Evolution News & Views

CSC senior fellow and Acton Institute Research Fellow Jay Richards was interviewed by The Christian Post about the current controversy over the Darwin vs. Design conference coming up at SMU next month. As if often the case, the question of how evolution should be taught is more pressing for reporters than the scientific evidence at the foundation of either Darwinism or intelligent design. So, how does Richard's weigh in on the what should be taught question?

I do think that the biggest impediment for ID getting a better hearing is what I would call a ‘Scope’s Monkey Trial stereotype.’ In part, it’s this idea from American history since 1925 that conveys whether a teacher can express Darwin’s theory of evolution. At that time, the issue was whether the state could suppress the discussion of Darwinism. The issue actually has fled to the opposite direction since then. So now the question is whether the teacher is even free to discuss criticism of Darwinism. Now, even if the teacher tries to raise criticism of Darwinism apart from an argument for intelligent design, they can find themselves a target of a lawsuit.

Richards is no one trick pony. See here for his latest film endeavor, "The Call of the Entrepreneur," which will be highlighted at a special Discovery Institute screening in April.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This fourth and final installment of a critique of Elliott Sober’s recent article entitled “What is Wrong With Intelligent Design?” will show some final problems Sober's claim that ID is not testable because, he alleges, ID can always regress to a higher level of design. In Part I, I explained some problems with Sober's history of ID, and in Part II, I explained how Sober eschews ad hoc explanations while ignoring how modern neo-Darwinism commonly invokes them. In Part III, I explained that Sober ignores the testable predictions of ID. In this final installment I will show that Sober is wrong to claim that ID is not testable because he bases his argument on the false claim that ID permits the possibility that a designer produced a universe where natural processes can produce novel specified complexity on their own.

Designer-Regress?
Sober objects to the prediction that ID creates certain types of complexity by claiming that if “purely physical antecedents” are shown to produce complexity, then ID proponents will just claim those “purely physical antecedents” were themselves designed. In other words, he thinks that ID proponents can always appeal to higher levels of design to save the theory. His example is the printing presses, a physical machine, which can reprint intelligently designed information. His implication is that we might treat nature like a printing press--asserting that Darwinian processes themselves were designed to create information. In his view, this makes ID an untestable theory because whenever real design is lacking, we'll always appeal to higher, untestable levels of design.

But the printing press gives an inappropriate example because of course we know that printing presses are designed, and we do not find printing presses in nature. The question is not “can processes which we know are human-designed re-transmit information and complexity?” but rather “can processes we find at work in nature generate novel specified and complex information?”

Intelligent design is making real claims, not untestable speculations like Sober puts it. William Dembski explains this point:

According to the theory of intelligent design, the specified complexity exhibited in living forms convincingly demonstrates that blind natural processes could not by themselves have produced those forms but that their emergence also required the contribution of a designing intelligence. The design found in nature therefore exhibits that nature is incomplete. In other words, nature exhibits design that nature is unable to account for.” (Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 147, emphasis added)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We recently reported on a major ID conference in Istanbul, which was organized in part by Mustafa Akyol. Now today, Post-Darwinist highlights an interview with Akyol about what it is that Easterners find discomfiting about Westerners.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A short time ago I posted a story on the celebration in London of the 150th birthday of Karl Pearson, one of the fathers of mathematical statistics and an ardent Darwinist and eugenicist. The celebration focused on Pearson’s contribution to mathematical statistics, which was substantial, but neglected his contribution to eugenics, which was substantial, too.

The only word that Darwinists use less frequently than ‘design’ is ‘eugenics’. It‘s disappeared down the Darwin memory hole following the Second World War because the Nazi programs that applied Darwinism to medicine made the real nature of eugenics so apparent that it could no longer be denied. So it was forgotten.

Eugenics is the application of the principles of animal breeding to medicine and to human society. It depends entirely on a denial of the sanctity of human life. Its modern scientific foundation is Darwinism.

The ideology that drives Darwinism and eugenics is materialism. Philosophical materialism is the assertion that all existence is ‘atoms in the void’ — the only thing that exists is matter in motion. Materialism is a denial of the existence of God, and of any transcendence or meaning in human life. Darwin provided materialism with a creation myth.

Just as Darwinism is still very much alive, eugenics is alive as well, but cleaner and quieter than it used to be. We have sperm and egg banks that systematically select donors for their appearance and for their intelligence. We have routine antenatal genetic testing and abortion of handicapped babies. There is a growing acceptance of euthanasia in the United States and Europe. Babies with spina bifida in Holland are routinely killed in the nursery with lethal injections. Support for assisted suicide is growing, and the recent killing of a helpless, severely brain-damaged woman by starvation was accepted by the American judicial system. A hundred years ago, it was a lot safer to be an unborn baby with Down’s syndrome in the United States, or a newborn with spina bifida in Holland, than it is now.

