According to a February 26, 2008 report in ScienceDaily, a team of French scientists has unraveled the structure of a protein that allows bacteria to gain resistance to multiple antibiotics. Frédéric Dardel and his colleagues crystallized two forms of the antibiotic-modifying enzyme acetyltransferase and showed that it has a flexible active site that can evolve to enable bacteria to break down various antibiotics and render them useless. The research may aid in the design of new antibiotics to deal with this form of resistance, which is becoming a serious medical problem.

This is very good news! Unfortunately, Darwinists will probably claim — as they have done many times in the past — that their theory was indispensable to the achievement.

Yet Darwinian evolution had nothing to do with it.

First, some bacteria happen to have a very complex enzyme (acetyltransferase), the origin of which Darwinism hasn’t really explained. Come to think of it, most cases of antibiotic resistance (including resistance to penicillin) involve complex enzymes, and the only “explanations” for them put forward by Darwinists are untestable just-so stories about imaginary mutations over unimaginable time scales.

Second, the acetyltransferase story is about minor changes in an existing species of bacteria. But Darwin’s theory isn’t really about how existing species change over time. People had been observing those long before 1859, and most of the new insights we’ve gained since then have come from genetics, not Darwinism. Yet Mendel’s theory of genetics contradicted Darwin’s, and Darwinists rejected Mendelian genetics for half a century. And although an understanding of genetics is important when dealing with antibiotic resistance, Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by natural selection is not.

Third, Dardel and his colleagues made their discovery using protein crystallography. They were not guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory; in fact, they had no need of that hypothesis.

Fourth, their discovery may aid in the intelligent design of new antibiotics. Chemists will attempt to synthesize new drugs purposefully, by looking ahead to the desired goal and working toward it. No Darwinian evolution here.

So how, exactly, is Darwinian evolution essential to understanding and overcoming antibiotic resistance — as the Darwinists claim it is?

Posted by Jonathan Wells at 12:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In science, theories are tested and debated almost constantly. As silly as it may sound, there are scientists who are still researching gravity. This isn't as absurd as you might think. While no one doubts that mass attracts mass and apples fall down, not up, scientists are still debating the nature of the underlying physical laws and fundamental particles that cause gravitational attraction.

There are always scientists curious about one aspect or another of any theory under scrutiny, and so they challenge it. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it is the very nature of science to challenge things.

Except when it comes to neo-Darwinism. Then scientists are supposed to shut up, not ask questions, not challenge anything. That isn't science. It isn't even what Darwin himself envisioned for science.

Darwin wrote:

A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.

Wired reported that:

The resolutions have been patterned after the one from St. Johns County, which calls for "teaching the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory rather than teaching evolution as dogmatic fact."

Critics say the resolutions' language is thinly veiled creationism -- either in the strictly biblical sense, or the more-modern take of "intelligent design," which purports to use scientific methodology to prove divine intervention.

This isn't exactly a new tactic. Self-proclaimedevolutionary biologist Patricia Princehouse espoused this back in 2005/06. More recently, in Texas it has become the practice to constantly claim that any criticism of evolution is the same as advocating intelligent design.

That would likely be news to the scores of scientists (many who are evolutionists themselves) who question parts Darwinian evolution.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: This special post comes to us courtesy of CSC Fellow Dr. Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany.

In the heated struggle over the teaching of evolution in the state of Florida, some have suggested that Darwinism is dangerous. They claim it has produced odious ideologies, most prominently, Nazism. Michael Ruse has castigated those trying to connect Darwinism and Nazism in his op-ed piece for the Tallahassee Democrat, "Darwin and Hitler: A Not-Very-Intelligent Link" (February 6).

Ruse, a philosopher by profession, claims that the anti-evolutionists are "not very good historians." However, he commits some serious historical gaffes himself, undermining his claim to be setting the record straight.

First of all, since Ruse is a philosopher, not a historian, I would like to address what seems to me to be a philosophical mistake in his brief essay: the straw-man fallacy. Ruse challenges two key ideas that I have not seen anyone advance in this debate: 1) that Hitler’s ideology was based solely on Darwinism; and 2) that Darwinism leads inevitably to Nazism. Now it could be that some anti-evolutionist somewhere might actually hold these positions, but Ruse ignores the much stronger historical position that I advance in my book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

I agree with Ruse that Hitler’s ideology was not built solely on Darwinism. Nonetheless, Ruse does not seem to realize that Darwinism was a central, guiding principle of Nazi ideology, especially of Hitler’s own world view. Richard Evans, historian at Cambridge University, has explained, "The real core of Nazi beliefs lay in the faith Hitler proclaimed in his speech of September 1938 in science—a Nazi view of science—as the basis for action. Science demanded the furtherance of the interests not of God but of the human race, and above all the German race and its future in a world ruled by ineluctable laws of Darwinian competition between races and between individuals." This is not a controversial claim by anti-evolutionists, but it is commonly recognized by scholars who study Nazism.

Contra Ruse’s claim, Nazis did not abandon Darwinism because of its racial egalitarian implications. In fact, the vast majority of Darwinists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries argued that Darwinism proved racial inequality. Darwin claimed in chapter two of The Descent of Man that there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the "highest races" and the "lowest savages." Later in Descent he declared, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races." Racial inegalitarianism was built into Darwin’s analysis from the start.

Haeckel, whom Ruse correctly cites as the most prominent German Darwinist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even claimed that humanity should be divided into twelve distinct species in four separate genera. He declared repeatedly that the distance between the highest and lowest humans was wider than the distance between humans and apes.

This Darwinian-based racial inegalitarianism was a mainstream view among early twentieth-century German scientists and scholars. Before and during the Nazi period, the leading anthropologists and eugenicists—Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, Otmar von Verschuer, Hans F. K. Guenther, and many others—were all avid Darwinists and all believed that Darwinism implied racial inequality. Ruse’s claim that "Nazi ideologists quickly realized how completely antithetical the whole evolution idea was to their own ideology" is about as far from the mark as you can get.

Also, I should mention that Haeckel was also the first person in German history to advance the idea that disabled people should be killed, a program the Nazis carried out. Most of the eugenicists and physicians who promoted "euthanasia" for the disabled—and most of those who carried it out under Nazism—used overtly Darwinian justifications for it.

Now, Ruse is right that Darwinism has been used by many people to advance a variety of positions, some of which are antithetical. I am not saying that Darwinism leads inevitably to Nazism. However, as I point out in my article "Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life," many Darwinists have admitted that Darwinism does have philosophical implications that impinge on the value of human life.

Peter Singer, the bioethicist at Princeton University who supports infanticide and euthanasia for the disabled, for instance, admits that Darwinism underpins his dismissal of the sanctity of human life. Richard Dawkins likewise claims Darwinian support for euthanasia.

Ruse’s attempts to whitewash the historical connection between Darwinism and Nazism may make him feel better about Darwinism, but it does not correspond to historical reality.

Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany.

Posted by Anika Smith at 3:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's clear that with Expelled coming to theaters in April that we will probably hear more from Ben Stein about what he thinks of Darwin and modern evolutionary theory. In his latest writing on the subject over at News Blaze, Stein says that Darwin created "a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism."

Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition. Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.

Imperialism had a short but hideous history - of repression and murder.

But its day is done.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Somewhere a dialogue is presently taking place concerning intelligent design, and it may be going something like this:

ID Proponent: DNA. Genetic code. Language. Commands. Information. Intelligent design.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Cambrian Explosion. Pattern of Explosions. Cosmic Fine-Tuning. Intelligent design.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Complexity of life. Irreducible complexity. Specified Complexity. Intelligent design.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Human intelligence. Creative Genius. Love. Music. Art. Leonardo da Vinci. Beethoven.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Molecular Machines. Molecular motors. Cellular factories. Intelligent design.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Science. Evidence. Data. Observations. Intelligent design.

Darwinist: Wedge.

ID Proponent: Atheism: Richard Dawkins. Daniel Dennett. Sam Harris. Eugenie Scott. Barbara Forrest. Stephen Jay Gould. E.O. Wilson. Michael Ruse. P.Z. Myers. Many others. Wedge? Irrelevant.

Darwinist: Hmmf. Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judges can’t settle science. Courts can’t change data.

Darwinist: Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judge adopted false definition of ID.

Darwinist: Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judge ignored positive case for design.

