There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality.
One can be grateful that there are so many cases where science does proceed along the ideal path, but there is no excuse for trying to fool the public into thinking that great injustices and bad judgments don’t occur, too...
As Rob Crowther noted earlier, NYT’s Cornelia Dean has been doing a shoddy job reporting on intelligent design and evolution. In fact, even her allies are beginning to take notice.
On Thursday the local (and vehemently anti-ID) weekly had a note on its blog to Cornelia Dean. While they agreed with her biased reporting, even they are getting tired of her knee-jerk parroting:
Cornelia Dean! It’s good to be emphatic, but you start to sound like a robot—one of those Darwin-believin’ automatons whom the Discovery Institute takes great pleasure in deriding.
While it’s true that Dean is an easy target, it’s worth noting here that such staunch supporters of Darwinism are worried that Dean is actually hurting their cause. If readers start to suspect unfair and biased reporting with her heavy-handed tone, they may question her premises, and that’s a reaction that Darwinists simply can’t afford.
Of course, there are those who lavish praise on Dean for being “one of [NYT’s] best science people” and not using “the usual dreadful ‘he said, she said’ nonsense that passes for balance…” Who else would congratulate a reporter for being so ideologically committed to Darwin that she doesn’t actually allow her subjects to speak for themselves? PZ Myers, who has finally proven himself less reasonable than The Stranger.
The Story the New York Times found was Unfit to Print
Yesterday Rob Crowther recognized that Cornelia Dean and the New York Times are puffing Darwinism in an article about Expelled titled, “Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin.” This front page New York Times news-article blatantly editorializes that, "[t]here is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth." But that isn't the real story here. If Cornelia Dean and the New York Times were to report the real story, they would have instead reported: "There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth that goes unpunished."
In Part I, I demonstrated that specified complexity is the appropriate measure of biological complexity. In this section, I will show why merely citing gene duplication does not help one understand how Darwinian evolution can produce new genetic information. Dawkins’ main point in his "The Information Challenge" article is that “[n]ew genes arise through various kinds of duplication.” So his answer to the creationist question that so upset him is gene duplication. Yet during the actual gene-duplication process, a pre-existing gene is merely copied, and nothing truly new is generated. As Michael Egnor said in response to PZ Myers: “[G]ene duplication is, presumably, not to be taken too seriously. If you count copies as new information, you must have a hard time with plagiarism in your classes. All that the miscreant students would have to say is 'It's just like gene duplication. Plagiarism is new information- you said so on your blog!'”
Duplicating Genes Doesn't Increase Biological Information in Any Important Sense
I now have 2 questions to ask of Darwinists who claim that the mechanism of gene duplication explains how Darwinian evolutionary processes can increase the information content in the genome:
(1) Does gene duplication increase the information content?
(2) Does gene duplication increase the information content?
Asking the question twice obviously does not double the meaningful information conveyed by the question. How many times would the question have to be duplicated before the meaningful information conveyed by the list of duplicated questions is twice that of the original question? The answer is that the mere duplication of a sentence does NOT increase the complex and specified information content in any meaningful way. Imagine that a builder of houses has a blueprint to build a new house, but the blueprint does not contain enough information to build the house to the specifications that the builder desires. Could the builder obtain the needed additional information merely by photocopying the original blueprint? Of course not.
Darwinists Must Give Detailed Accounts of how a Duplicated Gene Acquires its New Function
The Darwinist would probably reply to my objection by saying, "Well, it isn't just gene duplication that increases the genetic information — such information is increased when gene duplication is coupled with the subsequent evolution of one of the new copies of the gene." Aye, there's the rub.
Darwinists laud the mechanism of gene duplication because they claim it shows how one copy of a gene can perform the original function, freeing up the other copy to mutate, evolve, and acquire a new function. But the new genetic information must somehow be generated during that subsequent evolution of the gene. To explain how Darwinian processes can generate new and meaningful genetic information, Darwinists must provide a detailed account of how a duplicate copy of a gene can evolve into an entirely new gene. But ask Darwinists for details as to how the duplicate copy then starts to perform some new function, and you probably won’t get any. At least, Dawkins didn’t given us any details (as I explain below) about this in his "The Information Challenge" article, which I am rebutting here.
A recent study in Nature admitted, “Gene duplication and loss is a powerful source of functional innovation. However, the general principles that govern this process are still largely unknown.” (Ilan Wapinski, Avi Pfeffer, Nir Friedman & Aviv Regev, “Natural history and evolutionary principles of gene duplication in fungi,” Nature, Vol. 449:54-61 (September 6, 2007).) Yet the crucial question that must be answered by the gene duplication mechanism is, exactly how does the duplicate copy acquire an entirely new function? Stephen Meyer explains in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington that it is difficult to imagine how duplicated genes acquire new functions since they must successfully undergo “neutral evolution” and traverse a random walk in order to acquire a new function:
[N]eo-Darwinists envision new genetic information arising from those sections of the genetic text that can presumably vary freely without consequence to the organism. According to this scenario, non-coding sections of the genome, or duplicated sections of coding regions, can experience a protracted period of “neutral evolution” (Kimura 1983) during which alterations in nucleotide sequences have no discernible effect on the function of the organism. Eventually, however, a new gene sequence will arise that can code for a novel protein. At that point, natural selection can favor the new gene and its functional protein product, thus securing the preservation and heritability of both.
This scenario has the advantage of allowing the genome to vary through many generations, as mutations “search” the space of possible base sequences. The scenario has an overriding problem, however: the size of the combinatorial space (i.e., the number of possible amino acid sequences) and the extreme rarity and isolation of the functional sequences within that space of possibilities. Since natural selection can do nothing to help generate new functional sequences, but rather can only preserve such sequences once they have arisen, chance alone--random variation--must do the work of information generation--that is, of finding the exceedingly rare functional sequences within the set of combinatorial possibilities. Yet the probability of randomly assembling (or “finding,” in the previous sense) a functional sequence is extremely small.
The Inconvenient Truth for Dawkins: At best, the mechanism of gene duplication shows how a hiker can get to the foot of a hiking trail, but never explains how the hiker finds the peak of the mountain, while doing a random, blindfolded walk. We don't need to know that genes can make copies of themselves; we need to know how the duplicate gene evolves, step-by-step, into an entirely new gene.
Mistaking Similarity as Evidence for Common Descent, and then Mistaking Common Descent as Evidence for Darwinian Evolution
Rather than giving a step-by-step mutational account of how a duplicated gene acquires a new function, Dawkins’ article substitutes bland evidence of sequence identity between different genes as evidence for Darwinian evolution by gene duplication. Dawkins gives the example of the evolution of various globin genes that he claims arose via gene duplication. His evidence is that “[c]areful letter-by-letter analysis shows that these different kinds of globin genes are literally cousins of each other, literally members of a family.” Of course the “[c]areful letter-by-letter analysis” simply means finding amino acid sequences that are similar or identical between two different proteins. David Swift explains that such claims of relationship “are inferred solely on the basis of assuming a common ancestry and then deriving a route of polypeptide evolution, typically the most parsimonious one, to fit the known present day amino acid sequences and consistent with the observed pattern of conserved amino acids.” (David Swift, Evolution Under the Microscope, pg. 165 (Leighton Academic Press, 2002), emphasis in original.) At best, such sequence identity demonstrates common ancestry (if one ignores the possibility of common design), but it does not demonstrate Darwinian evolution. Michael Behe easily rebutted the over-extrapolation from sequence-similarity to Darwinian evolution in both Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution:
“Although useful for determining lines of descent ... comparing sequences cannot show how a complex biochemical system achieved its function—the question that most concerns us in this book. By way of analogy, the instruction manuals for two different models of computer put out by the same company might have many identical words, sentences, and even paragraphs, suggesting a common ancestry (perhaps the same author wrote both manuals), but comparing the sequences of letters in the instruction manuals will never tell us if a computer can be produced step-by-step starting from a typewriter. … Like the sequence analysts, I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form?” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pgs. 175-176.)
"[M]odern Darwinists point to evidence of common descent and erroneously assume it to be evidence of the power of random mutation." (Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pg. 95.)
Darwinists like Dawkins continue to make the mistake cited by Behe and Swift. (In fact, if you read the aforementioned “Natural history and evolutionary principles of gene duplication in fungi” article, you'll find it gives only anecdotal or circumstantial evidence of evolution by gene duplication, not directly observed evidence, and there certainly aren't any detailed step-by-step models for how the genes evolved.)
The Dangerous Road Faced by Duplicated Genes
If a duplicated gene cannot successfully traverse its random walk, it may die. As Lynch and Conery found, “the vast majority of gene duplicates are silenced within a few million years.” (Lynch & Conery, "The Evolutionary Fate and Consequence of Duplicate Genes," Science Vol. 290:1151-1155 (Nov 10, 2000).) Does Richard Dawkins give a step-by-step mutational account of how globin genes evolved from one another while remaining functional at all times, such that the duplicate copies were never “silenced,” terminating their evolution? Of course not. Dawkins has not demonstrated how Darwinian evolution can take a duplicated gene and evolve it into a new gene. The problem for Dawkins is that duplicating a gene may increase your amount of Shannon information, but it does not increase the amount of specified complexity in any non-trivial sense. To explain how one gene can turn into another, Dawkins must explain how new specified and complex information can enter the genome, and give a step-by-step mutational account of the origin of some gene via gene duplication. Dawkins has provided none of this.
To understand this point, consider the following sentence (with spaces removed):
METHINKSDAWKINSDOTHPROTESTTOOMUCH
If we merely consider the Shannon information of the 33 letters (not counting spaces) in the sentence, then it has about 155 bits of Shannon Information. Now we duplicate it, like what happens in a gene duplication event:
The amount of Shannon information has now doubled (~310 bits), but we have seen no non-trivial increase in the amount of specified complexity. Still, Dawkins thinks gene duplication is the answer, and that “[i]t is by these, and similar means, that genome sizes can increase in evolution.”
[Update Note: The Shannon information in the doubled-string is twice the Shannon information in the shorter string if the shorter string does nothing to predict the sequence of the doubled-string. By granting this assumption, we are able to increase the Shannon information in the genome, even though this is a trivial informational increase that does not provide a meaningful increase in the specified complexity. The key questions are (a) what process is generating the new sequence, and (b) to what extent does that process predict the new sequence? In this sense, duplicating a gene would predict that the duplicate gene would be an identical copy of the original gene. From this standpoint, gene duplication actually does NOTHING to increase the Shannon information in the genome because you can predict the sequence of the new stretch of the DNA with a Probability of 1 (where Log (1) = 0), leading to an increase in the Shannon information of 0 bits. In this sense, the Shannon information in the doubled-string is not increased at all from the original, shorter string, as it remains 155 bits. Keep in mind that it is Dawkins who raised the issue of increasing Shannon information in the genome via gene duplication. Viewed in this fashion, Dawkins' claim that gene duplication can increase the Shannon information is even more dubious: if gene duplication predicts that you will have an identical copy of the original gene, then gene duplication not only fails to increase the specified and complex information, it also fails to increase the Shannon information in the genome!]
But we aren’t trying to simply change the “genome siz[e],” and thereby change the Shannon information. We’re trying to construct something functionally new. Thus, imagine that one duplicate copy of the original sentence evolves into a new sentence of the same length:
BUTIMSUREDAWKINSBELIEVESHEISRIGHT
A Darwinian theorist would find that both sentences contain the word “Dawkins,” and thus share a 21% sequence identity. They would then infer that both sentences evolved from that common ancestor via Darwinian evolution. They would conclude that a duplicated version of the sentence “METHINKSDAWKINSDOTHPROTESTTOOMUCH” has evolved into “BUTIMSUREDAWKINSBELIEVESHEISRIGHT”.
