraction, a step away from reality, not reality itself. It is through mathematics, not in mathematics, that scientists find meaning in the data. The data is about reality, about the order of beings in nature. That is why reality always determines whether any particular mathematical formulation is applicable and effective.

Finally, both the pope and A Meaningful World argue for the unity of reason and insist that both nature and human culture point beyond mere matter to a creative reason as the source of nature’s order. The entire book, A Meaningful World, is given over to making that argument. The pope makes the point more briefly and draws theological implications

:... On these premises, it again becomes possible to broaden the horizon of our rationality, open it to the great questions of truth and goodness, and unite theology, philosophy and science, ... respecting their reciprocal autonomy but also aware of the intrinsic unity that holds them together.

We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But is such a thing still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn't add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth - I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. With this faith we have no reason to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end. We rejoice that we can know God! And we try to let others see the reasonableness of our faith, as Saint Peter bids us do in his First Letter (cf. 3:15)!

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 1:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We recently reported how New Scientist has exhibited an incredible bias against intelligent design and is encouraging scientists to attack ID using “the weapons of sound bytes and emotional arguments... deploy[ing] all the tools that are used to sell cars, [and] diet drugs...” But the best possible proof that the media is biased against intelligent design would be a cover article in one of the nation's leading media journals instructing editors and reporters to limit and stifle the pro-ID viewpoint when reporting on the ID-evolution debate. Precisely such an article entitled "Undoing Darwin" was co-authored by Chris Mooney as the cover article of the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review just a few weeks before the beginning of the Dover trial in September, 2005.

When Darwinists complain about media coverage of ID, what they really are upset about is the rare article which simply gives the pro-ID viewpoint the time of day and offers more than unyielding praise of Darwin. For example, Jason Rosenhouse and NCSE staff member Glenn Branch wrote in BioScience that "A misconceived concern for balance frequently results in equal time being accorded to biologists and creationists, creating the illusion of scientific equivalence." (from "Media Coverage of 'Intelligent Design,'" BioScience, Vol. 56(3):247-252 (March, 2006).) What Darwinists unambiguously desire in the media is imbalance, with an anti-ID bias and the limiting of pro-ID arguments and evidence in homage to the pro-Darwin position.

All ID-proponents desire is nothing more than what Chris Mooney, Jason Rosenhouse, and Glenn Branch oppose: balanced and unbiased media coverage. For more documentation of the media's bias, read this excerpt from my response to Chris Mooney, "Whose “War” Is It, Anyway?: Exposing Chris Mooney’s Attack on Intelligent Design," discussing his Columbia Journalism Review cover article:

In early September, 2005, just as Kitzmiller v. Dover case was approaching, Columbia Journalism Review published “Undoing Darwin,” which recommended nothing short of imbalanced and overall hostile coverage of the pro-ID viewpoint during the forthcoming media coverage of the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. This incredible article presented a call for journalists to become partisans in the debate over evolution and exclude a balanced or fair presentation of pro-ID arguments. It was co-authored by none other than Chris Mooney.

The article began by complaining that the media “tend to deemphasize the strong scientific case in favor of evolution and instead lend credence to the notion that a growing ‘controversy’ exists over evolutionary science.” The fundamental premise of the entire article is that “it is false” to claim there are scientific disputes against evolution. Again making misplaced reliance upon authoritarian political statements by scientific authorities, Mr. Mooney begins with the assumption that his position is correct, and that this fact should therefore define and govern journalistic coverage of this issue. He assumes that all critiques of evolution are “theological attacks that masquerade as being ‘scientific’ in nature” and encourages journalists to frame articles as such, to avoid lending “undue credibility” to non-evolutionary viewpoints. This is the same mindset we saw coming from those who attack ID-proponents in the academy: not only is intelligent design wrong, but ID-proponents do not deserve the opportunity to discuss their scientific views in a positive light.

Mr. Mooney complains that simply giving “balance” to the viewpoints in articles over intelligent design does a disservice:

Worse, they [journalists] often provide a springboard for anti-evolutionist criticism of that science, allotting ample quotes and sound bites to Darwin’s critics in a quest to achieve “balance.” The science is only further distorted on the opinion pages of local newspapers.

In other words, the fact that reporting is sometimes “balanced” is a problem: Mr. Mooney's message is that media coverage is not “balance[d]” when one allows dissenters from evolution have their say by allowing the “pairing of competing claims”:

Even worse, such “balance” is far from truly objective. The pairing of competing claims plays directly into the hands of intelligent-design proponents who have cleverly argued that they’re mounting a scientific attack on evolution rather than a religiously driven one, and who paint themselves as maverick outsiders warring against a dogmatic scientific establishment.

Mr. Mooney thus suggests that it is inappropriate to “pai[r] claims” of ID proponents and evolutionists because it will make ID arguments appear scientific. To his credit, Mr. Mooney says that pro-ID voices should not be completely censored. But his article implies that the way to avoid the “pairing” problem is to diminish or weaken pro-ID arguments in articles, leaving pro-evolution arguments to have the louder microphone. Clearly he is not interested in a truly balanced presentation of the views.

Mr. Mooney again warns TV talk show hosts about the dangers of allowing pro-ID guests on their shows because “the adversarial format of most cable news talk shows inherently favors ID’s attacks on evolution by making false journalistic ‘balance’ nearly inescapable.” Can evolution not withstand this “adversarial format”? Or does Mr. Mooney not desire a truly fair presentation? What other solution could Mr. Mooney suggest other than limiting the pro-ID viewpoint from such venues? Mr. Mooney does suggest one clear solution: journalists should become partisans in the debate:

In short, to better cover evolution, journalists don’t merely have to think more like scientists (or science writers). As the evolution issue inevitably shifts into a legal context, they must think more like skeptical jurists.

In recommending that journalists behave as “jurists” who are “skeptical” of intelligent design, Mr. Mooney implies they should let their own prejudices influence their reporting. Under this journalistic philosophy, the court of public opinion is to be determined by the media. Since when is it the media’s role to determine the answers to complex social issues? This is not an issue where the public agrees with the position Chris Mooney thinks the media should advocate: – over 75% of Americans agree that “[w]hen Darwin’s theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life.” But according to Mr. Mooney and other powerful players within the journalism establishment, journalists need to discard any notion of true objectivity and neutrality in order to protect the American public from pro-ID arguments. Do these pro-ID arguments pose the sort of threat to evolution that justifies Mr. Mooney’s conceded abandonment of the traditional journalistic principle of balance? Mr. Mooney seems to imply that journalists should become partisans in their coverage of intelligent design because the American people cannot be trusted to think for themselves.

Mr. Mooney even thinks that opinion pages should limit the space given to pro-ID viewpoints:

[On opinion pages], competing arguments about evolution and intelligent design tend to be paired against one another in letters to the editor and sometimes in rival guest op-eds, providing a challenge to editors who want to give voice to alternative ideas yet provide an accurate sense of the state of scientific consensus. The mission of the opinion pages and a faithfulness to scientific accuracy can easily come into conflict.

Mr. Mooney then complains that a local paper covering the Kitzmiller trial “recently print[ed] at least one” letter submitted by “a Christian conservative group.” The problem according to Mr. Mooney is that “many opinion-page editors see their role not as gatekeepers of scientific content, but rather as enablers of debate within pluralistic communities.” Since when are journalists the arbitrators of scientific dogma and not those whom the public entrusts to neutrally communicate and report the diverse viewpoints which exist into the public discourse? According to Mr. Mooney, it was a travesty that some papers covering the Kitzmiller case printed approximately equal numbers of letters-to-the editor in favor or against intelligent design. Mr. Mooney complained that this equal representation resulted in “an entirely lopsided debate within the scientific community [that] was transformed into an evenly divided one in the popular arena.” For Mr. Mooney, because the majority viewpoint in the scientific community is generally against ID, pro-ID voices should not be allowed to make their arguments fairly heard even in the public sphere—even if the public is overwhelmingly friendly to ID. Even those who agree with Mr. Mooney’s scientific position need not agree with his rhetorical strategy: ideas thrive by letting critics have their say and permitting intellectual freedom within the marketplace of viewpoints. If evolution is right, it can win the debates which Mr. Mooney does not want to see occur in the public discussion.

But Chris Mooney didn't always complain. He praised an editorial board of a paper covering the Selman v. Cobb County case because it stated that “our science infrastructure is under attack from religious extremists” and “warned repeatedly of the severe negative economic consequences and national ridicule that anti-evolutionism might bring on the community,” thus adopting Mr. Mooney’s party line. He observed that most of the letters printed were against ID, and pondered if this “may suggest a community with different views than those in Dover, Pennsylvania, or it may suggest a stronger editorial role.” So in Chris Mooney's eyes, a “stronger editorial role” is the limiting of viewpoints that conflict with the prevailing dogma of the scientific establishment, even when that viewpoint has high support from many letter-writers.

Mr. Mooney also praised the New York Times and The Washington Post because “the opinion pages sided heavily with evolution,” but he then scolded the New York Times because “a false sense of scientific controversy was arguably abetted when The New York Times allowed Michael Behe, the prominent ID proponent, to write a full-length op-ed explaining why his is a ‘scientific’ critique of evolution.” Does this imply that Mr. Mooney thinks that Behe’s singular voice explaining the scientific case for ID should have been wiped clean from the New York Times editorial page?