So, in coming posts, I’m going to recount the lives and work of the eugenicists, and recount the important events in the history of eugenics. Eugenics is the only meaningful idea that Darwin contributed to medicine. It’s fitting to remember the birthdays of these Darwinists who worked with such fervor to ensure that people they deemed inferior to themselves never had birthdays.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 3:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Philosopher Elliott Sober recently published an article entitled, “What is Wrong With Intelligent Design?” which claimed that intelligent design is not testable. In Part I, I rebutted Sober's early history of intelligent design. Part II explained how Sober made the curious charge that auxiliary prediction weaken the testability of a scientific theory, something which Darwinists are famous for doing. This third installment will assess Sober’s characterization of ID and explain how Sober ignores positive predictions of intelligent design. Sober misses 2 key points about intelligent design, leading him to false conclusions:

(1) It’s simple: intelligent design detects the past action of intelligence, nothing more, and nothing less

Sober states: “We have no independent evidence concerning which auxiliary propositions about the putative designer’s goals and abilities are true.” That’s not correct. While the "goals" of the designer may be beyond the reach of the scientific inquiry, ID does make claims about the "abilities" of the designer. Sober then provides quotes from design-proponents, and he fails to recognize that they always refer to detecting intelligence! We understand the abilities of an intelligent agent and we understand what intelligence produces (discussed below). Sober doubly misrepresents ID: He wrongly expects ID to identify the "goals" of the designer, but then fails to recognize that ID identifies the "abilities" of the designer.

(2) Studies of intelligence show that a unique hallmark of intelligence is its ability to produce high levels of complex and specified information.

Intelligence is a feature we understand and comprehend from our studies of human intelligence in the natural world. From these studies, William Dembski explains that “the primarily, empirically verifiable thing that intelligences do is generate specified complexity.” (Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 194). But does the generation of specified complexity make ID testable in a “comparative” sense (see Part II) with respect to neo-Darwinism? Yes, it does.

Dembski explains that natural processes like the neo-Darwinian mechanism do not generate high levels of specified complexity:

[Intelligent design is] a fully scientific claim and follows directly from the complexity-specification criterion. In particular this is not an argument from ignorance. Just as physicists reject perpetual motion machines because of what they know about the inherent constraints on energy and matter, so too design theorists reject any naturalistic reduction of specified complexity because of what they know about the inherent constraints on natural causes. Natural causes are too stupid to keep pace with intelligent causes. Intelligent design theory provides a rigorous scientific demonstration of this long-standing intuition. Let me stress, the complexity-specification criterion is not a principle that comes to us demanding our unexamined acceptance--it is not an article of faith. Rather it is the outcome of a careful and sustained argument about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design.

(William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, pg. 223 (InterVarsity Press, 1999).)

Sober Botches Irreducible Complexity
Similarly, Sober also ignores that irreducible complexity is a unique indicator of intelligent design, but he states that irreducible complexity “does nothing to test ID. For ID to be testable, it must make predictions.” Claiming that irreducible complexity is nothing more than a critique of evolution, Sober writes “The fact that a different theory makes a prediction says nothing about whether ID is testable. Behe has merely changed the subject.” Here, Sober is repeating the Darwinist plaintiffs' arguments in the Kitzmiller case. But Sober misrepresents ID and ignores the fact that ID theorists have argued extensively that irreducible complexity is not just a negative argument against evolution, but also a positive indicator of design. Behe writes:

[I]rreducibly complex systems such as mousetraps and flagella serve both as negative arguments against gradualistic explanations like Darwin’s and as positive arguments for design. The negative argument is that such interactive systems resist explanation by the tiny steps that a Darwinian path would be expected to take. The positive argument is that their parts appear arranged to serve a purpose, which is exactly how we detect design.

(Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, Afterward, pgs. 263-264 (Free Press, Reprint, 2006), emphasis added.)

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role the origin of the system. Given that neither standard neo-Darwinism, nor co-option has adequately accounted for the origin of these machines, or the appearance of design that they manifest, one might now consider the design hypothesis as the best explanation for the origin of irreducibly complex systems in living organisms. … Although some may argue this is a merely an argument from ignorance, we regard it as an inference to the best explanation, given what we know about the powers of intelligent as opposed to strictly natural or material causes.

(Scott A. Minnich & Stephen C. Meyer, Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic bacteria, in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design & Nature.)

Incredibly, Sober makes no mention of the fact that design proponents have formulated irreducible complexity or specified complexity as positive indicators and predictions of design. He completely ignores these in order to make his central point that ID makes no positive predictions.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The length some Darwinists have gone to in their efforts to deny that Haeckel’s embryo drawings were fraudulently used in modern biology textbooks has made for some interesting reading over the years. That these efforts were often used to paint intelligent design scientists such as Jonathan Wells as liars is even more outrageous. Where is the evidence for these claims? Or, as Casey Luskin puts it in a new article, “What Do Modern Textbooks Really Say about Haeckel’s Embryos?”

Luskin gives his reasons for analyzing no fewer than ten modern textbooks as follows:

Many Darwinists are scurrying around on their blogs and at movie screenings, trying to rewrite history by claiming that Haeckel’s embryo drawings were never used in modern textbooks. In a contradictory claim, some then concede that modern textbooks did use the drawings but argue that Haeckel’s work was only cited to provide some historical context to evolutionary theory—they assert that Haeckel’s fraudulent drawings are not used to promote evolution in modern textbooks. They are wrong on both counts.

Posted by Anika Smith at 1:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This last weekend, I attended Timberlake Wertenbaker's play "After Darwin" at D.C.'s Church Street Theater.