Darwinist: Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judge copied many errors into ruling from ACLU. Judge ignored ID rebuttals. Judges make mistakes all the time.

Darwinist: Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judge ignored peer-reviewed pro-ID publications. Meyer, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Dembski, The Design Inference. Beye/Snoke, Protein Science. Others.

Darwinist: Kitzmiller.

ID Proponent: Judge ignored pro-ID research. Minnich's flagellum research.

Darwinist: Hmmf. Type III Secretory System has ¼ flagellar parts.

ID Proponent: Not an explanation. Huge Leap.

Darwinist: Type III Secretory System has ¼ flagellar parts.

ID Proponent: Flagellum: Rotor, Stator, Bushings, Motor, Propeller, U-Joint, Rotary Engine 100,000 RPM. Irreducibly complex.

Darwinist: Type III Secretory System has ¼ flagellar parts.

ID Proponent: Then provide step-by-step evolutionary model.

Darwinist: Hmmf. ID has no research.

ID Proponent: Minnich. Axe. Dembski. Marks. Meyer. Behe. Snoke. Gonzalez. Biologic. Others.

Darwinist: Hmmf. NAS rejects. AAAS rejects. “Steves” reject.

ID Proponent: That’s Politics. Thomas Kuhn was right. “Science not a democracy” –Eugenie Scott. All majority views started off as minority views.

Darwinist: Hmmf. ID = Politics.

ID Proponent: ID also has science. Plus Darwinism has politics: NAS anti-ID edicts; AAAS anti-ID edicts; Witch hunts (Sternberg, Crocker, Gonzalez, others).

Darwinist: Hmmf. ID = Creationism.

ID Proponent: DNA. Genetic code. Language. Commands. Information. Not Bible based.

Darwinist: ID = Creationism.

ID Proponent: Cambrian Explosion. Pattern of Explosions. Cosmic Fine-Tuning. Not Faith based.

Darwinist: ID = Creationism.

ID Proponent: Complexity of life. Irreducible complexity. Specified Complexity. Not Divine Revelation based.

Darwinist: ID = Creationism.

ID Proponent: Molecular Machines. Molecular motors. Cellular factories. Not Religion.

Darwinist: ID = Creationism.

ID Proponent: World’s most famous evolutionist Richard Dawkins (who is anti-ID): “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

Darwinist: Hmmf. TalkOrigins Quote Mine Project.

ID Proponent: DNA Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick (who is anti-ID): "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.“

Darwinist: TalkOrigins Quote Mine Project.

ID Proponent: Former NAS president Bruce Alberts (who is anti-ID): “The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”

Darwinist: Hmmf. Then who designed the designer?

ID Proponent: Theological Objection—Irrelevant. Theological Answer: God is eternal, has no designer.

Darwinist: Who designed the designer?

ID Proponent: Knowledge of designer not necessary for design inference.

Darwinist: Who designed the designer?

ID Proponent: Why does the universe exist?

Darwinist: Hmmf. Progress of science. God of the gaps.

ID Proponent: Science seeks truth. If ID is right, ID is progress.

Darwinist: Progress of science must be NATURALISTIC. God of the gaps.

ID Proponent: That’s my point: Naturalism failing. How did flagellum evolve? Evolution of the gaps.

Darwinist: Progress of science. God of the gaps.

ID Proponent: Where are Cambrian ancestors? Evolution of the gaps.

Darwinist: Progress of science. God of the gaps.

ID Proponent: How did the first cell arise? Evolution of the gaps.

Darwinist: Progress of science. God of the gaps.

ID Proponent: ID is positive. DNA. Genetic code. Language. Commands. Information. Cambrian Explosion. Pattern of Explosions. Cosmic Fine-Tuning. Complexity of life. Irreducible complexity. Specified Complexity. Human intelligence. Love. Music. Art. Leonardo da Vinci. Beethoven. Molecular Machines. Molecular motors. Cellular factories. Science. Evidence. Data. Observations. Information in nature requires intelligent design.

[Empty Silence; Crickets]

ID Proponent: How did any single biochemical pathway arise? Evolution of the gaps. ID dramatically superior.

[Empty Silence; Crickets.]

Darwinist: Wedge. You’re ignorant, insane, and wicked.

--------------------------------

Note: This was intended as a parody only, although sadly it represents the many fallacious objections to ID raised by Darwinists. If anything, this parody underestimates the amount of name-calling and personal attacks that a Darwinist would have probably leveled (in this case, the Darwinist refrains from personal attacks until the very end.)

A real scholarly debate between those on both sides of the intelligent design controversy would have much more technical arguments. Nonetheless, the sad truth is that when many criticize intelligent design in the media, courtrooms, classrooms, and even scientific journals, their arguments often fail to rise above those of the "Darwinist" antagonist presented here. For those interested in serious, scientific discussions of intelligent design, check out any of these two books that have both pro- and con- arguments regarding intelligent design:

Discovery senior fellow David Klinghoffer has an interesting piece just out in the new Townhall Magazine, in which he looks at whether or not scientists really are free to research intelligent design. Of course, ID-critics claim that academic freedom reigns supreme:

I asked leading ID-critics whether Darwin-doubters face any hurdles, beyond the strength or weakness of ID itself, to researching and testing their ideas. Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, emailed me with a withering reply: “The conclusion of ‘Design’ should follow from well-done research on comparative genomics, molecular biology, gene expression, and biochemistry. There is, as you surely know, no barrier to such research.”

Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, was emphatic: “I cannot imagine any serious scientist or academic administrator trying to dissuade anybody else from carrying out any well-designed research project.”

The untenured will, as a rule, speak only on the condition that neither they nor their institution be named. I asked one such scientist if he felt free to pursue his ID-related research interests. He said, “No, absolutely not. It presents a problem for me.”

Another biologist told of how, immediately after his interest in intelligent design became known, he had his lab space withdrawn. The assistant to the director of the facility emailed him that, due to an unexpected “space crunch,” he had to be out in two weeks.

Asked about the statements of ID-critics that research critical of Darwin may be conducted freely, the biologist looked amused. “That’s a huge joke,” he said. He explained that professional science is “prestige driven and [scientists] don’t want a knock to their prestige. You do well by impressing your peers, so you are reluctant to jeopardize that.”

And if you want to do something to help, you can sign the Academic Freedom Petition.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I recently picked up Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science by Oxford chemist Peter Atkins. It’s a 2003 book, and on the plus side, it offers enjoyable and concise explanations of many important scientific theories, including some lucid diagrams explaining Einstein’s ideas about relativity.

In his chapter on evolution, Atkins boldly states, "The effective prediction is that the details of molecular evolution must be consistent with those of macroscopic evolution." (pg. 16) I'm willing to accept that “prediction.” However, Atkins unfortunately goes on to dramatically overstate the evidence for molecular evolution by asserting, "That is found to be the case: there is not a single instance of the molecular traces of change being inconsistent with our observations of whole organisms." (pg. 16)

I’ve addressed this topic before, and, to put it nicely, Atkins’ comment is wrong. In fact, in 2000, Trisha Gura wrote an entire review article in Nature entitled "Bones, Molecules or Both?" (Vol. 406:230-233, July 20, 2000), devoted entirely to examining the difficulties encountered by evolutionary scientists when trying to reconcile molecule-based phylogenetic trees with phylogenetic trees based upon morphology. In Gura’s words, the commonality of these conflicts has led to great “evolution wars” among systematists over whether they should use “bones,” “molecules,” or “both” when constructing phylogenies. As Gura stated:

When biologists talk of the 'evolution wars', they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.

[…]

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date.

(Trisha Gura, “Bones, Molecules or Both” Nature, Vol. 406, pgs. 230-233 (July 20, 2000).)

There is a raging debate because these two types of data often conflict. Gura wouldn’t be discussing “evolution wars” if molecules and macromorphology were always in agreement regarding phylogenetic history. Consider these other striking comments from various scientists explaining the conflicts between molecule-based phylogenetic trees and morphology-based phylogenetic trees:

"As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology." (Colin Patterson et al., "Congruence between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies", Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol 24, pg. 179 (1993).)

"That molecular evidence typically squares with morphological patterns is a view held by many biologists, but interestingly, by relatively few systematists. Most of the latter know that the two lines of evidence may often be incongruent." (Masami Hasegawa, Jun Adachi, Michel C. Milinkovitch, "Novel Phylogeny of Whales Supported by Total Molecular Evidence," Journal of Molecular Evolution, Vol. 44, pgs. S117-S120 (Supplement 1, 1997).)