Mr. Mooney fears that “the unintended consequence may be that increased media attention only helps proponents present intelligent design as a contest between scientific theories rather than what it actually is — a sophisticated religious challenge to an overwhelming scientific consensus.” But if he is concerned about not helping a cause, then clearly he is interested in using the media as a tool to hurt it. This non-neutral behavioral recommendation raises a question: What right does Mr. Mooney or anyone in the media have to make judgments about this controversy which lead them to diminish and weaken the presentation of certain viewpoints? (As was previously documented, Mr. Mooney's arguments that ID is not science are based upon fundamental misconstruals of the theory.) He concludes that “[in] such a situation, journalistic coverage that helps fan the flames of a nonexistent scientific controversy (and misrepresents what’s actually known) simply isn’t appropriate.” This assumes that there is no controversy. Mr. Mooney concludes with proscriptions for keeping the pro-ID viewpoint out of media coverage:

So what is a good editor to do about the very real collision between a scientific consensus and a pseudo-scientific movement that opposes the basis of that consensus? At the very least, newspaper editors should think twice about assigning reporters who are fresh to the evolution issue and allowing them to default to the typical strategy frame, carefully balancing “both sides” of the issue in order to file a story on time and get around sorting through the legitimacy of the competing claims.

Here Mr. Mooney’s recommendation for journalistic bias is stated explicitly: In short, Mr. Mooney thinks it is not appropriate to cover “both sides” of a dispute in a truly balanced or objective fashion even if this is “the typical” methodology of journalism. Indeed, he directly suggests that reporters who would employ such balance should not be assigned to report on evolution. According to his view, one side should not be given the same amount of air-time, size of print-space, or numbers of opportunity for rebuttal simply because it goes against the “consensus.” According to Mr. Mooney, such “balancing” isn’t appropriate. Mr. Mooney ends by stating that “the media have a profound responsibility — to the public, and to knowledge itself.” This sounds reasonable, but one would think this responsibility carries with it the duty to inform the public about the arguments promoted by both sides in a balanced fashion, and then let the reader decide. If arguments for evolution are so powerful, then doesn’t Mr. Mooney think they can win the debate?

(From Whose “War” Is It, Anyway?: Exposing Chris Mooney’s Attack on Intelligent Design)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

It looks as if the reporting on evolution and intelligent design is even worse in the UK than it is here in the US. I was just forwarded this article from last week’s Independent titled “Does Creationism Have a Place in the Classroom.” Right off the bat the lead of the article makes unsupported assertions, editorializing in a manner that even some of the most agenda-driven reporting in the US has yet to do.

“A creationist group, Truth in Science, has targeted thousands of secondary schools in the UK with an information pack that is being used by believers and unwary teachers to bring religious dogma into science classrooms.”

Throughout the story, the reporter’s choice of words is so loaded that it is hard to understand how any objective editor would have allowed it to run in this fashion. When covering controversial issues balance and objectivity is necessary for fair reporting. For instances, in political reporting —presumably in the UK as well as in the US— if one were reporting on Democrats and Republicans, they would both be considered political parties. You wouldn’t refer to one as a social club, and the other as a professional political organization. Yet, that is exactly the sort of imbalance that is taking place in this piece in regards to proponents of intelligent design.

Anyone who is even nominally critical of evolution is immediately classified as religious. They are painted as either ignorant or simply motivated by politics, whereas those who support evolution are referred to as scientists.

The Independent doesn’t simply rely on insinuating that intelligent design isn’t science and that its proponents are not scientists, it makes that assertion with nothing to back it up other than vacuous doctrinal statements from governing bodies that are not likely to have ever explored the theory beyond the pages of the Independent or the New York Times.

Even worse are the outright lies put forth about Dr. Michael Behe, who testified in the Dover vs. Kitzmiller ID trial last year.

“Last year Dr Behe had to admit in a US courtroom not only that such organisms could be the result of evolution, but that intelligent design had the same scientific legitimacy as astrology.”

This is simply false. It is based on faulty reporting from that bastion of journalistic integrity, the New Scientist, which falsely reported this last year during the trial. (see here for the straight scoop)

Another false assertion by the Independent is that irreducible complexity has been discredited. Far from it. Behe has written about the hand waving, speculations, and just so stories that greeted his argument for irreducible complexity in the new afterword to his groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box.

• Responding to Darwinists Claiming to Have Explained Away the Challenge of Irreducible Complexity
  
• The Lamest Attempt Yet to Answer the Challenge Irreducible Complexity Poses for Darwinian Evolution by Michael Behe
  
• How to Explain Irreducible Complexity -- A Lab Manual by CSC Fellows
  
• Irreducible Complexity and the Evolutionary Literature by Michael Behe
  
• Do Car Engines Run on Lugnuts? A Response to Ken Miller & Judge Jones's Straw Tests of Irreducible Complexity for the Bacterial Flagellum by Casey Luskin

What is it that the Independent, and Darwinian hardliners, are afraid of? A head of science interviewed for the story sums it up nicely. Concerning the distribution of “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” – a documentary presenting and explaining the positive evidence for intelligent design theory – it is clear that following the evidence where it leads is what Darwinists desperately want to keep students from doing.

Graham Wright, head of science at North Bridge House, an independent school in north London, says the pack sent to him went straight into the bin. But he is concerned that some well-meaning teachers, convinced by talk of changes in the national curriculum, will include the pack in lessons. "If I showed this to children, of course they would be convinced," he says. "There's no doubt about that at all."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The whole point of independent schools is that they are supposed to be independent! The whole point of the media is to report the news, not distortions. Yet in the story from The Ottawa Citzen (“Teach sex and evolution or close, Quebec evangelical schools told”), we discover by reading the whole story carefully that the schools under attack do teach evolution. They also teach the scientific evidence against it and they teach intelligent design. And that additional teaching is the state’s real beef.

So here we have the state threatening to close supposedly independent schools because, de facto, they fail to teach the party line that there is no evidence against Darwin’s theory. That is sheer nonsense. Further, though we at Discovery Institute do not urge public schools to require instruction in intelligent design, we cannot understand how a state can prohibit a PRIVATE school from including such teaching.

(PC in Canada is in even worse than in the US, that’s for sure.)

Then there is the news story itself. The news writers and headline writer collude with the province’s censors and mislead their readers into thinking that evolution is not being taught at all in the evangelical schools. Only late in the story does the truth come out. The real story is that the province is persecuting people for no good reason whatever and misrepresenting what the schools are doing.

As for sex education, what business of the state is it what a church school teaches or doesn’t teach on moral issues?

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 8:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The NCSE's Nicholas Matzke wrote last summer, "We don’t need the anti-creationists going and mixing their views on religion into their science. In fact, this is probably the surest path to disaster politically and in the courts. Anyone who wants to do this has the right to do it, but it ain’t helpful or particularly smart." Richard Dawkins apparently didn't get Nick's memo. In a recent BBC News interview, Dawkins said that “America is ready for an attack on religion. ... Britain always has been." He explained that he wrote his book The God Delusion to convince “vaguely religious people” that “[t]he religion of their upbringing is probably nonsense” and explained to viewers that “the living world … comes about by Darwinian evolution, by natural selection.”

On Monday, Dawkins wrote in The Huffington Post that "the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis" but alleges that "no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared." Keep in mind that Dawkins is Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and that Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell's widely used textbook, Biology, praised Dawkins for his ability to "engag[e] and challeng[e] nonscientists" (5th ed., pg. 412). Meanwhile, many others are talkin' about Dawkins:

In her Kitzmiller account, Barbara Forrest writes that leading ID proponents have "blustering cowardice ... who must capture support with brazen deceit and sarcastic punditry." Ironically, she later attacks Discovery Institute's critique of the Kitzmiller ruling, claiming it had "nastiness." In response to her inconsistent argument, Dr. Forrest would likely respond that her attacks are justified based upon the evidence she presents in her article. (I’m not conceding that her ad hominem attacks are justified, I’m just describing how she would respond.) Yet our simple claim that Judge Jones got some important facts wrong in the ruling is not just an assertion we’ve invented because we have something against Judge Jones. It’s based upon careful analysis of the facts as they were stated in the opinion. I've already discussed one example in this series responding to Barbara Forrest. This post will discuss the misrepresentation that ID “has not generated peer-reviewed publications” (page 64 of online version) by looking at two examples of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers that were discussed at trial.

Stephen C. Meyer's Paper
Dr. Forrest testified that she “did a key word and subject searches for peer reviewed articles in science journals using intelligent design as a biological theory” and “found nothing.” (Day 6 pm testimony, pgs. 32-33) Perhaps that's true, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the complete story because she later conceded that there were peer-reviewed papers arguing for intelligent design--namely, Stephen Meyer's article. (For a good discussion of the Darwinist response to Meyer's paper, see "The Stricture of Scientific Resolutions" by Mark Hartwig.) But she dismissed Stephen Meyer’s peer-reviewed paper in Proceedings for the Biological Society of Washington because it supposedly "contains no new data" and it's a "review essay.”

