A few months ago Nick Matzke of the NCSE was on a podcast giving the usual NCSE line that opposition to evolution is a fundamentally "Protestant" Christian phenomenon. Matzke stated, "I'm not sure if the evolution issue will go away until Biblical inerrancy declines in popularity," and he expressed his hope that, "maybe in a few hundred years people will get over it." Mr. Matzke should have attended a recent lecture, "Is Darwinism Kosher?," given at Discovery Institute by Jonathan Rosenblum, an Orthodox Jewish scholar and popular columnist of The Jerusalem Post. Mr. Rosenblum stated that he is comfortable with the literal meaning of Genesis being a "mystery" or an “analogy,” yet he rejects Neo-Darwinism. Speaking at Discovery Institute to a crowd that included many Orthodox Jews, Rosenblum explained that in his view, the literal meaning of the Torah may be reinterpreted, but its moral lessons and the theological truths are constant. Rosenblum explained that Orthodox Judaism has no objections to the claim that life undergoes change. But he repeatedly asked, “What’s the mechanism of that change?” According to Rosenblum, Neo-Darwinism, with its random mutations and lack of any goal, “cannot be reconciled" with the theological teachings of the Torah. Rosenblum was adamant that Orthodox Judaism in its reading of the Bible is not driven by a simple literal approach, but he maintained that Neo-Darwinian evolution stretches the theological truths of the Torah beyond their intended meaning.

Rosenblum clearly grasped the scientific issues. His article last year in the Jewish Observer challenged Darwin on the grounds of a lack of transitional fossils and the inability of natural selection to produce complex systems. Instead, Rosenblum, who himself is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Chicago, gave a lucid explanation of how Neo-Darwinism survives:

First step: Exclude all non-natural causes as a priori inadmissible. Second step: If Darwinian Evolution were true, it would explain observed taxonomic similarities between different living things. Third step: Since no alternative explanation exists to explain those phenomena, Darwinism must be true. … Fourth step: Since Darwinism is true, all explanations based on non-natural causes are vanquished. Note how that which was a priori excluded at the outset is now deemed to have been somehow disproved.

(Jonathan Rosenblum, “The Myth of Scientific Objectivity," Jewish Observer (May, 2006).)

[Under sociobiology a] newborn baby has less claim to life than a contented house cat, according to Singer. And the scope of those whom this son of Auschwitz survivors would see subject to euthanasia is wide - not only Downs syndrome babies, but even those with hemophilia, if their death would result in the parents producing a more perfect baby.

(Jonathan Rosenblum, “Think Again: Sociobiology isn't science,” Jerusalem Post (January 11, 2006).)

Regardless, Rosenblum showed that the case against Darwinism is not based on Biblical literalism of any faith, but rather involves much common sense and thoughtful reflection. This being the case, it seems that Mr. Matzke and the NCSE will be dealing with public opposition to evolution for a long time.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We have blogged in the past about the growing numbers of doctors who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution to explain the complexity of life.

Those numbers are continuing to grow, and conesquently doctors are beginning to organize themselves and reach out to others who hold similar positions. Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI) has for sometime had a website at www.doctorsdoubtingdarwin.com. Recently they have begun using the site to organize and promote conferences about Darwinian evolution around the world.

According to a recent e-mail, they have 264 members from 15 different countries and are planning a number of major events in the next 18 months, including a series of public events in Spain this January, titled "What Darwin Didn't Know," featuring CSC Fellow Dr. Geoff Simmons. Simmons' first book was What Darwin Didn't Know, and his most recent book is Billions of Missing Links.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Daily News, a newspaper in the predominantly Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka, has an excellent article authored by Dr. V.J.M. de Silva expressing skepticism towards Darwinian evolution. Silva states, “This article is not meant to be a critique of any Buddhist doctrine, for which I have the highest regard,” and he then explains, “Life, it seems, did not wait for blind chance to roll the dice, but erupted at the first available instant, leaving Darwinists with no time at all for their probabilistic processes. . . . Evolution (neo-Darwinism) is not a theory that has been proved. It is not like physics and chemistry. However, it is presented in the news media as an accomplished fact of science and all intelligent people are supposed to accept it. It is really a highly speculative hypothesis.” He demonstrates a clear grasp of ID: “Intelligent Design allows the possibility of God, but does not specify God.” Silva also knows how to recognize the false information put out by the Darwinian community:

In 2001, the US Public Broadcasting System ran a seven part TV series on evolution, and the spokespersons for this presentation asserted that “all known scientific evidence supports Darwinian Evolution, as does virtually every reputable scientist in the world.”

In response to this, the Discovery Institute, a ‘think tank’ in the US, sought the opinion of reputed scientists. Over one hundred scientists from various specialties, most with doctorates from prestigious universities, responded immediately.

They said they were sceptical of what was shown on the TV series, especially its impartiality. These scientists ran a two page advertisement in The Weekly Standard of October 1, 2001.

“We are sceptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for the Darwinian Theory should be encouraged.”

Since then, over 700 others have signed in, agreeing with the above.

(Dr.V.J.M.de Silva, "The origin of life in the universe ," The Daily News (July 12, 2007).)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There's a new resource for those wanting to learn more about the ID debate. Jason Rennie, an Australian podcaster, has a series of 25 podcasts, called "Darwin or Design?"

Rennie has compiled 25 interviews with prominent thinkers on both sides of the ID debate into a sort of "audiobook" which gives the listener a chance to hear each individual in their own words (and voice!). Interviews include Mike Behe on irreducible complexity, Guillermo Gonzalez on The Privileged Planet, Joey Campana on ID research, and Denyse O'Leary on ID and the media. On the critics' side, evolutionists like Sean Carroll and PZ Myers gave their two cents.

Rennie is upfront about his own friendliness to ID, but he avoids pushing any agenda onto his subjects and lets them each have their own say... which quickly becomes very interesting. While the basic ID and Darwinist arguments are great to hear in this unfiltered format, the extended conversations on ID and the law and ID in the media will enrich the understanding of those who want to dig a little deeper.