The first thing to note is that the man playing Darwin looks uncannily like Steve Meyer. Go figure.

Second, the play is set up in a series of Inherit the Wind-induced stereotypes. It is Fitzroy vs. Darwin, the Bible vs. Science, from the get-go—where Fitzroy is pro-flogging and Darwin the enlightened liberal is opposed, and on and on. This was unfortunate. Even if these things were to be historically true, the impression given (to me, at least) is that this has applicability for today, which is false.

And finally, the important part of the play centers around a moral dilemma facing one of the characters. You see, it is a play within a play—so there are Darwin and Fitzroy, but then there are also the actors playing each. "After Darwin" cuts back and forth from the rehearsal of a play about Darwin to the actors themselves. Each of the characters faces a moral dilemma—but it is universally agreed by the characters that Darwin’s theory has destroyed morality. So the moral dilemma of one of the actors is difficult for the characters to come to grips with. In the end, one of the characters (a biology professor who wrote the play-within-the-play) says that he knows morality has evolved, but he feels moral obligation nonetheless, so he abides by it best he can.

Now I do not think Wertenbaker intends the play to come off this way, but the whole thing struck me as a reductio ad absurdum. When the professor chose to follow the dictates of morality at all costs—despite claiming to know that morality has only evolved—it seemed to me to show the ridiculousness of the claim that morality has evolved.

It was like seeing a cartoon character standing on the branch which he has sawed off. Sadly, this dramatic climax was probably meant to show that evolution is mystically strong indeed, and so we might have trouble breaking from the illusion that morality exists. That is, it was probably meant to show, in a post-modern sort of way, that we just have to live with the existing tension and contradiction “after Darwin.”

All of this seems to me, however, to undermine the case for neo-Darwinism. If neo-Darwinism has implications that contradict our everyday experience of the world, so much the worse for the theory, in my mind—especially if one is, as I am, already dubious as to its scientific merit.

Posted by Logan Gage at 12:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you want a clear example of Darwinist sleight-of-hand, read the Panda’s Thumb tirade about my posts on the relevance of Darwinism to modern medicine (here). My interlocutors, between puns on my name, insults and obscenities, raise off-point topics that evade the central issue: is Darwinism, which is the assertion that all biological complexity has arisen by random heritable variation and natural selection, relevant to the practice of medicine? Several bloggers raised the standard Darwinist trope about bacterial antibiotic resistance. This issue is an important source of misunderstanding about the application of Darwin’s theory to medicine.

The Darwinist assertion that random variation and natural selection (chance and necessity) account for all biological complexity has nothing to do with the mundane observation that it’s unwise to unnecessarily expose populations of bacteria to antibiotics. The observation that an antibiotic will kill the bacteria that are killed by it, and the antibiotic will not kill the bacteria that are not killed by it, is a tautology. If you expose a population of bacteria to antibiotics, the unkilled ones will, over time, outnumber the killed ones. The unkilled ones will be the ones that are resistant to the antibiotics. Think about it. That's Darwinism's seminal contribution to our understanding of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

Preventing the emergence of resistant strains of bacteria is important work, but the insight that Darwinism brings to the problem — the unkilled ones eventually outnumber the killed ones — is of no help. We can figure that out ourselves. The tough work on preventing the emergence of resistant bacteria is done by microbiologists, epidemiologists, molecular geneticists, pharmacologists, and physicians who are infectious disease specialists. Darwinism, understood as the view that “chance and necessity” explains all biological complexity, plays no role.

The Darwinist modus operandi for a century and a half has been to slip a philosophical agenda — scientific materialism — in with the science. They hijack other fields of biology — microbiology, population biology, epidemiology, genetics, etc — then they assert that Darwinism is essential to those fields, then they claim that the hypothesis that random variation and natural selection is the origin of all biological complexity is a “fact” supported by overwhelming evidence. When challenged, they prove the “fact” of scientific materialism by doing a Pub-Med search for thousands of tangential articles from the fields they've hijacked.

Not a single Darwinist in this debate has addressed the issue of how their trivial contribution to our understanding of bacterial resistance to antibiotics-'unkilled bacteria will eventually outnumber killed ones'- in any way supports the assertion that all biological complexity is the result of random variation and natural selection.

Darwinists are hoping that people don’t notice this non-sequitur. The reason for their rage at intelligent design advocates is that we have noticed it.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 7:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It isn't just profs in SMU's Ivory Tower that are afraid of students learning more about the failings of Darwinian evolution. In New Mexico recently an attempt to ensure academic freedom in line with the state's educational standards has been opposed by local, dogmatic Darwin-only lobbyists. Joe Renick of ID Net New Mexico today has an opinion piece, Fear of Exposure, that shows the intolerance of the Darwinists in regard to any views but their own.

Unhappy with the thought that scientific views different than their own might be discussed in science classes, the Darwinists avoid the science debate entirely (as usual) and accuse the backers of academic freedom of wanting to insert religion into the science curriculum.

