On Monday December 3rd, at a news conference in the Iowa state capitol, Discovery Institute will release a record of secret emails exchanged among faculty at Iowa State University about ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. The emails demonstrate that a campaign was conducted against him by his colleagues, with the intent to deny Gonzalez tenure because of views he holds on the intelligent design of the universe, expressed in his 2004 book The Privileged Planet.

Gonzalez was denied tenure at ISU earlier this year. While ISU president Gregory Geoffroy claimed that the decision was because Gonzalez “did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect” and not because of his views on ID, it has become increasingly clear that his views on ID are exactly what led to his being forced out. Indeed, the day after the president announced his decision ISU professor John Hauptman published an op-ed in the Des Moines Register in which he contradicted the university and admitted that ID was the specific reason that he voted against Dr. Gonzalez receiving tenure.

Here is Dr. Gonzalez's trajectory of excellence, a trajectory that far outstrips most other faculty at ISU with tenure, even in his own department.

Dr. Gonzalez:

• has authored 68 peer-reviewed scientific articles in refereed science journals.
  
• is an author of Observational Astronomy, second edition (2006), a college-level astronomy textbook published by Cambridge University Press (authors: D. Scott Birney, G. Gonzalez and D. Oesper).
  
• work has been cited in Science, Nature and many other scientific journals. All told, there were nearly 1,500 citations to his articles and research in science journals by the end of 2005.
  
• research led to the discovery of 2 new planets.
  
• is building new technology to discover extrasolar planets.
  
• served on the NASA Astrobiology Institute Review Panel in June 2003 and the National Science Foundation Advanced Technologies and Instruments review panel in January 2005.
  
• has served as a referee for Astronomical Journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Astrophysical Journal (and Letters), Icarus, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Nature, Naturwissenschaften, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Origins of Life and Evolution Biospheres and Science.

“This is a clear First Amendment case,” said Discovery attorney for public policy and legal affairs Casey Luskin, who will be presenting at the news conference in Iowa next week. “Dr. Gonzalez’s persecution demonstrates the limits of academic freedom at ISU and similar institutions.”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Behe will be on C-SPAN 2's "Close Up at the Newseum" program airing today at 7 pm EST. From his Amazon blog:

Case Western Reserve University Professor Patricia Princehouse and I recently taped an episode of the program "Close Up at the Newseum", where we discussed intelligent design, Darwinism, The Edge of Evolution, and other topics with an audience of about 40 high school students. The purpose of Close Up is to get students interested in issues of the day, and to become active participants in our democracy. The show will air this Friday, November 30th, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, on C-SPAN 2.

#1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Bioengineering > Biochemistry
#2 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Biochemistry
#3 in Books > Science > Evolution > Organic

Posted by Anika Smith at 5:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In this week’s National Review (December 3, 2007), theoretical particle physicist Stephen Barr takes on those who claim that the findings of modern science have banished the ideas of mind or soul.

Barr, with whom many of us at Discovery have misgivings regarding his use of the word “random” in neo-Darwinian theory, nonetheless gives an excellent exposition of philosophy of mind’s intersection with contemporary physics in his article “The Soul and Its Enemies” (sorry: password required).

Barr concludes:

We see, then, that those who confidently assert that scientific discoveries have banished the soul to the realm of myth offer only a limited view of the evidence. Indeed, the very possibility of scientific discoveries points to man’s openness to truth and his ability to grasp meaning. One does not really need a scientist to confirm that one has a spiritual soul, however. Its powers are daily on display in our lives as rational and free creatures. Of course, there are those who disagree with this. And they are quite free to disagree. But their very freedom to disagree is proof that they are wrong.

Posted by Logan Gage at 4:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here.

From the 1890s into the early years of the twentieth century, a growing number of American doctors advocated castration as a solution for habitual criminals as well as rapists and murderers. Proponents of castration like Frank Lydston derided the failed rehabilitation efforts of the “sentimentalist and his natural ally, the preacher,” and argued that “asexualization” surgery would produce results by preventing criminals from passing down their criminal tendencies to their children, by striking fear into non-castrated criminals, and by changing the personality of the castrated criminal. “The murderer is likely to lose much of his savageness; the violator loses not only the desire, but the capacity for a repetition of his crime, if the operation be supplemented by penile mutilation according to the Oriental method.” Lydston’s views were grounded forthrightly in scientific materialism. “The attempt to reduce criminology to a rational and materialistic basis has constituted a great step in advance—one which marks a distinct epoch in scientific sociology,” he proclaimed in 1896.

Some doctors went beyond talk and actually began performing castrations.

Dr. F. Hoyt Pilcher operated on 44 boys and 14 girls of the Kansas State Home for the Feeble-Minded during the 1890s. Though he had to curtail his castrations due to public outcry, the Board of Trustees of his institution was unrepentant, insisting that “those who are now criticizing Doctor Pilcher will, in a few years, be talking of erecting a monument to his memory.”

As I discuss in chapter 5 of Darwin Day in America (“Turning Punishment into Treatment”), efforts to cure criminals through “scientific” rehabilitation led to a parade of horrors during the twentieth century as criminals were turned into guinea pigs. This was precisely the result warned about by C. S. Lewis in his 1949 essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.”

To order Darwin Day in America click here. To find out more information about the book (and watch the trailer), visit the book’s website here.

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

What’s the single book that you would most like your friends to read? According to U.K. pro-ID blogger Exiled from Groggs, it is Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt’s book A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature. According to the reviewer, formerly at Cambridge, “Of all the books on the great debate that I have read - and there are a fair few on both sides! - this is probably the one I have enjoyed the most, and the one which ought ideally to have the most potential to influence.” He goes on to explain why:

Wiker and Witt's thesis is that the universe is rich in "meaning" - the dominance of the materialist worldview has blinded us to this. And the "meaning" testifies to a creative genius. To make this case, they start in English literature, looking at Shakespeare, and then move into mathematics and chemistry before revisiting the world of biology. In the process, they identify depth, clarity, harmony and elegance as hallmarks of genius . ... Unsurprisingly, their conclusion is that the meaningfulness that is found at all levels in the universe is indicative of an underlying creative genius.

This book, like only a few others that I have read before ("Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter, "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, "How Should We Then Live?" by Francis Schaeffer), took a discussion that had reached a sterile impasse and presented it from an entirely new perspective. For theists, this book has the potential to help them see beyond the wrangling over details of materialism again, and remind them of how rich the universe is. For atheists, this book has the potential to lift their eyes from narrow discussion about whether or not it is possible to prove that bacterial flagellum evolved, to take in again the vast panorama which once captivated and amazed them.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

You can tell when the Christmas season is approaching—by the nip in the air, and by the jump in the level of crankiness exhibited by Darwinists in the blogosphere. This year Christmas apparently has come early for internet Darwinists, who have been raising a kerfluffle on their blogs about Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William Dembski’s usage of a clip of some Harvard-commissioned animation of the cell in a few of his lectures. In typical high dudgeon, Darwinists have accused Dr. Dembski of all sorts of nefarious violations of intellectual property law. Some have even claimed (as usual, without an iota of evidence) that Discovery Institute supports the disregard of copyright laws or even had something to do with Dr. Dembski’s usage of the animation in question. (Wrong on both counts.)

It’s nice to see that internet Darwinists have suddenly become the protectors of America’s copyright laws. However, it’s a rather peculiar role for them. Check out Google Video or You Tube and you will regularly find examples of Darwinists uploading (without permission) huge chunks of copyrighted videos featuring various Discovery Institute Fellows. Indeed, the other week, we discovered a Darwinist who had uploaded the video of Icons of Evolution online in order to denounce it—not just a couple of minutes of the video, mind you, but nearly the entire thing. In the past, we’ve come across other Darwinists who have archived for public use (again, without permission) whole sections of DI’s website. Unlike the internet Darwinists, we don’t usually make a cause celebre out of such wanton violations of the copyright code, although we have been known to contact the parties involved privately and ask them to cease and desist. Now that the internet Darwinists have discovered the glories of copyright, may we hope they will begin to police their own supporters?

Back to Dr. Dembski: Contrary to what some Darwinists seem to suppose, we have better things to do with our time than pre-screen every lecture delivered by the nearly 40 Fellows of Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture, all of whom are quite capable of giving lectures without our aid, and many of whom (like Dr. Dembski) are unsalaried and hold full-time positions at other institutions. In the present case, Discovery Institute played no role whatever in the use, alteration, or dissemination of any animation clip from Harvard that our esteemed colleague may have included in some of his lectures. When we first learned several weeks ago that someone had concerns about Dr. Dembski’s occasional use of this particular clip, we contacted Dr. Dembski directly, and he told us that he had stopped using the material as soon as these concerns had been raised with him. Of course, you can still find the cell animation in question posted all over the internet by persons other than Dr. Dembski from places as far away as Latvia. It will be interesting to see if anyone goes after those sinister Latvians for violating Harvard’s copyright—or, for that matter, the hundreds of professors and teachers who are likely showing the clip to their classes without permission.

For the record, those of us at Discovery Institute do believe in—and respect—intellectual property rights. We certainly empathize with the legitimate concerns of the Harvard professors who commissioned this animation. They unquestionably have the right to control and safeguard the use of their intellectual property.

What I find difficult to take seriously are the recent histrionics by members of the Darwinist internet posse. If would take them more seriously if they applied their concerns a tad more consistently. For example, some of the very Darwinists who are now browbeating Dr. Dembski also posted on their blogs video from his lecture, presumably without his permission.