Posted by Anika Smith at 4:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Fancisco J. Ayala is an esteemed evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was dubbed the "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology" by the New York Times. Ayala is not only former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), but he helped found, chair, and organize the AAAS Dialogues on Science, Ethics, and Religion. He’s widely acclaimed by the Darwinian scientific community as a guru on science and religion. So what does Ayala say about evolutionary biology and religion? In May, 2007 Ayala published an article in the prestigious journal Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences USA entitled “Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer,” explaining that “evolution conveys chance and necessity jointly enmeshed in the stuff of life; randomness and determinism interlocked in a natural process..." In case you think that leaves room for God-guided evolution, Ayala states, "In evolution, there is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations.” In fact, Ayala believes that it was “Darwin’s greatest accomplishment” to remove "a Creator" from biology:

It was Darwin’s greatest accomplishment to show that the complex organization and functionality of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process—natural selection—without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.

(Francisco J. Ayala, "Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 104:8567–8573 (May 15, 2007).)

All this was published in the prestigious journal of perhaps the top scientific body of the entire world, by one of the top science-religion gurus in the Darwinian scientific community.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last summer I reported how theistic evolutionist and biologist Kenneth Miller gave some inaccurate testimony during the Dover trial when he wrongly claiming that the phrase "[e]volution is random and undirected" exists only in the third edition of his textbook. Miller claimed, "[T]hat statement was not in the first edition the book, it was not in the second edition, it was not in the fourth edition." The problem is that the phrase "[e]volution is random and undirected" was in the first, second, and fourth editions. As I noted, “The facts are very different from Miller's testimony. All of the first four editions of his ‘elephant’ Biology textbook contain the phrase ‘[e]volution is random and undirected.’" Now, I have recently discovered a 5th printing of the "elephant" Biology textbook from 2000, and it also contains Miller's infamous phrase, "[e]volution is random and undirected.” Why is this significant? Miller admitted during the Kitzmiller trial that this phraseology was "about meaning and purpose" and "beyond the realm of science," implying it could be offensive to religion. Yet Miller is the Darwinian biologist that Josh Gilder observed was the “religious mascot” of the PBS Evolution Series. Miller was also the plaintiffs’ star biology expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, where he testified before Judge Jones that evolution does not conflict with religion. Judge Jones was so enamored with Miller’s testimony (as Gilder put it earlier, “all religious issues were reconciled, as it were, in his person”) that Judge Jones ruled it is “utterly false” to believe that evolution conflicts with religion. Yet combined with two editions of Biology: Discovering Life that state, "Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism," it appears that no fewer than 7 editions of Miller’s textbooks have used language to describe evolution that many traditional theists might find offensive.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Orac over at Scienceblogs is starting to develop a reputation as someone more interested in calling his opponents names than in accurately representing their positions. His latest misrepresentation involves ENV contributor Casey Luskin and his post on junk-DNA, which Orac called “breathtakingly idiotic” (perhaps like Judge Jones calling ID “breathtakingly inane,” as anything which poses a challenge to the status quo must be to a Darwinist?). Orac explained to his readers that Luskin’s argument was that “’junk DNA’ somehow disproves evolution.”

This is a blatant mischaracterization of Luskin’s argument. According to Luskin,

Orac totally misrepresents my argument. I'm sure that evolutionary biology can accommodate the finding that "junk"-DNA has function, and such function does not "disprove" evolution (given Darwinist behavior, I wonder if it is even possible to disprove Darwinian evolution). The point of my post is that Darwinism's false presumption that non-coding DNA was "junk" had stopped science from investigating function for non-coding DNA and therefore hindered research.

Not content merely to attribute arguments to people who never made them, Orac goes on to attack Luskin for referencing a Scientific American article because, as he notes, it’s a popular science magazine. Aside from the fact that this is a rhetorically weak argument on its face (Orac ridiculously implies that Scientific American is necessarily wrong simply because it’s a lay magazine), Orac’s bigger problem is that Luskin’s argument regarding junk-DNA addressed a statement by John S. Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. It’s not the authority of Scientific American he should challenge, but that of Dr. Mattick.

Throughout his angry blog post, Orac is doing everything he can to erase the simple historical fact that the false "junk"-DNA mindset originated from Neo-Darwinism. (Here are several examples of Darwinists promoting the "junk"-DNA view.) In response to the historical record, Orac brings up scientists who have sought function for "junk"-DNA. To quote Luskin, of course "some rogue Darwinian biologists have bucked the consensus and promoted the view that non-coding DNA isn't mostly junk. . . . We wouldn't even be having this conversation about the death of "junk"-DNA were it not for the fact that Neo-Darwinism gave it life in the first place.” Unfortunately for Orac, neither the existence of a few biologists who challenge the consensus nor any of Orac's name-calling and pejorative metaphors can change the fact that the false "junk"-DNA paradigm was created by Neo-Darwinism.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Mathematician and intelligent design supporter Granville Sewell has posted an article, entitled “How Evolution Will Be Taught Someday,” where he makes some interesting predictions about the future state of teaching science. He asks whether intelligent design will be taught and says, “probably not in my lifetime.” In Sewell’s view, "in the not-too-distant future, biology texts will refer to evolution as an amazing, mysterious ‘natural’ process, which scientists do not now understand, but hope to understand some day." Sewell continues to explain that this result would not be opposed by the Discovery Institute, which is not trying to push ID into schools:

But for most ID proponents, this will be a quite satisfactory outcome, certainly a huge improvement over the current sad state of affairs, where Darwin's natural selection is the only scientific theory around which enjoys widespread legal protection from scientific criticism in the classroom. The Discovery Institute , which actively promotes ID as a scientific theory, does not (contrary to common belief) support the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classrooms, they only hope that biology instructors will be allowed to "teach the scientific controversy" over Darwinism.

Perhaps after a few generations in which biology texts point optimistically toward future discoveries which may uncover the mechanism of evolution, eventually some will begin to recognize the obvious, that there is no possible explanation without design. Until then, I will be happy with texts which simply acknowledge that the idea that the survival of the fittest can turn bacteria into giraffes, and cause human consciousness to arise out of inanimate matter, is doubted by some scientists.

(Granville Sewell, “ How Evolution Will Be Taught Someday,” emphasis in original)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Question: What do you do when a theory logically predicts both (a) and not (a)?
Answer: Apparently you heavily promote it.