The principle objectives of this legislation are to "give teachers the right and freedom, when a theory of biological origins is taught, to objectively inform students of scientific information relevant to the strengths and weaknesses of that theory and protect teachers from reassignment, termination, discipline or other discrimination for doing so," and to give students the "right and freedom to reach their own conclusions about biological origins."
Thomas warns that while the bill is about academic freedom, its intent is to teach creationism in the science classroom.
Having assisted in the drafting of this legislation, I can say that it says what it means and means what it says - nothing different, nothing more and nothing less.
There is a lawyer's adage that says, "If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If neither are on your side, change the subject and go after the motives of your opponent."

Now, when legislation is put forward that would ensure that the free speech rights of scientists and eductors aren't trampled by Darwinist thought police, we see the ugly face of censorship.

Again I ask, what is so dangerous about this discussion going forward?

Joe Renick concludes by offering an answer to that question:

It is academic freedom the Darwinists fear because it will expose the weakness of the evolutionary theory.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

First Darwinists at SMU demanded that the school keep the debate over Darwin off-campus, arguing for the Darwin vs. Design conference to be cancelled and denied use of campus facilities. Now their attempts at censorship have sparked more controversy than they intended, as evidenced by a response printed in the SMU Daily Campus:

I was amused to read that some of the science department faculty at SMU had protested the proposed Intelligent Design Conference.

Isn’t it so typical to see academics who live in mortal fear of viewpoints other than their own? I was particularly amused to read the comments of Dr. Ubelaker, former chair of chemistry, calling the conference “propaganda.” Someone might want to explain to Dr. Ubelaker that propaganda takes place when someone tries to suppress the discussion of ideas. Where is the SMU faculty’s commitment to free and open discussion?

Sincerely,
Larry Bradshaw, Ph.D.
Abilene Christian University

Dr. Bradshaw has it right. Those who really want to educate their students will engage them with the evidence for and against a theory, and they won’t be shy away from alternative explanations. In fact, science faculty at SMU agreed with this proposal as recently as 2005, when biology professor John Wise wrote an opinion article responding to ID-proponent and conference speaker Michael Behe. Then, he said, “What makes science so useful and progress so quickly is the tradition of critically analyzing these alternatives from individuals.”

Now it seems the Biology Department at SMU, along with Geology and Anthropology, want to go against this important tradition in science by keeping this alternative scientific explanation — intelligent design — off-campus, thereby ensuring that their students will be shielded from any theory which challenges the reigning paradigm of Darwinism.

Posted by Anika Smith at 11:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Is Darwinism indispensable to genetics? Darwinists claim that their theory, which is the assertion that all biological complexity arose by random heritable variation and natural selection ("chance and necessity"), is indispensable to modern medicine. What was Darwin’s role in genetics?

He played an important role in classical genetics, in a negative way. In 1865, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel presented a scientific paper called 'Experiments in Plant Hybridization' at meeting of the Natural History Society of Brno in Moravia. Fr. Mendel found a remarkable pattern of inheritance in experiments on plants in his garden in his monastery. The experiments suggested that heritable factors were, in some cases, particulate, could remain hidden for generations, and sorted according to simple mathematical rules. According to contemporary records, his paper was ignored, and discussion at the meeting swirled around Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Mendel’s seminal work, the basis for classical genetics, was buried for the rest of the 19th century under a Darwinian frenzy.

Modern molecular genetics grew out of the work of James Watson and Francis Crick in Cambridge in the early 1950s. Using x-ray diffraction and information about molecular structure derived from quantum mechanics, Watson and Crick designed scale models of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The models made it evident that DNA was a double helix, and that the individual components (base pairs) were symbols in a code. Subsequent work translated the genetic code, and revealed that at the core of life there is a symbolic language, with letters (base pairs), words (codons), sentences (genes), directional reading frames, and even punctuation (stop codons).

Darwin’s role in the emergence of molecular genetics was negative, as well. Molecular geneticists worked implicitly from an inference to design, using the principles of reverse engineering applied to biology. The genetic code was translated, and read, like a language. Darwin’s assertion that the raw material for biological complexity is "randomness" was anti-heuristic. It was the inference to design, not the inference to randomness, that led to the understanding and translation of the genetic code. Darwin never predicted, in his theory of chance and necessity, a language at the core of life. The understanding of the genetic code was the direct result of the inference to design in biology.

Former Vice President Al Gore famously claimed to have invented the Internet because years ago he was in the Senate and sponsored a bill. The assertion that Charles Darwin’s theory was indispensable to classical and molecular genetics is a claim of an even lower order. Darwin’s theory impeded the recognition of Mendel’s discovery for a third of a century, and Darwin’s assertion that random variation was the raw material for biological complexity was of no help in decoding the genetic language of DNA. The single incontrovertible Darwinian contribution to the field of medical genetics was eugenics, which is the Darwinian theory that humans can be bred for social and character traits, like animals. The field of medical genetics is still recovering from eugneics, which was Darwin’s only gift to medicine.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 10:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In Part I, I explained how Elliott Sober's recent attack upon ID in his article entitled “What is Wrong With Intelligent Design?” gave an inaccurate history of intelligent design. This second part will discuss how Sober's reasoning necessarily implies that ID is testable, except for the fact that he applies a double standard and ignores the ad hoc explanations so commonly used by Darwinists to square their theory with the data.