David Swift explains that finding such similarities is not enough to justify the claim that Darwinian evolution has produced the observed pattern: “[F]or family trees to be credible, most if not all of the putative ancestral sequences must be functional; but this presents a major stumbling block in the production by divergence of proteins with different functions. To get from one set of conserved amino acids to another is either an unlikely big jump, or the intermediates must have biological activity; but the latter seems unlikely because it contradicts what we know about conserved amino acids.” (Pg. 166). Thus, in order for Darwinists to convince me that Darwinian evolution can produce new information, at minimum I need to see a step-by-step mutational account of how they can take the sentence:
“METHINKSDAWKINSDOTHPROTESTTOOMUCH”
and evolve it into:
“BUTIMSUREDAWKINSBELIEVESHEISRIGHT”
by changing the first sentence one letter at a time, and having it always retain some comprehensible English meaning along each small step of its evolution. Telling me that you can duplicate the sentence does NOT answer the question posed in the video, “Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or evolutionary process that can be seen to increase the information in the genome?” As Michael Behe requested over ten years ago in Darwin's Black Box, what is required is a “detailed, scientific [explanation of] how mutation and natural selection could build” the sentence. (Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pg. 176.)
Don’t Blame Natural Selection: It’s Just Acting upon What Mutations Provide
It’s worth noting that Dawkins finally claims that it is natural selection that “feeds information into gene pools” by selecting for mutations that help organisms survive. Thus, Dawkins would argue that the information in the environment is transferred into the genome of the organism. Fair enough. But Dawkins isn’t telling the most important part of this story. We all know that mutations must provide the raw fuel upon which natural selection can act. As Gilbert, Opitz, and Raff write:
The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, "the origin of species -- Darwin's problem -- remains unsolved.
(Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff (1996) "Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology," Developmental Biology 173, 1996, pg. 361.)
Natural selection can (given the right population circumstances, etc.) preserve traits that confer a survival advantage, and it is very effective at weeding out traits that are disadvantageous. But natural selection can only act upon what mutations provide. Thus, we can’t account for the survival of particular mutations until we account for the arrival of particular mutations. We cannot account for the increase in information content of genomes until we consider how random mutations produce the raw fuel that natural selection can preserve.
My Information Challenge Reiterated:
So here is my “Information Challenge”: For the sake of the argument, I will grant that every stage of the evolutionary pathway I requested above will survive, and thus I’ll give natural selection every possible benefit of the doubt. What I need is a step-by-step mutation account of how one sentence evolved into the other wherein the sentence remains functional – i.e., it has comprehensible English meaning – at all stages of its evolution. In short, I request to see how:
“METHINKSDAWKINSDOTHPROTESTTOOMUCH”
can evolve into:
“BUTIMSUREDAWKINSBELIEVESHEISRIGHT”
by changing the first sentence one letter at a time, and having it always retain some comprehensible English meaning along each small step of its evolution. This seems like a reasonable request, as it is not highly different from what Darwinists are telling me can happen in nature.
How would Dawkins reply? Would he get angry and complain that this is “the kind of question only a creationist would ask”? Or would he dodge the question like he did in his “The Information Challenge” article? Personally, I’d like to see an answer to the question.
New York Times' Cornelia Dean: Wrong on Evolution, Intelligent Design and Expelled
The New York Times periodically exhibits a questionable nose for news. What rises to the level of news for the science writers at the Times aren't instances of scientific censorship or persecution of scientists. Today, complaints by Darwinists allegedly featured in a forthcoming (and as of yet unfinished, according to the filmmakers themselves) film, Expelled, that documents the persecution of scientists who question Darwin, is considered news by the Times' science staff.
What about real news related to the debate over evolution and intelligent design? The Times has a snobbishly selective olfactory sense, it seems.
Has the Times reported on the attacks on the academic freedom of distinguished professor Robert Marks, who had his research website on intelligent design shut down by Baylor University?
Did the Times ever report on Dr. Richard Sternberg's persecution at the hands of the Smithsonian Institution? Even though a report by the US Office of Special Counsel and a Congressional investigation definitively concluded that Sternberg had been harassed, persecuted and demoted. (The observant reader will not that the Times did editorialize about Sternberg's situation, admitting: "E-mail notes show that several scientists and managers at the Smithsonian were extremely embarrassed and eager to push Mr. Sternberg out of his research niche, and that some dug around for material to discredit him." That isn't worth reporting in a news article, but it is worth mentioning in a vulgar attempt to humiliate and discredit Sternberg over his tenure as editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.)
Did the Times report on the denial of tenure to noted ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, solely on ideological grounds?
The answer is a resounding no in every instance.
Yet today the paper has a front page story about how certain Darwinists are upset that they are to be featured in Expelled. Richard Dawkins, among others, might even be angered, if the Times is to be believed. (Can you imagine Dawkins being angry?)
The article is written by Times science writer Cornelia Dean, and, as she often does, Dean makes assertions of fact without backing them up.
According to Dean:
There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.
Dean merely asserts this as a fact, without saying who is making the claim other than herself. Worse, she doesn't acknowledge that the claim is disputed by scientists -- over 700 at last count.
Dean used to acknowledge that there were those who disagree with her statement.
“There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source.” (In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome)
Now, however, the assertion of evolution as a fact (note that we don't really know what Dean means by evolution -- is it change over time? Common ancestry? The Darwinian mechanism? She never says) is left to stand as if it were a natural law.
The article is wrong on many other counts as well.
Dean misrepresents the thesis of Dr. Gonzalez's book The Privileged Planet, stating:
The book asserts that earth’s ability to support complex life is a result of supernatural intervention.
In The Privileged Planet, we argue, on the basis of a wide range of empirical evidence, that the places in the universe most habitable to complex life, such as Earth’s surface, are also the best places, overall, to make a wide range of scientific discoveries, in areas as diverse as geology, astronomy, and cosmology.
Dean conflates intelligent design with creationism, revealing her own biases: "intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism." And "intelligent design, a creationist idea…"
Here is a film that shows how extreme the reaction is from Darwinists to challenges to their theory, including persecution, censorship, and attempting to suppress the debate. This film has apparently hit a nerve. I'm betting you haven't heard the last of this.
Last week I posted a link to a YouTube video where Richard Dawkins was asked to explain the origin of genetic information, according to Darwinism. I also posted a link to Dawkins’ rebuttal to the video, where he purports to explain the origin of genetic information according to Darwinian evolution. The question posed to Dawkins was, “Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or evolutionary process that can be seen to increase the information in the genome?” Dawkins famously commented that the question was “the kind of question only a creationist would ask . . .” Dawkins writes, “In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera.” Dawkins’ highly emotional response calls into question whether he is capable of addressing this issue objectively. This will be the first installation of a 3-part response assessing Dawkins’ answer to “The Information Challenge.”
What Type of “Information” Is Relevant Here?
Dawkins writes, “First you first have to explain the technical meaning of ‘information’.” While that sounds reasonable, Dawkins pulls a bait-and-switch and defines information as “Shannon information”—a formulation of “information” that applies to signal transmission and does not account for the type of specified complexity found in biology.
It is common for Darwinists to define information as “Shannon information,” which is related to calculating the mere unlikelihood of a sequence of events. Under their definition, a functionless stretch of genetic junk might have the same amount “information” as a fully functional gene of the same sequence-length. ID-proponents don’t see this as a useful way of measuring biological information. ID-proponents define information as complex and specified information—DNA which is finely-tuned to do something. Stephen C. Meyer writes that ID-theorists use “(CSI) as a synonym for ‘specified complexity’ to help distinguish functional biological information from mere Shannon information--that is, specified complexity from mere complexity.” As the ISCID encyclopedia explains, “Unlike specified complexity, Shannon information is solely concerned with the improbability or complexity of a string of characters rather than its patterning or significance.”The Inconvenient Truth for Dawkins: The difference between the Darwinist and ID definitions of information is equivalent to the difference between getting 10 consecutive losing hands in a poker game versus getting 10 consecutive royal flushes. One implicates design, while the other does not.
It is important to note ID proponents did not invent the notion of “specified complexity,” nor were they the first to observe that “specified complexity” is the best way to describe biological information. My first knowledge of the term being used comes from leading origin of life theorist Leslie Orgel, who used it in 1973 in a fashion that closely resembles the modern usage by ID proponents:
[L]iving organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple, well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures which are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.
(Leslie E. Orgel, The Origins of Life: Molecules and Natural Selection," pg.189 (Chapman & Hall: London, 1973).)
Orgel thus captures the fact that specified complexity requires both order and a specific arrangement of parts or symbols. This matches the definition given by Dembski, where he defines specified complexity as an unlikely event that conforms to an independent pattern. This establishes that specified complexity is the appropriate measure of biological complexity. This point will be important in the next installment, Part 2, which rebuts the heart of Dawkins' article.
As a final note, Richard Dawkins’ article admits that “DNA carries information in a very computer-like way, and we can measure the genome's capacity in bits too, if we wish.” That’s an interesting analogy, reminiscent of the design overtones of Dawkins concession elsewhere that “[t]he machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.” (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, pg. 17 (New York: Basic Books, 1995).) Of course, Dawkins believes that the processes of random mutation and unguided selection ultimately built “[t]he machine code of the genes” and made it “uncannily computer-like.” But I do not think a scientist is unjustified in reasoning that in our experience, machine codes and computers only derive from intelligence. Regardless, in the next installment, Part 2, I will assess Dawkins' argument that gene duplication can increase biological information.
Dr. Jeffrey Shallit has answered my question about the analogy between S.E.T.I. research and the inference to intelligent design in biology. His reply was thoughtful, made some good points, and was free of personal insults.
My question was:
"If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?"
Starting off, Dr. Shallit demurs:
One thing I'd like to point out is that Egnor seems to be under the misapprehension that the information theory that mathematicians and computer scientists actually study has something to do with inferring design.* This is simply not the case….as a mathematician and computer scientist I have no particular expertise on the general topic of "inferring design". It's just not something we do; maybe he should ask a SETI researcher, or a forensic investigator. But then again, Egnor has no particular expertise on the topic, either.
That’s not true — about either of us. All of us discern design as a matter of daily life. It’s an essential expertise. For scientists — all scientists — it’s a particular expertise. For some scientists — forensic scientists, cryptographers, archaeologists — discernment of design is their science. For other scientists, discernment of design makes their science possible. Physicists discard data tainted by artifact from their own instruments. Astronomers distinguish natural from artificial signals — pace Penzias and Wilson, who, by distinguishing natural signals from artifact in their own equipment, discovered the background radiation from the Big Bang. Chemists must distinguish synthesized compounds from contaminants. Computer scientists — like Dr. Shallit — must distinguish signal from noise.
Biologists routinely use the design inference in their work. Recombinant DNA research is impossible unless one can reliably distinguish between humanly designed and natural organisms. Ecologists distinguish natural environmental changes from changes that are the result of human intervention. The debate over global warming turns on this ability to distinguish natural temperature change from man-made temperature change. Even evolutionary biologists — especially evolutionary biologists — use the design inference. Natural selection must be distinguished from artificial selection — it is the exclusion of design that forms the basis of Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection.
Surely Dr. Shallit didn’t mean that the discernment of design is irrelevant to science, or that none of us are any good at it. We’re remarkably good at it. Without the design inference, science (and daily life) would be impossible. The pervasive inability to discern design in science would preclude science. The pervasive inability to discern design in ordinary life is autism.
Perhaps Dr. Shallit meant that we aren’t good at quantifying design. But that’s not true either. Design is quantified in different ways in different scientific disciplines, but quantification of design is essential to most sciences. It’s essential to forensic science ("Doctor, is the angle from which that bullet was fired more consistent with accident or with homicide?"), to physics ("The vibrations in the crystal are at 50 Hz., and are therefore artifact from vibrating equipment in the lab"), and to molecular biology ("The organisms with the new gene will make at least 70% more of the protein than the unaltered organisms"). Quantification of designed artifacts, using various methods, is routine in science.
So what did Dr. Shallit mean? He explains:
Elsberry and Wilkins point out in their article from Biology and Philosophy, there is a huge difference between inferring design based on artifacts for which we have a causal story like human construction, and inferring design based on some causal story lacking any details whatsoever. They refer to this latter attempt, commonly used by ID advocates, as "rarefied design", and characterize it as "based on an inference from ignorance, both of the possible causes of regularities [that might explain the event] and of the nature of the designer."