What is apparent from all of this is just how bare the Darwinists’ cupboard must be these days. Every time they try to shift the evolution-ID debate away from the scientific evidence—whether it be by fake reenactments of the Dover trial a la PBS, or through overblown controversies such as this one—they expose the weakness of their position. After all, if they had the evidence on their side, they would be arguing it. Since they don’t, they try to change the subject.

Posted by John West at 5:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to a recent article in the Seattle Times, “School officials unite in banning Wikipedia,” because “[t]here have been many cases of incorrect information on the Web site, some of which has been biased.” The article reports that sadly, “A teacher researching Martin Luther King Jr. found white supremacist information in his entry.”

Dr. King is one of my personal heroes. His perseverance in support of a just cause, and his calls for civil, reasoned responses to false personal attacks and persecution should be seen as a model for any ID proponent on how to behave in the present political climate. Thus, it is tragically unsurprising that Wikipedia, which promotes so much incorrect and biased information against intelligent design, should also be a haven for an even more distasteful form of incorrect and biased information about the pathway taken by the civil rights movement to strive towards freedom.

Regardless, there is one piece of good news coming from this article: Wikipedia itself is slowly recognizing its own deficiencies. As the article reports, “

Wikipedia officials recognize the problems with using the Web site for research, said Sandra Ordonez, communications manager for Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia. The company does not recommend using the Web site as a primary research source, she said.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As part of our response to the PBS-NOVA documentary “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design,” Discovery Institute recently released “The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Briefing Packet for Educators” (available free for download, here). The packet contains numerous resources for educators trying to effectively teach about biological origins in public schools. These resources include:

PBS-NOVA's "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" documentary has evoked much commentary and response. In fact, we have recently received a flood of e-mails from members of the public who felt that “Judgment Day” was heavily biased and inaccurate, including e-mails from educators and teachers who thanked us for correcting the misinformation promoted by PBS. Other e-mails have not been so nice, showing that sadly, some Darwinists apparently lack the Thanksgiving holiday spirit. Below is a sampling of some of the e-mails we have received recently:

One Darwinist wrote us to explain that he is a "science teacher," showing the type of example that he sets for his students regarding how to discuss controversial scientific and social issues:

"May you rot in the feces you espouse, and than god for helping expose your phony attempts to get creationism into the classroom. I will help fight your kind to the end of time, as will many of my colleagues. Did I mention I'm a science teacher! Next time you try something unconstitutional I hope they ream your lily white a**es into prison where you belong! Eat crap you losers."

“Here's my general inquiry. What do you at this creepy organization really think you're doing, attempting to force your version of religion into public schools with beliefs that are identical to those of radical Islam? I suppose there will never be an end to the machinations of those truly stupid and venal humans among us, a group you represent oh so well. How pathetic.”

“I'm proud of my great ape ancestorial history. At least they aren't destroying the planet like the virus that is humanity.”

“laughed my f***ing a** off at you guys, maybe god created giant a****** for you to put your heads in.No that would be ittelegent [sic] design. maybe change your namr [sic] to discovery prostitute”

Posted by Casey Luskin at 3:29 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As we noted earlier, Mike Behe has a response to another critic, Dr. Ian Musgrave of University of Adelaide, who wrote "An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe."

Read Behe's response to Musgrave at his Amazon blog using the links below. Behe has also responded to a number of other critics at that site, including Ken Miller, Sean Carroll and Nick Matzke.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I just posted at Discovery Blog about the remarkable article in The Los Angeles Times by Richard Hayes and what it tells us about the poltiical motivation of scientists who opposed embryonic stem cell research, but were reluctant to speak out because they didn't want to go against the P.C. crowd in science and the media. The relevance to other issues, including Darwin's theory, is obvious.

http://www.discovery.org/blogs/discoveryblog/

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 10:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Recently stories about intelligent design and evolution have been appearing more regularly in the mainstream media. Many of these have to do with ongoing arguments over the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution, and academic freedom cases of scholars and scientists researching intelligent design theory. Here's a rundown of some of the biggest stories of recent weeks.

PBS' NOVA aired its review of the Dover intelligent design trial and misrepresented what intelligent design is and what its proponents say about it.

Federal judges don’t ordinarily travel around the country speaking about their judicial rulings, but Judge Jones is no ordinary federal judge. While promoting the PBS-NOVA special on intelligent design, he recently appeared the Lehrer Newshour, where he made striking admissions that demonstrate the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling.

Two hallmarks of judicial activism are (1) the tendency to resolve questions outside the scope of the judiciary, which are best left to other branches of government, and (2) the intent to make policy and influence parties outside of the case. Judge Jones’ own admissions on the Lehrer Newshour demonstrate that both of these criticisms correctly apply to his Kitzmiller ruling.

Judge Jones’ Expansive Intrusion into Legislative Questions
First, Judge Jones admitted that a key question his ruling answered was whether intelligent design was “good science,” and he states that “after six weeks of largely expert testimony, I came to the conclusion that it simply was not good science” (emphasis added). This proves his judicial activism because it shows that, in his mind, a key question was not the constitutionality of Dover’s policy in particular, but rather a broad sweeping question about whether ID is “good science,” something that is totally inappropriate and unnecessary for the federal judiciary to answer in such a case over the constitutionality of a science curriculum. As I co-wrote with David DeWolf and John West in Montana Law Review, Judge Jones confused the proper question he was supposed to answer:

Unfortunately, Judge Jones appears to have confused the question of whether he finds ID personally convincing with the question of whether ID is a scientific theory. Because he was not convinced by the scientific arguments made by ID proponents, Judge Jones ruled that ID must not be science in principle. But it was not Judge Jones’s place to determine the ultimate truth or falsity of ID’s scientific arguments…

Even if Judge Jones believed that ID is false, he should have remembered that “the wisdom of an educational policy or its efficiency from an educational point of view is not germane to the constitutional issue of whether that policy violates the establishment clause.” If it is really true that “[s]tates and local school boards are generally afforded considerable discretion in operating public schools,” then what matters is that the school board sincerely believed that ID has scientific merit, not whether a federal judge is convinced of its ultimate scientific truth.

I wrote the opinion in a comprehensive way because I knew that the dispute was possibly going to be replicated someplace else. And what I wanted to do was make the opinion sort of a primer that people could read. You're absolutely correct. It's not precedential outside of the middle district of Pennsylvania, but I thought that if other school boards and other boards of education could read it, they would possibly be more enlightened about what the dispute was all about. And, in fact, in Ohio, in Kansas, in California, and some other places, it was reacted to in a positive way.

Proclaiming that one is not an activist judge does not make it so. And claiming that those who charge “judicial activism” simply disagree with the ruling and have nothing better to say does not mean that reasonable arguments cannot be raised that Judge Jones’s ruling intruded into inappropriate territory or had factually incorrect findings. Judicial activism is not just a meaningless epithet; it is a term applied to judges who succumb to the temptation to “increase their impact as policymakers.” Judicial activism has the tendency to displace other branches of government, or other institutions in society, that are arguably better equipped to resolve a dispute.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We had a "heads up" yesterday from Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith to expect a breakthrough on the issue of embryonic stem cells, and now he has published on it.

Read more here.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 12:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One way you can tell an ideologue is if he ditches an old friend because the old friend no longer agrees with him. It has happened to me occasionally on the issue of Darwinism, and I rather relish it, frankly. I have been a card carrying member of the Centrist Establishment my whole adult life, so I experience a certain excitement in being stigmatized as an extremist by the Leftist Establishment. Me? An extremist? Why thank you so much!

The same thing is happening to Anthony Flew now, in double dosage, and I hope he, too, is enjoying the notoriety.

The New York Times -- media headquarters for the Give No Quarter to Darwin Doubters campaign -- decided to respond to the recent apostasy of England's hallowed Professor of Atheism by intimating that the old man must be daft. Never let it be said that NYT lacks for objective anaylsis and journalistic professionalism on science issues. They simply are following the lead of that noted Darwinian ethicist, Richard Dawkins.

But Flew is fighting back. I may be old and slow, he says, but stop your carping insinuations about my intelligence and your egregious age discrimination (okay, I added that last twist myself). Let my recent book speak for itself, he says.

Lovely. I say that the AARP (or their UK branch) should file a suit against The Times.

Meanwhile, let The New York Times wallow in its patronizing zeal. When the history of our real times is written, it will be noted that The Times newspaper was no more accurate about trends in science in the early 21st century than it was about the nature of communism in the middle of the 20th. It is easily addled by its ideology.

I had the honor as a young man to write editorials for the late, great New York Herald Tribune. We distrusted The Times then and I can't find any reason to think better of it as years go by.

Cross-posted at DiscoveryBlog

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 9:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Nearly 20 years ago, a small non-profit in Texas, The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), published a short supplemental textbook called Of Pandas and People (Pandas). This event did not go unnoticed.

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) soon thereafter published numerous reviews condemning Pandas as a “creationist … ’equal time’ tract” that presented “a pot pourri of half-truths, untruths, and nonsense.” Law review articles were published hoping to prove Pandas unconstitutional. In 2005, a federal judge banned Pandas outright from science classrooms in Dover, Pennsylvania — but only after denying FTE the right to appear before the court to defend the book. Most troubling, the judge largely ignored the published text of Pandas, instead scrutinizing long-forgotten pre-publication drafts, alleging constitutional defects in pages that no student had ever read. Today, the NCSE’s website hosts over 100 individual web pages attacking Pandas.