"[T]he wealth of competing morphological, as well as molecular proposals [of] the prevailing phylogenies of the mammalian orders would reduce [the mammalian tree] to an unresolved bush, the only consistent clade probably being the grouping of elephants and sea cows." (W. W. De Jong, “Molecules remodel the mammalian tree,” TREE, Vol 13(7), pgs. 270-274 (July 7, 1998).)

Atkins said there is “not a single instance” where molecule-based trees failed to confirm morphology-based trees. Yet a survey of the actual literature shows there is far more than "a single instance" of the molecular phylogenetic data conflicting with the phylogenetic data based upon whole organisms. As Trisha Gura put it, for some Darwinian scientists, the solution is simply “to throw out” the data that doesn’t fit the theory. Indeed, if we take Atkins’ “prediction” of Neo-Darwinism at face value, it seems that Darwinian evolution is faring poorly in this test.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:17 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We are often told by Darwinists that design cannot be detected in biology. But an article entitled "Wired Science Reveals Secret Codes in Craig Venter's Artificial Genome" reports that "Wired Science has ferreted out the secret amino acid messages contained in 'watermarks' that were embedded in the world's first manmade bacterial genome, announced last week by the J. Craig Venter Institute." In biochemical jargon, each amino acid is ascribed a letter. Thus, one can encode sequences of amino acids that effectively spell out words. (The IDEA logo has done this since 1999 by using a chain of 4 amino acids that spell out "I.D.E.A.") These are the words that Wired's sleuths discovered in the "manmade" parts of the bacterial genome (the words describe some collaborators on the project):

VENTERINSTITVTE

CRAIGVENTER

HAMSMITH

CINDIANDCLYDE

GLASSANDCLYDE

If Richard Dawkins worked for Wired, would he just assume that "[b]iology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose" and rule out the possibility that these watermarks were designed? But if we take Stephen C. Meyer's approach that, "in all cases where we know the causal origin of 'high information content,' experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role," then we can correctly make a design inference.

This is similar to the hypothetical situation I predicted recently:

The integration of biology into human nano-technology raises an interesting hypothetical scenario: What if someday human nano-technology becomes so sophisticated that it can be integrated into an organism’s DNA, and becomes part of self-replicating systems of living organisms? (This would be akin to the Borg, of Star Trek fame.) Then suppose that humans die off, but later alien scientists discover human-designed nano-biotechnology existing freely inside of living organisms that are still left on Earth. Of course those nano-biotechnological systems did not evolve; they were designed. Should those alien scientists be prevented from making a design inference?

Posted by Casey Luskin at 11:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

After debating whether Dan Brooks’ recent post at Panda’s Thumb should be dignified with a response, I’ve been persuaded that clearing away the worst of the dross is worth some of my time.

Dan Brooks, a parasitologist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, was invited by the Discovery Institute to participate in a private symposium held in Boston in early June 2007. The symposium revisited the issues raised at the 1966 Wistar Institute conference on mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution with a view toward assessing any progress that has been made in the last forty years. Brooks’ post at PT not only evinces poor etiquette in its attempt to discuss the content of a private symposium prior to the release of the conference proceedings, it severely misrepresents that content and the intent of many of the remarks that were made there. To briefly summarize, here are the facts of the situation:

(1) All participants were clearly informed that the Wistar Retrospective Symposium was a Discovery Institute initiative.

(2) The suggestion that the symposium was billed as a Gordon Conference has no factual basis whatsoever.

(3) It was clearly stated that the conference was private and would not be publicized so the attendees would feel free to engage openly and honestly on highly controversial topics.

(4) Discovery Institute assured the participants at the conference that there would be no public discussion of the meeting until the papers and transcripts of the discussions were released.

(5) There was a clear expectation, as a matter of etiquette, that attendees of the symposium would similarly respect the privacy of the conference and the other attendees by refraining from public commentary until such time as the content of the presentations and transcripts of the Q&A periods were made available and could speak for themselves.

(6) Brooks’ post not only violates this etiquette, it contains factual errors and misrepresents the actual content of the ID talks and interactions.

(7) After hearing of this symposium from an invitee who declined to attend, the NCSE, through the agency of Eugenie Scott, attempted to interfere with its organization (as Bruce Weber can attest) and is now, through its former employee Nick Matzke, trying to mitigate its significance by airing Brooks’ ill-conceived report.

Commentary:

Brooks was an invited participant to a closed research conference sponsored by the Discovery Institute. The conference was representative of the very kind of research our critics say we don’t sponsor, even while they’re actively working to obstruct its occurrence. Having failed to prevent this research symposium from happening, they then took recourse to deliberate misrepresentation in an effort to mitigate the significance of what they could not stop. Fortunately, the entire conference, including all of the discussions, was recorded, and the extent of Brooks’ errors and misrepresentations will be made evident when the papers and transcripts are eventually made public.

One of the co-organizers of the conference was an honorable ID-critic, Bruce Weber, who is a biochemist at Cal State Fullerton. Both Bruce Weber and I had direct email correspondence with Brooks and all of the other participants. The PT assertion that attendees were given the impression that the conference was organized by the Wistar Institute or that it was billed as a Gordon Conference is ridiculous, as can be seen from the text of Bruce Weber’s initial email to Brooks, in which it is also made clear that the conference would be a private one “out of press view.” (See here; relevant remarks have been highlighted.)

My first email exchange with Dan Brooks also confirms these points (see here).

Finally, you can read here Dan’s response (providing his talk title) to an email sent to all of the participants in which the private nature of the conference is emphasized.

With respect to the misrepresentation of symposium content in Brooks’ account, since the extent of this will be quite clear when the proceedings are released, I feel no need to address it in a point-by-point fashion (nor do I have the time or patience to do so). If the individual scientists whose work is misrepresented wish to spend any time correcting Brooks’ account of their work, I invite them to do so in this forum. I suspect most of them will have better things to do with their time. As a brief indicator of the kind of factual errors in Brooks’ account, let me briefly note that he succeeds in confusing Douglas Axe with both Stephen Meyer and William Dembski on separate occasions. If Brooks can’t even get right the coarse-grained details of who said what, then what credence should be given to his descriptions of the content of what they said? None at all.

As a final point for reflection, Eugenie Scott’s attempt to interfere with the conference at an early stage—a meddling behavior typical for her, another instance of which will be chronicled in the film Expelled—raises another possibility: did Brooks contact the NCSE about his invitation and was he then cultivated as a plant at the conference for the very purpose of doing what he now has done? The fact that Brooks coordinated the release of his faux report with Nick Matzke, himself formerly of the NCSE, lends plausibility to this hypothesis. I don’t suppose the public will ever know the truth of the matter, but it would be in keeping with the NCSE’s mode of operation: work behind the scenes to stifle fair-minded scientific discussion and publication on intelligent design, then publicly proclaim that pro-ID scientists don’t publish in respected journals and do nothing to engage the scientific research community with their ideas.

It’s rather ironic that in a badly conceived and ill-advised “outing” of a Discovery Institute research symposium, all that Nick Matzke and the NCSE have succeeded in doing is outing themselves: they have private knowledge of solid ID research and are actively seeking to repress it. This recurrent descent into trickery and deceit by Darwinian defenders leads toward an overwhelming question: if neo-Darwinism is as scientifically beyond dispute as they claim, what have they to fear from open discussion? Everything, it would seem. Draw your own conclusions.

Bruce L. Gordon, Ph.D.
Research Director
Center for Science and Culture
Discovery Institute

Posted by Bruce Gordon at 9:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Canadian science journalist Denyse O'Leary (co-author of the terrific book The Spiritual Brain) offers a multi-part review of my book Darwin Day in America here. O'Leary is a wry as well as perceptive writer, and I loved her description of my chapter on modern architecture, which she describes as a discussion of "featureless apartment buildings that resemble broiler houses."