Testing by Comparing Predictions of Theories
Sober concedes that “many formulations of ID are falsifiable” and meet Karl Popper’s famous criteria that a scientific theory must be falsifiable. However, Sober critiques Popper’s usage of falsifiability as a hallmark property of science because he claims it does not always entail robust testability relative to other explanations. Sober prefers a definition of testability where testing is conducted by comparing a theory to other competing theories. He writes: “To develop an account of testability, we must begin by recognizing that testing is typically a comparative enterprise.”

Thus, in Sober's view, ID must make predictions with respect to neo-Darwinism in order for ID to be testable: “If ID is to be tested, it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses.” His method might be called "relative testability," and it has clear implications for the scientific status of ID: Since Sober measures ID’s testability by comparing it to neo-Darwinism, the implication is that Sober should measure the comparative testability of neo-Darwinism by trying to test it against ID. The unavoidable conclusion is that under Sober’s methodology, ID and neo-Darwinism must have equal, relative testability with respect to one-another. Obviously Sober believes that neo-Darwinian evolution is a scientific theory, so doesn't that mean ID must also qualify as a scientific theory? Yet Sober implies ID is not a scientific theory, revealing a possible double-standard.

In the end, Sober doesn’t even use this "relative testability" methodology. Instead, he ignores the wholly standard formulation of intelligent design in order to claim that it’s untestable. This will be explained more in Part III of this series.

Sober’s Auxiliary Propositions
Sober writes: “It is crucial to the scientific enterprise that auxiliary propositions not simply be invented. By inventing assumptions, we can equip a theory with favorable auxiliary propositions that allow it to fit the data.” Auxiliary assumptions, when misused, are like the epicycles used to defend the long-discarded geocentric model of the solar system: they are post-hoc explanations used to square a theory with contrary data. I agree with Sober's statement here, which makes it all the more curious that Sober fails to recognize how often Darwinists have made auxiliary propositions to square their theory with the data:

The upcoming Darwin vs. Design conference at Southern Method University (SMU) has triggered controversy because some Darwinists are intolerant of discussion of ID taking place too close to their campus offices. When the DvD conference was held in Knoxville recently, the Knoxville News reported that an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Michael Gilchrist, was so concerned that he "petitioned Oak Ridge National Laboratory to remove Darwin vs. Design from its technical calendar." Gilchrist was quoted saying that "It is fine for people to think of these things, but it's a problem when they present it as science." It seems that for Gilchrist, he's OK with any view about ID being promoted as long as it is not the view which says ID is a scientific theory. The press has been sympathetic to free speech rights to discuss this debate over Darwin and design, but it has simultaneously revealed its anti-ID bias and its tendency to distort the arguments of ID proponents in favor of its own view. For example, Dallas Morning News religion reporter Jeffrey Weiss expressed dismay at the intolerance of SMU science faculty:

Not only did the professors misstate the facts, most of the protesters took actions guaranteed to help their opponents. By calling for the university to cancel the event (which was simply not going to happen. Contracts had been signed.), the science profs turned themselves into would-be censors and the ID side into victims standing up for free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

[T]he ID side jousted with me over the use of one word, "supernatural," using what I consider a sort of intellectual dishonesty that has nothing to do with whether ID is right or not, but makes many people suspicious of their point of view. … Their bottom line: To describe the designer as "supernatural" is to limit the identity or nature of the designer. And they don’t want to do that. I’ll use the ID side’s own strategy to explain why I think this is unfair word manipulation.

In contrast to what Mr. Weiss alleges, this is not some attempt to "manipulate" or be "dishonest," because ID-proponents have consistently given the principled explanation that ID's inability to specify the nature or identity of the designer stems from a desire to respect the limits of scientific inquiry. Moreover, ID-proponents are honest about their views on the designer, they just note that these views are their personal religious views and not the conclusions of intelligent design. Phillip Johnson gives a good example of this, writing: "[M]y personal view is that I identify the designer of life with the God of the Bible, although intelligent design theory as such does not entail that." Michael Behe gives another similar example in his quote given below.

Other Pro-ID Scientists and Scholars Agree
Mr. Weiss quotes from "a book co-authored by one of the scheduled presenters at the SMU conference" talking about the design of the universe. However, when it comes to biological design, ID-proponents are clear that the empirical data alone do not determine the nature or identity of the designer. Charles Thaxton, one of the first scientists to adopt "intelligent design" in the early 1980s, stated:

I wasn’t comfortable with the typical vocabulary that for the most part creationists were using because it didn’t express what I was trying to do. They were wanting to bring God into the discussion, and I was wanting to stay within the empirical domain and do what you can do legitimately there.

Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the progress of science. For example, the place of intelligent design in science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science. (Of Pandas and People, 1993, pgs. 126-127, emphasis added)

The most important difference [between modern ID and Paley] is that [ID] is limited to design itself; I strongly emphasize that it is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God, as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel--fallen or not; Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science. Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo. (Michael Behe, "The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis," Philosophia Christi, Series 2, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2001), pg. 165, emphasis added.)