Why have Darwinists gone to such lengths to attack Pandas? It's simple. While Discovery Institute opposes mandating ID in public schools or adopting Pandas in public schools, Pandas nonetheless scared Darwinists because it offered a potent, comprehensive critique of Darwinian evolution and proposed a legitimate scientific alternative, intelligent design (ID).

Fast forward to 2008, and Pandas’ successor, The Design of Life, written by leading ID theorists William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, brings readers up to speed on the numerous advancements of ID over the past 20 years. Design of Life is more than twice as long as Pandas, recounting many of the peer-reviewed scientific papers, scientific books, and laboratory studies completed by ID theorists. It offers an excellent up-to-date account of ID for any reader.

For the newcomer to ID, Design of Life offers clearly written and well-illustrated chapters explicating ID’s basic scientific concepts, such as irreducible complexity and specified complexity. Design of Life even gives accessible discussions of more complex issues, such as the “irreducible core,” or explaining how specified complexity is detected in the research of Douglas Axe, who found that the odds of obtaining a functional β-lactamase domain are less than one in 10^64.

For the ID-guru, Design of Life covers many hot topics. This includes a lucid explanation of the integrated, unevolvable complexity in the neck of the giraffe, a potent critique of the alleged transition from reptiles to mammals, and a critical analysis of the evidence used to support the hypothesis that whales evolved from land-mammals. The advanced reader will devour the General Notes, which expose the bankruptcy of Darwinist attacks on Stephen Meyer’s article “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” and also explain why Darwinists have thus far failed to explain the evolution of the bacterial flagellum.

All readers will appreciate Design of Life’s devastating critique of chemical origin of life hypotheses and hypotheses about universal common descent. The book provides piles of examples where the molecular data has conflicted with expectations of universal common ancestry and refutes the Darwinist icon that pseudogenes demonstrate that humans share common ancestors with other mammals. In other highlights, Dembski and Wells address SETI’s objections to ID and perform Lasic surgery on the common Darwinist icon that the vertebrate eye exhibits bad design.

Design of Life is unafraid to confront the sensitive topics. “Supernatural explanations invoke miracles and therefore are not properly part of science,” write Dembski and Wells, further explaining that “[e]xplanations that call on intelligent causes require no miracles but cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations.” Design of Life even has an epilogue squarely addressing the Kitzmiller ruling, concluding, “In the end, not any court rulings or public policies or Hollywood films, will decide the merit of intelligent design.”

So how do we decide the merit of intelligent design? According to Design of Life, the crucial question is, "What is the origin of new biological information?" With over 100 pages of footnotes and general notes, the book gives an immense amount of accessible data and scientific arguments supporting the view that “the source of that functional information is a designing intelligence.” But make no mistake: If Darwinists reacted strongly in fear over the scientific arguments in Pandas, they will go supernova after reading The Design of Life.

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

Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design
By Francis J. Beckwith
Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 185 pages.
ISBN 0-7425-1430-7

Legal scholar Francis J. Beckwith recounts the legal history of court battles over the teaching of biological origins. Though many thought that the landmark Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard would permanently settle these questions by ruling creationism unconstitutional, Beckwith observes that intelligent design poses a new challenge to legal scholars. Beckwith provides a thorough treatment of the subject.

After recounting the history of cases which involved the “Creator in the courtroom,’ Beckwith turns to analyzing intelligent design. Under various legal definitions of religion, Beckwith contends that design is not religion as conventionally understood because it derives its support from empirical data and philosophical arguments. Intelligent design, Beckwith explains, is distinct from creationism, for it derives its support from the scientific argument rather than religious texts such as the book of Genesis. Design also fails other legal tests for “religion,” such as the “parallel position test” because it does not function as a religion in the lives of its proponents. While design may come to conclusions shared by some religions, this does not necessarily make it “religion” for legal purposes. After all, Beckwith observes, courts have acknowledged that “a decision respecting the subject matter to be taught in public schools does not violate the Establishment Clause simply because the material to be taught ‘happens to harmonize with the tenets of some or all religions.’”

Finally, Beckwith argues that intelligent design does not fit under the Edwards test for religion because it lacks a historical connection with the Scopes Trial and other Genesis-inspired anti-evolution endeavors. Teaching about intelligent design could be justified on the basis that it improves the religious “neutrality” of a curriculum.

Beckwith provides a deep and thorough treatment of the legal arguments raised by critics of teaching design in public schools. Those interested in studying the relevant technical legal arguments surrounding the teaching of intelligent design will require an understanding of Beckwith’s well-reasoned position explained in this book.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In his review of Michael Behe’s book The Edge of Evolution, Paul Gross wrongly claims that cosmic fine-tuning is rejected by mainstream physicists. Gross writes that "as proof of intelligent design [Behe] now hitches it to the strong anthropic principle: a universe fine-tuned for human life, and not by accident. ... mainstream … cosmology remain[s] unimpressed."

First, cosmic design is a minimal component of Behe's book, which primarily focuses on biological design. Second, there are a variety of respected physicists who believe that cosmic find-tuning is a valid inference from the data. Indeed, Gross seems to have forgotten that numerous physicists have in fact supported the view that the universe was finely-tuned for life. Physicist Paul Davies, who is not a theist, writes that the consensus view is increasingly impressed with the evidence for “some sort of design” of the cosmos:

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is ‘something behind it all’ is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.

This view has been echoed by numerous physicists, including Nobel Prize winning physicist Charles Townes, who doesn’t necessarily endorse design in biology, but seems very impressed with arguments for cosmic design:

Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here. Some scientists argue that "well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right." Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate — it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that's why it has come out so specially.

(Charles Townes quoted in Bonnie Azab Powell, “’Explore as much as we can’: Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes on evolution, intelligent design, and the meaning of life,” UC Berkeley NewsCenter, June 17 2005.)

Gross has misrepresented the current state of thinking on this matter. Mainstream physicists and cosmologists are not “unimpressed” with the view that the universe shows fine-tuning evidence of cosmic design.

Conclusion
In conclusion, Gross asserted in his review that “it would need a book longer than The Edge to restate the model together with its already noticed (in print and online) errors and omissions.” Yet as we have seen in this 4-part series, it is Gross who has made fundamental misrepresentations of Behe’s arguments, printing the following errors:

This weekend Discovery Institute is moving its Seattle offices crosstown. For the locals in the know, we'll be saying goodbye to the exciting corner of Third & Pike, and heading south closer to Pioneer Square (here's a pic of the new digs). The new street address is 208 Columbia. More on the move here.

Moving servers, phone systems, and everything else is a chore. So, if the blog goes down for a while, well you've been warned. And if you're having trouble reaching us between now and Monday, have patience.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

November 13th PBS' NOVA program aired Judgment Day a special program on the Dover ID trial. For the truth about the Dover intelligent design trial go to www.traipsingintoevolution.com.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s edition of the student newspaper at Baylor University carries a devastating investigative report exposing new details of the university’s shameful treatment of pro-ID engineering professor Robert Marks. Anyone who thinks Baylor science faculty have academic freedom to research and write about ID should read this article, which provides extensive documentation of the lengths to which some Baylor administrators will go to censor and shut down open discussion and research about intelligent design. From reading the article, it appears that the intolerance of pro-ID faculty comes from the very top of the institution. This account makes a mockery of Baylor’s own Faculty Handbook, which promises faculty that

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results …

Given the heavy-handed efforts by Baylor administrators to stamp out any expression of dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy by Prof. Marks, perhaps Baylor’s Faculty Handbook should be rewritten thus:

1. Teachers at Baylor University should expect academic censorship and persecution in research and in the publication of results, especially if their research in any way questions the dogmas of Darwinian evolution. Teachers who persist in wanting academic freedom in their research should consider looking for another job.

Message to Baylor alumni: Does this crusade to suppress Prof. Marks’ research make you proud of your university? If not, what are you doing about it? Every dollar you donate to Baylor helps to enable the continued persecution of Prof. Marks.

Posted by John West at 12:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

“John West’s book is a deep and comprehensive study of scientific materialism’s morally corrupting effects on American public policy. Although some readers (like me) will not find his attack on Darwinian science persuasive, anyone who wants to think about the moral and political implications of modern science will have to ponder his arguments.”— Larry Arnhart, Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University and author of Darwinian Conservatism

Larry Arnhart is the most articulate defender of the idea that Darwinism supports conservatism, and I have enjoyed interacting with him over the past couple of years (we debated again tonight at Seattle Pacific University). Unfortunately, Arnhart has a habit of mischaracterizing my actual positions, and so he often ends up attacking a straw man. (He’s done the same thing to historian Richard Weikart.) Arnhart is at it again, criticizing my book Darwin Day in America on his blog for a position it doesn’t even uphold. This is the same book Arnhart earlier praised (see above). Since we disagree about Darwin’s theory, I fully anticipated that Arnhart would criticize parts of my book. But I had hoped that he would critique something that was actually in the book, which would allow for a much more interesting discussion. Alas, that was not to be.

Arnhart’s basic complaint (found here and here) is that Darwin Day “blame(s) Darwinian science for all of the bad thinking and bad policies attributed to scientific materialism.” Indeed, according to Arnhart, my book makes “ridiculously contrived efforts at connecting all of this [“the deleterious effects of scientific materialism on American public policy”] to Darwin.”

Except that it doesn’t. My book isn’t just about Darwin. It’s about scientific reductionism in general. That’s why in my book’s introduction I clearly state:

While Darwin’s theory is featured prominently in several chapters (and the book’s title), the scope of this study is broader than just Darwin. The overall aim is to examine the impact of materialistic reductionism on public policy and culture, and Darwinism is only one part of that larger story. (emphasis added)

So of course not everything in the book is directly tied back to Darwin. As I explain in my book (chapter 1 especially) materialist reductionism goes back to the ancient Greeks and is a much larger problem than Darwinism. Darwinism, to be sure, is a critical part of the overall story, but it is far from the only kind of scientific materialism.