Posted by John West at 2:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Steven Novella has laid down the gauntlet. In a recent post, Dr. Novella, a materialist who asserts that "every single prediction" of materialism has been proven by neuroscience, listed the predictions of his theory that the mind is caused entirely by the brain:

If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then: 1) There will be no mental phenomena without brain function. 2) As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered. 3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged. 4) Brain development will correlate with mental development. 5) We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.[numbers added]

He goes on:

What Egnor has not done is counter my claim that all predictions made by the materialist hypothesis have been validated. If he wishes to persist in his claims, then I openly challenge Egnor to name one prediction of strict materialism that has been falsified. To be clear, that means one positive prediction for materialism where the evidence falsifies strict materialism. This does not mean evidence we do not currently have, but evidence against materialism or for dualism. I maintain that such evidence does not exist – not one bit. Prove me wrong, Egnor.

I do wish to persist in my claims. Now of course dualism also has predictions, which, organized in accordance with Dr. Novella’s predictions, are:

If dualism is true and the mind is partly the product of the material function of the brain and partly the product of something else, then:

1) There will be some mental phenomena without brain function
2) As brain function is altered, the mind will not necessarily be altered
3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will not necessarily be damaged
4) Brain development will not necessarily correlate with mental development.
5) We will not always be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it

Note the similarities and the differences in the predictions. Dualism and materialism both predict that mental function will often correlate with brain function. Strict materialism takes it further: mental function will always correlate with brain function, because mental function is brain function. Dualism predicts that mental function and brain function won’t always correlate, because mental function isn’t the same thing as brain function.

When we examine experimental evidence, we must examine situations in which the predictions of dualism and strict materialism diverge. It will do no good to examine evidence in which dualism and strict materialism make the same prediction. For example, both dualism and strict materialism predict that severe brain injury will often severely impair mental function. The finding that many brain injured patients have mental impairment favors neither dualism nor strict materialism; both predict it.

Yet dualism and materialism differ in that dualism predicts that there will be some (perhaps very few) situations in which brain injury and mental impairment will not correlate well, whereas strict materialism predicts that brain injury and mental impairment must always correlate, because mind states are brain states.

Now, of course, there are subtleties. If strict materialism is true, it may not always be easy to discern what brain state gives rise to a particular mind state. If we find a disparity between a mind state and a brain state, it may be because we are looking at the wrong brain state. Contra Dr. Novella, these issues are not always clear, but reasonable inferences based on evidence can often be drawn.

Comparing the straightforward predictions of strict materialism and dualism, let’s begin to examine the evidence. I’ll choose one of Dr. Novella’s own examples, which he used in his post: a remarkable study from Cambridge of a woman in a persistent vegetative state.

Dr. Novella wrote:

To give one example [of the irrefutable evidence for strict materialism], two years ago Adrian Owen published an article in Science in which he used fMRI to examine the brain function of a young woman in an apparent vegetative state. During the study she was asked to either imagine herself playing tennis or to imagine herself walking through her house. These two distinct thoughts created distinct patterns of activation on the fMRI - indicating that she was actually capable of thought. But the relevance to this discussion is that different thoughts correlate to different functional states of the material brain. In fact this is what all fMRI research shows.

I agree with Dr. Novella. The study by Owen and his colleagues at Cambridge has a great deal of relevance to our discussion. Let’s take a closer look at the Cambridge study.

In the September 2006 issue of Science, Dr. Owen and his colleagues published a study entitled "Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State." Owen and his colleagues studied the responses of a woman who was in a persistent vegetative state, which was the consequence of severe diffuse brain damage that she had suffered in an automobile accident the year before.

The patient had no evidence of any mental function. Based on a battery of standard tests, including MRI scans, electroencephalograms (EEG’s — brain wave tests), and careful bedside examinations by neurologists and neurosurgeons, she was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Persistent vegetative state means that she had no mental state — no consciousness. She was, in a sense, a shell, a human body without a mind. That’s what "vegetative" means.

Owen and his colleagues did a fascinating series of tests. First, they asked a group of normal volunteers to have a kind of research MRI scan of their brain, called a functional MRI (fMRI). fMRI doesn’t measure the actual activity of the neurons in the brain, but it measures the blood flow and brain metabolism in specific regions of the brain. It has been found to correlate to some extent with mental activity. Thinking about things can make the metabolism in certain parts of the brain increase, and fMRI can detect this. The observation that brain activity can locally increase brain blood flow and metabolism was originally made a century ago, in animals in the lab, so it’s not new. What is new is that we can now measure it in living people non-invasively, using fMRI.

The Cambridge researchers asked the volunteers to think of things, like playing tennis or walking across the room, and they recorded their fMRI brain responses. They also presented the volunteers with nonsense words, to distinguish understanding in the brain from the mere reflex to sounds. The response to understanding was different from the response to sound. The fMRI test seemed to test understanding, not just reflexes.

They did the same tests to the woman who was in a persistent vegetative state. They asked her to imagine playing tennis or imagine walking across the room, and they did the sham test with random words as well.

When they examined her fMRI responses, they found that her fMRI patterns were identical to those of the normal awake volunteers. By fMRI criteria, she understood. In fact, by fMRI critera, she was as conscious as the normal volunteers. Her brain was massively damaged, to the extent that she had been diagnosed as having no mind at all. Yet the blood flow and metabolism patterns in her brain were those of a normal person. And just like normal people, she showed different fMRI responses to nonsense words. So she not only heard what was said to her, but she understood, and complied with the researchers’ requests to think about specific activities like playing tennis and walking across a room.

Owen’s study generated enormous interest among researchers, physicians and the public, not only for its implications for diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (e.g. the implications for the Terri Schiavo case), but because of what it suggests about deeper questions about the relationship between the mind and the brain. Many other studies of fMRI in patients in persistent vegetative state are underway, and several studies recently completed with other patients tend to support Owen’s findings.

From a scientific standpoint, Owen’s study is important for three reasons. The first is obvious; the last two are more subtle, but very important:

1) Owen’s study demonstrates that normal consciousness might be present in some patients who have met the clinical criteria for persistent vegetative state, which is defined as a state lacking consciousness.
2) It demonstrates that methods of assessing brain state and function (e.g., MRI, EEG, clinical examination, fMRI) can differ profoundly in their assessment of consciousness.
3) It demonstrates that an indirect assessment of brain function (fMRI, which measures regional blood flow and brain metabolism), may reveal evidence for consciousness when more direct methods (clinical examination, EEG) fail to detect consciousness.

Note that each of the three conclusions that can be inferred from Owen’s study is evidence for the lack of correlation between various methods of assessing consciousness based on assessment of material properties of the brain. The inconsistency between the fMRI and the other standard methods of assessment is striking. If the mind is the brain, why would different measures of brain function yield contradictory measures of mind function? If materialism is true, correlation between brain function and mind function should converge, not diverge.

Now, let’s consider Owen’s findings in light of Dr. Novella’s specific predictions about mind/brain correlation. The study actually addresses three of Dr. Novella’s predictions:

2) As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.
3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.
5) We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

Dualism predicts:

2) As brain function is altered, the mind will not necessarily be altered
3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will not necessarily be damaged
5) We will not always be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

Owen's evidence correlates much more closely with the predictions of dualism than it does with the predictions of materialism. Consider each prediction:

Strict materialism: As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered

Dualism: As brain function is altered, the mind will not necessarily be altered

Dr. Owen’s evidence is in accordance with the dualist prediction. The most parsimonious conclusion was that she was conscious, despite a diagnosis, based on traditional neurological examination, EEG, and neuroimaging, of persistent vegetative state, which is defined as the absence of consciousness. This panoply of neurological tests predicted different — and incompatible — things. Standard brain tests indicated that she had no mind. fMRI testing indicated that her mind was indistinguishable from that of a normal person. Recall that Dr. Novella insists that "every single prediction" of materialism has been verified. That's not possible with tests that yield contradictory results.

Strict materialism: If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.

Dualism: If the brain is damaged, then mental function will not necessarily be damaged

Again, Dr. Owen’s evidence is more consistent with dualism than it is with materialism. The patient’s brain was profoundly damaged, but her fMRI correlated with normal conscious thought.

Strict materialism: We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

Dualism: We will not always be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

Dr. Novella’s claim is directly falsified by Owen’s work, because different studies of brain activity gave opposite conclusions about the patient’s mental activity. Dr. Owen’s findings are clearly more consistent with the dualist prediction than with the strict materialist prediction. The central finding of the Cambridge researchers is that correlation between brain activity and mental activity can be quite nebulous, and the findings can even be completely contradictory. fMRI suggested the woman was fully conscious; all other tests suggested that she was in persistent vegetative state, without any consciousness at all.