So rarified design — design without a detailed casual story — troubles Dr. Shallit. He continues with the example of "skirnobs":
The problem with a simple conclusion that something is designed, is its lack of informativeness. If you tell me that skirnobs are designed but nothing else about them, then how much do I actually know about skirnobs? Of a single skirnob, what can I say? Unless I already know a fair bit about the aims and intentions of skirnob designers, nothing is added to my knowledge of skirnobs by saying that it is designed. I do not know if a skirnob is a good skirnob, fulfilling the design criteria for skirnobs, or not. I do not know how typical that skirnob is of skirnobs in general, or what any of the properties of skirnobs are. I may as well say that skirnobs are "gzorply muffnordled", for all it tells me. But if I know the nature of the designer, or of the class of things the designer is a member of, then I know something about skirnobs, and I can make some inductive generalizations to the properties of other skirnobs.
Is the inference to rarified design really uninformative? Knowing whether skirnobs are designed is the most informative thing we could know about them: knowing whether they are designed determines the way we study them. Imagine a scientist who knew nothing of literature or of the origin of language (but he could understand and use language of course). Imagine that he found a stained flexible wood slice with the marking "skirnob” on the front, and the following marks on the back:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Does it matter to the rarified design scientist if the stained-wood-slice-skirnob is designed or not? Of course it does. If the skirnob isn’t designed, the scientist can completely understand the skirnob by studying the relevant laws and chances that gave rise to it (the chemistry and surface adherence of pigments, the tensile strength of the wood-slice, etc). If the scientist incorrectly infers design, he would make a futile attempt to assign meaning to the stains. In assigning meaning by falsely inferring design, he would misunderstand the skirnob.
If the skirnob is designed, the scientist can completely understand the skirnob only by studying the teleology — the purpose — of the artifact, as well as the laws and chance that played a role in its emergence. The scientist would discover that the stains, in addition to abiding by the laws of chemistry and physics, conveyed meaning — in this case, the lament of an aging poet (Shakespeare, in his 73rd sonnet).
The correct inference to design — rarified or mundane — is essential to an understanding of a phenomenon, because it determines how we study it. The distinction between a natural object and a designed artifact matters. We might melt down an asteroid to understand its composition. We wouldn’t melt down a spacecraft to understand it.
Dr. Shallit continues:
I don't think that the question "is it designed?", in the absence of any candidate for a designer, is particularly interesting. That is, in the absence of motive, I don't think that knowing that something is designed tells you anything at all.
Is design in the absence of any candidate for a designer really uninteresting? Imagine coming home from work and finding a note on the table, in your wife’s handwriting: "I love you." It’s a wonderful note, but not particularly interesting, because you know who wrote it and how and why it was written. The sentiment is wonderful, but the note is mundane. Now imagine that you find a note, written in unfamiliar handwriting, taped to your car: "I love you." You don’t know the author, and you have no casual history for the note, except that you surmise that the paramour is human, shy, and probably of the opposite sex. Most people (even scientists!) would agree that this note is a lot more interesting, precisely because its vintage is uncertain. The absence of a discernible casual history makes the design more tantalizing.
Now imagine that you are on the first manned mission to Mars. You land, and eagerly begin exploring the Red Planet (a boyhood dream of mine!). You find a machine with wheels and a scoop that looks like a little motorized vehicle, parked on the Martian sand. You investigate it, pleasantly surprised that you have come across an old Mars Rover. Mundane design, for sure (you know just how and why it was built and who built it), but pretty neat, nonetheless. You radio Houston Control and send a photo of the little buggy, wait the requisite several minutes, and receive your answer: "It’s not ours. We have no idea where it came from." (!) Are you now more interested or less interested?
Dr. Shallit again:
I don't think that the question "is it designed?", in the absence of any candidate for a designer, is particularly interesting.
Most of us would think quite the opposite. Design without a casual history is less tractable, but it’s inherently much more interesting than mundane design, precisely because it opens up new and often profound questions. Rarified design is, in the vernacular, a science-starter.
Dr. Shallit next makes a surprising admission:
As an example of something I'd find convincing, if we were to find a crashed spaceship with plans showing how to build a bacterium, and scientists carried out these plans and found that they really did construct life, then I'd find this very strong evidence that life on earth was designed.
We've not found a single spaceship, but a cynic might suggest that we found the plans, in Cambridge, in 1953. Perhaps the evidence for intelligent design is intrinsic, not extrinsic, to life.
Dr. Shallit goes on:
Finally, DNA doesn't carry any of the hallmarks of human design, the kind of design we are most familiar with... When we consider an analogy, like the one Egnor proposes, to be fair, we have to consider points of disanalogy, too.
No doubt there is disanalogy. The analogy between human design and biological design isn’t perfect. There’s no reason to expect that it would be — the design in the genetic code is, after all, rarified design, not human design. Yet Dr. Shallit chooses odd examples of disanalogy:
Genes, for example, are often pleiotropic; they have multiple interacting effects. Human design, on the other hand tends to separate systems so they don't interact.
Human designs don’t interact? What about electronic networks, assembly lines, feedback systems, and autopilots? What about integrated circuits? Surely Dr. Shallit occasionally opens computers and looks.
On S.E.T.I., Dr. Shallit continues:
The answer is that I don't think that these situations are at all comparable. In the case of SETI, the fact that we are receiving a narrow-band signal is already suggestive, since we don't currently know any simple physical process that could produce these signals. This isn't a definite conclusion, though, because we have no idea what the probability of intelligent beings is, and we can't rule out narrow-band signals arising from some other physical process we simply don't know about…Let's alter the Contact story. Suppose the signal didn't encode a machine, but rather a sequence of DNA bases S. When we create DNA corresponding to this sequence, and stick it in a cell, we get an organism that tells us all about life on some other planet. Now the analogy is even closer than before; yet I think it is clear that our inference about the origin of S is still different from any inference about our own DNA. Indeed, it is entirely reasonable and scientific to infer that S is designed by intelligent beings on another planet, but our own DNA evolved.
I disagree with Dr. Shallit’s point, as best I understand it. A blueprint, encoded in a signal or in a genome, is evidence of design.
Next, Dr. Shallit makes the surprising assertion that ID advocates aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about identifying the designer:
… where's the designer? In SETI, we can pinpoint a place in the universe where the signals are originating from. If the signals encode a machine, we can reasonably deduce that the intention is that we are to build it. But in the genetic code, who is the hypothesized designer? Where did they originate? When did they carry out their design? What is the intention of the design? All the really interesting questions are ruled as 'out of bounds' by ID advocates. Until they really come to grips with these questions, they're doing religion, not science.
Biological design is rarified design. ID advocates don’t speculate much about the identity of the designer or the designers because we’re conservative. Perhaps some day we’ll know a lot more. For now, we stick to scientific inferences based on data. I can understand Dr. Shallit’s perplexity at our unwillingness to leap beyond the evidence and offer just-so stories. To a Darwinist, explanatory reticence seems peculiar.
So my reply to Dr. Shallit can be summarized:
1) All scientists use the inference to design in their work and all have particular expertise at doing so.
2) The inference to design is a testable inference in all disciplines of science. The methods of inferring design in science are often, but not always, quantitative, but the methods differ in different scientific disciplines.
3) Phenomena caused by law or chance can be understood completely by reference to law or chance.
4) Phenomena caused by design can be understood completely only by reference to law, chance, and teleology.
5) Therefore, the distinction between design causation and natural (law-chance) causation is essential in science; it determines the scientific approach appropriate to the study of the phenomenon.
6) Exclusion of the design inference from the study of a designed phenomenon necessarily leads to an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon, and attribution of design to the study of an un-designed phenomenon leads to an incorrect understanding of the phenomenon.
7) Rarified design (design without a casual history) is much more interesting, although scientifically less tractable, than mundane design (design with a casual history). A message from space is more interesting than a message from an acquaintance.
8) Several properties of living things, such as a blueprint/symbolic code (the genetic code) and integrated systems with parts that appear purposefully arranged (molecular nanotechnology), would be recognized as evidence for design in all fields of science — except evolutionary biology.
So why do evolutionary biologists exclude the inference to design as an explanation for functional biological complexity? Why do they find the design inference in biology so uninteresting?
Will Darwinists Make the Same Mistake with RNA that They Made in Ignoring So-Called "Junk" DNA?
Yesterday the Boston Globe published an amazing and insightful article about DNA and what scientists are learning about the inner-workings of the cell. As it turns out, the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn.
"The picture that's emerging" of how living cells actually operate and evolve "is so immensely more complicated than anyone imagined, it's almost depressing," Rigoutsos said.
One interesting thing that leapt out at me when reading this was the fact that, while many scientists now realize that it was a mistake to jump to the conclusion that there were massive amounts of "junk" in DNA (because they were trying to fit the research into a Darwinian model), they are on the verge of committing the same exact mistake all over again, this time with RNA.
No one knows what all that extra RNA is doing. It might be regulating genes in absolutely essential ways. Or it may be doing nothing of much importance: genetic busywork serving no real purpose.
Many researchers believe the truth falls somewhere in between.
"Half of it may be doing something very useful," said Lander, who is also a professor of biology at MIT. "The other part may turn out to be, well, just junk - doing neither great good nor great harm."
Knowing that senior fellow Jonathan Wells is working on a forthcoming book about genetics titled The End of the Genetic Paradigm, I e-mailed him and asked what he thought of the article. Here's his response in full.
According to an article in yesterday’s Boston Globe, biologists have discovered that the small percentage of our DNA that codes for proteins is not as important as they once thought. Many cellular processes are due to non-coding stretches of DNA – or of RNA, or of something else entirely. The discoveries have precipitated what Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, calls a “scientific revolution.”
The news seems revolutionary because Collins and so many others have bought into neo-Darwinism, which assumes that embryo development is controlled by a “genetic program” in DNA. It is this assumption that justifies the neo-Darwinian belief that DNA mutations provide the raw materials for evolution. And it was this assumption that prompted Francis Crick, when he and James Watson deciphered the structure of DNA in 1953, to announce that they had “discovered the secret of life.”
Even in 1953, some biologists were skeptical that “DNA is the secret of life,” but their skepticism was largely buried by the neo-Darwinian steamroller that has been flattening biology ever since. Now it turns out that the skeptics were right. The more we learn from genome sequencing, the more obvious it becomes that there are more things in living cells than are dreamt of in neo-Darwinian philosophy.
California Literary Review Interviews Michael Behe on The Edge of Evolution
California Literary Review has a short and insightful interview with Michael Behe about his latest book and among other things asked him what evidence there is of a designer.
Behe explains in part:
Whenever we perceive a “purposeful arrangement of parts” we suspect design. The more parts there are, and the more clearly they fit the purpose, the more confident our conclusion of design becomes. In the past fifty years science has discovered a very purposeful arrangement of parts in the cell’s molecular machinery. That is the evidence for the involvement of a designer in life on earth.
Op-ed in Waco Paper Highlights Baylor Univeristy Censorship of Intelligent Design Website
The Waco Tribune Herald today published an op-ed, keeping the spotlight on Baylor University's crusade to stifle research questioning Darwinism or supporting intelligent design.
Aside from the fact that they got both the author and the professor's name wrong (Mark Ramsey is the author, Robert Marks is the professor), the op-ed continues to showcase the censorship used by the Baylor administration to suppress intelligent design.
Baylor University literally has censored a “distinguished instructor” who has been conducting computational studies of what Darwinian evolution can and cannot accomplish.
Gary Marks’ Web site was hosted on Baylor servers (as professors are permitted to use). However, after someone objected, Baylor took Marks’ Web page down.
Ramsey points out that:
This censorship is based not on poor scholarship or bad data but on a disagreement about the research’s conclusions.
The conclusions were not deemed to be particularly favorable to the notion that Darwin was right and no intelligence was required in the creation of the world and everything in it.