This fact makes most of Arnhart’s specific criticisms of Darwin Day inapt. At one point, he contends that my book “concludes… Darwin must have been responsible for modern architecture,” to which he responds that he doesn’t “see that there is any kind of inevitable connection to Darwinian science.” But my book doesn’t claim that there is an “inevitable connection” between Darwinism and modern architecture. This is another straw man.

From reading some of Arnhart’s other comments, I have come to the conclusion that he needs to re-read my book more carefully. For example, he faults a brief summary statement in chapter three where I state that Darwin struggled with the ideas of free will and personal responsibility. According to Arnhart, West “never even explains exactly why and how Darwin ‘struggled’ with ‘free will and responsibility.’” Except that I do. In chapter two (see page 31).

As I said earlier, this isn’t the first time Arnhart has misrepresented my positions in order to attack a straw man. He previously claimed that I reject “evolutionary science as totally false” and even that I “insist that Biblical morality is the only reliable source of moral norms.” Wrong on both counts (see here).

It’s nice of Arnhart to make it so easy for me to rebut his claims. But it would be far more intellectually stimulating to be able to engage him on something I actually wrote or said.

I’m beginning to wonder whether Arnhart attacks a straw man version of my arguments because he really has no serious critique to offer to them. Or perhaps his Darwinist friends have abused him for initially praising my book, and so he feels compelled to do penance.

Whatever the case, in Arnhart’s last blog post on my book he unfortunately descends into the muck and tries to smear my book as part of a nefarious “secret plan” by Discovery Institute to defeat scientific materialism through a master “public relations strategy.” (For the truth about this supposed “secret plan,” see here.) Such garden-variety Darwinist rhetoric is beneath Arnhart. Fortunately, in our debate at Seattle Pacific University tonight, he was back to his usual model of civility and reasonableness, which is something I have always appreciated about him. At that debate, I think we both were able to present our respective positions clearly and without rancor. Unlike many Darwinists, Arnhart is to be commended for a genuine commitment to rational debate and discussion.

Posted by John West at 11:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here.

Perhaps the most celebrated defense attorney in the first half of the twentieth century, Clarence Darrow is best known for his role at the Scopes “monkey trial” in the 1920s. But he also was an early champion of the idea that criminals should not be held responsible for their crimes. Darrow’s debunking of criminal responsibility was based squarely on his worldview of deterministic materialism.

Darrow once told prisoners in a county jail that there was no difference whatever in the moral condition between themselves and those still in society. “I do not believe people are in jail because they deserve to be,” he declared. “They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it, on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control, and for which they are in no way responsible.” According to Darrow, “there ought to be no jails, and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealing with the people on the inside, there would be no such institutions as jails.” He added that he knew why “every one” of the prisoners committed their crimes, even if they did not know the reason themselves: “You did these things because you were bound to do them.” Those prisoners who thought they made a choice to commit a crime were simply deluded. “It looked to you at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit; but still, after all, you had no choice.”

Darrow even suggested that police were the real criminals, and he concluded by claiming that pleasure was the ultimate basis for morality: “I believe that progress is purely a question of the pleasurable units that we get out of life. The pleasure-pain theory is the only correct theory of morality, and the only way of judging life.”

Darrow’s outspoken denial of personal responsibility came to the forefront when he chose to defend Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb for their cold-blooded murder of a young boy in Chicago in the 1920s. The story of the Leopold-Loeb case and Darrow’s involvement in it can be found in chapter 3 of Darwin Day in America, “Criminal Science.”

To order Darwin Day in America click here. To find out more information about the book (and watch the trailer), visit the book’s website here.

Posted by John West at 11:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Paula Apsell was the executive producer of PBS/NOVA’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which tries to inaccurately paint ID as a creationist idea that has been refuted by science. But in fact, a few years ago Ms. Apsell produced a different NOVA documentary entitled “Mystery of the Megaflood.”

For a geologist like me, it’s a fascinating tale about how mainstream geologists took decades to accept the view that a giant post-glacial flood was responsible for much of the bizarre geological features found in eastern Washington. According to Apsell’s “Megaflood” documentary, a geologist in the early 1900s named J. Harlen Bretz proposed a catastrophic local flood theory to explain this geology.

Bretz was ridiculed by his contemporary geologists because his ideas reminded them of a creationist Biblical global flood. The documentary says that Bretz challenged the “orthodox view” and was labeled as promoting creationist “heresy” that “defied all scientific convention.” Of course, Bretz’s theory was not a creationist explanation. He did not propose a global flood—he simply proposed that a localized post-glacial flood in eastern Washington caused the geological features he observed. But his critics used the “creationist” label to oppose his views as unacceptable. That is, until the evidence won out.

About 80 years later, Bretz’s view has been vindicated because the evidence won out over false accusations that he was promoting creationism. Does this story sound familiar? Paula Apsell’s “Judgment Day” documentary does to ID precisely what Bretz’s contemporaries did to him: it tries to marginalize ID with false claims that it is creationism and makes fallacious claims that ID has been scientifically refuted. Emboldened by the misguided opinion of one federal judge, Apsell's latest documentary, "Judgment Day," similarly labels ID as creationist “heresy.”

Perhaps Apsell should review her own “Megaflood” documentary and take a lesson from history: 100 years from now, after ID’s scientific revolution is complete, Paula Apsell’s “Judgment Day” documentary may be shown in high school science classrooms studying ID to warn students not to wrongly label powerful scientific ideas as “creationist heresy” simply because they challenge the orthodox scientific view.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: A tenth PBS blunder is addressed, where PBS makes the false insinuation that intelligent design is no more scientific than astrology. Scroll down to read more.

More than 50 years ago two playwrights penned a fictionalized account of the 1920s Scopes Trial called "Inherit the Wind" that is now universally regarded by historians as inaccurate propaganda. Last night PBS aired its "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design" documentary, which similarly promotes propaganda about the 2005 Kitzmiller trial and intelligent design (ID). Most of the misinformation in "Judgment Day" was corrected by ID proponents long ago. To help readers sift the fact from the fiction, here are links to articles rebutting some of PBS's most blatant misrepresentations:

1. PBS falsely claims that Discovery Institute sent the Dover Area School Board the "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" documentary and supported Dover's ID policy.
In an attempt to rewrite history and claim that Discovery Institute encouraged Dover to pass its ID policy, PBS claims that "Unlocking the Mystery of Life," a documentary about ID, was the "DVD that [Bill Buckingham] got from Discovery Institute." This is a completely false statement. Discovery Institute never sent that DVD to anyone on the Dover School Board, but rather sent Bill Buckingham the Icons of Evolution DVD, which is not about ID and simply focuses on scientific critique of evolution. Discovery Institute has long-opposed mandating ID in public schools, and adamantly opposed Dover's desire to pass a policy using Of Pandas and People and requiring the teaching of ID. For more information, see:

Judge John E. Jones, a former trial attorney and State Liquor Control Board member who now is a federal judge for central Pennsylvania, is also a new phenomenon on the federal bench: a judge who, having made a ruling (e.g., the Dover case), goes on speaking tours and television shows to promote himself, his ruling and — yesterday — a PBS documentary on his ruling. Yesterday morning he was on the Today Show. Soon we will be asked to consider his views on the Iraq War or the writers' strike in Hollywood. Maybe he should retire and start a talk show for Air America (where he also has appeared).

There must have been others who have broken from the long-standing customary reluctance of the federal judiciary to risk the dignity of the court by lending themselves out as celebrity promoters. I can't think of any that were comparable. Had he ruled differently on the Dover Case, would his self-promotion efforts have been rewarded — or would they have been fiercely condemned?

Want a different legal take on Judge Jones' ruling? Listen in to the interview with Phillip Johnson, who clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and is the Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law, emeritus at University of California, Berkeley.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 10:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

When John E. Jones decided in 2005 to “traipse into” the controversial area of evolution and science education, deciding the scientific merit of intelligent design as a federal court judge in Dover, PA, he may have only dreamed of the day when he would see himself on the silver screen.

As the author of the 139-page verdict in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Jones gained national notoriety (and much acclaim from certain fashionable quarters) for ruling that intelligent design is not science but religion. That more than 90% of the section on intelligent design was copied nearly verbatim from the ACLU didn’t diminish his standing as a “great thinker” in the mainstream press. Neither did the fact that the Judge ignored the testimony of two scientists currently conducting intelligent design research.

Click here to read more.

Posted by Anika Smith at 2:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For the story behind the picture click here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A “Briefing Packet for Educators” just issued by PBS in conjunction with the NOVA program Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial inserts religion into the classroom and encourages teaching practices that are likely unconstitutional, says Discovery Institute.

“The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,” says Dr. John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute.

Tuesday, November 13th, Discovery Institute will publish its own guide, The Theory of Intelligent Design: A briefing packet for educators, to help teachers understand the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. The briefing packet can be downloaded here or copies can be requested by e-mailing cscinfo@discovery.org.

The PBS teaching guide is a companion piece to the NOVA docudrama about the 2005 Dover intelligent design trial and claims to provide for teachers “easily digestible information to guide and support you in facing challenges to evolution.” The guide instructs teachers to introduce religion into science classes with discussion questions like

“Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion? A: Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false.”