Strict materialism predicts that mental function will always correlate with brain function, because mental function is the same thing as brain function. Dualism predicts that mental function and brain function won’t always correlate, because mental function isn’t the same thing as brain function. The Cambridge findings are more consistent with the dualist prediction than with the strict materialist prediction. That is, in a sense, why the paper received so much attention; it suggested that mental function may not be linked to brain function in a strict cause-and-effect relationship.

So is it reasonable to conclude that Owen’s findings prove dualism? Of course not. Science doesn’t work that way. Scientific theories prevail by preponderance of evidence and by carefully considered inferences, not by "proof" or by validation of "every single prediction." Hyperbole is the currency of hucksters, not scientists. But the growing body of scientific evidence, which is consistent with my experience as a neurosurgeon for 23 years, suggests that the strict materialist theory of the mind is simplistic and probably wrong. There’s scientific evidence that justifies the inference that there is more to the mind than the brain.

Dr. Novella again:

The materialist hypothesis - that the brain causes consciousness - has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated. Every single question that can be answered scientifically - with observation and evidence - that takes the form: “If the brain causes the mind the...” has been resolved in favor of that hypothesis.... [w]hat Egnor has not done is counter my claim that all predictions made by the materialist hypothesis have been validated. If he wishes to persist in his claims, then I openly challenge Egnor to name one prediction of strict materialism that has been falsified. To be clear, that means one positive prediction for materialism where the evidence falsifies strict materialism. This does not mean evidence we do not currently have, but evidence against materialism or for dualism. I maintain that such evidence does not exist – not one bit...

...Prove me wrong, Egnor…

Done.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

The good news is that concern for society's lack of intellectualism continues. The bad news is this concern continues to lack intellectualism. This unfortunate irony is so common it seems to have become a tradition, and the latest contribution is Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason. Jacoby is a long-time critic of intelligent design who, like most critics, propagates more strawmen renditions and Inherit the Wind stereotypes, than thoughtful or fresh ideas.

In this tradition, one is either a Darwinist or a religious fanatic. Darwinism is the ideal of science while ID is creationism in disguise, hostile to reason and knowledge. Doubt evolution and you are a throwback to the days before the Enlightenment. This use of false dichotomies and strawmen renditions to ridicule and marginalize opponents must make for great sport, but it certainly does not help bolster intellectualism.

Those who do read Jacoby should be keen to her linguistic attacks and peculiar use of the term rationalism. Briefly, in science, empirical approaches lean on the data regardless of where it leads while rational approaches interpret the data according to a preset framework.

ID is an empirical approach since it does not make such assumptions. Design may be inferred, or not, depending on the data. Evolution, on the other hand, is a rational approach. It requires all causes and explanations to be purely naturalistic and the design inference is not allowed. This is not controversial. Evolutionists routinely argue that science must be limited to strictly naturalistic explanations. They readily admit that nature exhibits design, but this is a conclusion they may not consider.

Jacoby characterizes ID as anti-rationalist. While ID certainly does not constrain the answer to a preset framework, this casting of ID in an opposition role (anti-rationalist) rather than in a positive role (empiricist), serves to marginalize. Rather than pursuing a legitimate philosophy of science, ID is characterized as merely antagonistic.

Furthermore Jacoby confuses rationalism with empiricism, defining the former as driven by evidence rather than assumptions. So with this creative terminology Jacoby not only casts ID as the antagonist in her fictional world, but also assigns to it evolution's role of foisting preset conclusions regardless of the data. One wonders if Jacoby's concern is over a lack of Darwinism rather than a lack of intellectualism.

Posted by Cornelius Hunter at 7:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today the Florida State Board of Education voted 4-3 to adopt science standards that call evolution “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology.” While it is good that students will learn about evolution, these standards will make for bad science education because they elevate Darwin’s theory to a dogma that cannot be questioned. Even worse, some board members thought that they could rectify the dogmatic tone of the standards by calling evolution a "scientific theory." Some news articles are even calling this a "compromise." Those board members were tricked into a false compromise: inserting the word “scientific theory” before the word "evolution" is a meaningless and impotent change that will do absolutely nothing to actually inform students about the scientific problems with evolution.

Despite the fact that the meaningless words "scientific theory" were inserted into the standards, the standards still retain dogmatic language and reject the excellent suggestions of the Minority Report that would have required that “Students should learn why some scientists give scientific critiques of standard models of neo-Darwinian evolution or models of the chemical origin of life.” If the State Board of Education wanted to do it right, then they should have protected the academic freedom of teachers to teach students about both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

One good aspect of Florida's new standards is that their section on the Nature of Science states that students should “use critical and logical thinking, and the active consideration of alternative scientific explanations to explain all the data presented.” But as Mr. Fred Cutting, writing-committee member, wrote in the Minority Report, “Somewhat inexplicably, there is no indicator in the proposed standards that applies this philosophy of science education to biological origins.”

Unless Floridans now demand change, Florida’s biology classrooms will follow the dogmatism of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which recently published a booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, similarly proclaiming that “[t]here is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution” because “no new evidence is likely to alter” it. Contrary to what the NAS and the Florida Science Standards assert, there are fundamental questions among scientists about Darwinian evolution.

Darwin didn’t know how the cell worked, but modern biochemists have discovered our cells contain a micro-world of molecular machines that function like a factory, or a miniature city. Over 700 scientists have signed a statement agreeing that the integrated, organized complexity of life is not what we would expect from a random and unguided process like Darwinian evolution (see www.dissentfromdarwin.com). As biochemist Franklin Harold observed in an Oxford University Press monograph, "there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

Leading scientists also disagree with the NAS's claim that evolution is "a cornerstone of modern science.” In 2005, NAS member Philip Skell wrote in The Scientist that, “Darwinian evolution … does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists.” (For a further response to the NAS, see here.)

Sadly, academia is commonly intolerant of dissent from Darwinism. Consider the NAS's statement that "there is no scientific controversy" over evolution. Imagine you are a scientist with fundamental doubts about Darwinism and you see the top science organization in the USA asserting that your views don't exist.

Or imagine you are a Florida biology teacher who feels compelled to inform students about scientific dissent from Darwinism, but Florida's science standards dictate that you must praise evolution as “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology.”

Do these statements support academic freedom to express such dissenting views in the laboratory or the classroom? I think not.

This spring, a documentary will be released featuring Ben Stein entitled Expelled that recounts the stories of scientists who have experienced persecution of their academic freedom because they questioned evolution. One such scientist is Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist formerly at the Smithsonian with two Ph.D.’s in evolution who was harassed and intimidated because he is a skeptic of Neo-Darwinism. Another biologist lost her job at George Mason University because she challenged evolution in a classroom.

No wonder Darwinists confidently declare there is no debate over evolution: they shut down such debate and prevent it from taking place.

Sadly, the proposed Florida science standards stifle will free inquiry because they too censor any real scientific challenges to evolution.

Change is now necessary if Florida teachers are to be given the academic freedom to inform students about scientists who dissent from evolution. Let us hope that there are still smart people in Florida who want to teach evolution the correct way, and not implement meaningless "compromises" like calling it a "scientific theory."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

http://www.expelledthemovie.comFrom a press release issued by Biola University:

La Mirada, Calif. -- Ben Stein, known for his lead role in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day and his Comedy Central show Win Ben Stein’s Money, believes in liberty and truth. In recognition of this, Biola University’s masters in science and religion program will present him with the 2008 Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on March 27, a month before the release of his major controversial motion picture, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

In his new movie Expelled, Stein wonders whether humans were designed by an intelligent being or whether we were simply the result of an ancient natural accident. In his search for an answer, he discovers an elitist scientific establishment that punishes the scientific proponents of Intelligent Design because they reject some of the claims of Darwin’s theory of evolution. “Big science in this area of biology has lost its way,” says Stein. “Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science.”

In light of Stein’s contribution to the pursuit of liberty and truth, particularly as it relates to the field of Intelligent Design, he is being honored with the 2008 Johnson Award. The award ceremony will feature premiere clips from the forthcoming movie, the personal appearance of scientists who were expelled from their jobs because they are sympathetic to Intelligent Design, and will include a brief address by Stein.

Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California, established the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth in 2004 to honor legal scholar and Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, who was the award’s first recipient. The award recognizes Johnson’s pivotal role in advancing our understanding of design in the universe by opening up informed dissent to Darwinian and materialistic theories of evolution. British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, became the second recipient of this award in 2006 for his Socratic approach of “following the evidence where it leads” and abandoning atheism on account of design arguments.

Ben Stein is a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator. He has acted and made guest appearances in numerous movies, TV series, and TV commercials. His part as the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was recently ranked as one of the fifty most famous scenes in American film.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dogmatic materialist Dr. Steven Novella, assistant professor of neurology at Yale, president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society, and my interlocutor in an ongoing debate on the mind-brain problem, has issued a challenge to me regarding his theory that the mind is caused entirely by matter:

Prove me wrong, Egnor.

A bit of background helps explain Dr. Novella's pique. In an earlier post arguing for a pure materialist understanding of the mind, Dr. Novella made this astonishing claim:

The materialist hypothesis - that the brain causes consciousness - has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated. Every single question that can be answered scientifically - with observation and evidence - that takes the form: “If the brain causes the mind then…” has been resolved in favor of that hypothesis.

I noted:

A bit of advice: whenever a scientist says of his own theory that “every single prediction has been validated," you’re being had. No scientific theory has had "every single prediction" validated. All theories accord with evidence in some ways, and are inconsistent in others. Successful scientific theories prevail on the preponderance of the evidence, not validation of “every single prediction." Real science lacks the precision of ideology.

Dr. Novella replied:

This is one of those statements that seems reasonable on the surface, but with a bit of thought, and a modicum of scientific knowledge, we can see that it is just deceptive rhetoric.

Dr. Novella goes on with a rambling essay about his philosophy of science, the theory of relativity, intelligent design, the mind-brain problem, and of course, he points out my many personal and professional inadequacies. Ironically, he begins his discussion of his philosophy of science by insisting:

It is…historically true that many scientific theories have been validated “by every single” piece of evidence that bears upon the basic question of whether or not the theory is true. Let’s take special relativity, for example. Einstein proposed this theory in 1914, and his claim that space and time are relative makes a number of specific predictions. In the last almost-century every single prediction made by special relativity has been validated. There is not one observation that falsifies special relativity. (That would be big news if there were.) I guess Egnor thinks that all physicists are not “real” scientists and are just conning the public.

Einstein didn’t propose his theory of special relativity in 1914. He proposed it in June of 1905, in his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” in the journal Annalen de Physik. His theory was quite successful, yet it was inadequate and even wrong in quite a number of predictions, particularly in strong gravitational fields and in situations in which the velocity of a moving body was near the velocity of light. Some of the situations in which special relativity does not accurately predict experimental results include the dynamics of tachyons (unless tachyons cannot transmit information at superluminal speeds), non-relativistic equations of fluid dynamics such as the Navier Stokes equation, and Schrodinger’s equation.

Because of the problems with his theory, and its inability to account for "every single piece of evidence," Einstein spent the next decade revising his theory. In 1915 he published his general theory of relativity, which accounted for many of the deficiencies of his special theory in accelerated reference frames and in gravitational fields.

Yet even general relativity as Einstein formulated it in 1915 (which is probably the "1914" theory that Dr. Novella was referring to as "special relativity") wasn’t validated by "every single piece of evidence." Einstein’s original formulation of general relativity included the cosmological constant, inserted by Einstein into the tensor equations in order to yield steady-state predictions of the universe. The cosmological constant proved to be a major error, and a decade later Hubble found evidence for the redshift — evidence for an expanding universe and clear evidence that the cosmological constant was an error.

Even today, general relativity, which has been strongly supported in most ways by experimental evidence, is inconsistent with quantum mechanics, and gravitational singularities remain an open question in the theory. In fact, these problems with general relativity were the basis for most of Einstein’s work during the last 35 years of his life as he worked on a unified field theory. Problems with general relativity form the basis for much of modern research in physics and cosmology. Unlike Dr. Novella's claim for his own theory of materialist neuroscience, general relativity hasn’t been verified by "every single prediction."

No theory — not even a quite successful theory such as special or general relativity — is supported by every piece of evidence. In fact, the willingness to honestly confront inadequacies in scientific theories is how science makes progress. Einstein’s willingness to confront the inadequacies in Newtonian physics and Maxwell’s electrodynamics led to special relativity, and his willingness to confront the inadequacies in special relativity led to general relativity. Friedman’s and de Sitter's willingness to confront the problems raised by the theory of general relativity (particularly the cosmological constant) led to Hubble’s interpretation of the red shift and to Lemaitre’s Big Bang cosmology. Schwarz’s and others’ willingness in the 1970s to confront the inadequacies of general relativity and quantum mechanics has lead to string theory, and Witten’s dissatisfaction in the 1990’s with some aspects of string theory has led to M-theory.

Science progresses by incessant questioning of dogma. It is a fundamental maxim of good science: each scientist must be his own most relentless critic. None of these scientists claimed, as Dr. Novella does, that their theories were validated by “every single piece of evidence.” Note Dr. Novella’s implicit claim: his own strict materialist theory of the mind has greater empirical support (“every single prediction has been validated…”) than either special and general relativity, for which no physicist claims validation of every single prediction.

Dr. Novella’s blunder on the issue of special relativity and on the scientific lessons learned from early 20th century physics is revealing. In the midst of a quite technical debate on the mind-brain relationship, he didn’t even fact-check his most rudimentary scientific argument. He doesn’t even have a layman’s knowledge of the difference between the special and general theories of relativity, yet he confidently used them as examples of his philosophy of science. He can’t even get his own examples right. And ironically, the example he mangles — the evidence for special relativity — makes my point, not his.

No theory in science is validated by "every single piece of evidence," and any scientist who makes that claim is a charlatan.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 9:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

The January 2008 issue of Christianity Today contained a letter from Randy Isaac titled “Providence and Evolution.”

In his critique of Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion? [“The CT Review,” November], Logan Paul Gage fails to distinguish between scientific randomness and metaphysical randomness. By insisting that these two concepts are inextricably linked, Gage concludes that McGrath (and Francis Collins) maintain a position that precludes divine providence. Evolution is not a purely random process,

though as with all natural processes, there are underlying random events involved. But even if evolution were completely random, God’s action is not limited by randomness, just as human creative activity may involve random actions.

The Bible records several instances when God’s guiding action was expressed through the casting of lots. Does Gage have a better explanation than McGrath and Collins have provided for how God carries out his sovereignty through means that appear to us as scientifically random? Randy Isaac Executive Director, American Scientific Affiliation Ipswich, Massachusetts

Back to randomness. I think Isaac’s distinction unhelpful. Consider Isaac’s own example: Does he really want to hold that the apostles’ casting of lots was physically random but metaphysically determined? What would that even mean? Would it mean that the physical lot could have physically gone to anyone?

While defending true randomness at first ("even if evolution were completely random, God’s action is not limited by randomness"), later Isaac avoids contradiction by claiming that the random mutations of neo-Darwinian theory are not truly random but rather only appear so from our limited vantage point. But notice that he had to abandon orthodox evolutionary theory to keep intelligent guidance. Thus, he unknowingly accepts my point and abandons his early distinction.

Isaac would better serve his Christian community by being clear that in claiming that mutations only appear random, he denies neo-Darwinism. He is still an evolutionist, but of a very different sort than the neo-Darwinists who dominate our universities.

If Isaac actually thinks an intelligent being can guide randomness, then it is up to HIM to explain how that works—not the other way around. I have claimed that it is impossible. Providence can certainly reign over random events; and Providence can certainly know the outcome of future contingents; but all that is different from saying that Providence can guide truly random events.

“Even if evolution were completely random, God’s action is not limited by randomness,” wrote Isaac. While this may sound like he is coming to God’s defense, this is like saying that God is not limited by square circles. Providence is, of course, not limited by these things because they are contradictions, and hence they do not exist.

As for having a better explanation than Collins and McGrath as to how Providence interacts with randomness, yes, I do. When intelligent beings direct events, the events are not random either physically or metaphysically, and thus the agency is potentially detectable. And events that appear random may or may not actually be random. They cannot be both random and non-random at once.