By contrast, intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature, nor does it prescribe in advance the sequence of events by which this intelligent cause had to act. . . . Intelligent design is modest in what it attributes to the designing intelligence responsible for the specified complexity in nature. For instance, design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the remit of science. As Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis remark in their text on intelligent design: ‘Science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy.’ (William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, pg. 247-248 (InterVarsity Press, 1999))

There is no ‘Made by Yahweh’ engraved on the side of the bacterial rotary motor—the flagellum. In order to find out what or who its designer is, one must go outside the narrow discipline of biology. Cross-disciplinary dialogue must begin with the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, and theology. Design itself, however, is a direct scientific inference; it does not depend on a single religious premise for its conclusions. (Thomas Woodward, Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, pg. 15 (Baker Books, 2006))

Reporters aren’t supposed to editorialize. They’re supposed to report. This presents a nice case study of how a reporter has imposed his own biases and misunderstandings upon the debate. For some unknown reason, Mr. Weiss refused to print the definition of ID coming from ID-proponents, so he created his own. That’s not reporting — that’s creative writing.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

William Dembski reports that Ken Miller responded to the BBC Documentary and my recent claim that he misrepresented Dembski's work. In short, Miller now claims he wasn't talking about Dembski and passes the blame on to the BBC for misleading editing and blames "Discovery Institute" for believing what the documentary plainly said. Most of Miller's response blames the BBC documentary's editors for making it appear as if he were talking about Dembski by sandwiching Miller's comments between narrator's comments stating Miller is rebutting Dembski, and interspersing Miller's comments with numerous shots of Dembski. Directly after Miller’s comments, the narrator said, “For Miller, Dembski's math did not add up.” But does Miller’s explanation of the situation now “add up”? Readers can decide for themselves after considering these points:

(1) Miller admits he has a hazy memory of what happened:
Miller writes, "I do not remember the exact question that prompted my response." He claims he doesn't remember the question he was asked, but he claims he does remember he wasn't talking about Dembski. Miller's admission of a fading memory on this matter does not inspire confidence for the things he claims he does remember. After all, in the documentary Miller clearly states he is critiquing the "mathematical tricks employed by intelligent design," and Dembski is widely recognized as the leading mathematical theorist in the ID movement. Dembski seems a likely target for Miller's comments.

(2) Miller has a history of misrepresenting intelligent design arguments:
Miller attempts to pass the blame to Discovery Institute, saying we "should know better," implying we should not think he would misrepresent Dembski. This reminds us how, in 2003, Dembski told Miller that Miller "should know better" than to claim that ID necessarily requires “the direct and active involvement of an outside designer.” Yet in this very BBC documentary, Miller repeats the same false claim, saying, "By the terms of the advocates of intelligent design themselves, the designer creates outside of nature, supernaturally..." (time index 39:25) Shouldn’t Miller “know better” than to make such claims? Based upon this example and many others, we “know” that Miller at times misrepresents the arguments of ID-theorists.

(3) Miller admits that the documentary makes it look like he's talking about Dembski:
Miller admits that the documentary "does mislead the viewer" to think he's talking about Dembski. After all, just before the statements of Miller that I quoted, the narrator states: "Also on his [Miller's] hit list, Dembski's criticism of evolution." Miller then speaks, giving his misrepresentations, while the video simultaneously shows numerous shots of Dembski himself. As noted, directly afterw Miller is done speaking the narrator says, "For Miller, Dembski's math did not add up." Clearly, the BBC Documentary gives every indication that Miller was talking about Dembski. If the editors were fair, then one would presume that the question Miller was asked referred to Dembski, which is why they felt justified in framing this section as a response from Miller to Dembski. But Miller claims (despite a bad memory) that he was not talking about Dembski. If we assume Miller's explanation of the situation is true, then according to Miller's admission that the documentary "does mislead the viewer," then I did nothing wrong. I simply watched the video and took away the message any reasonable viewer would take: the context strongly indicates that Miller was talking about Dembski.

But even if Miller's account is true, this does not let him off the hook:

(4) If Miller wasn't talking about Dembski, he's still promoting a straw man view:
Assuming Miller wasn't talking about Dembski, the question remains: Then what is Ken Miller talking about? We know what Miller did say, but no ID-proponent argues that mere improbability is enough to infer design nor do they argue that some inconsequential but unlikely event (like a hand dealt in a game of cards) is enough to falsify neo-Darwinian evolution. Design theorists acknowledge that improbable events happen all the time. When inferring design, they always couple improbability with some specification. One commenter on Dembski's blog, "gpuccio," explained this point clearly:

As far as I know, nobody in the ID field has ever made the silly argument that Miller criticizes. Everybody, instead, in the ID field, constantly mentions the CSI argument due to Dembski, and so clearly and beautifully explained in many of his writing.

Perhaps the BBC's misleading narration and editing is to blame for part of this problem, but that does not let Miller off the hook. Regardless of whether Miller intended to bring Dembski into this, Miller's rebuttal doesn't address the types of arguments that proponents make, especially when it comes to the math behind the theory of ID. If Miller’s explanation is correct, the he seems to misrepresent the arguments of not just William Dembski, but ID in general.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Is Darwinism indispensable to modern medicine? As I noted in an earlier posts here and here, Darwinists usually use three arguments to assert that Darwin’s theory of random variation and natural selection is indispensable to medicine. They claim that Darwinism is necessary for comparative medicine, or that it is necessary for molecular genetics, or that it is necessary for understanding bacterial resistance to antibiotics. All three fields of medicine are obviously important, but Darwinism, understood as the theory that all biological structure arose by random variation and natural selection, is not necessary to understand any of them. In this post, I’ll deal with the first question: is Darwinism essential for an understanding of comparative medicine and comparative biology? No, it’s not.