Human Origins Update: Harvard Scientist and New York Times Reporter Get the "Plug Evolution Memo"...Sort of
What a difference a month, and a couple likely internal memos, can make. Last month I discussed the fact that newly reported Homo erectus fossils predated fossils of "Homo" habilis, meaning that habilis could not possibly have been an evolutionary link between the Australopithecine apes and our genus Homo. When the press covered that story, Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman was quoted in the New York Times stating that those fossils "show 'just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.'" It's a fascinating admission, and I wrote at the time, "Daniel Lieberma[n] apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making statements that might lead to doubts about evolution." The same could have also been said for the NY Times' article's author John Noble Wilford, who in that same article wrote, "Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood." I can imagine that both Wilford and Lieberman have subsequently received possibly non-fictitious memos reminding them "Don't question evolution to the public, plug evolution to the public!", because both are now defending our knowledge of human evolution in articles that just came out this week. What a difference a month makes!
Lieberman's public rhetoric has changed a lot in the last few weeks. Rather than viewing the ape-to-human transition that as "poorly ... underst[oo]d," he now apparently states, also in the New York Times, that "new discoveries further highlight the transitional and variable nature of early Homo." Yet regarding one of these "new discoveries" he recounts in his recent Nature article, the team of scientists who published the original study discussing this "new discover[y]" publicly admitted, "we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes." Indeed, Lieberman himself admitted in his recent Nature article that, "When viewed up close, however, the Australopithecus-Homo transition has always been murky." Thus, we have yet another retroactive confession of Darwinist ignorance: they concede the lack of knowledge on a certain point only after some new allegedly "transitional" fossil is found.
NY Times' reporter John Noble Wilford's reversal in rhetoric is even more striking. Keep in mind that he originally reported that "Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood." But consider the highly different tune sung by his most recent article: "Other paleoanthropologists said the discovery could lead to breakthroughs in the critical evolutionary period in which some members of Australopithecus, the genus made famous by the Lucy skeleton, made the transition to Homo." Apparently last month, "other paleontologists" said human evolution was "poorly understood" and now the "other paleontologists" are finding "breakthroughs in the critical evolutionary period." What a difference a month makes! I think Wilford got the memo.
Additionally, it's not clear if Dr. Liebermen entirely absorbed the memo to "plug evolution," as he still writes in Nature: "The fossil record of human evolution is like a pointillist painting: one sees a different picture close up from when one stands back." In other words, don't expect too many details about evolution: Paleoanthropology has a bunch of dots, and we simply have to step back and imagine the connections between the dots. Do these new fossils connects the dots leading from ape-like species to our genus Homo?
According to Wilford's NY Timesarticle, these newly reported fossils, "had brains not much larger than those of a chimpanzee" and "[t]he small body size and small craniums, the upper limbs, elbows and shoulders were more like the earliest habilis specimens." Of course habilis's skeleton has been recognized as highly ape-like, so these features all appear very ape-like. Why do they claim this species is transitional? Supposedly, it's all in the legs.
According to the Figure 3 in the Nature report, the femoral length is like that of a human or a gorilla (Fig. 3b). The tibial mediolateral distal width is like that of a chimp, human, or bonobo. Figure 3a reports that the tibia length is quite similar to that of a gorilla but different from that of humans. (Figure 3 also reports the length of an arm bone, as the humeral length resembles that of a human or perhaps a chimp (Fig. 3b).) Finally, the fossil footbones that were discovered are reported to have some features that are like human feet, and others that are closer to the feet of modern apes.
For those claiming this is clearly a species evolving into humans, a few troubling facts emerge from these data: This species lived millions of years after the supposed split in the lines that led to apes, and humans, respectively. I cannot be faulted for hoping that if there is an evolutionary story to be told here, this fossil would tell me whether it was evolving towards a modern ape, or a modern human. Yet these leg and foot bones in many respects resemble modern apes as much as they resemble modern humans. I cannot be faulted for being skeptical of the claim that these species were necessarily evolving towards modern humans. Is it possible these scientists are anthropomorphizing this find by assuming that it's evolving towards humanity?
Also, as noted, this species supposedly represents species that were transitional from Australopithecines to Homo erectus. Let's revisit the dimensions of the leg bones to find out where this species falls. Figure 3 in the paper reports no tibia finds for the australopithecines, so there is no data there to assess. But the chart does place these new fossils squarely between australopithecines and Homo erectus with regard to femoral length. That fits their thesis. But modern humans, gorillas, and chimps also fall right in between erectus and the Australopithecines with regard to femoral length. Again, the question must be asked, do these data show that this species is evolving towards apes, or humans? Perhaps the dots are too few and far between to tell a clear story here.
Finally, according to the currently reported data, these new fossils can't be transitional between the Australopithecines and the genus Homo. The new fossil finds were dated at 1.77 million years. Yet Homo erectus itself has been dated at 1.9 million years of age, a point conceded by Lieberman's article. Thus, it is impossible that these fossils themselves were actually transitional between the Australopithecines and Homo erectus.
In short, these are interesting new finds: Above the waist, they appear to be extremely ape-like. Below the waist, they seem to resemble modern apes as well as resembling modern humans. Yet this species post-dates the human-ape split and is being touted as a species that was evolving into a modern human, not a modern ape. What's going on here? I like Lieberman's characterization of the state of things: "murky." Maybe I just need to take the "pointillist" approach to paleoanthropology: take a step back and imagine all the lines connecting these highly fragmented and blurry dots, and hope not for too many details.
Baylor President Stays Mum on University's Suppression of Intelligent Design
The Baylor student newspaper continues to report on the story of the shut down of distinguished professor Robert Marks' evolutionary informatics website due to aonymous complaints that it was pro-intelligent design. Baylor president John Lilley refused to speak with Expelled filmmakers about the suppression of intelligent design scientists and scholars. Filmmakers had to settle speaking to a public relations reprsentative and the Dean of Marks' school.
"With both of them it was really limited because they have a certain line they are holding, which the issues are all about procedures and not about the content," Mathis said, "and all the information we have seen says that that's not true."
Mathis said the main indication to him about the issue being about content is that Kelley sent an e-mail to Marks saying he had "received several concerned messages" about the Web site.
"With Dean Kelley and Lori Fogleman, it's pretty clear to me that both of them were coached by lawyers to continue saying it's not content but procedure," Mathis said.
Mathis said he asked Kelley and Fogleman several questions about academic freedom and the issue behind Marks' Web site, but he was unable to get a lot of answers.
The French Reject Prayer while Accepting Evolution and Geocentrism
Earlier this summer, Mike Gene posted on Telic Thoughts a YouTube video where a contestant on a French version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” was asked a question where he had to decide whether it was the Sun, or the Moon that revolved around the Earth. The contestant (see below) wasn’t sure, so he polled the audience for the right answer. After the poll, 56% of the French audience thought the Geocentric model of the Solar System was correct, i.e. they thought the sun revolved around the earth, rather than visa versa. After much deliberation, this French contestant went with the majority vote and decided that the Sun revolves around the earth. What does this say about scientific literacy in France? Bear in mind that Eugenie Scott’s survey in Science found that in France, “80% or more of adults accepted the concept of evolution.” Her supplementary data also boasted that French adults were among “the least likely to believe in divine control and to pray frequently.” If those numbers are true, this video suggests that accepting evolution and rejecting religion does not necessarily mean you are scientifically literate. The funny YouTube video is below:
Troubled by the Baylor administration's removal of an intelligent design Web site from a Baylor server, a producer from the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is planning a Thursday trip to campus in hopes of meeting with President John Lilley.
Distinguished professor Dr. Robert Marks' personal research Web site on evolutionary informatics was taken down from a Baylor server last month, and producers of Expelled want to speak to Lilley about it.
"We are disturbed with what happened with Dr. Marks," executive producer Walt Ruloff said. "He was working on some really vital research."
(In addition to the news article in the Lariat there is also this op-ed from the executive producer of Expelled.)
While we often see the persecution of scientists and scholars, unfortunately students suffer sometimes as well. But they suffer quietly becuase they know that to speak out could jeopardize their education or harm their careers.
The Lariat article confirms this:
"We think it would be appropriate for the student body to ask the questions," Mathis said.
However, the producers said they wouldn't be surprised if students are hesitant to get involved.
"Students are fearful," Mathis said. "They don't want to go on the record supporting intelligent design."
Through his previous experience on the film, Mathis said students have frequently expressed concerns about coming forward with support.
"The depth of intimidation tactics are unreal," he said. "Students are concerned they won't be able to get into graduate school or get a job."
Mathis also said certain majors are more worried about the stigma of intelligent design than others.
"If you were a biology student, you wouldn't dare touch this," he said.
Finally, help is on the way with a major motion picture coming that will tell the complete story about academic persecution of Darwin doubters.
Intelligent Design Debate Tomorrow at Penn State Altoona
I just found out about a debate tomorrow that will be of interest to any of you in the Penn State area.
Dr. Michael Shermer and Dr. Paul Nelson Evolution vs. Intelligent Design - A Debate
Thursday, September 20, 2007
7:30 p.m. - Wolf Kuhn Theatre - Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts
In July, I noted that Francisco Ayala wrote an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describing evolution as "randomness and determinism interlocked in a natural process" where "is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations." Clearly, some theists might find that such descriptions of evolution contravene their religious beliefs. Indeed, there are a number of recent examples of scientific papers promoting evolution alongside anti-religious sentiments:
A recent editorial by the editors of Nature explained that "the idea that human minds are the product of evolution" is "unassailable fact" and went on to conclude that "the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside." ("Evolution and the brain," Nature, Vol. 447:753 (June 14, 2007).)
A similar view was promoted by Eugene V. Koonin, biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health, who in the journal Cell Cycle wrote that the evolution of genomic complexity has "far-reaching biological and philosophical implications" because "Darwin demonstrated that man emerged not by a special act of creation in God's image, but as a regular result of biological evolution." (Eugene V. Koonin, "A Non-Adaptationist Perspective on Evolution of Genomic Complexity or the Continued Dethroning of Man," Cell Cycle, Vol. 3(3):280-285 (March, 2004).)
Another recent article discussing the evolution of the flagellum in Microbe Magazine stated that "the English playwright Oscar Wilde said, ‘Science is the record of dead religions.’ In terms of the intelligent design case regarding [flagellar evolution], the current factual analyses force this example to exit the realm of religion and return fully to the arena of science.” (Wong et al., "Evolution of the Bacterial Flagellum," Microbe Magazine (July, 2007).)
Finally, last year, in the journal Gene, Emile Zuckerkandl, Stanford biologist and one of the founders in the field of molecular evolution, explicitly contends that God would not produce the biological structures we observe in nature:
The observations in question definitely do not suggest that living systems have been built up thanks to the insights and decisions of a master engineer. Rather, the observations testify to a vast amount of continuous tinkering by trial and error with macromolecular interactions. The results of this tinkering are often retained when they can be integrated into the organism’s functional whole. But why would God tinker? Doesn’t He know in advance the biological pathways that work? Isn’t a tinkering God one who loudly says “I am not”? And why would He say so if He existed?
It seems that none of these scientists got Eugenie Scott’s memo to not promote evolution alongside materialistic philosophy. While I may not agree with what these Darwinists assert, and personally hope that more scientists would take Eugenie Scott's advice to leave out materialistic philosophy when promoting evolution, it seems that they are nonetheless working hard to disprove Judge Jones's Kitzmiller ruling that held it is "utterly false" to believe that "evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being."
Evolutionary ‘theory’ is immune to satire. Satire depends on exaggeration, and evolutionary theory is such far-fetched science— substituting preposterous generalizations, non-sequiturs and jargon for meaningful scientific inference— that it can’t be satirized. It can only be described, which is funny enough.
Much of recent evolutionary self-satire involves the origin of the human brain. How did an organ of such staggering complexity and biological novelty arise? For evolutionary biologists, no speculation (except design) is too outlandish. Evidence: a paper in Nature Genetics offers a new theory to account for the human brain: spit.