“The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that the government must maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion’," says Randal Wenger, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed amicus briefs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. "Because the Briefing Packet only promotes religious viewpoints that are friendly towards evolution, this is not neutral, and PBS is encouraging teachers to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.”

Discovery Institute has enlisted over a dozen attorneys and legal scholars, including Wenger, to review the PBS teaching guide with an eye to its constitutionality.

“The PBS materials, in suggesting that students need not be concerned that evolution violates their religion, ironically equip public school teachers to violate our current conception of the First Amendment by explicitly teaching students concerning matters of religious belief," adds Wenger. "The irony is that discussing intelligent design would not teach any student about any religious belief—the PBS materials, on the other hand, will.”

The teaching guide also presents false information about the theory of intelligent design.

“The teaching also guide is riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory,” adds Luskin.

“PBS gives a false definition of intelligent design that is a complete straw man argument,” explains Luskin. “Scientists who support intelligent design seek evidence of design in nature, and argue that such evidence points to intelligent design, based on our historical knowledge of cause and effect. So, intelligent design theory is not an argument based on what we don’t know, but rather an argument about what we do know.”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Proving once again that he's not one to take things lying down, Michael Behe is posting a new series of responses over at his Amazon blog.

This response is different from the others he's been posting. As Behe explains In his introductory post from Friday, available here:

This series of posts (besides this intro, there will be five posts over the next week) will be different. Here I will address a post on the blog The Panda’s Thumb by a man named Ian Musgrave. Musgrave, a professor at the University of Adelaide, wrote “An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe”, in which he questioned my earlier reply to a woman named Abbie Smith, who is a graduate student working on HIV. Musgrave asserts that my response to her was scientifically inadequate and uncivil. I disagree strongly on both counts.

The first post of the actual response went up today — look for more updates as the week continues.

Posted by Anika Smith at 4:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2005 Judge John E. Jones, presiding over the Dover intelligent design trial, ruled that intelligent design is religion, not science, because he felt he was in the best position to “traipse into such a controversial area” and settle the debate over intelligent design once and for all.

Tomorrow, PBS will air NOVA’s propaganda piece reenacting some parts of the Dover trial, “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial." PBS claims the program will tell the true story behind the Dover trial. But will it?

The program features the usual cast of characters: anti-ID activist Eugenie Scott, Darwinist Ken Miller, and apparently Judge Jones himself (currently on his second annual self-congratulatory globe-trotting tour -- be sure to catch him on your local NPR station and Air America). The program will attempt to show that intelligent design is creationism and therefore more religion than science. Like the misleading “Evolution” miniseries PBS produced in 2001, this is an attempt to stifle scientific inquiry and censor science by making talking and researching about intelligent design out of bounds.

Here are a few truths about intelligent design you won’t get from PBS/NOVA’s “Judgment Day” program.

Myth #1: There are no peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting intelligent design.
Judge Jones said that ID “...has not generated peer-reviewed publications.”

FACT: Judge Jones is simply wrong. Discovery Institute submitted an amicus brief to Judge Jones that documented various peer-reviewed publications, which he accepted into evidence. This is a fact-based question which is hard to get wrong. The fact is that there are peer-reviewed papers supporting intelligent design.

Myth #2: Intelligent design is not scientific because it isn’t testable.
Judge Jones said, “...nor has ID been the subject of testing and research.”

FACT: For two days during the trial biologist and flagellum expert Dr. Scott Minnich presented slides from his own mutagenesis experiments performed in his lab at the University of Idaho. In his experiments, he knocked out every flagellar gene, one by one, and found that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. These tests were given to Judge Jones, but apparently he ignored them.

Myth #3: Intelligent design is the same as creationism.
Judge Jones said that ID is “a mere re-labeling of creationism.”

FACT: Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. ID starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.

For the truth about the Dover intelligent design trial, visit www.traipsingintoevolution.com.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Was justice denied to Foundation for Thought and Ethics during the Kitzmiller intelligent design trial? Whether or not it was, do you think NOVA will relate this information in their Judgment Day program about the trial next week? Don't count on it.

Last year attorneys Seth Cooper and Leonard Brown published an article entitled, "A Textbook Case of Judicial Activism: How a Pro-ID Publisher Was Denied its Day in Court," which describes how the publisher of the textbook Of Pandas and People, Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), was denied the right to become a party to the Kitzmiller trial, despite the fact that its intellectual property rights were implicated in the lawsuit.

Interestingly, FTE had completed manuscripts of a new intelligent design book, The Design of Life, and at that time it was already under review for publication.

The NCSE was dying to get its hands on the book so they could prepare their attack, and they used the Dover trial and lawyers with the ACLU to basically steal the manuscript from FTE.

The ACLU’s subpoenas of FTE were a broadside representing potential catastrophe for the publisher. The ACLU had secured as consultants the pro-Darwin and Oakland-based anti-ID lobby group, National Center for Science Education (NCSE). The NCSE has long been a harsh critic of Pandas, and the ACLU sought to place the important Design of Life draft into their hands.

As background, the right of a party to "intervene" in a lawsuit is governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 (a):

(a) Intervention of Right. Upon timely application anyone shall be permitted to intervene in an action: (1) when a statute of the United States confers an unconditional right to intervene; or (2) when the applicant claims an interest relating to the property or transaction which is the subject of the action and the applicant is so situated that the disposition of the action may as a practical matter impair or impede the applicant's ability to protect that interest, unless the applicant's interest is adequately represented by existing parties.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

First they dramatized the O.J. Simpson trial. Then they acted out Michael Jackson’s courtroom drama. This time around we have NOVA reenacting parts of the 2005 Dover intelligent design trial presided over by Judge John E. Jones.

As NOVA’s website points out, Paula Apsell, senior producer for NOVA’s propaganda piece on intelligent design, Judgment Day, felt “compelled” to make the docudrama. Journalists are usually only “compelled” to report on events by their editors, or by the newsiness (timeliness, proximity, impact, conflict, etc) of a specific issue/event.

So, why were Apsell and NOVA compelled to make this program?

Apsell: If the decision had gone the other way, it could have had dire consequences for science education in this country.

Dire: adj. dir•er, dir•est, having dreadful or terrible consequences; calamitous.

If Apsell really thinks this, then it's no wonder she felt compelled — compelled to make a docudrama that misrepresents what the theory of intelligent design is and ultimately presents only a one-sided, biased view of intelligent design. A decidedly negative view.

Apsell claims that they wanted to include other points of view. However, their proposal to do so was aimed at slicing and dicing interviews with intelligent design scientists and scholars to show them in the poorest light possible.

Apsell claims that she “had to think long and hard before we decided to take it on.” Yet it was scarcely eight weeks after the ruling, February 6th, 2006 in fact, when NOVA first approached Discovery Institute seeking our involvement in the program. Over the course of the next eight months I negotiated with NOVA and WGBH producers (though never with Apsell herself) as to whether or not Discovery Institute scientists and scholars would appear in the documentary. We were anxious to be included in the program so that we could clearly define what intelligent design theory is, what the role of the Institute was in the trial, and most importantly, what our position was leading up to the Dover school board’s decision to plunge ahead with their ID policy — against our specific counsel and advice. We all thought that this program would give us a good chance to have our side of the story told. Clearly that wasn't what NOVA's producers thought — or wanted to happen.

I understood from the beginning that NOVA and PBS have a clear anti-ID position, but I hoped that we might have a chance to at least speak for ourselves.

PBS has a track record of bias against ID, dating back to their poorly-received "Evolution" miniseries in 2001. Then, as now, we negotiated but ultimately were kept from participating by PBS’ unwillingness to fairly represent our scientists and views on intelligent design. Indeed, in 2001 a leaked memo surfaced — a memo that was never denied by PBS — that outlined how they were planning to "co-opt existing local dialogue about teaching evolution in schools" and target government officials, all to promote a Darwin-only science education policy that didn’t just negate any discussion of intelligent design, but also strove to stifle any questioning of Darwinian evolution whatsoever. So we had no doubt as to what point of view Judgment Day would be preaching.

I’ve had a great deal of experience dealing with anti-ID reporters and producers. I can smell a disingenuous interview request a continent away. In 2005 I negotiated for months with ABC’s Nightline and finally agreed to have them come in and conduct an interview with CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer. The interview was lengthy and on several occasions specifically broke the ground rules that we had agreed to with ABC. However, ABC allowed us to audiotape the interview, and allowed me to sit in the room as the interview was conducted so I could see how it transpired.

We audio taped Nightline's interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer at Discovery Institute's office, and we've prepared a verbatim transcript, available here. If you want learn what Nightline refused to show its viewers, I encourage you to read it. I think you'll find the transcript illuminating--not only because of Dr. Meyer's answers, but because of the predictable tone of some of the questions by Nightline's staff. Here's your chance to go behind-the-scenes with the gatekeepers of the national media to see how they screen out viewpoints and information that don't fit their stereotypes.

Nightline: The whole theory of intelligent design begs the question of who and what is behind that design. How do you answer that question?
SM:The question of the identity of the designer is what I would call a second order philosophical question. From the evidence of the information that’s embedded in DNA, from the evidence from the nanotechnology in the cell, we think you can infer that an intelligence played a role. In fact, there are sophisticated statistical methods of design detection that allow scientists to distinguish the effects of an intelligent cause from an undirected natural process. When you apply those statistical measures and criteria to the analysis of the cell, they indicate that the cell was designed by an intelligence. Now, the second question then you want to ask is, “Who was the designer?” The media commonly says, in fact recently it was said that we’re so clever that we don’t say the designer is God. Well, the reason we’re not saying the identity of the designer is not because we’re trying to be clever or get around Supreme Court rulings, or anything of the sort. We’re just trying to be careful about what the scientific evidence does and does not support. It supports the conclusion that there was an intelligence; the second order question of the identity of the intelligence is something that is for philosophical deliberation.