Judge Jones was actually presented with a number of papers which support intelligent design during the trial. Discovery Institute submitted an amicus brief which was accepted by Judge Jones listing some peer-reviewed papers, including Meyer's. But the evidence was also directly in the testimonial record, through the testimony of Scott Minnich, who testified about various pro-ID peer-reviewed papers:

I think yesterday there was, as I mentioned, there were around, between, I don't know, seven and ten. I don't have the specific ones. But Dr. Axe published one or two papers in the journal Biological Chemistry that were specifically addressing concepts within intelligent design. Mike Behe had one. Steve Meyer has had one. So, you know, I think the argument that you're not publishing in peer reviewed literature was valid. Now there are a couple out there. How many do we have to publish before it is in the literature and being evaluated? I mean, do we have to have 25? 50? I mean, give me a number.

(Minnich Testimony, Day 21, AM, pg. 34)

If Judge Jones knew about Meyer's peer-reviewed pro-ID article, why did he make absolutely no mention of the paper in the ruling, but instead made explicit findings which implied it doesn't exist? Is it because it was a "review essay" as Forrest says? Judge Jones accepted a review article offered by the plaintiffs entitled "The Origin of New Genes: Glimpses From the Young and Old" (by Manyuan Long, et al., Nature Reviews Genetics (4):865-875 (Nov., 2003)),” claiming that it provided peer-reviewed evidence for “the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes." (page 86 of online version) Either Judge Jones applied a double-standard to pro-ID vs. pro-evolution papers as regards peer-review, or he wrongly ignored Meyer's paper.

Michael Behe and David Snoke's Protein Science Paper
Michael Behe also testified about his peer-reviewed article with David Snoke in Protein Science. At least here Judge Jones did not ignore this paper completely, but he dismissed it as irrelevant in a footnote because he said it “does not mention either irreducible complexity or ID.” (page 88 of online version)

Yet Behe and Snoke's paper clearly does bear on the topic of the origin of irreducible complexity in protein-protein interactions. Again, a double-standard comes into play: Judge Jones claimed that the aforementioned review paper entitled "The Origin of New Genes: Glimpses From the Young and Old" accounted for “the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes” in a peer-reviewed scientific publication. Yet the body of Long et al.'s review article does not even contain the word “information,” much less the phrase “new genetic information.” The word “information” appears once in the entire article--in the title of reference #103.

The lack of the phrases "irreducible complexity" or "ID" in Behe's paper does not mean the peer-reviewed paper does not clearly support ID arguments, just like the lack of the phrase "new genetic information" or the word "information" in Long et al.'s review paper does not mean it doesn't try to address how new genetic information evolves. Once again, it seems Judge Jones applied a double-standard to pro-evolution vs. pro-ID papers as regards peer-review, and he misstated the facts on this matter.

[This post was edited immediately after posting for clarity.]

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:04 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

* The estimable cultural commentator Joseph Epstein writes in The Wall Street Journal Thursday about those "Ugly Thorny Things" called facts that have a way of undercutting "velvety and suave" things called ideas. The piece (by subscription only here) makes a fascinating observation about the way that big ideas decay in the presence of factual reality.

"Not only have the past 50 or so years been largely bereft of grand ideas, but much of the best intellectual work of the period has been devoted to eliminating the major ideas, or idea system, of the previous 100 years or so: notably Marxism and Freudianism, with Darwinism perhaps next to tumble."

* The New Republic (October 23 edition) engages New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel ("The Fear of Religion") to review Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, and his effort is both comprehensive and incisive. (link here, but by subscription only.)

Examining the inevitable clash of chance and necessity with design, Nagel describes the “overwhelming improbability of (an original self-replicating molecule)...coming into existence by chance, simply through the laws of physics...Dawkins (he goes on) recognizes the problem, but his response to it is pure hand-waving.”

Darwinism and Dawkins reach a theoretical as well as factual dead end on origins. “That is why the argument from design is still alive, and why scientists who find the conclusion of that argument unacceptable feel there must be a purely physical explanation of why the origin of life is not as physically improbable as it seems.” Multiverse theories are merely an unpersuasive and “desperate device to avoid the demand for a real explanation.”

He agrees with Dawkins that “the issue of design versus purely physical causation is a scientific question.” (We agree with them both on that. Would someone please tell Judge Jones and the ACLU?) But, paradoxically, to try to win the debate on that question, Dawkins and other neo-Darwinists are reduced to the philosophical “reductionist project” that Nagel says “tries to reclaim some of the originally excluded aspects of the world, by analyzing them in physical—that is, behavioral or neurophysiological—terms; but it denies reality to what cannot be so reduced. I believe the project is doomed—that conscious experience, thought, value, and so forth are not illusions, even though they cannot be identified with physical facts...”

Dawkins also would yoke all religion to the sins of the kind of fanatics who attacked on 9/11. Of course, fanatical religionists are bad, Nagel notes, but that is hardly an argument against design. “Blind faith and dogma are dangerous; the view that we can make ultimate sense of the world only by understanding it as the expression of mind or purpose is not,” he concludes.

The New Republic will be assaulted by the Darwinist thought enforcers for even running this essay. Which sorta makes the point about desperation.

* Jean Parietti in the new issue of The Catholic Northwest Progress writes a sound, straightforward article about ID and Darwinism and the real agenda of Discovery Institute. She shows that it can be done. Ms Parietti even provides a resource list.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 11:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The following was posted on the Cornell IDEA Club Blog at Reply From the New Scientist:

October 6, 2006

Hello Hannah and thank you for your message.

We are aware of this incident and have addressed the matter internally.

Celeste Biever is a staff reporter at New Scientist who covers, among other specialties, stories related to the intersection of science and culture on the topic of evolutionary biology. The exchange in question is unique in Celeste’s history with us and not representative of New Scientist reporting. We are not currently pursuing a story about your group and do not intend to publish any part of the communication Celeste initiated with you.

I hope this will address any concerns you may have.

Best regards,

Ivan Semeniuk

Posted by Casey Luskin at 5:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

From blogger Amy Welborn:

Your readers may be interested in the following… David Quinn, a well known Catholic commentator and journalist here in Ireland debated Richard Dawkins on Irish radio last week on the reasonableness of religious belief. Dawkins is a formidable debater, but David Quinn absolutely embarrassed him – he had Dawkins on the ropes from the outset. It is a rare moment when Dawkins is left speechless and is well worth listening to.

The debate can be downloaded by going here.... The debate starts at 7min 57 seconds into the programme and lasts for about 18 minutes.

I don’t think Dawkins was absolutely embarrassed. But he certainly doesn’t fare well. Quinn hammered him on both the existence of free will (which he claims not to be interested in) and on his hypocrisy of blaming religiously motivated people for the evil they commit but not irreligiously motivated people.

Personally I think Quinn concedes too much about the Darwinian mechanism’s supposed abilities when he decided to hold the line at the origin of matter. This allows Dawkins to say that he has a materialistic explanation for life and someday soon scientists will have a materialistic explanation for the origin of matter itself.

If Quinn had gotten into the evidence, perhaps he could have weakened Dawkins’s promissory-note-argument about the origin of matter by pointing out that Dawkins’s materialistic explanation of life simply does not hold water. And if Dawkins cannot explain life, what reason is there to trust him on the origin of matter itself?

Posted by Logan Gage at 4:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This week on Think Tank: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Part Two
Last week, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg aired the first of two episodes looking at what intelligent design theory is and how it differs from the standard Darwinian explanation for the complexity and diversity of life and the universe. Host Ben Wattenberg was joined by Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and co-editor of "Darwinism, Design and Public Education," and Dr. Michael Ruse, Director of the Program in the Philosophy of the History of Science at Florida State University and author of numerous books including "Darwinism and Design." If you missed the program, you canread the transcript. And, be sure not to miss part 2, airing this weekend on PBS stations across the country.

Here are the air times in some major markets from around the country. If your location is not listed here, go here for other air times.

Washington, DC: WETA Ch. 26, Sunday, 10 AM
Washington, DC: WHUT Ch 32, Saturday, 9:30 AM
New York, NY: WNET, Ch. 13, Saturday, 9 AM
Chicago, IL: WYCC, Ch. 20, Monday, 4:30 PM
Los Angeles, CA: KCET, Ch. 28, Saturday, 12:30 PM
Sacramento, CA: KVIE2, Ch. 190, Sunday, 5 PM
San Francisco, CA: KCSM, Friday, 5 PM
Denver, CO KBDI, Ch. 12, Sunday, 10 AM
Norfolk, VA: WHRO, Ch. 15, Sunday, 1 PM
Seattle, WA: KCTS, Ch. 9, Tuesday, 5 AM
Seattle, WA: KYVE, Ch. 47, Tuesday, 5 AM
Dayton, OH: WPTD, Ch. 14, Sunday, 6 AM
Tucson, AZ: KUAT, Ch. 6, Sunday, 5 PM
Moline, IL: WQPT, Ch. 24, Thursday 10:30 PM
Kansas City, MO: KCPT, Ch. 4, Sunday, 4 PM
Wichita, KS: KPTS, Ch. 8, Sunday, 7 PM
Oklahoma City, OK: OETA, Ch. 11, Sunday, 6:30 PM
Dallas, TX: KERA, Ch. 13, Friday, 1 AM

Be sure to check out Ben Wattenberg’s new blog at www.wattenblog.blogspot.com, where you can respond and contribute to the discussions behind the show. For more information on Think Tank, check out the program’s website at http://www.pbs.org/thinktank. And if you'd like to order a copy of this episode, email thinktank@pbs.org.