According to the authors, evolution of the human brain was helped along by the evolution of spit, or more precisely, by evolution of the genes that code for the amylase enzymes in spit. Our brains needed a lot of energy, so evolution favored hominids with more effective carbohydrate-dissolving spit. The researchers noted:
That's the big mystery of paleoanthropology…What changed [?] [sic] Why did our earliest human ancestors deviate from the pattern we see in living apes to evolve this incredibly large brain, which is very energetically expensive to maintain, and to become a much more efficient bipedal organism [?]
Solving the 'big mystery', the groundbreaking study
indicates that humans carry extra copies of the salivary amylase gene…humans have many more copies of this gene than any of their ape relatives, the study found, and they use the copies to flood their mouths with amylase, an enzyme that digests starch. The finding bolsters the idea that starch was a crucial addition to the diet of early humans...
Natural selection, unsurprisingly, explains it all:
...natural selection favored individuals who could make more starch-digesting protein....extra gene copies are an easy way for evolution to ramp up expression of a protein… why wait for chance mutations to improve gene function. Natural selection can favor duplicate copies of a gene that already works well, and enzyme production will increase ...
The spit-brain paper no doubt contributes to the literature on salivary amylase. A study of the comparative biology of salivary enzymes- genuine science but with limited (to say the least) popular appeal- would have languished on dusty shelves were it not for the authors’ utterly unwarranted inference that their research is relevant to the origin of the human brain. It seems to be a contemporary maxim in evolutionary biology- ‘attach preposterous speculation about the origin of the human brain to your arcane research, and you’re famous’, at least for a day or two.
Nature recently published an editorial asserting that the inference to design has no place in our effort to understand the origin of the genetic code or the origin of the intricate nanotechnology in living cells. Now, a few months later, Nature lauds a research paper that asserts that groundbreaking insight into the origin of the human brain can be gained by extrapolating from the comparative biology of spit.
Evolutionary biology can't be satirized. It can only be described.
On a very important question that goes to the heart of the debate about Darwinism and intelligent design, Dr. Jeffrey Shallit is exercising his right to remain silent. Dr. Shallit had recently used the example of S.E.T.I. research on a blog post in which he ridiculed author and editor Tom Bethell for defending intelligent design. Mr. Bethell pointed out that it’s perfectly appropriate for scientists use the inference to design under certain circumstances, and he believes that biology is one of them. Dr.Shallit ridiculed him, calling him a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ‘’simply stupid’ and categorizing his views as “Idiocy”. I was taken back by Dr. Shallit’s incivility and lack of professionalism- he’s a professor responsible for teaching students appropriate standards of discourse, for goodness sake- and I responded to his post.
I replied that the analogy between the inference to design in S.E.T.I. research and the inference to design in biology was to some extent valid, and asked Dr. Shallit a question:
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ [in a signal from space] would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?
It’s a simple enough question, and it gets to the heart of the debate over intelligent design. If the receipt of a coded signal from space - for example a blueprint to build a complex device- would be immediately recognized as designed, why do Darwinists insist that the inference to design in biology isn’t at least a reasonable inference, open to the same kind of scientific investigation to which we would subject a coded ‘blueprint’ signal picked up by a radio telescope?
I have twice asked Dr. Shallit, a leading professor of computer science who studies and teaches information theory, to answer this simple question, which after all, hinges on information theory. These are Dr. Shallit’s replies:
Dear Prof. Egnor:
I wonder if you see any irony in the fact that, while intelligent design proponents are complaining about the suppression of their views and the unwillingness of scientists to debate, you attack me from a weblog that does not allow comments, while the Panda's Thumb and Recursivity are open to comments from everyone ... including you.
Oddly, Dr. Shallit makes this claim from his own blog. He's hardly being denied an opportunity to respond, and I happily link to his answers. I have nothing to do with the administrative decisions made at Evolution News and Views, but I suspect that we don't accept comments because of some fairly evident problems with simple civility in the Darwinist blogsphere (something that Dr. Shallit knows a bit about).
Then he asks, obviously piqued:
P. S. Is it your general practice to steal copyrighted photos from people's websites without asking their permission?
I had included Dr. Shallit’s portrait on my post- I didn’t know it was copyrighted! Sorry- it was a nice photo, and it did liven up the post. It seems a minor point- what about the scientific question that I asked…?
Then he brings this up, out of left field:
Dr. Egnor says nothing at all about his friend Tom Bethell's support for crackpot views on AIDS. Apparently, where Dr. Egnor comes from, if you discourage efficacious treatment for a life-threatening disease, that's just fine. He's in good company: other prominent creationists, such as Phillip Johnson, maintain the same views. Here's an issue where a word from Egnor, a medical doctor, could really have an impact. The silence from Dr. Egnor is deafening.
Of course, I didn’t ask Dr. Shallit anything about AIDS, I asked him about the genetic code and the inference to design…
Next, he writes:
If you're going to cite me, Prof. Egnor, please spell my name correctly. Thanks
.
And finally,
So I'll make you a deal, Prof. Egnor: you answer my questions, and I'll answer yours. You first
.
Ok. Actually, only one was a question- “Is it your general practice to steal copyrighted photos… “, and my answer is- no. I apologize, and I apologize in advance for any other slights I might have committed.
It seems to me (and I’m sure I’m not alone) as if Dr. Shallit is trying to avoid answering my question. Now, if I may, I’d like to repeat my question (this is the third try!):
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ [in a signal from space] would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?
Dr. Shallit teaches information theory. He should have no trouble explaining why Darwinists deny that the design inference is relevant to understanding biological complexity. Perhaps if I rephrased my question, Dr. Shallit would feel comfortable answering it:
Why is the design inference accepted by astronomers but not by biologists?
Want to learn about how Darwinian evolution generates new information? This video clip, which includes the raw footage of the original question, shows how Richard Dawkins responded, in context, when the question was directly posed to him during an interview. Phillip Johnson described this interview as follows: "In response to the question, Dawkins hesitated for at least eleven seconds, an agonizingly long time in the context of a video interview, before he finally gave a completely irrelevant reply about the transition between fish and amphibians. The creationists were ecstatic. As they saw it, Richard Dawkins--the world's most prominent Darwinist--was so completely flummoxed by their most important question that he had to duck it." (Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth, pgs. 39-40) Johnson also recounts the false accusations promoted regarding this tape:
Eventually the tape made its way to Barry Williams, the editor of an Australian journal called The Skeptic, who consulted with Dawkins and then published a blistering article with the title "Creationist Deception Exposed." Williams at first seemed to be accusing the filmmakers of altering the tape by substituting a question Dawkins was never asked, but that accusation was never made explicitly and in any case was dropped after the creationists produced the raw tapes.
(Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth, pg. 40 (InterVarsity Press, 1999).)
As Johnson notes, this video provides that raw footage so we can see precisely how Dawkins answered the very question he was posed:
[Update Monday, September 17, 2007: I just learned that Dawkins himself posted a response to this video where he tried to answer "The Information Challenge." Read Dawkins' response at http://www.skeptics.com.au/articles/dawkins.htm and see if he still has yet to satisfactorily answer the question!]
Darwinist Dr. Jeffery Shallit posted an odd response to my comments on his ridicule of Tom Bethell. Mr. Bethell had reiterated the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and he pointed out that the inference to design was valid for some kinds of scientific research. Dr. Shallit, in his post entitled “Bethell the Baffoon", offered little meaningful refutation of Mr. Bethell’s observations. Instead, Dr. Shallit called Mr. Bethell, explicitly or by clear implication, a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ‘’simply stupid". He categorized Mr. Bethell’s views as “Idiocy”.
Keep in mind that Dr. Shallit is a full professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, editor in chief of Journal of Integer Sequences, author of scores of research papers, several textbooks and fifteen book reviews. He graduated cum laude from Princeton. He is professionally, though not rhetorically, distinguished.
Dr. Shallit takes issue with my observation that he called Mr. Bethell a liar:
What I said was, "Bethell then goes on to repeat a common lie of the intelligent design movement..." Repeating a lie doesn't necessarily make one a liar; it is possible to repeat a lie from sheer ignorance.
Back to the science. In his post, Dr. Shallit referred to the example of Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact”, in which scientists receive a signal from space that’s a blueprint for a spacecraft. Although “Contact” is fiction, it raises an important question relevant to the controversy over intelligent design: does the discovery of a blueprint to build a complex device imply that the blueprint was designed? Can blueprints arise in nature by chance?
Dr. Shallit writes that the receipt of a coded message from space would be an appropriate basis for the inference that the message was designed:
If we were to receive a coded message from outer space reading "Welcome earthlings! We are your reptilian overlords. Submit or be absorbed!", I would gladly join the hordes defending our beloved planet from invaders.
So far, so good. Dr. Shallit and I agree. But then, oddly, Dr. Shallit, who in his post had been so attentive to nuisances, missed the last sentence of my post. I’ll repeat it. I asked Dr. Shallit:
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?
Busting another Darwinist Myth: Have ID Proponents Invented Terms like “Microevolution” and “Macroevolution”?
In 2005 I busted the Darwinist myth that ID-proponents have invented terms like “Darwinist” or “Darwinism” by noting that, well, Darwinists themselves have long-used such terms to describe themselves and their viewpoints. Jonathan Wells also recently busted this same myth, and Anika Smith recently busted the myth that evolution is not “random.” In 2006, I also busted the myth that skeptics of neo-Darwinism don't exist outside the United States.
When engaging in debates, every once in a while I hear the claim that Darwin-critics also invented terms like “microevolution” or “macroevolution.” For example, Jonathan Wells reports, “In 2005, Darwinist Gary Hurd claimed that the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution was just a creationist fabrication. … Hurd wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education: “…‘macro’ and ‘micro’ evolution ... have no meaning outside of creationist polemics.” (Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, pgs. 55-56). This is also a Darwinian urban legend, for such terms have been used regularly in the scientific literature. Indeed, textbooks commonly teach this terminology, including two of the textbooks I used in college when learning about evolutionary biology.
The glossary of my college introductory biology text, Campbell’s Biology (4th Ed.) states: “macroevolution: Evolutionary change on a grand scale, encompassing the origin of novel designs, evolutionary trends, adaptive radiation, and mass extinction.” Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology, a text I used for an upper-division evolutionary biology course, states, “In Chapters 2h3 through 25, we will analyze the principles of MACROEVOLUTION, that is, the origin and diversification of higher taxa.” (pg. 447, emphasis in original). Similarly, these textbooks respectively define “microevolution” as “a change in the gene pool of a population over a succession of generations” and “slight, short-term evolutionary changes within species.” Clearly Darwin-skeptics did not invent these terms.
Other scientific texts use the terms. In his 1989 McGraw Hill textbook, Macroevolutionary Dynamics, Niles Eldredge admits that “[m]ost families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.” (pg. 22) Similarly, Steven M. Stanley titles one of his books, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 version), where he notes that, "[t]he known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." (pg. 39)
The scientific journal literature also uses the terms "macroevolution" or "microevolution." In 1980, Roger Lewin reported in Science on a major meeting at the University of Chicago that sought to reconcile biologists’ understandings of evolution with the findings of paleontology. Lewin reported, “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No." (Roger Lewin, "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire," Science, Vol. 210:883-887, Nov. 1980.)
Two years earlier, Robert E. Ricklefs had written in an article in Science entitled “Paleontologists confronting macroevolution,” contending:
The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. ... apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.
(Science, Vol. 199:58-60, Jan. 6, 1978.)