For several millennia before Darwin, all biology was comparative biology. Before the scientific revolution, biologists spent their time studying and comparing the design of living things. In the 4th century B.C., Aristotle wrote extensively on comparative biology, and classified living things according to structural and functional similarities. The great 2nd century A.D. Roman physician Galen, who was the father of classical anatomy, dissected apes, not humans, and drew inferences to human anatomy from his animal dissections. Andreas Vesalius, the 16th century founder of modern anatomy, dissected humans and corrected Galen’s erroneous extrapolations from animal dissections. The great 17th century physician William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood by extensive physiological studies of animals. It is noteworthy that all these pioneering comparative biologists based their work on the inference that living things were designed.

The father of modern comparative biology was Carolus Linnaeus. The 18th century Swedish physician, botanist and zoologist laid the foundation for modern taxonomy. He advanced the binomial (“genus and species”) system of classification, and his work is the basis for biological nomenclature used throughout the world today. Linnaeus’ system was based on detailed knowledge of the physical similarities and differences between living things. Linnaeus based his classification on his inference that living things were designed.

Was Darwin indispensable to comparative medicine and biology? Consider this. Linnaeus, the father of modern comparitive biology and a devout Lutheran, died during a church service in Uppsala Cathedral on January 10, 1778. That was 31 years and 33 days before Charles Darwin was born.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 5:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It’s been amusing—and revealing—to observe the recent debates between many in the Darwinist internet community and a professor of neurosurgery, Michael Egnor. A few simple questions have incurred a deluge of ad hominem attacks upon Egnor, mocking his name by calling him an “Egnoramus” who writes “EgnorRants” and using post titles like, “Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance.” In fact, Darwinist attacks upon Egnor are nothing new. Last summer a Darwinist wrote that “Michael Egnor is a Crappy Neurosurgeon Who Will Cut out Your Brain and Eat It,” and compared Egnor’s arguments to taking “a big ol' steaming s*** on a piece of paper and want[ing] that taught as science.” More recently, Egnor pointed out the viciousness of Darwinist attacks upon Michael Behe. Egnor was then greeted with telling replies from Darwinist commenters on PZ Myers’ blog who wrote things like: “let me say,as [sic] gently and politely as possible, that on this Egnor is full of s***,” and explained away Behe's perseverance through the attacks by saying “if idiots couldn't weather having their idiocy pointed out to them, they wouldn't BE idiots now, would they.” Yet for all their numbers and name-calling, not a single one has answered Egnor’s question: How does Darwinian mechanisms produce new biological information?

One Darwinist was so angry that he wrote in response to Egnor, “I'm deliberately not linking to the [Egnor interview] podcast; I will not help increase the hit-count that DI will use to promote it's [sic] agenda of willful ignorance.” I’ll gladly link to this Darwinist because this Darwinist mathematician’s irrelevant stammering about the definition of tautology never addresses Egnor’s point that we don’t really need Darwin to achieve the mundane insight that bacteria which are immune to drugs are going to survive. The mathematician’s angry tone proves Egnor’s private statement to me: “Chesterton once wrote that insanity isn't a matter of losing your reason, but of losing everything but your reason” (oh yeah, and the Egnor podcast is here). Still, one thing is still missing from Darwinist reason: a satisfactory answer to Egnor’s simple question, How much information can actually be produced by Darwinian mechanisms?

These ad hominem attacks remind me of Kevin Beck’s post last month on a "scienceblog" called “Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge,” where he tells those he calls “faith-filled gasbag[s]” to “look up ‘arrogant’” as he praises PZ Myers for “having the temerity to put to use his years of education and scholarship in exploding the stupid arguments of fundagelical Christians." Beck concludes that these “fundagelical Christians” try “to paint” their “opponent as ‘soulless’ or ‘having no greater purpose’.” But he himself calls those who believe in the Bible, believers in “horsesh** that has no inherent meaning,” calling a hypothetical mother who questions evolution, “the little lamb … who is supremely arrogant.” He calls people like this a “thoroughly debunked s***slinger” and ends with a criticism of religion: “It's often struck me that religious belief is so arrantly f**ed up that its adherents aren't content to merely be wrong; they have to get things 100 percent backward most of the time as well. In fact, the whole house of cards seems to rely on this, especially in an increasingly skeptical world.” But at least he gives me a soul, calling me “Discovery Institute's affably inane Casey Luskin.”

In the end, I can cheerfully forgive Kevin Beck, but two questions remain: (1) Why is such name-calling so common among Darwinists? and (2) How do Darwinian mechanisms produce truly novel biological information? I've seen no good answers to question 2, and perhaps their lack of such a good answer is driving the observations behind question (1).