As far as I know, Collins and McGrath don’t offer ANY such explanation as to how an intelligent being could guide random events. Collins’s The Language of God argues for neo-Darwinism and then slaps God on top without telling us what is left for Him to do. And while I have only read a few of McGrath’s numerous tomes, I have yet to find any detail as to how an event could be truly random and guided at the same time. Because I think such an explanation is impossible, I am not holding my breath.

Posted by Logan Gage at 8:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the recently published booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism, the National Academy of Sciences claims that science must be limited to naturalistic explanations:

In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. (p. 10)

Like the creationist who mandates a particular interpretation of the scientific evidence (according to scripture), the evolutionist also mandates a particular interpretation of the scientific evidence (according to naturalism). All explanations must be thoroughly and completely naturalistic, no matter how contorted those explanations become.

We could find a code buried in our cells, but for evolutionists only naturalistic causes can be considered. And so all scientific evidence is interpreted according to this restriction —one way or another, the evidence is force-fitted to the pre-existing framework. Consequently, evolutionary theory is highly speculative.

For instance, how did life evolve? The booklet explains that there are no consensus hypotheses for this remarkable event, and that evolutionists are searching a variety of ideas. "Researchers have shown how this process might have worked," write the authors. For "if a molecule … could reproduce … perhaps with the assistance … it could form … if such self-replicators … they might have formed … could lead to variants" and so forth. (p. 22) The evidence for the origin of life is packed with question marks.

Obviously, we do not have strong evidence that the highly complex cell arose on its own, and the booklet admits that
"[c]onstructing a plausible hypothesis of life’s origins will require that many questions be answered. Scientists who study the origin of life do not yet know which sets of chemicals could have begun replicating themselves." As if realizing that this hardly constitutes "compelling" evidence for the "fact" of evolution, the authors conclude this section with a nod toward the future:

The history of science shows that even very difficult questions such as how life originated may become amenable to solution as a result of advances in theory, the development of new instrumentation, and the discovery of new facts. (p. 22)

This unfortunately is characteristic of how the National Academy of Sciences informs the reader of the biological evidence for evolution. While some legitimate evidences are presented, the booklet repeatedly presents speculations and interpretations according to the theory as strong evidences for the theory. And it consistently ignores the many negative evidences. An informed reader can easily see the evidences fail to demonstrate that evolution is a well supported theory, much less that it is a fact. But unfortunately, many readers may be influenced by the authority of the National Academy of Sciences and erroneously conclude that the evidence must support the booklet's triumphant claims.

Posted by Cornelius Hunter at 9:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwin Day is finally here, which means the second annual Darwin Day broadcast is now available online at ID the Future. The video “Proselytzing for Darwin’s God” presents the outrageous story of evolution activists who are inviting theologians into public schools. After years of accusing Darwin’s critics of trying to bring religion into science class, this willingness to undermine the separation of church and state is hypocritical to the core.

Click on image to watch the video.

Dr. West further explains these latest efforts in an article published today, “Darwin Day and the New Campaign to Inject Religion into Public Schools”:

As schools and museums celebrate the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday today, a new push is being made to inject religion into the nation’s science classrooms.

But it’s not coming from those you might think.

After years of accusing Darwin’s critics of trying to insert religion into biology classes on the sly, leading defenders of evolution are now campaigning to incorporate religion explicitly into classroom lessons on evolution.

Earlier this month, John West spoke at the Heritage Foundation on “The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.”

Scientific materialism--the claim that everything in the uni¬verse can be fully explained by science as the prod¬ucts of unintelligent matter and energy--has become the operating assumption for much of American politics and culture. We are repeatedly told today that our behaviors, our emotions, even our moral and religious longings are reducible to some combination of physical processes interacting with our environment.

In 1943, British writer C. S. Lewis wrote prophetically about the dangers of scientific materialism in a small, penetrating volume titled The Abolition of Man. There Lewis warned that "if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite...in the person of his dehumanized Conditioners."

Continue reading here.

As a special Darwin Day treat, we’ve included links to the greatest hits of Darwin Days past:

Happy Darwin Day!
Celebrating Mankind's Discovery of Eugenics
By David Klinghoffer

The Gospel According to Darwin
There is scant reporting on the anti-religious zeal with which many atheists promote Darwinism
By John West

Beware of Darwin Day
By Anika Smith

Video of last year's Darwin Day lecture:
Darwin Day and the Deification of Charles Darwin, Part One
Darwin Day and the Deification of Charles Darwin, Part Two

Posted by Anika Smith at 3:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As schools and museums celebrate the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday today, a new push is being made to inject religion into the nation’s science classrooms.

But it’s not coming from those you might think.

After years of accusing Darwin’s critics of trying to insert religion into biology classes on the sly, leading defenders of evolution are now campaigning to incorporate religion explicitly into classroom lessons on evolution.

Eugenie Scott, head of the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education, recommends having biology students read statements endorsing evolution by theologians. She further suggests assigning the students to interview ministers about their views on evolution— but not if the community is “conservative Christian,” because then the intended lesson that “Evolution is OK!” might be undermined.

According to biologist Kenneth Miller, science teachers around the nation are already using his book Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution to convince students that evolution and religious faith are compatible.

Ironically, Miller served as an expert witness in the Dover, Pennsylvania intelligent design trial, testifying on behalf of those who wanted intelligent design banished from schools because they thought it was religion in disguise. But Miller apparently has no problem with the overt use of religion in the classroom to endorse evolution.

An educational website called “Understanding Evolution,” meanwhile, encourages teachers to debunk the “misconception” among students that evolution is incompatible with religion. Funded by more than a half-million in tax dollars from the National Science Foundation, the website directs teachers to dozens of statements endorsing evolution by various religious groups, including a declaration that “modern evolutionary theory… is in no way at odds with our belief in a Creator God, or in the revelation and presence of that God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

While there are good secular reasons for teaching students about the science of evolution, taxpayers might wonder what business it is of the government to persuade their children that evolution comports with “the revelation and presence of… God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

The new efforts to use religion to promote evolution in the schools don’t even come close to following Supreme Court precedents on the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Imagine the outcry that would ensue if the critics of Darwin’s theory proposed using religion to denounce evolution in biology classes? How long would it take before the ACLU was on the scene?

Yet support for the use of religion to promote evolution in schools seems to be spreading.

Last fall, in conjunction with a highly-touted “docudrama” attacking intelligent design, PBS distributed a briefing packet to educators across the country that made a point of including statements endorsing evolution by Jewish and Christian groups.

In January, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on evolution for teachers, school board members, and others that similarly spent several pages trying to convince readers that good religion supports evolution.

Public schools are certainly allowed to hold objective discussions of competing religious explanations in relevant courses. But that is not what the defenders of evolution are advocating. They are pushing one-sided religious propaganda with the clear intent of changing the spiritual beliefs of students.

Notably, groups like the ACLU that typically champion the separation of church and state have been AWOL when it comes to the classroom promotion of religion by evolutionists. Apparently, religious indoctrination in science classes is okay so long as religion is used to endorse Darwin’s theory.

The hypocrisy of the situation is blatant, but then again, so is the cynicism.

Many of the advocates of using religion to promote evolution in the classroom turn out to be atheists or agnostics. Eugenie Scott, for example, is a signer of a document called the “Humanist Manifesto III” that proclaims the “finality of death” and calls for “a progressive philosophy of life… without supernaturalism.” The biologists of the National Academy of Sciences hold similar views—nearly 95% of them classify themselves as atheists or agnostics according to a 1998 survey.

Even the theists among evolution proponents tend to be less friendly to traditional religion than one might think. Biologist Kenneth Miller, who is usually cited as a traditional Roman Catholic by the news media, insists that evolution is an “undirected” process and that the development of human beings was “an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out.”

Regardless of which religious view of evolution is correct, the question is why science classes should be dealing with this issue at all. Do we really want to turn public school science classes into a Darwinian version of Sunday School?

Evolution defenders frequently complain that Darwin’s theory is under attack from people of faith, and perhaps they feel religious instruction is a way to defuse that threat. If so, they are tone-deaf.

If they think some religious people are offended by evolution now, just wait until more teachers start proselytizing for Darwinian theology in the classroom.

We have religious liberty for a reason. Let’s hope evolution proponents recognize that fact before they inspire yet another needless round of polarization in the public schools. For more information about the Darwinists' push to inject religion in the classroom, check out chapter 10 of my new book Darwin Day in America.