C: When you say intelligent designer, if you’re saying you don’t mean God, then could you mean the devil, or space aliens, or some supernatural force beneath the sea?
SM: There have been some scientists who have posited other identities for the designer. Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the first advocates of the idea of intelligent design, thought that it might be an intelligence from some other planet. I don’t hold to that view, but it’s certainly a logical possibility, and one of the reasons that we say that the question of the identity of the designer is a second order philosophical question that invites further deliberation once you have become convinced from the scientific evidence that you are looking at evidence of intelligence in the cell and in the form of the information that you find there.
C: You call it a second order philosophical question. That kind of sloughs off the main event, doesn’t it? I mean, if there is a design is not the secondary question….
SM: The two questions are separable…
C: …but who is the designer?
SM: People have different answers to the question of who the designer is. The key question for us is how you interpret the observed information that is present in the cell. And we think intelligence provides the best explanation for that. After you have inferred that, then there is a second question that needs to be deliberated upon, and that is who is the designer?
C: And you are saying the designer could be something other than God.
SM: That is a logical possibility – the designer could be something other than God. But there is also the possibility that the designer could be God.
E: You’ve drawn no conclusions on who you think the designer is?
SM: I think the designer is God, but, look, it’s not like we are trying to make a scandal of where the evidence might lead. We think that the evidence leads first to intelligence, and then from there, there is a second question, which is the identity of the designer, and there are some people who think it’s God, and there are some people, like Fred Hoyle, who think that maybe it is some sort of imminent intelligence within the universe. Francis Crick speculated that some other intelligence may have been involved. But we are insisting that from the scientific evidence, from the presence of digital code in the cell, you can tell that an intelligence played a role in the origin of life.

So I was well aware of how interviews with PBS could be manipulated to say just about anything they want them to say. And because we published the Nightline incident, and the New York Times wrote a lengthy article about it, you can bet that Paula Apsell and others at PBS were well aware of the incident too.

Initially, when we agreed to sit for interviews, as long as we could monitor and record the interviews, NOVA agreed. Not surprising. We've had this policy for almost four years and in that time we've recorded interviews with Newsweek, The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, BBC, CBC and a number of other media outlets. This is not an unusual request.

In an e-mail Apsell wrote:

If DI believes it needs to make its own recordings of the interviews being conducted, that is acceptable as well provided that these recording activities do not interfere with NOVA's technical or journalistic needs in setting up and conducting its own recordings.

Ultimately, Apsell refused to let us record the interviews, writing to us just a few weeks later.

Upon reflection, I've decided that NOVA cannot set such a precedent, although we would be happy to provide a transcript or even a tape of our interview footage should you decide to participate.

DI agrees that any use of such recordings will be limited to DI's commenting upon or reviewing the NOVA program or other related internal DI uses, and shall not be used for purposes unrelated to commenting upon the specific NOVA program, such as but not limited to, fundraising, lobbying, general advocacy, or in any publicly exhibited media.

In the end NOVA wanted to sit pro-intelligent design scientists down in isolation and interrogate them about the Dover case and intelligent design. They wanted to be able to do as they please with the interviews, much like Nightline, and edit them to fit their biased, anti-ID agenda. And they weren’t about to give anyone permission to expose their manipulation of the interviews, so we would be denied the ability to ever expose the complete, unedited interviews “In any publicly exhibited media.”

Once you know the whole story, you have to wonder how fair NOVA’s presentation of Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is really going to be. My guess is not very.

We will be watching and we will be posting corrections to all of the mistakes and misleading pieces of information about intelligent design that PBS produces in the program, and in its plethora of propaganda materials, again aimed at censoring science education policy so as to present a one-sided Darwin-only approach to biological evolution.

Go to traipsingintoevolution.com for the truth about the Dover trial, and to get the truth about intelligent design theory that PBS is trying to stifle visit intelligentdesign.org where you will find links to a multitude of pro-intelligent design organizations.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who missed Dr. John West's lecture at The Heritage Foundation this week in Washington, D.C., it is now available online (look for November 6, 2007).

West had a strained voice that day, yet he spoke eloquently on "The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science." In this lecture, he covers what he sees as five impacts of scientific materialism on public policy.

If you like what you see, don't forget to check out Darwin Day in America.

Posted by Logan Gage at 10:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today, CSC Fellow Paul Nelson will be speaking at the University of Buffalo and tomorrow at Daemen College on “Does the Complexity of Life Prove Intelligent Design?" The first lecture takes place at the University of Buffalo’s North Campus, in Cooke Hall, Room 121, on Thursday, November 8th at 8:00 pm. For directions click here. The lecture on Friday, November 9th is at 6:30 pm at Daemen College in the Wick Center Social Room. For directions to this location, click here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here.

By the end of the nineteenth century, American scholars were already talking with excitement about the “new school of criminal anthropology” that sought to use modern science to identify the causes of crime. Leading the way was Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), whose book Criminal Man (1876) remains a landmark work in the field of criminology. Lombroso and his disciples contended that criminal behavior could be explained largely as a throwback to earlier stages of Darwinian evolution.

According to Lombroso, infanticide, parricide, theft, cannibalism, kidnapping, theft and anti-social actions can all be found throughout the animal kingdom, as well as among human savages. In earlier stages of development such behaviors aided survival and were therefore bred into animals by natural selection. As William Noyes, one of Lombroso’s American disciples, explained, “in the process of evolution, crime has been one of the necessary accompaniments of the struggle for existence.” While crime no longer served a necessary survival function in civilized societies, many modern criminals could be considered atavists—reappearances of characteristics from earlier stages of evolutionary development. According to Lombroso, such atavists were “born criminals,” exhibiting from birth the physical as well as behavioral characteristics of savages. Physical markers of such individuals included “abundant hair,” “sparse beard[s],” “enormous frontal sinuses and jaws,” “broad cheekbones,” a “retreating forehead,” and “volumnious ears.”

Lombroso and his followers repudiated the traditional idea that “crime involved… moral guilt.” Italian Jurist Enrico Ferri (1856-1929), one of Lombroso’s most celebrated disciples, argued that it was no longer reasonable to believe that human beings could make choices outside the normal chain of material cause and effect given the advent of modern science, particularly the work of Charles Darwin. Portraying the controversy over Darwin’s ideas as nothing less than a battle between the forces of enlightenment and “the lovers of darkness,” Ferri applauded Darwin for showing “that man is not the king of creation, but merely the last link of the zoological chain, that nature is endowed with eternal energies by which animal and plant life… are transformed from the invisible microbe to the highest form, man.” Ferri looked forward to the day when punishment and vengeance would be abandoned and crime would be treated as a “disease.”

As I discuss in chapter 3 of Darwin Day in America (“Criminal Science”), the application of Darwinism and other forms of scientific materialism to criminal justice in America severely undercut efforts to hold criminals responsible for their actions.

To order Darwin Day in America click here. To find out more information about the book (and watch the trailer), visit the book’s website here.

Posted by John West at 6:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwin Day in America that is. The new book by CSC associate director John West is now available in bookstores and online.

If you missed West at the Heritage Foundation yesterday you can now watch or listen online. Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science
Watch | Streaming MP3 | Save MP3 | Details

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

An urban legend has cropped up among Darwinists that Michael Behe ignores indirect routes of evolution, commonly called “exaptation,” when he argues for irreducible complexity. In his review of The Edge of Evolution in The New Criterion, anti-ID biologist Paul Gross wrongly accuses that "Behe had failed to understand 'exaptation' (the use of an available part in function 'B' despite its original function 'A')." But in Darwin's Black Box, Behe clearly accounts for exaptation and explains why it does not refute irreducible complexity:

"Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one can not definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. And as the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin’s criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pg. 40.)

"Because the cilium is irreducibly complex, no direct gradual route leads to its production. So an evolutionary story for the cilium must envision a circuitous route, perhaps adapting parts that were originally used for other purposes. ... For example, suppose you wanted to make a mousetrap. In your garage you might have a piece of wood from an old Popsicle stick (for the platform), a spring from an old wind-up clock, a piece of metal (for the hammer) in the form of a crowbar, a darning needle for the holding bar, and a bottle cap that you fancy to use as a catch. But these pieces couldn't form a functioning mousetrap without extensive modification, and while the modification was going on, they would be unable to work as a mousetrap. Their previous functions make them ill- suited for virtually any new role as part of a complex system. In the case of the cilium, there are analogous problems.” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, pgs 65-67.)

(1) The parts were available for co-option;
(2) The availability of the parts was synchronized in both time and space;
(3) The availability parts must be coordinated so that they assemble properly;
(4) The parts must have interface-compatibility so they can work together.

Gross claims that Behe has "redefin[ed]" irreducible complexity "in an effort to meet the flood of negation." But what is this "flood of negation" or what is the "redefinition"? Gross doesn't tell us about either. Yet in 2001, Biochemist Franklin Harold stated that "there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” (Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life, pg. 205 (New York, Oxford University Press 2001).)

It seems that the reality is that Behe's original argument is still quite potent.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The intelligent new on-line Seattle regional magazine "Crosscut", edited by David Brewster, carries a column (as Anika Smith pointed out yesterday) called "Bruce Chapman is Right," written by "Mossback" liberal Knute Berger. It generally agrees with recent comments of mine on Dr. James Watson and the battle over eugenics.