If you enjoy the Think Tank set-to, be sure to watch the recent Meyer debate with University of Washington's Peter Ward, hosted by the Seattle Times. Click here to watch, or click here to listen.

And, do send feedback to the producers. If you want to keep quality programs on the air you need to let them know you're watching, and congratulate them on tackling such an important issue. The more feedback they get, the more likely it is they will continue to address this topic.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Are leading Darwinists succeeding in promoting a religion-friendly image? Prominent evolutionists have used warfare imagery to call upon people to “fight” against intelligent design and other forms of evolution-skepticism, including various religions. In a recent article about a talk on The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins told a crowd in Kansas, “I know you here are in the front-line trench against powerful forces of darkness… Fight the good fight” against the “the ‘rotten logic’ of intelligent design and creationism,” which he claims argue the religious viewpoint that “God did it.” (As noted yesterday, the article is factually challenged, as it repeatedly incorrectly calls Dawkins a "physicist," when he is actually a zoologist and evolutionary biologist.)

In a similar fashion, Gerald Weissmann, writing in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (“FASEB”) Journal where he is editor-in-chief, wrote “The facts of evolution: fighting the Endarkenment,” where he argues that “much of society at large is beating a hasty retreat to the dark ages” because “superstition threatens our schools and Bible-thumpers preach that Darwin got it wrong.” Weissman expresses dismay that “[a] third of Americans believe that the Judeo-Christian Bible is the word of God to be taken literally, word for word.” Using tactics reminiscient of a general trying to inspire his forces, he envisions winning a war against “zealots of all stripes” through his call that “[e]xperimental science is our defense—perhaps our best defense—against humbug and the Endarkenment.”

Finally, Michael Ruse, who views intelligent design as a version of creationist religious beliefs, explained in Playboy Magazine that intelligent design and Biblical literalism must be fought because they are “evil” and denigrate “great religion”:

I think intelligent-design theory and its companions are nasty, cramping, soul-destroying reversions to the more unfortunate aspects of 19th century America. Although I am not a Christian, I look on these ideas as putrid scabs on the body of a great religion. … But if you are going to fight moral evil—and creationism in its various forms is a moral evil—you need to understand what you are fighting and why.

Ruse goes on to say that “[t]raditional Christians hate biblical literalism as much as atheists do—more, in fact, because it sullies their religion” and that non-religious evolutionists should unite with Christian theistic evolutionists against such sects because “in fighting Hitler [Churchill and Roosevelt] realized they had to work with the Soviet Union. Evolutionists of all kinds must likewise work together to fight creationism.”

Somehow I doubt that most readers of Playboy needed to be convinced by Ruse's militant call to action against both the scientific theory of intelligent design, and various types of religious viewpoints.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:23 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Can I get a fact-check on this paper? It looks like the Lawrence Journal-World has decided to forgo any quality control in their newsroom. This latest piece mistakenly identifies zoologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins as a physicist, a blunder that made its way into the very headline. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that Albert Einstein was the greatest chemist of the last century.

While laughable, this latest gaffe illustrates a serious problem. Lawrence Journal-World has been a mouthpiece for the Darwinists, exposing their bias as they editorialize in their news articles on evolution and intelligent design. While many Kansans trust the Journal-World to keep them informed, this shoddy journalism proves what we've known for some time: they just can't get their science straight.

Posted by Anika Smith at 3:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Travis McSherley, an editor at Breakpoint online, has an insightful author interview with CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt, co-author of A Meaningful World. Last week, Breakpoint highlighted the importance of A Meaningful World with back to back commentaries on the book (here and here).

McSherley writes:

As Chuck Colson and Mark Earley have pointed out in BreakPoint commentaries on the book, this is not the typical defense of the intelligent design theory. One finds it somewhat overwhelming to go from an in-depth analysis of the writing style of Shakespeare to a discussion of the atomic makeup of the elements. And it is a bold venture to draw from so many widely varying sources in science and culture in order to draw a picture, as it were, of a universe that is finely tuned and awe-inspiring, and perhaps observed only by a few billion sentient life forms on one isolated planet.

The conclusion, however, is fairly simple: order, function, and consistency all represent evidence of purpose. Naturalism demands that purpose and meaning must, at root, be stripped away. But the human heart clamors for something deeper, while human experience—even in art and science—testifies to a world not simply enslaved to the whims of chance.

Read the full interview here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The American Museum of Natural History's propagandistic "Darwin" exhibit has gone on the road. It is now on display in Philadelphia, and in 2008 it will be shown in Japan. As I reported last year, this biased exhibit rewrites the history of Social Darwinism, as well as covering up the museum's own key role in the eugenics crusade.

Posted by John West at 8:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have responded to Wesley Elsberry's latest character attack upon me offsite, here.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The CATO Institute event with Michael Shermer and our own Senior Fellow, Jonathan Wells, is now available online. Here are a few notes.

Dr. Shermer covered mostly philosophical arguments for Darwinism and against ID—the one exception being the co-option argument which Mike Behe and others have responded to repeatedly. I will only note here that critics continue to have it both ways: they say ID is not science, yet they also claim to have scientific objections to it. Or similarly, many say “ID is not testable or falsifiable…oh, and by the way, we’ve already tested it and shown it to be false.”

Second, judging from Dr. Shermer’s remarks yesterday, I do not believe that he really takes neo-Darwinism seriously in at least one key respect. What I mean is this: he said that nature “does look designed” but then went on to say that in fact it is designed—by evolution, that is. Okay fine. This is clever enough, and if he is saying that things appear designed but are in reality not designed, then this is nothing new. Richard Dawkins and others have said as much. But then Shermer goes on to say “eyes are designed to see” and “the wing is designed to fly” but in a bottom-up manner. He does not seem, however, to notice the conflict here. Natural selection has no foresight. It cannot plan ahead. Thus, if the magical powers of natural selection really did build the amazing vertebrate eye or a bird’s wing, then the eye is not designed for seeing, and the wing is not designed for flying. Rather, they are both frozen accidents. Natural selection preserved a genetic accident. But Shermer wants to keep the teleological language when all he can truly say is that eyes see and wings help an organism fly. But by slight of hand he personifies “evolution,” really a process of differential death and reproduction, and says these were “designed, as it were, by evolution.” This may not at first seem very important, but I believe this clarification helps to underscore the radical claim of Darwinism. Something as amazingly complex as the vertebrate eye, according to Darwinism, was never really intended to see.

Third, Shermer thinks “a really important point” in this debate is the question of who designed the designer. Forgive me if I think this is a bit sophomoric. (I'm ashamed to admit that I was briefly impressed with this argument from Bertrand Russell when I was in high school.) As Dr. Wells noted in the question period, everyone comes to a point where they must posit something eternal. Theists claim it is God; and materialists like Shermer claim it is matter. (For more, see Jay Richards’s response to this argument here.)

But the more important point to notice is that Shermer claims that we “must” search until we find a bottom-up material explanation for everything. Now Dr. Shermer is certainly entitled to his view that there in fact is such an explanation for everything, but what does this amount to? This amounts to defining science as philosophical materialism. What if the ancient Greek philosophers were right, and there is not a bottom up explanation for some features of the natural world? And what if there is empirical evidence of this, as ID scientists claim? Should we deny such evidence because the materialist presupposition says we must keep searching for a mindless cause for a given phenomenon? Or should we follow the evidence, even if it points to an intelligent cause?

When Dr. Wells spoke, he mainly focused on the science Shermer employs as evidence for Darwinism in Why Darwin Matters. Shermer rounds up the usual suspects: the shoddy whale transition, the supposed backward-wiring of the vertebrate eye, and the extrapolation from micro- to macro-evolution. Wells disputed them all. For more, see his new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism & Intelligent Design.

Watch and decide for yourself.

Many thanks to David Boaz of CATO for being a good moderator and a gracious host.

Posted by Logan Gage at 8:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, longtime ID supporter Chuck Colson gave the first of two BreakPoint radio commentaries praising A Meaningful World by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt. While Mr. Colson is familiar with many of the arguments for design, he was quick to note that A Meaningful World is

about so much more than the narrow concept that many people have of “intelligent design.” Their book’s subtitle helps explain their idea: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature. It’s an original and utterly fascinating approach to the subject.

The authors ask that, if the world was born out of chance, how is it that nature acts according to rational laws? If we’re all here because of random and meaningless events, it doesn’t make sense that, one, there are mathematical and scientific laws that govern our world, and, two, that our efforts could discover what those laws are. We would be fumbling in the darkness of randomness, looking for explanations that didn’t even exist.

But the universe is full of patterns—patterns that extend to the smallest particles of an atom, that can be seen in the orderliness of the periodic table of elements. Furthermore, they’re patterns that the human mind could discover and comprehend. How does random chance explain all that?

Posted by Anika Smith at 10:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwinists have apparently killed the proposed framework for teaching controversial issues in Ohio--at least for now.