MSNBC recently published two articles promoting Darwinian just-so stories to the public. The first article about the evolution of Waterfowl genitalia contends, “Scientists had speculated that male waterfowl evolved longer phalluses to give them a competitive edge over those not as well-endowed when it came to successfully fertilizing females.” That makes sense, I suppose. But the article makes one admission that strikingly contradicts that little just-so hypothesis: “Most birds lack phalluses, organs like human penises. Waterfowl are among the just 3 percent of all living bird species that retain the grooved phallus…” If long phalluses are so advantageous for reproduction, why did so many birds supposedly lose them? Darwinists will look back retroactively and claim that under the environmental conditions or sexual selection pressures experienced by most bird species, long phalluses weren’t advantageous. The problem in so doing is that they now have a theory which can explain both (a) long phalluses, and also not (a).

The second article, “Why we quit aping around, began walking,” hypothesizes that humans began walking upright because “[t]raveling upright takes a quarter the energy of ‘knuckle-walking’.” It’s a nice anthropocentric story, but if falls into the same predicament as the first article. Our upright-walking species, Homo sapiens comprises one out of about 7 species of the species of the family Hominidae. This means that only 14% of living species of Hominidae were naturally selected to walk upright. So think about this from the apes’ perspective: If upright walking is so energetically favorable, why do apes still “knuckle-walk”? I’m sure that some armchair Darwinian paleoanthropologist would be happy to oblige us with a just-so story as to why living ape species did not evolve bipedal locomotion and instead found knuckle-walking more advantageous for survival. We would then have a theory which can explain both (a) complete bipedal locomotion, and also not (a). In cases like these, one cannot help observe that Neo-Darwinism is like a theory which can explain anything, and therefore actually explains nothing.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Materialist neuroscientist and blogger P.Z. Myers gave a talk Sunday to the Minnesota Atheists entitled: “There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief”. I wish I could have been there! Hopefully P.Z. will post a transcript, or put up the Powerpoint file. The program looks like it was a treat. Quoting Myers:

We've made great strides in the past century towards understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive brain function, and I will briefly present an overview of some of the major conclusions of that work. In short, though, what we have are sophisticated molecular regulators and sensors and effectors and modulators that generate patterned impulses in pathways throughout the brain, and the mind is ultimately reducible to highly organized chemistry—there's no room for ghosts, souls, or spirits, and no need for them, either.

"Recently, researchers have made progress in identifying the neural substrates of higher level patterns of thought. This work is much more tentative, and we have to be aware of the limitations of our interpretations, which is a consequence of the complexity of the data. I will discuss one narrow aspect of this research, the neural basis of religious belief, and explanations for its evolution. Religious belief is an emergent consequence of much broader genetically determined properties of the brain; I will make the argument that there is no "god gene", no specific hard-coding of religion into human brains, and that religion itself is a kind of conceptual parasite that takes advantage of other desirable and even "virtuous" intrinsic qualities of the brain."

I presume it went well, but I would like to suggest some strategies to P.Z. for future materialist neuroscience talks to atheist organizations:

1) Avoid going into too much detail about actual materialistic theories of the mind. Avoid discussing Behaviorism, which was the materialist vogue in the early and mid-20th century (remember Skinner’s box?) Don’t remind the audience that Behaviorists actually believe that internal mental processes are irrelevant to the study of psychology, and all that matters in psychology is what you can observe. And especially don’t mention the Eliminative Materialists, like Paul and Patricia Churchland, you know, the real materialists of the mind! They assert that the mind doesn’t even exist, and that our perception of subjective existence and internal mental processes are illusions (how someone can have an illusion without having real subjective experience is an uncomfortable question that you want to avoid). Disclosure of what materialist philosophers of the mind actually think (or whatever they call mental processes) would be indiscreet. A tactical error. If they ask you anything specific about materialist theories of the mind, pretend you're having trouble with the microphone.

2) Especially, avoid Daniel Dennett’s ’multiple drafts’ theory that the mind is simply an emergent property of the massive parallel processing in the brain. It leads to the uncomfortable observation that the paradigm Dennett uses to explain the brain (i.e. the computer) is an intricate piece of manufactured hardware run by software that is written by programmers. The computer is a beautiful model of intelligently designed dualism. If anyone in your atheist audience picks up on this, things could get nasty. Even tacit endorsements of I.D. or of dualism are unwise in front of an atheist audience. Atheists seem like an amiable lot, but, as the history of the 20th century attests, they can get a bit…testy. Play it safe.

3) Avoid any reference to the self-refuting nature of materialist neuroscience. If your mind is merely an emergent property of your brain, then your opinions are completely determined by your neurophysiology. But neurophysiology is determined by physics and chemistry. Can physics and chemistry ascertain truth? Don’t remind your audience that by the very act of asserting your theory you inherently stake a claim to credibility not normally accorded to meat.

4) Be delicate about the assertion that religious belief is explained by evolution. Although you can’t expect a whole lot of real skepticism from atheist ‘skeptics’, there may be a few in the audience who aren’t gullible enough to accept the assertion that ‘religion is an evolved adaptation’ without noting the obvious corollary: ‘atheism is an evolved adaptation’. Since your real goal is to discredit religious belief by telling a story about the pedestrian manner in which it supposedly arose (see the Genetic Fallacy), a couple of the less credulous skeptics in your audience might notice that the same fallacy can be applied to atheism, materialism, Darwinism, etc. Be careful of this.

5) Your argument that “religion itself is a kind of conceptual parasite” is brilliant! After all, ideas copy themselves and spread from organism to organism. You’ve got variation, natural selection, the whole Darwinian package! Why not call it a ‘meme’ or something. But you have to be careful here, too. An astute atheist might say: ‘how can natural selection apply to ideas, just like it applies to genes? Ideas and genes are completely different things. If natural selection works on both of them, then natural selection is true regardless of the substrate on which it acts. Doesn’t that imply that natural selection is a tautology?’ Bad denouement. Don’t push the gene-meme thing too far. People do just fine studying ideas without recourse to 'natural selection'. They might see that they can do just fine studying biology without recourse to 'natural selection'.

6) Because you are promulgating 19th century materialist ideology, avoid any reference to quantum entanglement and the ‘observer effect’ in quantum mechanics. Material reality at the quantum level only sharpens into focus when it is observed by a mind. The implication is that the mind, in an important and fundamental way, is distinct from matter, and in fact is a prerequisite for discrete physical reality at the quantum level. The observer effect in quantum mechanics adds credence to the dualist theory of the mind. Don’t remind the audience.