I hate to cavil after such welcome praise, but I have to demur from Berger's one demurral. That is, when he says that we should remember that many Christian and Jewish clergy backed the original eugenics program in America, some heavy qualification is needed.

I will leave the details to John West's authoritative new book, Darwin Day in America—being launched today at a Washington, D.C. book event at the Heritage Foundation—but the point I want to make here is that most traditionalist Christian clergy did not back eugenics. Those who did tended to be liberal theologians in liberal denominations that already had made their peace with Darwinism and modernity. In contrast, virtually the whole scientific establishment not only lined up behind the "consensus" position in support of eugenics, but they also sought to silence dissent. (Sound familiar?)

Theologically conservative Protestants and the Catholic Church were largely opponents of eugenics. The Vatican, which is always a little behind the times, thank God, set Catholic public policy on the issue. As for evangelicals, almost forgotten now is the fact that eugenics was one reason former Democratic presidential candidate and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan became so passionately involved in the Scopes Trial of 1925.

The eugenics was preached in Hunter’s Biology textbook and its treatment of evolution, and it was this book that was at issue in Dayton, Tennessee and all around the country.

Playbill from Inherit the Wind, National Production, Chicago, 1956

Bryan feared that evolutionary theory was being used to justify mistreatment of the weak in society, as well as to discredit religion. This motivation takes on even more significance when one realizes, as Ed Larson makes clear in his book on the Scopes Trial, Summer for the Gods, that Bryan himself was not a young Earth creationist, even though his fictional surrogate is so characterized in the play and film, Inherit the Wind. It might help to rehabilitate the liberal reputation of Bryan, "The Great Commoner," if his stand on evolution was better understood and not permanently warped by the fictional accounts.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Scopes Trial, what about H. L. Mencken, the famous Baltimore Sun journalist who did more than anyone to denigrate Bryan in the public eye and whose bitterly funny style was employed so effectively against other opponents of Darwinism? Well, Mencken's sarcasm has been a great inspiration to aspiring journalists right up to our own time and especially on the topic of evolution. But as to his content, Mencken was an on-and-off-again eugenicist, a racist and an anti-Semite right up to and past the time when that was no longer an acceptable position in polite society.

Sorry, but that is the history. Those who doubt it should be prepared to debate it in public. John West, the expert, along with Richard Weikart of California State (author of From Darwin to Hitler) have the research mastered.

Meanwhile, regardless of the above, I want to repeat that I'm grateful that Knute Berger has been so clear on the need to examine the real way eugenics developed. Because eugenics is still with us in various forms. It is a human rights issue of historic proportions. It goes right to the question that John Paul II always asked, "What does it mean to be human?"

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 2:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Behe has a new blog series up responding to Nick Matzke’s review of his book in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, in three parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

As Behe notes, this review of Edge of Evolution is a real doozy, “a tediously disdainful review of The Edge of Evolution which revisits the blunders of previous reviews while adding new ones.”

It’s only when we get to Part 3 of his response that Behe reveals the identity of the reviewer to be none other than Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE. Behe thinks this is worth mentioning:

As its website proclaims, the NCSE “is a not-for-profit, membership organization ... working to keep evolution in public school science education.” In other words, the NCSE is an organization dedicated to actively fighting concepts like ID. Folks who associate with the Center, both staff and volunteers, are self-selected to be antagonistic toward those who challenge evolutionary theory. Listed on its website as official “supporters” of the NCSE are Sean Carroll, who reviewed The Edge for Science; Kenneth Miller, who reviewed the book for Nature; and Michael Ruse, who reviewed it for the Globe and Mail. About the only reviewer for a major publication who isn’t associated with the NCSE is Richard Dawkins!

The negative reviews of Behe’s book have a lot in common, but perhaps the most telling thing about them is the way they continually fail to engage Behe’s argument. While Behe’s Amazon blog documents his many responses to these reviews and the conversation his argument has provoked, his critics haven’t given him much to work with. As he puts it,

in my estimation, the NCSE reviewers, true to the organization’s aims of battling evolutionary unorthodoxy wherever it may be found, wrote hatchet jobs. Rather than engaging the book, they wanted it to just go away as quickly as possible. That’s an intellectual shame, but doesn’t affect the reality of life and the universe, both of which, we increasingly realize, are much more finely-tuned and much more elegantly arranged than previous generations of scientists ever knew.

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In Paul Gross’ review of The Edge of Evolution he wrongly claims Behe’s argument for design is merely a negative argument against evolution. Gross asserts that Behe argues for ID by "offer[ing] some claim that Darwinism is wrong, with the (unwarranted) conclusion that life is therefore the work of an intelligent agent." (emphasis in original) This misrepresents Behe's argument. Behe does not say that because Darwinian evolution has flaws, therefore intelligent design is proven correct. As Behe writes in the afterward to the new edition of Darwin's Black Box:

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

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

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Former editor of Seattle Weekly Knute Berger saw the merit in Bruce Chapman’s recent blog post, Thank You, Dr. Watson, though, as he put it,

I don't agree with Chapman often, but he's absolutely right that such thinking continues in scientific (and I would add corporate) circles. Despite our collective horror about the Holocaust — the extreme Nazi expression of eugenics — there is a general unwillingness to own up to the sorry legacy of eugenics in America and Europe, where hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized, lobotomized, and institutionalized to "sanitize" society of the poor, disabled, gay, mentally ill, etc. A general sense of amnesia or an attitude that nothing we did was as bad as what Hitler did seems to pervade.

The states and provinces of the Pacific Northwest were early adopters of eugenics laws, among them Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alberta. Today, technological advances in things like cloning, genetic engineering, and sterilization offer a whole new playground for neo-eugenicists. This playground is more dangerous to the extent that people refuse to take the legacy of eugenics seriously. Chapman is right: Eugenics is not just yesterday's bad.

Berger seems to be as surprised as we are that he agrees with Chapman.

Posted by Anika Smith at 2:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times has not covered any news that might damage Darwinism, at least not since a writer on its Science page a few years back acknowledged that some of the standard textbook proofs employed to bolster Darwin’s theory are false. (That reporter is now in Iraq.) Instead, The Times seeks out ways to anticipate and undermine any reports that could hurt the Darwinist cause. The New York Times, in truth, is in the news making business. Accordingly, Mark Oppenheimer apparently was dispatched by The Times magazine to debunk the new book co-authored by Antony Flew, the famous backsliding English atheist who has decided that there is a god, after all—some kind of god, anyhow, an “Aristotelian god” of the kind that inspires deism, Flew says.

Oppenheimer sat for hours, glass of water at hand and Flew’s cat at side, to interrogate the gentleman, none-too-gently it seems, in his Reading, England study. The conceit that resulted in the Times Magazine this Sunday is that Flew is getting old and forgetful and may have been intellectually seduced by kindly Christians and at least one kindly Jew (the Israeli physicist Gerard Schroeder). If it is true that Flew really has changed his mind, therefore, please note that his mind is getting stale. Too bad, one is led to conclude, that the atheists were not as solicitous of him as the Christians. He might not have so completely recanted.

Oppenheimer's article, “The Turning of an Atheist”, is going to be the Darwinist party line on Flew, I guess. All the strange birds of the materialist faith certainly will flap about madly now and land gratefully on it. But what is under-examined in Oppenheimer’s telling is not the case for God that Flew has advanced, but rather the evidence from science that persuaded him over a number of years that Darwinian materialism cannot explain either the universe or the development of life. Flew’s god account is a philosophical inference from the scientific evidence, not a scientific position, per se, and in any case it is less convincing and important than the abandonment of decades of Darwinist dogma.

Flew seems to have read a couple of DI-affiliated philosophers. But reading the Oppenheimer article, you don’t see any direct references by Flew to Discovery scientists. The “intelligent design” arguments, while referenced in the Oppenheimer piece, don’t seem to be key ones that Flew puts forth, at least not in exactly those words. But he does speak of “intelligence” in the universe and in biology. The religious people he has met in recent years didn’t create this change in his assessment; they found out about it, however, and apparently encouraged him to publicize his views more widely.

What is sad here is not an old man’s resolve to reach a new level of understanding, even as he acknowledges that the speed of his mind is slowing. What is pathetic (once again) is the manic determination of Darwinists to assail every intellectual apostate personally. Antony Flew is far more alert than his disparaging foes, and far more honest.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 2:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2005, Michael Behe published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Design for Living. Paul Gross has now reviewed Michael Behe’s book The Edge of Evolution in The New Criterion, using exactly the same title as Behe's 2005 New York Times op-ed, accusing Behe of making so many mistakes that “it would need a book longer than The Edge to restate the model together with its already noticed (in print and online) errors and omissions.” Yet as I will recount in this four-part response, Dr. Gross's review has many mistakes, and many of his key criticisms of Behe are misplaced.

Gross’s first error was claiming that Behe presumes that the mutations that allow malaria to evolve resistance to the antibiotic drug chloroquine must all occur simultaneously. Gross thus writes, “[T]he calculated probabilities, upon which the main argument of the book depends, come from a single report in the literature on the frequency of spontaneous resistance to a drug in the malaria parasite (Plasmodium). That frequency was in the first place a mere guess by its author, and it does not anyway measure the likelihood of what Behe thinks it measures. … Behe assumes simultaneous mutations at two sites in the relevant gene, but there is no such necessity and plenty of evidence that cumulativeness, rather than simultaneity, is the rule.” (Emphasis added.)