According to a news article in the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio Board of Education voted 14-3 to scrap further consideration of the proposal by one of its subcommittees. Check out my post from earlier this week if you want to know more. Chalk up another pyrrhic victory for the Darwin lobby. Darwinists seem oblivious to the fact that every time they try to censor open discussion on Darwinism (and now on other issues as well), they expose for all to see the bankruptcy of their position. If Darwinists really believed that the evidence for Darwin's theory is overwhelming, they wouldn't act so petrified every time someone suggests that students and teachers ought to be able to discuss different scientific views. Darwinists are apparently so insecure that they now believe the only way to preserve their theory is through one-sided indoctrination enforced by the state. We've come a long way from John Scopes, baby.

Posted by John West at 1:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is an update to my earlier post about the "undercover" activities of New Scientist writer Celeste Biever. According to the blogsite of the Cornell University IDEA Club,

The New Scientist has responded to our letter, characterizing the event as unique in Biever’s history and unrepresentative of New Scientist reporting.

Notably, unlike some internet Darwinists, the New Scientist did not try to defend its writer's actions.

Posted by John West at 1:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This week, seismologists were met with the unfortunate news that North Korea probably tested a nuclear weapon. The task of seismologists in the free world has been to confirm whether the North Korean government was truthful when they claimed they tested a nuke. Whether they realize it or not, scientists currently working to verify if North Korea has conducted a nuclear test are actually engaging in an exercise in intelligent design. They are trying to distinguish between naturally caused seismic energy and seismic energy which was artificially produced by an explosion caused by intelligence. Such studies are possible because explosions, particularly large ones like nuclear blasts, produce a distinctly different seismic signature from natural earthquakes:

Seismic sensors can register the strength and pattern of an explosion, and a nuclear blast gives off a clear signature -- a graph of peaks and curves -- that differentiates it from other kinds of shocks, according to Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a professor of physics at Salzburg University.

(Verifying Nuclear Test Blasts FAQ, Associated Press, in the Washington Post, Monday, October 9, 2006)

In short, nuclear explosions produce strong compressionary waves (called p-waves) with energy that travels like compressions along a slinky, and weak shear waves (called s-waves) with energy that moves up and down, like the motion created when one snaps one end of a rope. Naturally occurring earthquakes produce the opposite signature: stronger s-wave energy but weaker p-waves. (See Seismic detectives go underground or Monitoring Clandestine Nuclear Tests for good discussions.) These distinct signatures allow for design inferences to be made, or rejected:

(Linked from "Monitoring Clandestine Nuclear Tests" at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Making such design inferences can require much scientific analysis. For example, "if an underground blast is smaller than one kiloton, it's difficult to distinguish between the natural sounds of the earth and an actual explosion," and "it takes a long time to interpret data" (see Verifying Nuclear Test Blasts FAQ).

But difficulties in detecting intelligent causation in seismic energy don't prevent scientists from trying to detect, or reject design. When they do verify a nuclear explosion, they have made a design inference. One scientist stated in the overtly anti-ID Seed Magazine that the recent North Korean seismic event was not a natural event, but was designed: "The peculiarity of the seismic waves indicated there was an artificial explosion, not a natural earthquake."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Kudos to Richard Gallagher & Alison McCook from The Scientist for being gutsy enough to do an even-handed piece on President Bush’s record on science, and for asking the question in Gallagher’s editorial, “Is Bush Science’s Nemesis?” in more than the conventional rhetorical fashion. McCook’s piece “Sizing Up Bush on Science" answers with a resounding “no,” or at least no more than past presidents, including Bill Clinton.

As McCook notes:

Part of what may be fueling many scientists’ distress over the Bush administrations attitude to science is that many scientist don’t understand that politicians have to consider more than just science, and take advice from more than just scientists. This is how policy works, notes [Jane] Lubchenco, now at Oregon State University. “Some scientists seem to imply that ‘if science says X, then the policy should follow blindly.’ And I don’t think that’s true,” she says. Scientists often act “as if the science automatically tells you what you should do, which it doesn’t,” and making a decision that’s not responsive to scientific input doesn’t necessarily mean a politician is “anti-science”, notes [Dan]Sarewitz [director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University].”

Even Bill Clinton-now admired by many scientists for overseeing the doubling of the NIH budget, among other measures-appeared to ignore science for his own political gain. In 1997, the EPA’s science advisory board recommended that Congress immediately consider ways to reduce emissions of mercury because of its effect on health and the environment. The Clinton administration delayed release of a scientific report about the dangers of mercury for more than a year, and didn’t issue recommendations to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants (the largest source) until three years later, the day after then-vice president Al Gore conceded the 2000 election to current president George W. Bush…Clinton also publicly denounced the creation of embryos for research.

The decision of how to handle climate change is about more than just science, given that politicians have to weigh many competing interests, Lubchenco adds….The delay in decision making about climate change “doesn’t really have anything to do with debates over science, but had to do with conflicts over values and interests,” says Sarewitz.

But beyond maintaining status quo with the past, McCook notes that Bush has done many good things for science. Citing an analysis from the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005 that funding for biomedical research doubled between 1994 and 2003, McCook notes that private sector R&D funding reached its highest levels of close to $40 billion in 2005, encouraged partly by the administration’s “R&D tax credit that lets companies write off a portion of their R&D expenses.” What’s more, McCook gives the administration credit for the Critical Paths Initiative at the FDA, which aims at better predicting “which research will most likely yield drugs and devices,” noting that close to half of investigated products fail in late-stage trials, taking money that could otherwise be used for research and increasing the cost of development.

Perhaps one of the best insights from McCook’s article is that many in the life sciences community, not used to high levels of scrutiny during the years of massive NIH funding increases, are now chafing because they are experiencing what scientists in other fields have experienced all along. As Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, noted in McCook’s article, “So far, most of [biologists’] experience with Congress has been showing up and asking for money and going home.” Daniel Kevles, science historian at Yale University, says in McCook’s article, that politicians now spend “more time debating issues related to climate science, biodiversity, reproduction, and molecular biology. So for biologists, it’s natural to wholeheartedly believe that politics is interfering more in research, because it’s something they largely have not encountered for years.” Couple this with the NIH budget transition from flush to flat and the increase in biologists seeking positions and the perception is that they are somehow under assault and the situation seems dire, but this is merely a matter of adjustment that other fields have had to accommodate. As Kevles, put it “there’s nothing written in the laws of man or nature that says funding appropriations have to go up in proportion to the demand.” Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the AAAS, was more blunt saying that, “[m]any other disciplines have a hard time sympathizing about [an NIH budget of $28 billion] not being enough.”

Some political rancor is brought on by scientists own actions. Citing an example from the 2004 election of “Scientists and Engineers for Change” who endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry, Pielke said, “When scientists publicly align themselves with Democrats, some Republicans may suspect scientists of having an agenda.”

Observing that politicians have to balance competing interests McCook acknowledges that there is a moral dimension to many of the debates involving science. As my colleague Wesley Smith has noted with regards to embryonic stem cell research, while science can answer questions about capabilities, it cannot answer questions about the morality of an action. To do so is to commit the genetic fallacy of deriving an “ought” from an “is”. McCook put it this way:

Similarly, a scientific argument about the promise of stem cell research may mean very little to someone who is morally opposed to using embryos for research, says Sarewitz. Bush isn’t saying science is wrong about the promise of stem cells; in limiting federal funding for stem cell research to projects that won’t destroy embryos, he’s making a decision based on his own view of morality, not on the science. And, he is the first president to allocate federal funding for stem cell research.

In closing, McCook gives a historical perspective, noting that in the late 19th century “some politicians (including southern Democrats) argued that funding of basic science that had no direct benefit to the nation’s farmers was a misuse of federal dollars and best left in the hands of private funders.” Bush has gone well beyond this minimalist approach to funding, but this highlights the erroneous assumption that all science rides on the wheels of federal funding and thereby the back of the federal taxpayers. Bush’s approach to science has been to free up industry to make advances and not burden the taxpayer with the cost. Contrary to what Chris Mooney says in The Republican War on Science, Daniel Kevles, science historian at Yale University, says in McCook’s article that “[a]nyone who believes that political interference with American science is worse now than ever before has ‘some degree of historical ignorance.’” So I would like to take this opportunity to give Chris Mooney the Historical Ignorance of Science Award for his particularly near-sighted and selective reading of history and recommend Pamela Winnick’s book A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion to see how science has been co-opted and abused by the Left as well.

Posted by Keith Pennock at 1:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This week the Ohio State Board of Education may consider the adoption of a proposed “Framework for Teaching Controversial Issues.” Darwinists are complaining--predictably--that the framework represents another nefarious plot “to orchestrate a religiously motivated attack on the theory of evolution.”

But the Darwinists’ shrill rhetoric has a lot more to do with their own hypocrisy and paranoia than it does with any legitimate fears.

When the Ohio Board of Education adopted its critical analysis of evolution benchmark in 2002, and again when it adopted a model lesson plan to support the benchmark in 2004, many Darwinists complained that evolution was being unfairly singled out. Critical analysis was OK, they said, but it should apply to every issue, not just evolution.

Of course, the reason evolution was singled out was that it happens to be one of the controversial issues that is taught the most dogmatically.