7) Especially avoid pointing out that the assertion that neuroscience proves the non-existence of the soul is inconsistent with the Darwinist assertion that ‘I.D. isn’t science’. If science can adjudicate the existence or non-existence of the soul, it obviously can adjudicate the existence or non-existence of design in living things. Disproof of transcendence presupposes the capacity to prove transcendence. If ‘soul detection’ is science, ‘I.D. detection’ is science. Oops.

8) By all means, use neuroscientific jargon. The only way you could even hope to convince a room full of thoughtful people (or even conscious people) that their minds are merely the secretion of a couple of pounds of meat is to cloak the assertion in jargon. Assert confidently that ‘phase locked oscillations in neurons in the hippocampal CA1 region and the subinculum give rise to sophisticated molecular regulators and sensors and effectors and modulators that generate highly organized chemistry and patterned impulses in pathways throughout the brain yielding states of arousal we that interpret as consciousness …,' or something like that. Dress your ideology up, or it won’t sell, even to atheists.

9) Above all, be assertive! Drive home how neuroscience proves that materialism is the only respectable view for ‘Brights’. Avoid gratuitous reticence. Your audience might realize that the "limitations of our interpretations" are due less to the "complexity of the data" than to the 'inadequacy of the ideology'. Don't reveal too much.

All this aside, I’m sure Myers did fine. He had a very receptive audience, and I’m sure my conundrums listed above never occurred to any of them. Cognitive dissonance isn’t a big problem for materialists.

I’m sure the chemistry was just right.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Our recent podcast interview with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, discusses his new Evolutionary Informatics lab at Baylor University. Additionally, Mario Lopez recently has posted an interview with William Dembski at the IDEA Center's website discussing Dembski's research with Robert Marks's Evolutionary Informatics lab at Baylor University. Dembski thinks the lab's research puts ID “in a position to challenge certain fundamental assumptions in the natural sciences about the nature and origin of information.” Dembski’s work has long-been a lightning rod for ID-critics who take a science-stopping approach to ID by alleging that areas of Dembski’s continued ID-research actually represent unsolvable problems for the science of ID. In essence, some of Dembski’s critics have taken an approach that goes like this: “If Dembski hasn’t yet finished the research to provide what I consider would be a full answer to my objections, then I’m going to engage in character assassination against Dembski.” Some ID-critics have even tried to actively shut down Dembski's research programs: then-NCSE staff member, Molleen Matsumura (also a “past Vice President of the Internet Infidels”) was part of the group that recommended shutting down Dembski’s previous Michael Polanyi Research Center he was trying to start at Baylor to do ID research! Nonetheless, Dembski continues to do research, as he describes in the interview:

CA: Dr. Dembski, ID has come a very long way since its inception; and ID proponents are making inroads in a vast array of scientific disciplines such as astronomy, biology, and chemistry. How has your own work in mathematics (namely, The Design Inference and No Free Lunch) helped or influenced the development of novel ways of doing science?

WD: It’s too early to tell what the impact of my ideas is on science. To be sure, there has been much talk about my work and many scientists are intrigued (though more are upset and want to destroy it), but so far only a few scientists see how to take these ideas and run with them. There’s a reason for this slow start. My work in The Design Inference was essentially a work on the philosophical foundations of probability theory, trying to understand how to interpret probabilities in certain contexts. This led naturally to some ideas about information and the type of information used in drawing design inferences. My book No Free Lunch was a semi-popular overview of where I saw the ID movement headed on the topic of information. The hard work of developing these ideas into a rigorous information-theoretic formalism for doing science really began only in 2005 with some unpublished papers on the mathematical foundations of intelligent design that appeared on my website (www.designinference.com). With the formation of Robert Marks's Evolutionary Informatics Lab in June 2007 (Marks is a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University), and work by him and me on the conservation of information (several papers of which are available at http://www.EvoInfo.org), I think ID is finally in a position to challenge certain fundamental assumptions in the natural sciences about the nature and origin of information. This, I believe, will have a large impact on science.

CA: Your critics (such as Wein, Perakh, Shallit, Elsberry, Wolpert and others) seem unsatisfied with your work. They charge your work as being somewhat esoteric and lacking intellectual rigor. What do you say to that charge?

WD: Most of these critics are responding to my book No Free Lunch. As I explained in the preface of that book, its aim was to provide enough technical details so that experts could fill in details, but enough exposition so that the general reader could grasp the essence of my project. The book seems to have succeeded with the general reader and with some experts, though mainly with those who were already well-disposed toward ID. In any case, it became clear after that publication of that book that I would need to fill in the mathematical details myself, something I have been doing right along (see my articles described under “mathematical foundations of intelligent design” at www.designinference.com) and which has now been taken up in earnest in a collaboration with my friend and Baylor colleague Robert Marks at his Evolutionary Informatics Lab (www.EvoInfo.org).

CA: Are you evading the tough questions?

WD: Of course not. But tough questions take time to answer, and I have been patiently answering them. I find it interesting now that I have started answering the critics’ questions with full mathematical rigor (see the publications page at www.EvoInfo.org) that they are largely silent. Jeff Shallit, for instance, when I informed him of some work of mine on the conservation of information told me that he refuse to address it because I had not adequately addressed his previous objections to my work, though the work on conservation of information about which I was informing him was precisely in response to his concerns. Likewise, I’ve interacted with Wolpert. Once I started filling in the mathematical details of my work, however, he fell silent.

(Mario Lopez’s "An Interview with Dr. William A. Dembski")

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The best way to rewrite history is to delete the views of those who remember it personally. The Scientist's editor Richard Gallgaher's recent article on "junk"-DNA mentions that Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz suggested that The Scientist publish an "obituary" for "junk"-DNA. Gallagher wrote:

Andras J. Pellionisz, to whom I am grateful for bringing this notable 35th anniversary to my attention, suggested that The Scientist publish an obituary to "formally abandon this misnomer." Pellionisz's objection is that scientific progress is being inhibited, and declaring junk DNA dead would align us with his own organization, the International PostGenetics Society (postgenetics.org), which disavowed the term on the 12th of October last year. Pellionisz is not alone.

(Richard Gallagher, "Junk Worth Keeping," The Scientist, Vol. 21(7):15 (July, 2007).)