Gross is repeating the same misplaced argument that both Ken Miller and Jerry Coyne made earlier. Behe has responded to this argument repeatedly on his Amazon.com blog:

The number of one in 10²⁰ is not a probability calculation. Rather, it is statistical data. It is perhaps not too surprising that both Miller and Coyne make that mistake, because in general Darwinists are not used to constraining their speculations with quantitative data. The fundamental message of The Edge of Evolution, however, is that such data are now available. Instead of imagining what the power of random mutation and selection might do, we can look at examples of what it has done. And when we do look at the best, clearest examples, the results are, to say the least, quite modest. Time and again we see that random mutations are incoherent and much more likely to degrade a genome than to add to it — and these are the positively-selected, “beneficial” random mutations.

Miller asserts that I have ruled out cumulative selection and required Plasmodium falciparum to achieve a predetermined result. I’m flattered that he thinks I have such powers. However, the malaria parasite does not take orders from me or anyone else. I had no ability to rule out or require anything. The parasite was free in the wild to come up with any solution that might help it, by any mutational pathway that was available. I simply reported the results of what the parasite achieved. … Certainly, there may be several routes, maybe permutations of pathways, too. But whether or not there are several routes, the bottom line is that resistance arises only once for every 10²⁰ parasites.

The number I cite, one parasite in every 10²⁰ for de novo chloroquine resistance, is not a probability calculation. Rather, it is a statistic, a result, a data point. (Furthermore, it is not my number, but that of the eminent malariologist Nicholas White.) I do not assume that “adaptation cannot occur one mutation at a time”; I assume nothing at all. I am simply looking at the results. The malaria parasite was free to do whatever it could in nature; to evolve resistance, or outcompete its fellow parasites, by whatever evolutionary pathway was available in the wild. Neither I nor anyone else were manipulating the results. What we see when we look at chloroquine-resistant malaria is pristine data — it is the best that random mutation plus selection was able to accomplish in the wild in 10²⁰ tries.

Calculating the “Mere Guess”
Gross asserts that the statistic was, “a mere guess by its author.” Is Gross correct? In fact Gross has blatantly misrepresented the methodology behind the statistic Behe cites: it is a calculation, not “a mere guess.”

Behe cites his source that spontaneous resistance to chloroquine occurs in one in every 10²⁰ malaria cells. It’s from a review article published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation entitled, "Antimalarial drug resistance" (Vol. 113(8) (April 2004)). The author, Nicholas J. White, holds two doctorates and is an esteemed researcher in his field. As White's bio states:

Professor White has contributed to over 500 peer reviewed scientific publications and has written over 30 book chapters. He is a full Professor at Mahidol University and also Oxford University. He is a member of several WHO advisory panels, and is on the International Editorial Advisory boards of several international journals including The Lancet and the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Nicholas White of Mahidol University in Thailand points out that if you multiply the number of parasites in a person who is very ill with malaria times the number of people who get malaria per year times the number of years since the introduction of chloroquine, then you can estimate the odds of a parasite developing resistance to chloroquine is roughly one in a hundred billion billion. In shorthand scientific notation, that’s one in 10²⁰.

(Behe, Edge of Evolution, pg. 57.)

The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski answers:

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here.

This week’s installment of “Meet the Materialists” is particularly fitting for the week of Halloween.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini was performing macabre experiments on decapitated oxes, horses, lambs… and humans. “The unenlightened part of mankind are apt to entertain a prejudice against those… who attempt to perform experiments on dead subjects,” Aldini later acknowledged, but he maintained that such experiments were justified because the object was to improve human welfare. “It is… an incontrovertible fact, that such researches in modern times have proved a source of the most valuable information.”

Determined to understand the workings of what he called “the human animal machine,” Aldini knew that he needed to procure bodies while they were still fresh and “retained… the vital powers in the highest degree of preservation.” His solution? “I was obliged, if I may be allowed the expression, to place myself under the scaffold, near the axe of justice, to receive the yet bleeding bodies of unfortunate criminals, the only subjects proper for my experiments.”

Aldini’s first human experiments were conducted on the bodies of two young brigands who had been decapitated in Bologna in January 1802. Aldini started by applying electricity to various parts of their decapitated heads. This produced “the most horrid grimaces. The action of the eyelids was exceedingly striking.” Through further applications of electricity, the mouth of one of the heads generated a small amount of saliva, and the tongue moved back into the mouth after having been pulled out. Aldini also dissected the brains and applied electricity to their various components, producing further facial convulsions. Finally, Aldini applied electricity to the trunks of the bodies, which resulted in one of the corpses raising its forearm—“to the great astonishment of those who were present.”

By 1803, Aldini was in London experimenting on the body of a British criminal who had been hanged. Aldini praised the “enlightened” British legislators who permitted the bodies of criminals executed in England to be handed over for medical experimentation. His British experiment “surpassed our most sanguine expectations,” he later wrote enthusiastically, adding that it had been so successful “vitality might, perhaps, have been restored, if many circumstances had not rendered it impossible.” Aldini’s experiments sparked imitators as scientists across Europe rushed to discover the secret of animation.

Aldini’s gruesome experiments provided one of the inspirations for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and even possibly for C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. But even more important, as I explain in Darwin Day in America, Aldini’s experiments foreshadowed the rise of a virulent strain of materialism that attempted to use science to reduce human beings and their very thoughts to mere matter in motion. The full story of the development of this “scientific materialism” can be found in my new book Darwin Day in America in chapter 1, “Nothing Buttery from Atomism to the Enlightenment,” and chapter 2, “Darwin’s Revolution.”

To order Darwin Day in America click here. To find out more information about the book (and watch the trailer), visit the book’s website here.

Posted by John West at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2001 an internal PBS memo titled The Evolution Controversy, Use It or Lose It: Evolution Project/WGBH Boston, revealed an improper political agenda behind PBS's miniseries "Evolution." The memo made very clear how "Evolution" would be used to influence government officials and marketed to the public in an effort to exercise control over how evolution is taught in public schools.

Here they go again. November 13th, PBS’s NOVA will air Judgment Day, which PBS describes as “recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as ‘What is evolution?’ and ‘Does intelligent design qualify as science?’" You can bet there won’t be any leaked memos about how they plan to spin the Dover trial. (We hardly need one having been inundated with misrepresentation after mistreprsentation of the trial’s impact for almost two years now.)

The trailer for the program shows that PBS has turned to the usual suspects to advance their agenda.

One new character, Judge Jones, who presided over the real-life courtroom drama, likes to boast that he allowed all sides of the issue to be aired, even saying: “Margaret Talbot, who wrote after the trial in the New Yorker, ‘It was a science class that everybody wished they’d been able to take when they were in school.’”

Kids in Dover are still wishing they could get a full and complete education, without scientific ideas such as intelligent design censored as too dangerous for them to hear about.

Here’s how we reported the leaked PBS memo in 2001.

Dated June 15, 2001, the memo bears the title "The Evolution Controversy, Use It or Lose It: Evolution Project/WGBH Boston." The document outlines the overall goals of the ongoing PBS series Evolution and describes the marketing strategy for the series. The complete text of the PBS memo is posted at www.reviewevolution.com.

According to the document, which was leaked by a source within PBS, one of the goals of "Evolution" is to "co-opt existing local dialogue about teaching evolution in schools." Another goal is to "promote participation," including "getting involved with local school boards."
In addition, the document identifies "government officials" as one of the target audiences for the series, and it describes a publicity campaign accompanying the series that will include writing op-eds for newspapers and "guerilla/viral marketing."

"Clearly, one purpose of "Evolution" is to influence Congress and school boards and to promote political action regarding how evolution is taught in public schools," says Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman. "In fact, "Evolution's" marketing plan seems to have the trappings of a political campaign."

"Public television is funded in part by American taxpayers, and it should be held to high standards of fairness. It is inappropriate for public broadcasting to engage in activities designed to directly influence the political process by promoting one viewpoint at the expense of others," said Chapman.

According to Discovery Institute’s John West, the political agenda behind "Evolution" is made even more explicit by its enlistment of Eugenie Scott as one of the official spokespersons for the series.

Scott runs the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an advocacy group that by its own description is dedicated to "defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools." According to the group's web site, the NCSE provides "expert testimony for school board hearings," supplies citizens with "advice on how to organize" when "faced with local creationist challenges," and assists legal organizations that litigate "evolution/creation cases."

"The NCSE is a single-issue group that takes only one side in the political debate over evolution in public education," says West, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University. "It is inappropriate for public television to enlist NCSE's executive director as an official spokesperson for this program."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In Part 1 I discussed the principled reasons that ID proponents offer to explain why ID does not identify the designer: “while biological structures may be scientifically explained via intelligent design, the structures themselves have no way of directly telling us whether the designer is Yahweh, Buddha, Yoda, or some other type of intelligent agency.” Unfortunately, some critics have misunderstood this point as implying that ID proponents are completely silent about who they believe the designer is, or that ID proponents deny the possibility that the designer could be God. This very misconception was printed in an article co-authored by Barbara Forrest that was published in a legal journal:

First- and second-generation creationists were quite willing to acknowledge who they believe designed the world. Proponents of intelligent design creationism, on the other hand, vociferously deny that the intelligent designer they postulate is equivalent to God, and in their statements to the general public they often deny taking any position at all on the nature of the world’s designer. … [P]roponents of intelligent design cannot acknowledge to the general public (much less to courts) the true identity of their intelligent designer.

(Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, Steven G. Gey, "Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution," Washington University Law Quarterly, Vol. 83(1) (2005).)