Be that as it may, after Darwinists succeeded in getting the Ohio Board to repeal its critical analysis benchmark and model lesson plan last February, some board members decided to call the Darwinists’ bluff and develop a framework for teaching controversial issues across the curriculum. The result was the development of the new “Framework.”

It's important to understand that the “Framework” does not compel teachers to do anything. It does not tell them to teach any particular issue, and it does not require them to use any particular curriculum. It does try to offer suggestions for how teachers can constructively deal with polarizing issues in the classroom.

For example, teachers are encouraged to:

Create a classroom climate that is conducive to discussion and disagreement, which means that the rules of discourse need to be established early and followed by everyone, especially the instructor.

Wow, that really sounds like a sinister strategy for imposing theocracy, doesn’t it? Urging teachers to “create a classroom climate that is conducive to discussion and disagreement” is one step away from the Inquisition!

But it gets worse. The framework also encourages students to

•Always listen carefully, with an open mind, to the contributions of others.

•Ask for clarification when you don’t understand a point someone has made.

•If you challenge others’ idea, do so with factual evidence and appropriate logic.

•Always critique ideas or positions, not people.

I encourage you to read the entire “Framework.” See for yourself whether you agree with “Ohio Citizens for Science” that its contents constitute “denigrating debate tools based on political propaganda and ill-informed by evidence.”

After you read the “Framework,” you might ask yourself the following question: Who is the real danger here to democracy and the First Amendment? The Ohio Board of Education... or Darwinian fundamentalists who won’t be happy until they stamp out any public expression of criticism of Darwinian dogma, no matter how mild?

Posted by John West at 12:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In her Kitzmiller account, Barbara Forrest leaves out information about the scientific research supporting ID, claiming "creationists are executing every phase except producing scientific data to support ID." Ignoring her usage of the "creationist" label, Dr. Forrest's argument mimics that of Judge Jones. Both Dr. Forrest and Judge Jones ignored the testimony provided in the courtroom during the Kitzmiller trial by Scott Minnich about his own experiments which demonstrate the irreducible complexity of the flagellum. Amazingly, Judge Jones then wrote that "ID has not been the subject of testing or research" (pg. 64 of online version).

The best way to refute Judge Jones / Barbara Forrest's claim is to let the reader see the testimony of Scott Minnich. Minnich is a pro-ID microbiologist who testified as follows on the next-to-last-day of the trial about his own research and experimentation into the irreducibly complex nature of the bacterial flagellum:

Q. Do you know employ principles and concepts from intelligent design in your work?

A. I do.

Q. And I'd like for you to explain that further. I know you're prepared several slides to do that.

[...]

A. Sure. All right. I work on the bacterial flagellum, understanding the function of the bacterial flagellum for example by exposing cells to mutagenic compounds or agents, and then scoring for cells that have attenuated or lost motility. This is our phenotype. The cells can swim or they can't. We mutagenize the cells, if we hit a gene that's involved in function of the flagellum, they can't swim, which is a scorable phenotype that we use. Reverse engineering is then employed to identify all these genes. We couple this with biochemistry to essentially rebuild the structure and understand what the function of each individual part is. Summary, it is the process more akin to design that propelled biology from a mere descriptive science to an experimental science in terms of employing these techniques.

[...]

So it was inoculated right here, and over about twelve hours it's radiated out from that point of inoculant. Here is this same derived from that same parental clone, but we have a transposon, a jumping gene inserted into a rod protein, part of the drive shaft for the flagellum. It can't swim. It's stuck, all right? This one is a mutation in the U joint. Same phenotype. So we collect cells that have been mutagenized, we stick them in soft auger, we can screen a couple of thousand very easily with a few undergraduates, you know, in a day and look for whether or not they can swim.

[...]

We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can't swim. Now, to confirm that that's the only part that we've affected, you know, is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild type and reintroduce it by mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy of the gene. One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, put a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition the system is irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.

(Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added)

During this testimony, Scott Minnich showed slides in the courtroom documenting his own research experiments, which performed knockout experiments upon the flagellum, and found that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Minnich produced relevant experimental data which confirmed a prediction made by intelligent design, and he used this research to support intelligent design in the courtroom. Yet Dr. Forrest completely ignored this testimony, as did Judge Jones, who did not even mention it in the Kitzmiller ruling. Given the testimony of an expert witnesses's own personal experiments which was directly presented before him, it is incredible that Judge Jones could write "ID has not been the subject of testing or research."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Friday's Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal had a great piece: "Under the Microscope: When science and politics become worlds in collision." Among other things, this piece noted that "This was a banner week for American science."

"The Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry all went to Americans." So despite what griping you may have heard at Darwinists' cocktail parties and university lectures about America falling behind in science because of the outright rejection of science by the masses--perhaps the dreaded red-staters--be calm. Apparently good science can flourish in a country that largely rejects neo-Darwinism. Crazy, huh?

Noting that both government and private funding aid America's dominance in the sciences, Opinion Journal wisely grasps the real wellspring of scientific accomplishment: "a society that encourages independent thinking, open debate and an unbounded spirit of inquiry."

One new group, Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA), picking up Chris Mooney's war cry

said that it is concerned about how the Bush administration has "compromised the integrity of science" with, among other things, its policies on global warming and stem-cell research and its (alleged) support for nonscientific "intelligent design" theories of evolution. SEA members have also cited a delay in making the "morning-after" pill, sold under the name Plan B, readily available over-the-counter as another example of a sustained government "assault" on science and scientists.

The more disturbing disingenuousness here involves the suggestion in some SEA statements that there is such a thing as absolute, accurate science--a body of facts--that is beyond further investigation. And that certain subjects or findings are not open to interpretation or discussion by nonscientists, including policy makers. In other words, when Americans raise questions about the moral implications of, say, stem-cell research, they are trumping science with "ideology." Presumably, those who disagree have no ideology or political agenda, only factual knowledge on a case that is closed.

We should not be surprised then that Mooney, SEA, and the like are also repeating the ironic hypocrisy of modernism: they exempt themselves from their own rules. When Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, and the rest of the logical positivist intelligencia said that all statements--if they are to be meaningful--must be either logically necessary or empirically verifiable, what they really meant was that all statements that their political and philosophical interlocutors make must be either logically necessary or empirically verifiable. (After all, the logical positivist criterion for meaning is itself neither logically necessary nor empirically verifiable.)

In the same way, what Mooney's crowd means is that when they approach science it is without human motivations and assumptions. The science just jumps out of the lab and into the journals. There are no intellectual gatekeepers here. (Heck, for all purposes, there are no scientists in this vision of science.) But, when their political and philosophical rivals approach science, it is with the vilest of human motives. Somehow Mooney's interlocutors' philosophical commitments seep into their interpretations of science while those of his crowd do not.

Perhaps when Darwinists realize their mistake they will start to clean house. Perhaps Barbara Forrest will write a history of Darwinists' personal motivations; and being a member of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, she can begin with her own. And just perhaps Mr. Mooney will write a book called "The War on Scientific Dissenters" where he drops the modernist worldview for a moment, questioning his own philosophical assumptions and how they underpin both his blithe acceptance of majoritarian science and his clear disdain for scientists with whom he disagrees.

(For more on SEA, see Wesley J. Smith's piece at The Daily Standard.)

Posted by Logan Gage at 7:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday we reported how New Scientist writer Celeste Biever has used a fake identity to contact people for a story on intelligent design (ID). (As documented here, Biever falsely identified herself as "a student at Cornell" named "Maria" to the Cornell IDEA Club.) Apart from her latest tactics, Biever has a history of extremely inaccurate and biased reporting when it comes to the issues of evolution and intelligent design:

(1) Kansas Science Standards. In an article that reads like a Kansas Citizens for Science press release, Biever falsely claimed that the 2006 Kansas State Primary elections "ousted two radical conservative school board members" and reported that the current board "opposes the teaching of evolution." Ignoring the "radical conservative" invective, there are two glaring factual errors here. First, only one incumbent lost: Connie Morris. The other seat to which Biever refers was left open by Iris Van Meter, who chose not to run for re-election. Second, current board members do not "oppose the teaching of evolution." Kansas's science standards teach students more about evolution, not less: arguments in favor for evolution are presented, but scientific arguments against evolution are also included. Biever further claimed that the standards define science so as to "include supernatural causes" and "change the definition of evolution to imply that evolution conflicts with belief in God." These claims are flatly false, as explained here.

(2) ID and Peer-Review. Biever asserts that, "Only one paper that supports ID has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the phrases 'intelligent design' and 'irreducible complexity' had to be removed before the paper was accepted." Again, that's false. Stephen C. Meyer's 2004 peer-reviewed paper in a mainstream biology journal explicitly argues that "intelligent design... [is] the most causally adequate explanation for the origin of the complex specified information required to build the Cambrian animals." Moreover, a peer-reviewed article in Annual Review of Genetics asks, "to what extent can any of the TE-incited rearrangements contribute to the origin of novel genes and new gene reaction chains as well as the genesis of irreducibly complex structures?"