Darwinists at Pandas Thumb can rewrite history if they want, but as I noted, "The fact remains that the entire false 'junk' DNA paradigm was born out of the neo-Darwinian mindset, which taught that cells were constantly subjected to random evolutionary forces and genetic parasites that littered the genome with 'junk.' There is no denying that the whole dead-end concept of 'junk'-DNA came from the Neo-Darwinian paradigm, and that’s what matters here." The backpedaling at Panda's Thumb is an exercise in stressing irrelevancies. We wouldn't even be having this conversation about the death of "junk"-DNA were it not for the fact that Neo-Darwinism gave it life in the first place. With his permission, I reprint Dr. Pellionisz's e-mail below:

-----Original Message-----

From: Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: Integrity of Panda's Thumb

Dear Casey Luskin,

Under the heading of "Unintelligent move" by Panda's Thumb, obviously appearing as an attempt to "back-pedal" by citing claims that "a strict application of the Darwinian paradigm, also known as “panselectionism” or “adaptationism”, led many prominent evolutionary biologists to initially resist the idea that some DNA may be non-functional"

I tried to post my following note, as one of the first in the debate. I cited the case of my friend and fellow-pioneer Dr. Simons (a Darwinist) who bet his life more than one way since 1987 that "Junk DNA" was not junk at all.

My posting never appeared as the reply screen claimed "protection". This was the *third* time that my opinion was suppressed in Panda's Thumb.

Malcolm' story, "a triumph and tragedy", however is perhaps the strongest documentation of the ruthless oppression by Primitive Darwinists (who Malcolm is obviously not) of any view that might not be fully consistent with what they would like to dictate.

Since informing the public about facts is important, and so is the quest to scientifically investigate the algorithmic design of the Genome, such that people like Malcolm suffering from "Junk DNA diseases" could be helped, I hereby give my permission that my posting that I intended as a reply in "Panda's Thumb" might appear in your column.

I would add to your statement that "for the scientific method (i.e. observation, hypothesis, and experimentation)" one need not (indeed, ideally should not) have any ideological predilection. Scientist must be free to have any belief that they might have, but must pursue the scientific method as you state.

"Those who can do the reseach to find out how 98.7% of human Genome works - just do it. Those who can't, please get out of our way with any ideology - saving lives is much too important".

Sincerely,

Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz

---

On September 1, 2005 when I originated the International PostGenetics Society http://www.postgenetics.org and established PostGenetics ("Genomics beyond Genes") we reached the edge of the "eye of the JunkDNA cyclone"; with an organization standing up against out casting 98.7% of human Genome as "Junk" the overwhelming wind was no longer blowing individual scientists into a junky direction. There appeared an organization led by scientists to provide anchorage of research of what this 98.7% of the Genome is actually doing. On the 12 of October 2006, on the "European Inaugural" of IPGS there appeared the first international organization that formally abandoned the "JunkDNA" misnomer as a scientific term.

On the 14 of June, 2007, with the publication of the NIH-led ENCODE-report(with $53 M tax-dollars spent), we have arrived at the dead-center of the eye of the cyclone. Yes, as appeared in The Scientist "Gallagher Editorial" "http://www.the-scientist.com/2007/7/1/15/1/", in July, the discredited misnomer will liver forever as a memento of "framing" Genetics into an establishment where for the purposes of researching "Junk DNA" resources were denied, papers were rejected (ask e.g. Mattick and Taft of their excellent manuscript which was never accepted as intended, or even Rigoutsos whose breakthrough publication on pyknons sustained at least a year of delay). Worse, as I pointed out in my "comments" to The Scientist, and elaborated in more detail in my "Obituary of Junk DNA "http://www.junkdna.com/#obituary_of_junk_dna" uncounted millions of people died miserable deaths while scientists were looking for the "gene" causing their illnesses - and were not even supposed to look anywhere but under the lamp illuminating only 1.3% of the genome (the genes).

One person with a Junk DNA disease " http://www.junkdna.com/junkdna_diseases.html " is my dear friend and fellow-pioneer of Junk DNA scientific research; Dr. Malcolm J. Simons, the Honorary Chairman of IPGS "http://www.junkdna.com/ipgs_staged/founders.html"

As documented in the full transcript of the video Genius of Junk "http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s898887.htm" award-winning science documentary (never aired in the USA, guess why), Malcolm, as a Darwinist voiced in the 2003 filming his 1987 conviction against the "Junk Frame" this way:

Under Darwinistic notions you would think that junk would drop off under the theory of natural selection just like species drop off if they hit ecological niches which is incompatible with survival. If they can adapt to those niches, then those that can survive and those that can't die. There's the notion. If you apply that to the DNA sequence, then the coding region genes which survived have a function and by the way the non coding sequences have survived as well. So the proposition would have to be that if they're there, they've got a function [MJS]

How do you think his fellow-Darwinist scientists received his assertion (1987) that "Junk DNA" had a function?

When I showed the professional geneticists the data, which indicated to me that the 95% non-coding region wasn't junk, and was ordered…The reaction was smiling disbelief at best - you're off your friggin' head and if you're any good at squash - stick to your day job [MJS]

(For those asking, I may give you a copy for your personal perusal of the video that you would never in your life forget - especially if you or your loved ones encounter one the gezillions of "junk DNA diseases". If you have gotten rich - and old enough that some of these regulatory diseases start popping up - your best investment may be to endow frantic research precisely for PostGenetics Centers. Probably unlike dear Malcolm himself, you might actually buy some years to live)

Thus, although when we are already re-entering the cyclone with an opposite wind building up with accelerating speed, "it is too easy" (and looks quite childish, though very human) to "back-pedal" in post-June 2007 on the issue of attributing function to "Junk DNA". Most everything is on record, already.

Instead of engaging in a "blaming game" (that may not be the best use of time, unless one enjoys it), one may wish to drop shouting over some arbitrary ideological trenches and do actual R&D towards the "Algorithmic Design" of the Genome. We are all united on that one - Malcolm and myself even published (yes, in peer-reviewed science journal…) experimental support "http://www.junkdna.com/fractogene/05_simons_pellionisz.pdf" of quantitative predictions.