Finally, in 2000 Douglas Erin wrote a paper the journal Evolution and Development entitled “Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution” where he explained the historical controversy over whether microevolutionary processes can explain macroevolutionary change:
Arguments over macroevolution versus microevolution have waxed and waned through most of the twentieth century. Initially, paleontologists and other evolutionary biologists advanced a variety of non-Darwinian evolutionary processes as explanations for patterns found in the fossil record, emphasizing macroevolution as a source of morphologic novelty. Later, paleontologists, from Simpson to Gould, Stanley, and others, accepted the primacy of natural selection but argued that rapid speciation produced a discontinuity between micro- and macroevolution. This second phase emphasizes the sorting of innovations between species. Other discontinuities appear in the persistence of trends (differential success of species within clades), including species sorting, in the differential success between clades and in the origination and establishment of evolutionary novelties. These discontinuities impose a hierarchical structure to evolution and discredit any smooth extrapolation from allelic substitution to large-scale evolutionary patterns. Recent developments in comparative developmental biology suggest a need to reconsider the possibility that some macroevolutionary discontinuities may be associated with the origination of evolutionary innovation. The attractiveness of macroevolution reflects the exhaustive documentation of large-scale patterns which reveal a richness to evolution unexplained by microevolution. If the goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the history of life, rather than simply document experimental analysis of evolution, studies from paleontology, phylogenetics, developmental biology, and other fields demand the deeper view provided by macroevolution.
(Douglas Erwin, “Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution,” Evolution and Development, Vol. 2(2):78-84, 2000.)
So the next time a Darwinist tells you that scientists don’t use terms like “microevolution” or “macroevolution,” remind them why this claim is a long-debunked myth!
Returning to Newsweek after a five year stint as a science writer for the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley posted a blog piece yesterday about Darwinist biology professor Richard Colling. Colling teaches at a small Nazarene university in Illinois and, according to Begley, has come under fire by church leaders because he is a theistic evolutionist and authored a book called Random Designer.
Anger over his work had been building for two years. When classes resumed in late August, things finally came to a head. Colling is prohibited from teaching the general biology class, a version of which he had taught since 1991, and college president John Bowling has banned professors from assigning his book.
Two years? Robert Marks’ evolutionary informatics website was barely online two months when Baylor admins gave it the heave-ho. Granted, private religious institutions—unlike state universities—have the right to enforce doctrinal beliefs as part of their First Amendment freedom. Of course, if Colling's university—like Baylor University—has claimed that it guarantees academic freedom, then that is another matter. If Colling’s academic freedom has been hindered then that needs to be corrected. We support academic freedom, obviously, for Darwinists as well as Darwinist-skeptics.
Begley’s blog is a bit unclear as to just who is attacking Colling. It sounds more as if the attacks have come from church leaders as opposed to university administrators.
At least one local Nazarene church called for Colling to be fired and threatened to withhold financial support from the college.
Clearly, Colling has not been fired.
Begley continues:
In a letter to Bowling, ministers in Caro, Mo., expressed "deep concern regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory as a scientifically proven fact," calling it "a philosophy that is godless, contrary to scripture and scientifically unverifiable." Irate parents, pastors and others complained to Bowling, while a meeting between church leaders and Colling "led to some tension and misunderstanding," Bowling said in a letter to trustees.
All of these attacks are coming from outside the University. That’s a big difference from the cases where ID proponents have suffered harassment, persecution and reputation bashing — almost always at the hands of their own administrators and faculty colleagues.
The cases of academic persecution against Darwinists are few and far between — can you name even three? — whereas IDers unfortunately find themselves attacked from all sides, and all too often. Sternberg, Leonard, Wells, Bryson, Crocker, DeHart, Kenyon, Behe, Marks, and the list goes on and on and on.
Where was Sharon Begley when these stories needed to be told? Where is she now when Robert Marks is under attack at Baylor? Why didn’t she cover the appalling public treatment of Guillermo Gonzalez by faculty and administrators at ISU — a major state funded university — over the past several years?
The biggest threat to academic freedom on Darwinism is not tiny religious universities that impose doctrinal standards but most every other university that imposes a Darwin-only litmus test. And the biggest accomplice in all this is the mainstream media which ignores the abuses heaped upon Darwinian skeptics but self-righteously champions the cause of the lonely professor under fire for courageously supporting the institutionalized orthodoxy of Darwinism.
Richard Colling can apply for a job at practically any university in the country without fear of being shunned because of his views on evolution. Not so Guillermo Gonzalez. Where should he apply, Ms. Begley?
One has to be careful about accepting the accuracy of news articles that describe scientific papers, so bear that in mind in my mention of a new paper by "scientists" at UCLA and NYU. Their actual paper in Nature Neuroscience (unavailable online so far) is reported in a joint Chicago Tribune/Los Angeles Timesarticle today . It claims that people's political convictions derive from (you guessed it), differences in biology. "..(A) specific region of the brain's cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives," they advise us.
How to Teach Intelligent Design, SMU Style: "You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap"
This past spring, anti-ID faculty at Southern Methodist University (SMU) refused to engage in a debate over intelligent design. Now that Discovery Institute's activities on the SMU campus are over, some of these faculty are sponsoring a course entitled "The Scientific Method - Critical and Creative Thinking (Debunking Pseudoscience)." The course has a clear bias against ID, as the course website has a page devoted to ID titled "(Un)Intelligent Design," which states, "You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap." They remain true to their promise to offer a one-sided and biased presentation: Their listing of course readings on ID lacks a single article that is friendly towards ID! The readings list, for what they call, "Intelligent Design (a.k.a Creationism version 2.0)," begins by citing to the ID entry from the "Skeptic's Dictionary," then it cites 8 Wikipedia articles, 3 NCSE articles, a CSICOP page on ID, 4 Talk Origins pages, and then another 15 or so other articles, ALL OF WHICH OPPOSE ID (including one YouTube video entitled "Evolution for ID-iots"). There is not a single article by an ID-proponent to balance out the 3 dozen or so articles that they list in this "Intelligent Design" section. As if they had not already adequately emphasized their intent to teach a one-sided and biased course against ID, the college-level course has a page called "The Pro-ID Webpage" that the professors have left completely blank.
The course has a lecture against ID to be taught by Dr. John Wise, a noted ID critic at SMU who was vocal in speaking out against ID during Discovery Institute’s SMU conference this past spring. In his "(Un)intelligent Design" lecture notes, Dr. Wise states, "If we have evolution, we no longer need a Creator to create each and every species. Darwinism is dangerous because it infers that God did not directly and purposefully create us. It simply states that we evolved."
The course's page on ID also lists some correspondence regarding Discovery Institute's SMU conference on ID earlier this year. They title one article on the "Darwin vs. Design" readings list a "rant," and they post it under a URL with the word "IDiot" in the title. The “rant” is actually a letter to the editor, and the person they call the "IDiot" who wrote it is me. I wrote to the SMU Daily after John Wise engaged in extensive personal attacks against Discovery Institute’s Anika Smith and SMU law student Sarah Levy. The course author comments in regards to my so-called "rant," "When your argument is absolutely devoid of science, attack John Wise." Such projections are an unfortunate way of responding to my letter: I did not accuse Dr. Wise of any moral wrongdoing, but merely observed that Dr. Wise engaged in precisely the tactic he now accuses me of doing. As I wrote, "It’s disheartening (and revealing) when people have to demonize their opponents in order to argue against them ... continuing for the entirety of his response to supply nothing more than a string of misdirected or misinformed ad hominem attacks." Again, I did not demonize Dr. Wise, and in fact my letter is devoid of personal attacks, and rather is devoted to defending Discovery Institute's Anika Smith and an SMU law student from Dr. Wise's personal attacks against them. I wrote, "Does Dr. Wise have anything to say that is both accurate and rises above personal attacks?"
To his credit, Dr. Wise eventually attempted to rise up to my challenge to discuss the evidence. Writing with Dr. Pia Vogel, he authored what I call an "evidentiary response to ID" that was published in the SMU Daily after my letter issued its challenge. I wrote a response to Dr. Wise and Dr. Vogel's “evidentiary response to ID" long ago but it never got fully posted because ENV soon became focused on Guillermo Gonzalez's denial of tenure. I now post my reply to Dr. Wise and Dr. Vogel's evidentiary response to ID, here. My rebuttal states:
In conclusion, Dr. Wise and Dr. Vogel should be commended for taking my challenge to provide an evidentiary response to Anika Smith and Sarah Levy. Unfortunately, their response addresses none of the arguments made by Ms. Smith and Ms. Levy, but rather blatantly mischaracterizes the arguments for intelligent design from the fossil record and from irreducible complexity. Some of their arguments even seem borrowed in a near-verbatim fashion from Judge Jones and the ACLU during the Kitzmiller trial. As I discussed, these arguments were vastly deficient in explaining the evolutionary origin of complex biological systems.
If Wise and Vogel are to convince critical thinkers, they should stop misrepresenting the arguments of ID-proponents, stop name-dropping fossils, and stop taking the “Judge Jones Said It, I believe It, That Settles It” approach to ID. Instead, they should model for students how to carefully scrutinize the arguments made by both sides. As it stands, their arguments in their letter paper over the problems and deficiencies of many evolutionary explanations and misrepresent the actual arguments made by proponents of the theory of intelligent design.
Does the Course Really Promote "Critical and Creative Thinking"?
Finally, the question must be asked, Does this course truly promote “Critical and Creative Thinking” as its title says it does? In the case Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, 185 F.3d 337 (5th Cir. 1999), a lawsuit was brought regarding an evolution-disclaimer in textbooks. The school district claimed the disclaimer had the legitimate secular purpose "to promote critical thinking." (Freiler, at 342.) The Fifth Circuit found that this purpose was “a sham,” rightly observing that “‘critical thinking’ requires that students approach new concepts with an open mind and a willingness to alter and shift existing viewpoints.” According to the court, the actual intent behind the disclaimer was the hope that “evolution as taught in the classroom need not affect what they already know.” (Freiler, at 345.)
This seems to be precisely the intent behind this present anti-ID course at SMU: it provides only anti-ID reading sources and unashamedly proclaims regarding ID that, “You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap." There seems to be no intent to approach ID "with an open mind" or a "willingness to alter and shift existing viewpoints." Were the Freiler court assessing this course, based upon its online syllabus, I think they would find its claim to promote "Critical and Creative Thinking" to be "a sham."
Another way to assess the course is to ask, what would Darwin think about this course? In Origin of Species, Darwin stated, “A fair result can only be obtained by balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” I think Darwin would roll over in his grave to see modern-day SMU Darwinists teaching his theory alongside such statements as, “You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap." Perhaps one day true critical thinking will take place at SMU regarding evolution and ID, with viewpoints for and against both sides presented. Until then, claims that this course promotes critical thinking appear to be little more than a sham.
[Note: Originally, a much older and improper version of the Response to Wise & Vogel was posted here, but that was fixed soon after this post went live.]
Dr. Jeffrey Shallit, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo and a Darwinist, has a few unkind words for Tom Bethell on his blog Recursivity. Mr. Bethell’s sin, it seems, is that he pointed out the rather obvious differences between creationism and intelligent design. Creationism is the belief that the Book of Genesis is literally, scientifically true — that the earth was created in six days, etc. Intelligent design is the opinion that some aspects of biology, such as the genetic code and the molecular nanotechnology inside cells, are most reasonably explained as the product of intelligent agency. The difference between these viewpoints continues to elude Dr. Shallit. Consequently, Dr. Shallit calls Mr. Bethell a “blathering buffoon.”
Dr. Shallit criticizes Mr. Bethell on another point. After calling Mr. Bethell “gullible” and “a liar,” Professor Shallit ridicules Bethell’s observation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) research demonstrates that, under appropriate circumstances, the scientific inference to intelligent design in nature can be a legitimate interpretation of data. Mr. Bethell uses, as one example, Carl Sagan’s novel (and movie) “Contact,” in which S.E.T.I. researchers intercept a signal from space that consists of the first 261 prime numbers, continuously repeated. The scientists correctly infer that this signal is designed. After the scientists in “Contact” recognize the signal as having an intelligent origin, they intercept two other signals, which they also immediately recognize as intelligent — a primer signal, and a signal that gives detailed instructions to build a space ship.
In reply to Mr. Bethell's analogy, Dr. Shallit points out that “Contact” is fiction. Then he calls Mr. Bethell “dishonest” and “simply stupid.”