(3) Misrepresenting the Relationship between Michael Behe's Religious and Scientific Views. Biever employs the fallacious and discriminatory Creationism’s Trojan Horse argument by writing "[Behe] admits, however, that he personally believes the designer is God." So what? Doesn't Behe have the right to his personal religious beliefs? The real issues are whether Behe's scientific beliefs are based on religious premises and whether he thinks one can prove the existence of God through empirical science alone. Behe is perfectly clear on both points: "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. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open." (emphasis added)

(4) Misdefining ID. Biever misdefines ID as a negative argument against evolution that appeals to the supernatural. She claims ID argues that "some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer" and that intelligent design is "the assertion that living things are the work of a supernatural 'designer'." Both claims are wrong, as explained here and here.

Systematic Anti-ID Bias and Prejudice from New Scientist
New Scientist as a whole has a history of bias and misrepresentation in its reporting on ID. As noted earlier on this blog, William Dembski reported how a New Scientist reporter misled Dembski to believe that the reporter wanted to "remedy" the fact that "the media coverage of intelligent design has mostly failed to present your case on scientific grounds." Yet this "news" article editorialized, supporting the claims of critics by asserting "Crucially, ID does not make testable predictions." (See "A sceptic's guide to intelligent design," New Scientist, by Bob Holmes and James Randerson, July 9, 2005.)

New Scientist's bias was also seen when it published an unrebutted editorial from anti-ID physicist Lawrence Krauss making ad hominem attacks that ID proponents lack "honesty" and "knowingly and willingly distort the truth." In order to combat ID, Krauss urges scientists to use "the weapons of sound bytes and emotional arguments" and to "deploy all the tools that are used to sell cars, [and] diet drugs...." Perhaps Celeste Biever has taken Krauss's misguided advice to heart.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

It turns out that Celeste Biever isn’t the only writer from New Scientist magazine to engage in impersonation. Last year, Bill Dembski reported on how he was contacted by the New Scientist’s Bob Holmes, who assured him:

It seems to me the media coverage of intelligent design has mostly failed to present your case on scientific grounds, and I’d like to remedy that.

Of course, Mr. Holmes had no intention of covering the scientific case for design, and his resultant article was little more than your standard anti-ID hack job. So it appears that New Scientist’s reporters are quite used to misrepresenting themselves with the people they interview, especially if the interviewees happen to be proponents of ID.

Posted by John West at 2:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Celeste Biever, a reporter for the viscerally anti-ID New Scientist magazine, seems to have been caught trying to impersonate a Cornell University student in order to ingratiate herself with pro-ID students there. The fascinating story is recounted here on the blog of Cornell's IDEA Club. Evolutionist Allen MacNeill, who teaches biology at Cornell, calls Biever's tactic "Pretty sleazy."

Biever and her editors apparently don't subscribe to the Code of Ethics issued by the Society of Professional Journalists, which clearly states:

Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public.

The New York Times imposes an even stricter standard on its employees:

Staff members should disclose their identity to people they cover (whether face to face or otherwise), though they need not always announce their status as journalists when seeking information normally available to the public. Staff members may not pose as police officers, lawyers, business people or anyone else when they are working as journalists. (emphasis added)

Since the students in question were happy to talk with reporters, there seems to be no justification for Ms. Biever's impersonation.

Posted by John West at 12:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Discovery Institute launched the Center for Science and Culture in 1996, recognizing the need for an institutional home for the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design. Even though the nascent theory of intelligent design was already being discussed by individual scientists around the world, it was not until the Center for Science and Culture was established that scientists were given the resources to research what has become the most exciting scientific story since the Big Bang.

The Center provides funding and support for scientists and scholars whose research challenges various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory and develops the scientific theory known as intelligent design. Saturday, October 21st, the Institute will host a ten year anniversary dinner to honor the achievements of the Center for Science & Culture, along with its Fellows and staff.

“In 1996, it was almost impossible to receive funding to do scientific research related to intelligent design,” says Bruce Chapman, President of Discovery Institute. “And, in addition to a lack of funding and resources, it was clear that scientists working on intelligent design were facing more and more persecution and harassment, making it difficult for them to conduct research.”

“So we started the Center, and now, just ten years later, we’ve put over $4 million directly into scientific and scholarly research on intelligent design and evolution.”

In the last ten years the CSC has:

• Supported research and writing by more than 50 scientists and scholars in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
  
• Supported scientists and philosophers of science working on specific journal articles, monographs, and books in such areas as biology, biochemistry, cosmology, physics, probability theory, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.
  
• Financially supported a number of scientific and academic conferences, including the International Symposium on the Origins of Animal Body Plans in Chengjiang, China, the Nature of Nature conference at Baylor University, and and intelligent design conference at Yale University.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

John Derbyshire continues to insult social conservatives (and skeptics of Darwinism both liberal and conservative) at NRO's The Corner. He uses the high rate of skepticism toward Darwinism in Turkey to demonstrate that intelligent design represents a dangerous attack on modern biology. Since it's a fallacious guilt by association argument, and one that flies in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, he leaves out key parts of his argument. Let's coax a few of his connecting links into the clear light of day.

Premise: People from Turkey aren't hip like people from England and Europe.
Premise: The Turkish people don't like Darwinism
Conclusion: Unhip people dislike Darwinism

Premise: Unhip people don't like Darwinism
Premise: Most Americans don't like Darwinism
Conclusion: Americans are in danger of being unhip.

Premise: Turkey doesn't like Darwinism
Premise: Turkey isn't very advanced technologically
Conclusion: Disliking Darwinism could plunge America into the Dark Ages.

Derbyshire has become an embarrassment to NRO because his arguments against intelligent design never grow, they never take into account the counterarguments of the design theorists, and they repeatedly employ precisely the sort of clubby, sneering, fallacious reasoning found in his newest piece on the subject.

Here are some facts worth grappling with if he intends to see his arguments mature.

1. The United States is the world's leader in science. United States citizens are also much more likely to doubt Darwin and have for decades. Is there a connection? Perhaps and perhaps not, but any Darwinist breezily suggesting a causal link between Darwin skepticism and scientific mediocrity needs to take these twin facts into account.

2. The five science Nobel Laureates this year were all Americans. They may all be card carrying neo-Darwinists who see no evidence for intelligent design anywhere in the biological realm. Nevertheless, apparently none of their research programs made any use of Darwinism. It's not surprising that the two physicists' research program didn't, but the other two prizes went to biochemistry researchers. If nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of Darwinism (as Darwinists are fond of telling us), why did these outstanding examples of experimental biology do so well without Darwinism?

As National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell has pointed out in the pages of The Scientist, the research program for every Nobel Prize winner in medicine since its inception made no use of Darwinian evolution. Darwinism provides an after-the-fact narrative gloss, but not a foundation for modern experimental biology. Skell's essay is here, and his response to the letters to the editor is here.

Berkeley trained biologist Jonathan Wells also considers Darwinism's relationship to modern experimental biology. In chapter seven of his excellent new book, he shows that when Darwinists claim responsibility for a breakthrough in experimental biology, they are claiming credit for someone else's work, and in many cases the discoverer even rejected Darwinism (e.g., Gregor Mendel, who pioneered modern genetics).

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 6:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today's BreakPoint commentary features Chuck Colson, a longtime friend of Discovery and an ID proponent, honoring his personal hero Phillip Johnson.

Colson asks, "How do you honor a man who started a groundbreaking movement that challenged the scientific establishment and is changing the way the world thinks about the origins of life?" He answers his question by introducing his readers to Darwin’s Nemesis, a collection of essays released earlier this year and highlighted here.

In recognizing the Godfather of Intelligent Design, Colson identifies the secret to ID's success:

There's no doubt that Phil's willingness to encourage the work of scientists and help create a network for them has allowed the movement to flourish. This book really shows just how far the intelligent design (ID) movement has progressed in a relatively short time, despite the best efforts of many Darwinists to shoot it down—because, as is becoming clearer and clearer, ID has the evidence on its side. (Emphasis added.)

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The current issue of Time features a cover story preaching evolution to the skeptical public and editorializing that humans and chimps are related. Though the cover graphic (below) shows half-human, half-chimp iconography, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks warns us against "exhibit[ing] the same old fallacies: ... humanizing apes and ape-ifying humans" (What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee, pg. xv [2002]). The cover-graphic commits both fallacies:

Common Descent, or Common Design?
The article predictably touts the 98-99% genetic similarity statistic between humans and chimps, assuming that the similarity demonstrates common ancestry. Can common ancestry explain shared functional genetic similarities between humans and chimps? Sure, of course. But so can common design: designers regularly re-use parts that work when making similar blueprints. The article ignores that shared functional similarities between two organisms do not rule out design in favor of descent.

Evolutionary Miracle Mutations
The article also discusses a "mutation" that could allow a loss in jaw-muscle strength, which evolutionary biologists hypothesize allowed the human braincase to grow larger. It's a nice just-so story, but paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood explained why simply identifying these genetic differences does not provide a compelling evolutionary explanation where natural selection would preserve the mutations:

"The mutation would have reduced the Darwinian fitness of those individuals … It only would've become fixed if it coincided with mutations that reduced tooth size, jaw size and increased brain size. What are the chances of that?"