Yes, FractoGene even passes "the Onion-test" (of Panda's thumb) at least as well as any competitor "Junk DNA theories"…

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A recent ID the Future podcast interviews Mario Lopez, founder of Ciencia Alternativa, discussing how intolerance against intelligent design and threats of persecution for ID-proponents are alive and well, sadly, not just in the English-speaking countries but also in Spanish-speaking nations. While searching the net recently, I stumbled across the blog of a Spanish-speaking Darwinist paleontologist who confirms this. His "Paleofreak blog" reports on a lecture by intelligent design proponents Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley Richards in an uninviting post titled “Go home!” The post also includes an odd picture of some bizarre character with the title “Creacionismo Go Home”:

[Update 1, July 23, 2007, 10:30 am: Apparently this Darwinist is so enamored with his own intolerance that he has now posted a response on his blog titled "Go home! Go home! Go home!" that says "we will continue saying GO HOME!" (quote translated, all emphases added). Taking a typical Darwinist approach, he justifies his intolerance by citing the "wedge document" (see here and here to understand why this is a fallacious response). The "Paleofreak" blog's response is saddening: if only such Darwinists were interested in expanding scientific diversity and building bridges rather than promoting such discrimination and intolerance.]

[Update 2, July 24, 2007, 4:00 pm: While namecalling us "IDolaters," Darwinist blogger Josh Rosenau now claims that in this post, "Casey Luskin acknowledges that ID is creationism." Nothing could be further from the truth. This post never calls ID creationism, rather the word "Creationismo" was used by the "Paleofreak" blogger, in a fashion that I simply quoted from the title of "Paleofreak's" blog post. There is obviously nothing in this post that asserts that I believe ID is creationism, and given that I have always contended that ID is not the same as creationism (see here for my latest of dozens of such examples), there is also no doubt that Josh Rosenau knows he has made a false statement. When Darwinists knowingly resort to such false arguments, it is clear they are desperate enough to resort to any argument possible to label ID as creationism, no matter how false that argument is.]

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The ever observant Denyse O'Leary over at the Post-Dawrinist blog has an interesting little post about NCSE's Eugenie Scott's recent attempts to spin the "inside story about the Discovery Institute, the well-financed 'think tank' promoting intelligent design and other far-right causes." (Well financed? What, compared to the average biology department at the average college? Our budget is a tiny fraction of just a tiny fraction of all the Darwin dominated budgets out there. And, far-right causes? What, like green hybrid vehicles or passenger ferry service?

Among other things Scott apparently refers to us as "right wing libertarians" with a "road map to theocracy". What in the world is a libertarian theocrat you might wonder? A former DI colleague (who asked to remain unnamed because he was worried about being associated with such "conspiracies") sarcastically explained to me that it must refer to "robber barron capitalism and a state church that regulates the hell out of peoples' sex lives."

For accuracy and clarity you won't get from the NCSE website go here. Among the numerous truth sheets on this page are these two which I'm sure completely unspin Scott's alleged "inside" story.

Discovery Institute and "Theocracy"
Overview: Periodically certain Darwinists make false and unsubstantiated claims that Discovery Institute advocates “theocracy” or is part of the “radical Christian right” or supposedly supports something called “Christian reconstructionism.” These charges are little more than smears, and they show the bankruptcy of the Darwinists’ own position. Rather than argue about the substance of the scientific debate over neo-Darwinism, all Darwinists can do is engage in baseless ad hominem attacks.

The “Wedge Document”: How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend
Overview: In 1999 someone posted on the internet an early fundraising proposal for Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Dubbed the “Wedge Document,” this proposal soon took on a life of its own, popping up in all sorts of places and eventually spawning what can only be called a giant urban legend. Among true-believers on the Darwinist fringe the document came to be viewed as evidence for a secret conspiracy to fuse religion with science and impose a theocracy. These claims were so outlandish that for a long time we simply ignored them. But because some credulous Darwinists seem willing to believe almost anything, we decided we should set the record straight. For a more detailed response please read "The Wedge Document: So What?".

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I stated in my previous post that “ID has long-predicted that junk-DNA has function, and ID was right.” So what has Neo-Darwinism done with respect to "junk"-DNA? The Panda's Thumb post cited by Richard Gallagher in his recent attack on ID in The Scientist cites an ID-proponent that found that some Darwinian biologists predicted that "junk"-DNA would have function, and the implication is that Neo-Darwinism has not forestalled research into "junk"-DNA. So what if some biologists did buck the trend and investigate function for non-coding DNA? Good for them for being observant, and good for them for not relying upon the neo-Darwinian consensus! The fact remains that the entire false “junk” DNA paradigm was born out of the neo-Darwinian mindset, which taught that cells were constantly subjected to random evolutionary forces and genetic parasites that littered the genome with "junk." There is no denying that the whole dead-end concept of "junk"-DNA came from the Neo-Darwinian paradigm, and that’s what matters here.

I discussed a few examples of Darwinian biologists proclaiming the lack of function for “junk” DNA in a previous post:

In 1994, the authoritative textbook, Molecular Biology of the Cell, co-authored by National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts, suggested (incorrectly!) that introns are "largely genetic 'junk'":

Unlike the sequence of an exon, the exact nucleotide sequence of an intron seems to be unimportant. Thus introns have accumulated mutations rapidly during evolution, and it is often possible to alter most of an intron’s nucleotide sequence without greatly affecting gene function. This has led to the suggestion that intron sequences have no function at all and are largely genetic “junk”…[2]

Soon thereafter, the 1995 edition of Voet & Voet's Biochemistry textbook explained that "a possibility that must be seriously entertained is that much repetitive DNA serves no useful purpose whatever for its host. Rather, it is selfish or junk DNA, a molecular parasite that, over many generations, has disseminated itself throughout the genome..."[3]

In 1996, leading origin of life theorist Christian de Duve wrote: "The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA."[4] Another leading biologist, Sydney Brenner argued in a biology journal in 1998 that: "The excess DNA in our genomes is junk, and it is there because it is harmless, as well as being useless, and because the molecular processes generating extra DNA outpace those getting rid of it."[5]

Again I ask, so what if some Darwinian biologists bucked the clear consensus that under Neo-Darwinism, the “excess” DNA was probably useless junk? As Dembski would say, emphasizing such biologists is an exercise in stressing irrelevancies. The important fact is that the false "junk"-DNA paradigm was born and bred within the Neo-Darwinian mindset. You would never catch a clear-thinking ID-proponent saying something like, “The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.”