Although the thrust of Dr. Shallit’s argument seems to be that Mr. Bethell’s character and intellect are deficient in a surprising variety of ways, Dr. Shallit does raise an important point. Are the scientific inferences that Sagan portrays in his novel reasonable? Specifically, would the receipt of a signal that contained detailed instructions on how to build a sophisticated device justify the scientific inference that the signal was intelligently designed?
The answer is obvious — of course it would. My question to Dr. Shallit is this:
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?
Baylor University Accused of Viewpoint Discrimination in Suppression of Pro-Intelligent Design Scientist
Baylor University continues to come under fire for its suppression of Professor Robert Marks' Evolutionary Informatics Lab. Clearly, Marks' site was removed because it was implicated with ID (not because of any Baylor policy) and there are plenty of labs and groups (some belonging to Marks himself) that have not faced similar discrimination. It seems obvious that his site is being singled out -- regardless of what Baylor says.
. . . at an Aug. 9 meeting, attended by Beckenhauer, Gilmore, Marks, Kelley, provost Randall O’Brien and engineering department chair Kwang Lee that “a disclaimer would be put on the Web site and that it would then go back online as the provost had promised at the close of the meeting.”
It also quoted Marks' attorney John Gilmore as saying:
(The disclaimer) might not have satisfied the absolutists who don’t want anyone at Baylor to think, even on their own time, about I.D. and its related issues. . . . Baylor has an obligation to defend Bob Marks’ position. Unfortunately, they’ve been taking the position of his persecutors. . . . It’s viewpoint discrimination.
The story is somewhat similar to that of noted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez who suffered academic persecution at the hands of Iowa State University earlier this year. Like Gonzalez, Marks is an especially accomplished scientist and scholar. Among Marks' numerous professional accomplishments are 120 peer-reviewed journal papers, 140 conference papers, and three patents. Just check this out.
CSC Senior fellow William Dembski, himself a part of this story, has continued to report and analyze the story on his blog Uncommondescent.org. According to a Baylor spokesperson:
So it has nothing to do with the content but is all about how one goes about establishing a center, an institute, a product using the university’s name.
Dembski responds:
Robert Marks has another research entity on the Baylor server: “The Baylor University Time Scales Group” (note the Baylor URL: web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Research/TimeScales). This research group (a collaboration between engineering and mathematics) has been allowed to proceed unimpeded by Baylor, using its name and absent any disclaimer. Is Baylor now, to maintain a foolish consistency, going to take down that site as well? Is it going to require disclaimers when previously it didn’t? Note that Prof. Marks, by way of compromise, was willing to rename the “Evolutionary Informatics Lab” the “Evolutionary Informatics Group,” but this too was unacceptable to the Baylor administration.
Read more about what Dembski has uncovered here and here.
Dembski further points out:
By the way, if the issue is money (i.e., a lab at Baylor requires start-up funds), it should be pointed out that the Evolutionary Informatics Lab did have funds pledged toward it: Prof. Marks secured a $30,000 grant for me to work with him as a postdoctoral fellow (with the title “Senior Research Scientist”) on evolutionary informatics. President Lilley, however, decided to return that money and revoke my fellowship back in December 2006 (for that story, go here). So even the money argument doesn’t work.
Is It Really Intelligent Design that has the Great Derb Worried?
The Great Derb, John Derbyshire, has spoken. And again he's muddled things badly. This time he's got himself all in a twist over a response by Tom Bethell to his letter responding to a recent column by Bethell about last spring's ID debate at AEI. (whew!)
He still can't understand the obvious differences between creationism and intelligent design, continually conflating the two and looking like an ill-informed crank. And the meandering rantings don't help.
Derbyshire insists on equating intelligent design and creationism because a judge agrees. "Intelligent Design is creationism. This has been proved to courtroom standards of evidence." He would be well served to read Traipsing Into Evolution.
Even thoughtful Darwinists understand that ID and creationism are simply two different things. Leonard Susskind, hardly a creationist or IDist, writes in his book The Cosmic Landscape:
"On one side are the people who are convinced that the world must have been created or designed by an intelligent agent with a benevolent purpose. On the other side are the hard-nosed, scientific types who feel certain that the universe is the product of impersonal, disinterested laws of physics, mathematics, and probability--a world without a purpose, so to speak. By the first group, I don't mean the biblical literalists who believe the world was created six thousand years ago and are ready to fight about it. I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent people who look around at the world and have a hard time believing that it was just dumb luck that made the world so accommodating to human beings. I don't think these people are being stupid; they have a real point." (Page 6)
Likewise, J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, recently wrote:
[I]ntelligent design … is one of multiple emerging critiques of materialism in science and evolution. Unfortunately, many scientists fail to see this, preferring the gross caricature that ID is simply "stealth creationism."
Derbyshire goes on to try and make Discovery Institute out to be not only creationist, but an instigator in getting creationism into schools. He blathers on about consensus science being all that matters in education, which brought to mind Michael Crichton's interesting comment that consensus science "is an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks." Following that is some ranting about public education, tax dollars and homeschooling. Ultimately though, the Great Deb just looks foolish for having no clue what we advocate in regards to education policy. Our policy has been clear and consistent. We want to see students learn more about Darwinism (that consensus science he so adores), not less. By that we mean students should learn about the evidence that supports Darwinian evolution, as well as some of the evidence that challenges it. We don't favor mandating intelligent design, let alone creationism.
Turner explains that the
[r]eflexive hostility to ID is largely cut from that cloth: some ID critics are not so much worried about a hurtful climate as they are about a climate in which people are free to disagree with them.
The Spiritual Brain: An Argument Against Materialism
“The fact is materialism is stalled. It neither has any useful hypotheses for the human mind or spiritual experiences nor comes close to developing any. Just beyond lies a great realm that cannot even be entered via materialism, let alone explored.” (xiv)
Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard notes at the beginning of his book The Spiritual Brain, co-authored with journalist Denyse O’Leary, that he belongs to a small minority of nonmaterialist neuroscientists. He is upfront about the fact that he “went into neuroscience in part because [he] knew experientially that such things [religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences (RSME)] can indeed happen.” Driven by his curiosity about what is happening to the brain during RSME, Beauregard and his colleague studied the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns, coming to the conclusion that it is more likely that these mystics are directly experiencing a reality outside of themselves.
This response of taking the nuns and their spiritual experiences seriously is not the norm in neuroscience, to put it mildly. Here Dr. Beauregard, aided by O’Leary, offers a unique perspective. Unlike his materialist counterparts, his philosophy does not force him to reject, deny, explain away, or treat these religious experiences as problems simply because they deny materialism. The book contains an entertaining if disturbing look at the ridiculous explanation materialists must resort to when confronted with the Numinous, a serious problem for their monistic philosophy. Taking the reader through uninspired arguments such as the “God gene,” the “God spot” in the brain,” and the eminently mockable “God helmet,” The Spiritual Brain reviews current evolutionary explanations for RSMEs and finds them severely lacking.
In contrast, Beauregard and O’Leary urge us to consider the mind as something distinct from the brain, giving evidence that the mind acts on the brain as a nonmaterial cause. Reviewing studies of near death experiences (NDE), they come to the intriguing conclusion that “mind and consciousness appear to continue at a time when the brain is nonfunctional and clinical criteria of death have been reached.” The Spiritual Brain does not question the validity of these reports, but accepts the challenge they present to the idea that consciousness is nothing more than an illusion of the brain. “There’s no escaping the nonmaterialism of the human mind.”
According to The Spiritual Brain, this is very good news, especially as it pertains to medicine. As its authors argue, “A nonmaterialist approach to the mind…is critical to alleviating some psychiatric disorders…ultimately the mind is the most effective agent of change for the brain.” Drawing on the work of UCLA neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, they conclude that responsible choices are possible for the many living with phobias, OCD, and other serious, often crippling psychological issues. Included in this examination is the power of the placebo effect, which provides serious food for thought: does believing something like I have taken this pill, so I will get better have the power to make it so?
The power of nonmaterialist neuroscience is not that it has answered these questions already, but that it frees the scientist to study the question at hand, opening doors for new investigations into how the mind works. The Spiritual Brain has the opposite effect of the many materialist screeds which attempt to explain religion. Rather than dulling curiosity with useless theories about God spots and God genes, Beauregard and O’Leary incite a hunger for more knowledge and excitement for the future of neuroscience research.
MSNBC Jumps on the Transhumanist / New-Age Evolutionary Bandwagon
MSNBC loves to promote the view that humans evolved from anthropoid ancestors (see here or here for a couple examples). Now MSNBC has created an online exhibit (and accompanying article) entitled "Before and After Humans" that not only promotes standard views of humans evolution, but also supports transhumanism: the view that humans will evolve into a new, higher species. MSNBC's "possible futur[e]" for the human species goes something like this: Within one million years, global gene mixing eliminates the races and the "Unihumans" develop a global "monoculture." That sounds reasonable enough. Next some global catastrophe kills off large portions of humanity, and the "Survivalistians" must adapt to extreme conditions, evolving "night-vision" and "radiation-shielding skin." If that sounds a little weird, wait until our next stage of evolution. 2 million years from now, humans turn into Dr. Strangelove-like beings who genetically engineer new "mini-species" of humans. This results in war between the "naturals" and the "Numans." At 3 million years, the Matrix apparently becomes reality, where we become "Cyborgs" and compete with our robotic creations in an evolutionary fight for survival. The organic beings must win, because at 4-million years, the "Cyborgs" evolve into "Astrans," who bear a strangely close resemblance to Coneheads, but with ears like a Vulcan (see the picture at right). The "Astrans" supposedly travel the stars to impregnate the universe with our "Astran" way of life. Yes, that's right: Dan Aykroyd's famous (and funny) Saturday Night Live "Coneheads" sketch apparently predicted the pinnacle of human evolution.
It's tough to tell if this exhibit is stealing pages from Star Trek, a New Age / transhumanism manifesto, or an evolutionary anthropologist's armchair speculation. One thing is for sure, MSNBC didn't get its ideas from Saturday Night Live, because there is no evidence that any of this is to be taken as a joke. Given recent admissions from paleoanthropologists that we know very little about how humans evolved from ape-like species (for example, see here and here), it does not seem unreasonable to regard the claim that humans evolved from ape-like species to be a bit of unwarranted speculation. But MSNBC's foray into New Age and Transhumanist philosophy in the "Before and After Humans" exhibit is pure science fiction. I love science-fiction, so if you take the "Before and After Humans" exhibit as such, it's all good fun. But this is being promoted with a half-serious tone on one of the internet's largest news websites. Perhaps MSNBC's editors could benefit from watching a few SNL reruns.
Baylor University Denies Research Scientist's Academic Freedom
“Baylor University has proven yet again that academic freedom has been thrown off campus and academic persecution is now the norm,” said Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in reaction to Baylor University’s deletion of a professor's research website, which focused on evolutionary systems and informatics. “It is simply unconscionable that a major university would so trample a scientist’s right to freedom of scientific inquiry,”
Baylor University has taken offline the Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory website that had been administered by Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, because the administration claimed there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.
The lab’s scope of research is described on evolutionaryinformatics.org (now hosted by a third party): “The Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory explores the conceptual foundations, mathematical development, and empirical application of evolutionary informatics. The principal theme of the lab’s research is teasing apart the respective roles of internally generated and externally applied information in the performance of evolutionary systems.”
This is the third instance in which Baylor University has squelched free speech and punished a faculty member because of their views on intelligent design. In 2000, the University administration caved to pressure from Darwinian activists demanding they shut down the Michael Polanyi Research Center established in part to do research on intelligent design theory. In 2006, noted legal scholar Francis Beckwith was denied tenure by Baylor administrators in part because of his writings supporting the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. After a protracted public battle, the Board of Regents reversed that decision and Beckwith was granted tenure.
“There is a troubling pattern of scientists and scholars at Baylor university coming under attack for questioning evolution,” said Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “The freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin is coming under increasing attack by people that can only be called Darwinian fundamentalists.”
“What has happened to Professor Marks is censorship, pure and simple,” added Luskin.