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[Update on March 29, 2007: Today a Darwinist biologist e-mailed me making no arguments against Egnor (who is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and an award-winning brain surgeon who has been named one of New York's best doctors by New York Magazine) other than calling him "a crackot [sic] physician.” Meanwhile, the above-mentioned Darwinist mathematician discussed above has responded to this post. How did he respond? He responded by titling his post "Casey Luskin, Proud Idiot," and saying Michael Egnor has "made incredibly idiotic statements," which the mathematician calls "dishonest." Moreover, the mathematicians scientific arguments are still inadequate: he continues to discuss irrelevant Shannon information (a random string of data has the same amount of Shannon information as a Shakespearan Sonnet of the same length), and he also discusses how bacterial genes are spread (a problem solved by molecular genetics, not Darwinism, as Egnor discusses below). The mathematician also talks about how people die to due to antibiotic resistance and the fact that it's a serious problem. But of course Dr. Egnor acknowledges that antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. But Dr. Egnor just doesn't think that Darwinism is very helpful in solving this problem:

Microbiology tells us that bacterial populations are heterogeneous. Individual bacteria differ from one another. Molecular biology tells us that some bacteria have molecular mechanisms by which they can survive antibiotics. Molecular genetics tells us how these resistance mechanisms are passed to other bacteria and through generations of bacteria. Pharmacology helps us design new antibiotics that circumvent the bacterial defenses.

What does Darwinism add to the sciences of microbiology, molecular biology, molecular genetics, and pharmacology? Darwinism tells us that antibiotic-resistant bacteria survive exposure to antibiotics because of natural selection. That is, bacteria survive antibiotics that they're not sensitive to, so non-killed bacteria will eventually outnumber killed bacteria. That’s it.

(Michael Egnor, Quick, Nurse, Give the Patient a Tautology!)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 5:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today, ENV contributor Dr. Michael Egnor will be on Janet Parshall's America to discuss the recent Newsweek article The Evolution Revolution. Dr. Egnor will be on for the second half of the first hour of the three hour program, which is carried nationwide. You can find a local station here. Members can stream the program directly from Parshall's website.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Science Daily reports:

Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the publication of several studies from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) in PLoS Biology detailing the discovery of millions of new genes, thousands of new protein families and specifically the characterization of thousands of new protein kinases from ocean microbes using whole environment shotgun sequencing and new computational tools.

"In addition to increasing substantially the size and diversity of these families," the article reports, "the GOS sequences increased the understanding of the evolution and function of these proteins" (emphasis mine). The article offers a repair protein by way of illustration:

One example is those that repair DNA damage due to UV light (photolyases). While sunlight has benefits to the microbes, like with humans, sunlight also has the potential to be harmful to cells exposed to it. The team discovered many new proteins that protect these organisms from UV ray damage and some that are involved in repairing UV damage. These proteins were found in all organisms in the dataset, even in viruses.

Posted by Jonathan Witt at 6:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For as long as Darwinian biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth R. Miller has attacked intelligent design (ID), design proponents have refuted him. While there are occasions where Miller has wisely dropped his refuted objections, more often he will keep trotting out the same stale arguments. His tendency to hold onto his misconceptions means design theorists have to continually point out how he misrepresents their arguments. Several of these responses to Miller are worth revisiting, and because we've recently had some new rebuttals to Miller, we've now put together a list of links to some of the best:

The issue of academic freedom when it comes to intelligent design just won't seem to go away. Darwinists are completely unable to tolerate any views of science that don't completely align with their own. This past week saw the science departments at Southern Methodist University throw a tantrum because we rented an auditorium on their campus and plan to have pro-intelligent design speakers present their case for ID (see Darwin vs. Design conferences). You'd think we were sacrificing puppies with chainsaws, given the way they reacted.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting the current view of academic freedom amongst scientists protesting the conference:

While some who are leading the protest acknowledge the need for free speech and academic freedom, they say this event doesn't qualify.

In another stellar example of their strong support for academic freedom and free speech, a letter allegedly sent to SMU's Provost from the anthropology department says the ID conference should be run off campus.

They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask. We urge the University to recognize this and to withdraw its permission to use our facilities and our name.

It seems to me that if the Darwinists were confident in the strength and merits of their arguments, they wouldn't need to censor other viewpoints and stifle debate.

Editor's Note: In the third paragraph of the DMN story it was reported that the Darwin vs. Design conference "will say that a supernatural designer is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe." In fact, the conference will not do that. On the issue of whether the designer is supernatural we've been very clear that the scientific theory of intelligent design does not address metaphysical and religious questions such as the nature or identity of the designer. (see here) As the article is otherwise accurate, we're hopeful this will be straightened out.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

DALLAS—Darwinists at Southern Methodist University issued a demand this week that the university withdraw permission for a scientific conference about intelligent design to be held on campus.

Discovery Institute and the SMU Christian Legal Society obtained permission to rent McFarlin Auditorium for a two-day conference on “Darwin vs. Design,” featuring presentations by the nation’s leading intelligent design scientists. The Departments of Anthropology, Biological Sciences, and Geological Sciences reacted with a letter objecting to the university’s agreement to host the conference. The Institute described the letter as an effort to censor scientists and stifle debate.

“Their attempt to censor scientific discussion of the evidence shows that their interest is not in obtaining a fair result but in keeping students from learning about the nature of the debate,” said Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman. “Darwin himself wrote that ‘a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.’”

In a statement issued by the Southern Methodist University Provost’s office, the university declined to cancel the upcoming Darwin v