I Saw It with Mine Own Eyes
It’s tough to beat the testimony of an eyewitness. In this case, I am an eyewitness to the fact that Darwinian biologists contended that types of non-coding DNA were “junk” that couldn't possibly have been designed. In 2000 I took a graduate seminar at Scripps Institution for Oceanography where my fellow classmates argued to me that our DNA was not designed because Alu repeats could not possibly be anything but "junk." Then in 2003, Hakimi et al. published in Nature, "A chromatin remodeling complex that loads cohesin onto human chromosomes," which reported function for human Alu sequences. Indeed, Richard Gallagher’s article now provides a discussion of the functions for Alu repeats:

It's been all downhill [for junk-DNA]. Since, undermined by discoveries of the complexity of gene structure, the sophisticated nature of translational controls (which includes a role for Alu repeats, on the face of it the most meaningless junk of all), and the reach and scope of transposons. Recently, and damningly to the concept of junk, we've had the revelation of regulatory RNA networks.

(Richard Gallagher, "Junk Worth Keeping," The Scientist, Vol. 21(7):15 (July, 2007).)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Scopes trial is often depicted as an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of light (scientific Darwinists) and the forces of darkness (benighted citizens of Tennessee who didn’t want Darwinism taught to their children). Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1950s play “Inherit the Wind,” a fictionalized account of the Scopes trail, portrays the trial as a struggle between scientific enlightenment and ignorant fundamentalism and has become a staple of high school English classes. Yet the Scopes trial wasn’t, as a matter of law, just about teaching Darwinism in an abstract sense. Scopes violated the Tennessee law by teaching from a textbook—George William Hunter's A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (1914).

In a recent essay in the weekly standard, A Book for No Seasons: the forgotten aspects of John Scopes’ famous biology textbook, Garin Hovannisian recounts the truth about the biology textbook that was at the center of the Scopes trial.

Hovannisian observes:

George William Hunter's A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (1914) was the book that sparked the controversy. Condemned as heretical in 1925, today it would seem to be a manual for enlightenment's battle against religion's perceived mysticism. Yet if John Scopes were to teach the very same Civic Biology in a modern classroom, he would probably be put on trial again. Because buried under the dust of history is the fact that this progressive, pro-evolution text was also quite racist.

At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Hunter was also a proponent of eugenics. "[T]he science of being well born," his text instructed, is an imperative for sophisticated society. "When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand," he wrote, arguing that tuberculosis, epilepsy, and even "feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity." "If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading," Hunter lamented in Civic Biology. "Humanity will not allow this but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race."[emphasis mine]

Subsequent editions of the textbook, like the ones I found at the Library of Congress, were cleansed of such views. Terms like "civilized white inhabitants" were disappeared, while references to "evolution" were replaced with "development of man." But these revisions were chiefly the design of Hunter's publishers who, in spite of the author's protests, sought to "omit statements that are likely to give offense to large numbers of people in control of the schools."

Outraged by the "emasculation" of his work and out of patience by 1926, Hunter wrote, "I have never felt so depressed and disgusted with a revision as this one. I thought I had the material for a mighty good book and it was before you people spoiled it."

You won't learn about A Civic Biology in Inherit the Wind. The lessons Scopes actually proposed to teach the schoolchildren of Dayton have been expunged from popular memory, as well as from the Library of Congress. Yet Inherit the Wind wasn't entirely inaccurate—the Scopes trial was indeed a struggle between two worldviews. The struggle between a 'benighted' and an 'enlightened' understanding of man continues to this day. The people of Tennessee objected to the lessions taught in A Civic Biology, and they objected to the Darwinist 'science' that was the explicit basis for Hunter's textbook. In rejecting dogmatic Darwinism as an ideology unfit for the education of their children, the people of Tennessee were a bit ahead of their time.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 9:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Des Moines Register is continuing the rewriting of history regarding Guillermo Gonzalez. Last week the Des Moines Register published an article by Lisa Rossi which misrepresented the accomplishments of Guillermo Gonzalez and vastly understated his grant funding. In response, I submitted the following letter-to-the-editor to the Des Moines Register, but they would not run the letter because it didn't "add anything new to the dialogue." It seems the Des Moines Register doesn't regard positive information about Guillermo Gonzalez as adding anything new to the discussion. Regardless, as my letter concluded, “Rossi's fuzzy math and selective presentation of ISU's tenure policies obfuscate the obvious fact that Gonzalez's tenure denial was due to intolerance of intelligent design.” I reprint the letter below:

Dear Editor, Lisa Rossi's article, "ISU professor appeals denial of tenure," ignores Guillermo Gonzalez’s professional accomplishments while grossly miscalculating the funds that Dr. Gonzalez received during his time at ISU.

Rossi never once mentions Dr. Gonzalez’s outstanding record of scholarship, though that would seem worth noting in a story about a professor’s tenure. Guillermo Gonzalez leads all tenured ISU astronomers in citations in scientific papers since 2001 (normalized), and he has published over 350% more than the number of peer-reviewed publications his department requires for tenure.

In addition (pardon the pun), Rossi’s numbers don’t add up. She reports that Dr. Gonzalez received only $22,661 in outside grant money since joining ISU in 2001. In fact, Dr. Gonzalez received $64,000 from the NASA Astrobiology Institute from 2001-2004 and $58,000 from the Templeton Foundation from 2000-2003. Additionally, in early, 2007 Dr. Gonzalez obtained a five-year $50,000 grant from Discovery Institute to collect new observational astronomical research data.

Rossi's implication is that Professor Gonzalez was denied tenure because he didn’t receive enough grant money. Ironically, this is refuted by an op-ed the Des Moines Register printed by ISU physicist John Hauptman, who admitted that his vote against Gonzalez's tenure was based solely on Gonzalez's support for intelligent design. Moreover, Gonzalez actually received more grant money than many of those given tenure at ISU this year, and he has more peer-reviewed publications than nearly all of those approved for tenure. Clearly, it is incredible to believe that Gonzalez was objectively less qualified than the 91% of ISU faculty applying for tenure in 2007 who were approved.

Given that the tenure policies of Gonzalez's own department don't even mention grants as a criterion for gaining tenure, Rossi's fuzzy math and selective presentation of ISU's tenure policies obfuscate the obvious fact that Gonzalez's tenure denial was due to intolerance of intelligent design.

Sincerely,

Casey Luskin
Discovery Institute
Seattle, Washington

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This week's WORLD Magazine features an interview (available here to subscribers) with biochemist Michael Behe, "Darwin Slayer" and author of this year's The Edge of Evolution, his first book since the groundbreaking Darwin's Black Box back in 1996. As Marvin Olasky writes, "[A] book once every decade or so is about as much as Darwinians can take. Behe's new work shows that Darwinism's random mutation and natural selection explain little about how one species has led to another."