Discovery Institute is encouraging Baylor alumni and Texas residents to write to the University’s board of regents and demand that the university reinstate academic freedom and protect the rights of scientists and scholars to pursue their research without fear of reprisal.
Nine Gorilla Teeth and a Confession of Evolutionist Ignorance
As I've noted before, it is often only after Darwinists report a new fossil discovery that they retroactively admit how little they previously knew about a given evolutionary transition. This happened again recently as a team of paleoanthropologists reported finding 6-7 million year-old fossil gorilla teeth that Nature News claimed "helps to fill in a huge gap in the fossil record." Accompanying this find, however, was a striking admission of ignorance regarding the evolution of humans:
"The human fossil record goes back 6 to 7 million years, but we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes," the researchers said in a statement on Wednesday that accompanied publication of their study in the journal Nature. "Chororapithecus gives us the first glimpse of the ape side background to the human origins story."
So there you have it, these paleoanthropologists admit: "we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes." Typically such confessions of ignorance are accompanied by reports of a fossil find that actually provides some kind of interesting evidence for evolution. In this case, we got the confession, but they didn't provide the supporting evidence for evolution. Natureadmitted that the research team "based its conclusion on just nine teeth from at least three individuals of the species." And just how interesting are these teeth? According to Nature News, "The teeth, eight molars and a canine, 'are collectively indistinguishable from modern gorilla subspecies' in size, proportion and scan-revealed internal structure." If you don't think this provides compelling evidence that humans evolved from ape-like species, join the club.
In sum, after this "huge gap"-filling find, we are left with nine gorilla teeth and the admission that "we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes." Perhaps in this case, the confession of ignorance about human evolution was not so retroactive after all.
According to CSC senior fellow and leading ID theorist William Dembski, what follows is:
“[A] big story, perhaps the biggest story yet of academic suppression relating to ID. Robert Marks is a world-class expert in the field of evolutionary computing, and yet the Baylor administration, without any consideration of the actual content of Marks's work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, decided to shut it down simply because there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.”
Read on if you care at all about academic freedom and protecting the right of scientists to freedom of scientific inquiry.
What a difference a year or two makes. Or not. The ugly specter of academic suppression seems incapable of being dispelled at Baylor University. It first ghosted across the campus a number of years ago when leading ID theorist William Dembksi undertook the task of heading up an intelligent design research program at the Michael Polanyi Research Center. Anti-ID bigots amongst Baylor’s faculty and staff moved quickly and decisively to stifle any such research on their campus, claiming that they were concerned that “people will make us guilty by association and assume that we are associated with or linked to this organization that is very well established as a pseudo-science.” It was clear then that intelligent design was not a subject that could be freely researched, studied, or discussed at Baylor University. Academic freedom be damned.
Fast forward to 2005-06. Academic suppression and anti-science prejudice again surfaced at Baylor, this time in denial of tenure to acclaimed faculty member and scholar Francis Beckwith. ENV reported on Beckwith’s case at that time:
Beckwith has defended the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design. Note: He has not advocated the wisdom of teaching ID, nor has he taken sides on the ultimate rightness or wrongness of ID. He has only defended the constitutionality of presenting the debate.
The trampling of academic freedom at Baylor did not go unnoticed in the wider world. Indeed, Joseph Bottum of First Things responded with withering scorn:
Baylor has apparently decided to sink back into its diminished role as a not terribly distinguished regional school. President Sloan is gone, the new high-profile faculty are demoralized and sniffing around for positions at better-known schools, energetic programs like the Intelligent Design institute have been chased away, and the bright young professors are having their academic careers ruined by a school that lured them to campus with the promises of the 2012 plan and now is simply embarrassed by them.
Fortunately for Beckwith, the decision was ultimately reversed and he was granted tenure, as he should have been in the beginning. But the writing on the wall was clear for ID proponents: Keep your views to yourself at Baylor or find yourself disgraced. Public pressure notwithstanding, academic freedom was all but absent at Baylor.
Unfortunately for Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, he didn’t keep his views to himself. Perhaps he was still under the misperception that tenured professors and proven researchers could still pursue scientific inquiry without fear of institutional reprisal.
Suffering from a delusion of academic freedom last year, Marks decided that research related to evolution and intelligent design, specifically the informational generative capabilities of Darwinian evolution, could be an interesting and fruitful subject for scientific investigation. Marks teaches signal processing and imaging intelligence, his current research is on computational intelligence, fuzzy systems and neural networks, and he has a recently published book on related subjects published by no less than Oxford University. Tying together all of these subjects, one of his biggest areas of research and study is evolutionary computing, which has to do with emulating evolution on computers and is a robust and growing field of engineering.
Marks discussed the subject of evolutionary informatics in an interview conducted by CSC’s Casey Luskin on ID The Future back in July. He described evolutionary informatics as basically conducting simulated evolution on computers. For better or worse Dr. Marks mentioned that he was working with William Dembski on some of his research into information and evolution computing. Just mentioning Dembski these days at Baylor is grounds for dismissal apparently – or at least for dismissal of your life’s work.
Actually, Marks committed an even worse crime – he said he was doing actual research with Dembski. And worse, he was posting their research on a website about the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, at www.evolutionaryinformatics.org. (As of this writing the website is accessible -- it is now hosted by a third party and no longer under the administration of Baylor University..)
It should be noted here that Marks had received a grant from an outside organization that was administered through Baylor University to do this research. And that grant had been approved by the President of the University himself. Interestingly, the involvement of William Dembski caused Baylor to return the grant. Researchers familiar with the grant process will appreciate the significance of this. Recipient research centers seldom, almost never, return research grants for any reason. That fact that Baylor did so regarding a program of research related to intelligent design is quite telling about the University’s appreciation of academic freedom. One wonders what sorts of grants Baylor has administered without complaint for other "controversial" research in the past.
The punishment for Marks is that his ”lab” (we’ll get to that in a moment) was shut down and his website taken offline because the lab's research was perceived as being supportive of intelligent design. To recap, in June of this year the website went online. In July, ID The Future aired its interview with Marks about the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, and a scant dozen days later the website was erased from the net. Is academic freedom or freedom of scientific inquiry alive and well at Baylor University? (Journalist Denyse O’Leary has documented the exact timeline of events at uncommondescent.com, and has provided the backstory of academic persecution at Baylor.)
Dr. Marks has gone the extra mile in trying to accommodate any legitimate concerns Baylor administrators may have had about his evolutionary informatics website--even agreeing to put a disclaimer on the site making clear that it represented his views as a faculty member, not the university as a whole. But Baylor administrators have now spurned Marks' efforts to accommodate them, apparently reneging on a compromise brokered last month by Marks' attorney. Not only has Baylor deleted Marks' website about his evolutionary informatics research, its lawyer is now outrageously charging Marks with misconduct in creating it and implying that Marks has no academic freedom to pursue research in evolutionary informatics as a faculty member at Baylor.
Under pressure from the administration, Marks agreed to rename the project “Evolutionary Informatics Group” since calling it the “Evolutionary Informatics Lab” bothered anonymous complainers at Baylor because they said it connoted a physical presence. Of course, a “lab” in science circles often refers to a group of scientists participating in related research and collaboration at differing locations. Bickering over whether or not it was a lab probably seemed a silly thing to a researcher like Marks, and so he agreed to change the name. Of course, for the anti-ID thought police in Baylor's administration anything less than the complete annihilation of any research related to intelligent design wasn’t good enough. Changing the name didn’t go far enough. The work itself had to be stifled. After all, it’s not the name that is truly threatening, it is the research that can’t be allowed to progress.
Stay tuned for more about Baylor’s attack on academic freedom. The anti-science bigots were thwarted with the granting of tenure to Francis Beckwith. This current situation is a much more dire one for Darwinists and they are mounting a serious attack to censor scientists and stifle science.
The Privileged Planet: Such a Dangerous Idea Its Author Had To Be Stifled
Regular visitors to ENV know well the recent trials and tribulations of astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure in spite of his stellar credentials. Now it seems the rest of the world will learn about Gonzalez' persecution for being a proponent of intelligent design.
Expelled, the forthcoming film that explores the academic persecution of pro-ID scientists, apparently will be featuring some of Gonzalez's story. After his tenure was denied earlier this year, a faculty member at ISU on the tenure committee admitted he voted against Gonzalez because of his support for, and research into, intelligent design theory.
While he didn't teach about ID in his classes at Iowa State University, Gonzalez did co-author an important ID book, The Privileged Planet, which later was made into a film, wonderfully narrated by Lord of the Rings actor John Rhys-Davies.
The Privileged Planet film explores the many ways in which Earth is ideally suited, not only for complex life, but also for observing the universe around us. According to Gonzalez and his co-author Jay Richards, modern scientific evidence indicates that the many factors that make Earth suitable for complex life also provide the best conditions for astronomical discovery. The Privileged Planet explores this intriguing correlation and its implications on our understanding of the origin and purpose of the cosmos.
Iowa State atheist professor of religion Hector Avalos (yes, the same Professor Avalos who harassed Guillermo Gonzalez about astrobiology) seems to now consider himself an expert in modern European History as well.
Weikart recently responded to Avalos’s charges in a comment left at Panda’s Thumb. I’ve pasted it below for wider distribution:
I don’t come to Panda’s Thumb very often, but a friend told me about Hector Avalos’s essay about my book, so I couldn’t resist reading it. What I find remarkable about it is that he ignores the historical context about which I am writing in my book. My book is about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and shifts in thinking that occurred during the period of approximately 1859-1914. Avalos hardly ever says anything about what Christianity was like during that period. His claims about what the Bible allegedly teaches–for instance child sacrifice–strains credulity, and I doubt that very many (maybe zero) Christians in the nineteenth century were using the Bible to defend child sacrifice. Since even according to his own view, the later parts of the Old Testament reject child sacrifice and it is clear that Christianity rejected child sacrifice from the start, what does this have to do with the shift in the nineteenth century I am discussing?
It is clear that Avalos is more interested in attacking the Bible as an allegedly immoral book, rather than trying to discover what happened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to make infanticide, euthanasia, and genocide intellectually acceptable to leading scholars (the ones I discuss were generally anti-Christian, a point Avalos apparently doesn’t like too much).
What were the prevailing views of Christians during that time? Sure, some Christians were (and still are) racist–some atheists were and are racist, too. But what was the prevailing current of thought? I find it interesting that during that time many Darwinists themselves lamented that Christianity supported egalitarianism, while–they asserted–Darwinism proved human inequality. Of course, there are many examples Avalos could bring up to show that not all Christians were egalitarian in the nineteenth century.
I also never claim in my book that Darwinism produced racism. I specifically remind my readers that racism predated Darwin. However, even Stephen Jay Gould admitted that racism increased significantly after and because of the advent of Darwinian theory. My book explains why that is so.
I never claimed in my book, either, that Darwinism was the sole culprit for genocide or racism or any other human evil. Evil has been around much longer than Darwinism.
However, Dr. Avalos sidesteps a key issue in my book: under the influence of Christianity for centuries infanticide and killing the disabled were forbidden by all European societies. Darwinian-inspired thinkers of the late nineteenth century began to endorse infanticide and involuntary euthanasia. The famous Darwinist Ernst Haeckel was the first to promote killing the disabled in Germany–and he based it on his Darwinian worldview. Ian Dowbiggin, Nick Kemp, Udo Benzenhoefer, Hans Walter Schmuhl, and other scholars have all shown the importance of Darwinism in fostering the euthanasia movement, not only in Germany, but also in the United States and Britain.
These are apparently unpalatable truths for Dr. Avalos.
I will not likely be looking back at this website, since I’m going to the University of Leeds to the “Darwinism after Darwin” conference, where I will discuss my book with some of its critics. Fire away, but know that my lack of response is simply because I’m gone.
You will be happy to know, however, that I am currently preparing some more grist for your mill, since I’m on leave this coming academic year to write a book entitled “Hitler’s Ethic,” where I will prove that evolutionary ethics was a central part of Hitler’s worldview. Stay tuned.
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