(quoted in Joseph Verrengia, "Gene Mutation Said Linked to Evolution" Union Tribune, 03-24-04)

The article also makes the unbelievable claim that two mutations could account for "the emergence of all aspects of human speech, from a baby's first words to a Robin Williams monologue." Are they joking? If human speech evolved via Darwinian means, it would require slowly evolving a suite of highly complex characteristics lacking in animals—a feat some experts think is impossible:

Chomsky and some of his fiercest opponents agree on one thing: that a uniquely human language instinct seems to be incompatible with the modern Darwinian theory of evolution, in which complex biological systems arise by the gradual accumulation over generations of random genetic mutations that enhance reproductive success. ... Non-human communication systems are based on one of three designs [but] ... human language has a very different design. The discrete combinatorial system called "grammar" makes human language infinite (there is no limit to the number of complex words or sentences in a language), digital (this infinity is achieved by rearranging discrete elements in particular orders and combinations, not by varying some signal along a continuum like the mercury in a thermometer), and compositional (each of the infinite combinations has a different meaning predictable from the meanings of its parts and the rules and principles arranging them).

(Pinker, S., Chapter 11 of The Language Instinct (1994).)

While Pinker believes that human language can be explained by Darwinism, human speech and language is exceedingly complex compared to animal language. Claiming it could evolve in two mutations is unbelievable.

Functional Non-Coding DNA: The Evolutionists' New Best Friend?
Ironically, the article admits that stark differences between humans and chimps may stem from functional non-coding DNA, which regulates protein production. In an elegant analogy, Owen Lovejoy explains that the 98-99% similarity in coding-regions of DNA ("bricks") may be irrelevant because it's "like having the blueprints for two different brick houses. The bricks are the same, but the results are very different."

Darwinists often cite similarities in non-coding DNA as evidence of chimp-human common ancestry. Yet the Time article explains that non-coding DNA has function—perhaps holding the functions responsible for the differences between humans and chimps:

Those molecular switches lie in the noncoding regions of the genome--once known dismissively as junk DNA but lately rechristened the dark matter of the genome. ... "But it may be the dark matter that governs a lot of what we actually see."

Though the article still asserts much of the genome is junk, Richard Sternberg and James A. Shapiro wrote recently that "one day, we will think of what used to be called 'junk DNA' as a critical component of truly 'expert' cellular control regimes" ("How Repeated Retroelements format genome function," Cytogenetic and Genome Research 110:108–116 [2005]).

Evidence of function in non-coding DNA not only casts doubt upon whether the 98-99%-protein-coding-DNA-similarity statistic is relevant to assessing the degree of genetic similarity between humans and chimps, but it also shows that similarities in human and chimp non-coding DNA could be explained by common design.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Over 3,600 Floridians were treated to a unique presentation of intelligent design as a scientific theory challenging the reigning Darwinian evolutionary paradigm last Friday night. The Sun Dome at USF in Tampa Bay was the locale for Darwin or Design, featuring three noted ID scientists: Dr. Michael Behe, Dr. Jonathan Wells and Dr. Ralph Seelke.

As sometimes happens, there were those who were not excited about the public presentation of intelligent design. A number of faculty sent a memo school-wide, announcing the event. Immediately, the spouse of another faculty member complained to the President of USF. That person, who was not a faculty member, had a number of problems with the USF community being alerted to a pro-ID presentation.

Here are the serious concerns I have with the "Darwin or Design" memo:
1. The memo creates the impression that this event is underwritten by
USF or is supported by a significant number of its faculty.
2. The memo's authors do not clearly state their positions or their
biases with respect to the topic of the memo.
3. The memo suggests that its authors--all affiliated with USF and in
possession of advanced degrees--either do not understand the difference
between science and philosophy, or feel that advancing the "Intelligent
Design" agenda is more important than maintaining USF's scientific
integrity.

In fact, as Republican judicial appointee John Jones pointed out in his
landmark Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District decision, the ID
movement is neither a recent phenomenon nor one that has ever been "led"
by scientists.

Fortunately, one of the original faculty supporters of the event, a co-signer of the memo which so upset the spouse of another faculty member, replied with a letter responding to each point. Because it was such a cogent response, I’m pasting the text of it in its entirety below.

Thank you for your comments regarding the upcoming event "Darwin or Design" that will be taking place at the Sun Dome on Friday, September 29, 2006. I appreciate your comments but wish to correct some factual errors in your e-mail.

First, your Point 1 that states that the memo gives the impression that the event is underwritten by USF and/or supported by a significant number of its faculty. If you will read the postcard carefully, you will notice that it specifically states that the event is sponsored by "Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity" and nowhere in the narrative does it state that USF is the sponsor. Other than the mention of the location at the USF Sun Dome, there is no mention of USF anywhere else. I find it difficult to believe that any person reading the narrative would get the impression that the event is a USF event, rather than just an event taking place at USF. It is obvious that you are reading more into the narrative than what is there. Also, with 8 individuals "signing" the memo, I find it hard to believe that any person reading the memo would assume that 8 persons represent the hundreds of academic faculty on the Tampa campus of USF.

In Point 2, you make another false assumption regarding the "positions or their biases with respect to the topic of the memo." Clearly while you advocate scientific inquiry and integrity, you seem to believe that only what you believe to be scientific is relevant or correct. If you would take the time to investigate the academic credentials of the two main speakers at the event, you will find that their records are impeccable. They are "world class" academic scholars and well regarded in the scientific community. As to the supposed biases of the memo's authors, I suppose all persons, including the memo authors and yourself, would be considered biased in one way or another. In an environment of academic freedom, people may express their views on a variety of subjects and the authors of the memo wish to express their views on this subject, at least from the perspective of having open-minded people listen to the scientific arguments for the intelligent design position.

Finally, your Point 3 totally misses the point regarding scientific inquiry. As academics, we recognize all facets of education and learning. Science and philosophy are subjects taught independently, although there is a long history of the blending of both. If you examine the area of "philosophy of science" of which there are numerous PhD-level courses at most universities with this title, you will find that the majority of individuals who devoted their lives to science were also somewhat philosophers themselves. This goes all the way back to Bacon who is considered the father of the scientific method. All great scientific researchers have some type of philosophy based on their individual world view. Obviously, this program goes against your worldview and/or personal philosophy, and that's OK. But to provide the false notion that everyone hearing about this program or perhaps attending it will be somehow drawn away from scientific exploration of issues is grossly exaggerated. If you would listen to the speakers on Friday (and you are certainly welcome to attend) or read some of their published articles, you would be provided with scientific, not philosophic, arguments supporting intelligent design. People can make up their own minds regarding the scientific reliability and believability of the positions espoused by the speakers.

As a final point, if you will examine the Chronicle for Higher Education and other academic related publications, you will find that the discussion of intelligent design versus Darwinian evolution, is in fact, an issue being discussed on college campuses. Your blanket statement that this is not an issue being discussed shows a lack of awareness of what is taking place on college and university campuses in North America.

As a personal point, I find it interesting that you refer to "a Republican judicial appointee" in your quote regarding the court decision you cited. Am I to assume, as you have in your response to seeing the Darwin or Design memo, that you are "biased?" Why not simply refer to the case without the reference to the political appointment process for naming this judge? Does it matter? Apparently it did to you since you mentioned it. Are you assuming that all of the signers of the memo are Republicans? Why should it even matter? Scientific inquiry is not a political issue, although you, by implication, try to make it one. I truly feel sorry for you and your limited perspective regarding the search for truth through scientific investigation.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I keep getting asked about the scientific research projects underway that relate to Darwinism and intelligent design. So why aren't we talking more about them publicly? For several good reasons:

The most important is that the Darwinist establishment would like nothing better than to "out" research programs before they are finished. The idea is to shut down damaging evidence as early as possible. Strangle the infant in the crib. Demand answers now to questions still being explored.

Paranoia? Hardly. There are too many examples of ID scientists and other scholars who have been hassled and harassed by the Darwinist Inquisition. (I include in the Inquisition those supposed science writers who long ago became propaganda agents rather than serious reporters.) Even a non-scientist in academia who writes favorably of ID can be assailed. It appears that the distinguished Baylor University philosopher and legal scholar Frank Beckwith will get tenure after all, but that decision came only a few days ago and on appeal at the very end of a long, painful process where his adversaries were well organized, persistent and reckless of facts and decency. His real problems were that he was pro-life and that he had written that it is constitutional to teach about intelligent design. Against those PC liabilities, his long record of outstanding publication didn't matter at all to his foes. On the contrary, it was his success that most alarmed them and excited their envy.

Friends of ID know the cases of a number of ID-friendly scientists who have lost their lab privileges or otherwise been discriminated against at universities here and in the UK. We are not trumpeting very many cases because the situations of several such scientists remain difficult. It is an appalling commentary on the state of academic freedom that ID-friendly scientists should have to work in an atmosphere of fear, but it's true. We just want friends of ID who wonder why we don't publicize work in progress more than we do to take a moment and reflect about that!

As for foes and critics who pester us for information about research now underway and who insinuate that, unless we oblige them, we must accept their opinion that such research is not happening, we owe them nothing. Since when does a scientist have to "report" on his work to the public before he is ready? The opposite is almost always the case.

And so it is with ID.

I’m reading of cases of stacked tenure committees and rigged peer-review processes on other subjects in science. It would make for an interesting study.

We know of a lot that is happening, and it’s exciting. As for the rest, we'll report it when it's ready, not before.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 9:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)