WORLD asks thoughtful questions and receives insightful answers, as seen in the following interchange:

WORLD: If macroevolution is like taking a gradual route to a distant pinnacle, why is it biologically unreasonable—given enough time—"to expect random mutation and natural selection to navigate a maze to get there"?

BEHE: Darwin's most radical claim was that evolution is utterly blind—unlike an intelligent agent, it can't "see" whether a mutation will be helpful in the long run. Random mutation and natural selection can only select whatever changes confer an immediate advantage, regardless of whether the changes are constructive or destructive. We see that starkly in human genetic responses to malaria, where many genes have been broken, diminished, or warped (like sickle cell). Yet in order to build complex coherent molecular machinery, evolution must avoid destructive changes and select ones that will be helpful in the future. A blind process can't do that.

Posted by Anika Smith at 11:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My Darwinist interlocutor Orac, the surgical oncologist who blogs anonymously to hide his professional identity, but who takes umbrage at my observation that his posts are sometimes unprofessional, repeated his claim recently that Darwin’s theory is essential to medicine. That’s an odd assertion, even at first glance, given that Darwin’s theory isn’t taught in medical school and there are no specific requirements that pre-medical students have any grounding in the theory. There are lots of things that medical school admissions and curriculum committees recognize as indispensable to medical practice and research—calculus, physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, physiology, anatomy, pharmacology and pathophysiology, to name a few—but Darwin’s fundamental assertion—that all natural functional biological complexity arose by non-teleological variation and natural selection—isn’t a part of the required curriculum. How can Darwin’s actual theory of the non-purposeful origin of all life be indispensable to medicine, but not taught as a part of medical education, nor even required as a part of pre-medical education?

Yet Darwinists have insisted that Darwin’s theory is indispensable to medicine in three ways:

• 1) It is indispensable for our understanding of comparative medicine, which is the study of the similarity between humans and other species.
• 2) It is essential to genetics
• 3) It is indispensable to our understanding of population biology, particularly as regards bacterial resistance to antibiotics and the growth of cancer cells

As I have pointed out in several previous posts, the first two claims are nonsense. Darwin’s theory isn’t the basis for comparative medicine. Comparative medicine antedates Darwin by several millennia. Aristotle developed a system of comparative biology, and Galen, the father of classical medicine before the Enlightenment, used the principles of comparative biology in his dissection of Barbary apes and other animals as the basis for his system of human anatomy. The pioneers in seventeenth and eighteenth century anatomy and physiology, such as William Harvey and William Hunter, based nearly all of their research on extrapolation from animal to human biology, which of course is comparative biology. The father of modern comparative biology—the modern system of classification of species—was Carol Linnaeus, who worked a century before Darwin was born. Most of biological science before Darwin was comparative biology. Darwin offered one particular explanation for the similarities and differences between species, but the similarities and differences were known centuries before he lived. Darwin’s theory depends on our understanding of species similarity (and differences), but the converse is not true. Our knowledge of these similarities and differences doesn’t depend on Darwin’s theory. Comparative medicine depends on the actual study of human and non-human biology, not theories as to how these similarities came about. Darwin’s theory depends on the data, but the data for species similarity and differences is independent of Darwin’s theory. And it is the data, not the conjecture, that is essential to modern comparative medicine.

Neither does our knowledge of genetics depend on Darwin’s theory of non-teleological variation and natural selection. Our knowledge of genetics depends on physics, chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc. The proposal that biological complexity is non-teleological, which is the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory, contributes nothing to the study of genetics. In fact, by definition, virtually all experimental research in genetics involves genetic engineering (design) and artificial selection in the laboratory, both of which are quite purposeful and thus are examples of breeding, not of Darwinian evolution. Advocates for Darwin’s theory of course use modern genetics in their work, but the converse is not true. Molecular geneticists gain little or nothing from the assertion that all biological complexity arose by "chance and necessity." Genetic engineering, which is the real basis for most of our progress in molecular genetics, is, in a very real sense, the antithesis of Darwin’s theory.

Orac’s assertion that Darwin’s theory is essential to the understanding of bacterial antibiotic resistance and cancer growth is a bit more subtle, but is no less nonsense than the first two. Darwin’s theory has been applied to bacterial antibiotic resistance and cancer growth in two ways:

• 1) Darwin’s theory asserts that in a population of cells the traits of surviving bacteria (or cancer cells) will eventually be more common than the traits of non-surviving cells. Colloquially, "survivors will eventually outnumber non-survivors." This trivial observation is obvious—it’s essentially a tautology—and Darwin’s exposition of this tautology is of no use to physicians or to medical researchers. It’s like claiming that the observation that "heat is hot" is indispensable to physicists studying thermodynamics.
• 2) The growth of bacteria and cancer cells can be modeled with mathematical techniques, most prominently, statistical methods and the application of non-linear dynamics (such as Van der Pol oscillations, which can also be used to explain several important phenomena ranging from insect infestations to irregular heartbeats and activity in neural networks). Indeed, several of the pioneers of the application of mathematical statistics to biology, such as Galton, Pearson, and Fisher, were Darwinists. But, obviously, the application of mathematical techniques to biology doesn’t depend on Darwin’s theory of the non-purposeful origin of all biological complexity. The techniques of mathematical statistics can be applied to many things—economics, sociology, psychology—that are obviously studies of purposeful variation and have nothing to do with Darwin’s theory. Modern iterations of Darwin’s theory certainly make use of mathematics. Yet mathematics, applied to biology, doesn’t depend at all on Darwin’s theory. The mathematical methods applied to biology, and spuriously credited to Darwin’s theory, are routinely applied to designed systems and owe nothing to Darwin’s actual theory. Darwin himself used no mathematics, and his theory contributes nothing to our mathematical understanding of biological systems. Mathematics is the source of our mathematical understanding of biology.

Orac misunderstands the genuinely inconsequential role of Darwin’s theory of chance and necessity in medicine. Mathematical methods are certainly important in medicine, but Darwin's theory that all life arose without design contributes nothing to the mathematical methods actually used in research. And Darwinian tautologies (e.g., "unkilled bacterial eventually outnumber killed bacteria") are of no real value to researchers or to practicing physicians.

So I ask Orac: give me the specific examples of medical practices or advances in medical research in which Darwin’s fundamental assertion—that all natural functional biological complexity arose by non-teleological variation and natural selection—has played an essential role, or any role.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 10:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In part