Posted by John West at 6:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every so often there's a report about teachers who are under pressure not to teach evolution. With Darwin's day nearly upon us (have you finished all your shopping?) and the debate over how to teach evolution at a tipping point in Florida, here it comes again.

This article makes many, many assertions without ever giving any real hard data to support the claims that 1) teachers don’t teach evolution, and 2) they skip it because they are afraid.

The closest they come up with are NSTA polls from 2005, which I reported about then. Then, like now, the results are cleverly communicated with misplaced emphasis to imply that teachers are under overwhelming pressure to not teach evolution. It just isn't so. Here they report that, according to the poll, 31% feel pressured to avoid teaching evolution or to include other theories. What they don’t report is that the vast majority, more than 2-to-1, 69% don't feel pressured to teach other theories.

As I pointed out originally, usually, a newspaper leads with the majority numbers when a survey is reported. Most people tend to want to know what the prevailing opinion is. The news in a poll is almost always what the majority is, unless the minority view is so incredibly surprising as to warrant a headline of its own. These polls aren’t that.

Regardless, in Florida there is no hard data at all, only anecdotal comments and second hand hearsay.

Once, when he and another teacher were coordinating lesson plans, they got to the part on evolution and she said, "I'm going to skip that one," Campbell said. Baylor, the teacher at Palm Harbor Middle, said she knows of two teachers who have avoided evolution because they're unsure how parents will react.

Articles like this make an issue out of a non-issue. They are distracting readers from what the real debate is about. When teachers present evolution, should they present the only the evidence that supports the theory? Or, should they present both the evidence that supports the theory and that which challenges it?

Why won't newspapers deal with that central issue?

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Way back when Evolution News & Views was launched in 2005, Rob Crowther pointed out that "there’s nobody else in the blogosphere right now holding the media accountable for how the debate over evolution is reported.” Thankfully, things have changed since then — just take a look at the latest from Salvo Magazine's blog, "The Media and Evolution," where Bobby Maddox takes on the latest issue of Wired magazine:

Having just completed Salvo 4 on intelligent design, I have been thinking a lot lately about how evolution is presented to the public by the popular media. Most typically, it comes in the form of off-hand comments in articles or columns on topics that have little or nothing to do with evolution itself. These pieces affirm Darwinism in passing, as though the matter has been fully settled—is as proven as gravity—and only a scientific Neanderthal would disagree.

Maddox takes one paragraph from the story as his example and gives an entertaining critique worth reading, including this telling note:

8. "Half of all Americans don't believe in evolution": Actually, only 13% of Americans believe in evolution by blind material causes, so this is just a lie. And perhaps the reason for this has less to do with our feeling threatened by evolution than by articles that make a lot of claims about evolution without backing them up.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Anika Smith at 7:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Atheist-materialist Dr. Steven Novella is confident: all of our experiences and awareness arise from brain matter. There is no soul, no immaterial mind, separate from the brain itself. According to Dr. Novella, a neurologist at Yale, the debate is over, and all that is left to do is to eradicate a few stubborn pockets of resistance to the theory that the mind is merely a secretion of the brain, just as bile is a secretion of the liver. Dr. Novella declares:

The materialist hypothesis— that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated.

A bit of advice: whenever a scientist says of his own theory that “every single prediction has been validated’, you’re being had. No scientific theory has had ‘every single prediction’ validated. All theories accord with evidence in some ways, and are inconsistent in others. Successful scientific theories prevail on the preponderance of the evidence, not validation of “every single prediction”. Real science lacks the precision of ideology.

Both dualists and materialists recognize that matter influences the mind. Wine affects dualists just as it does materialists. The difference in viewpoint is this: dualists propose that the mind is in part caused by matter, and in part caused by something else. Mental causation is dual. Materialists believe that the mind is entirely caused by matter. There is nothing else.

Who's right? We don't know for sure, but over the past century we've learned an enormous amount about the brain, and we've come to see that the materialistic model of the mind has enormous evidentiary problems. The materialist theory makes quite a number of predictions that Dr. Novella elides. An example will suffice:

Dr. Novella assets that

"Every single question that can be answered scientifically - with observation and evidence...has been resolved in favor of that hypothesis [strict materialism]"

No. It is true that over the past century we have studied the electrochemistry, neuroanatomy, and molecular biology of the brain in remarkable detail, and our modern fund of knowledge of brain structure and function, even down to the molecular level, is vast. What is genuinely remarkable is what hasn't been found, and it's a real problem for materialism.

Consider this: if the mind arises entirely from the brain, materialism predicts that there must be a specific material cause for each mental state. That is, a specific mental state must be a specific brain state, nothing more or less. For example, if I am thinking “the White House is in Washington, D.C.”, there must be a specific arrangement of molecules and neurons and action potentials in my brain that are the thought itself. In the materialistic paradigm, please understand, matter doesn’t just correlate with the thought; matter is the thought. Materialism is the proposition that all things are material, including thoughts. Every time I think “the White House is in Washington D.C.”, there must exist in my brain that exact configuration of matter: 2,433 neurons with x concentration of acetylcholine located in 87,456 dendrites arrayed in a discrete geometrical pattern with action potentials precisely defined. That exact configuration is the thought. If I had a different configuration of matter— any difference— I would have a different thought. If each mental state is a brain state, then this reduction must hold for every thought. This is a straightforward prediction of materialism.

We have a vast knowledge of neuroscience. Yet what is the scientific evidence supporting this most fundamental prediction of materialism— that every thought is reducible at the molecular level to a discrete and unique brain state? There isn't a shred of evidence that any discrete mental state— any specific thought— can be reduced at the molecular level to a unique material brain state. Not a shred.

The materialistic hypothesis creates even more problems. Imagine that Dr. Novella and I are both simultaneously thinking “the White House is in Washington, D.C.”. Do we both simultaneously have exactly the same brain state, defined in terms as acetylcholine, dendrites, etc.? If the thought “the White House is in Washington, D.C.” is entirely a material state of the brain, do we all have exactly the same state in our different brains when we think the same thought? No two human brains are identical. If thoughts are merely brain states, and completely reducible to them, how can identical thoughts arise in different brains?

It will do no good for Dr. Novella to fudge. He might say ‘mind states are emergent properties of matter, yet they are not rigidly linked to measurable properties of matter'. 'Emergence' is a popular materialist circumlocution. If you're a materialist, and you don't have a clue how something happens, assert (confidently) that it's an 'emergent' property of matter. A nice way to deflect the hard questions. Yet 'emergence' really offers materialists no refuge from the hard questions in the mind-brain problem. This is why: if each mind state were emergent, and not merely identical with a material state of the brain, then each mind state would be defined in part by something other than the brain. Thoughts would arise from something in addition to matter. That’s a dualist position.

So what’s Dr. Novella’s evidence that each thought is completely reducible to one discrete molecular state of the brain? Not a shred. Dr. Novella can’t give even one rigorous scientific description of a mental state— a thought— in terms of a molecular brain state.

In fact, the inability to find a unique material cause adequate to completely account for each mental state is a fundamental prediction of dualism. In neuroscience, dualism is holding up quite well. Despite astonishing advances in neurobiology, not one unique material cause of a discrete mental state has been found.

So much for materialism's “every single prediction…”

Posted by Michael Egnor at 7:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Should scientists who believe the universe is the product of intelligent design be fired? Should science teachers who tell students about evidence that challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution be reprimanded? Should students who want to explore both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution be discouraged from doing so? If you answered no to these questions, click here and sign the Academic Freedom Petition.

If you answered yes, then keep reading and hopefully you will change your mind.

Just this morning astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez had his appeal for tenure at Iowa State University denied by the university’s board of regents. He was denied tenure for committing a thought crime. He thought intelligent design was something a scientist could research without fear of losing his job.

America is supposed to believe in free speech, but on the issues of evolution and intelligent design right now, there is precious little freedom of discussion. This is the key reason we started Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture more than ten years ago. And it is the central point of the new film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

And protecting academic freedom and free speech is why Discovery Institute is helping to sponsor the Academic Freedom Petition at www.academicfreedompetition.com.

Academic Freedom is under attack in America. Right now, state science standards are being twisted by Darwinian activists to dogmatically rule that only the evidence supporting Darwinism can be presented in science classes across the country, and teachers are being pressured to not teach students that there is scientific evidence that challenges Darwin’s theory. Scientists in state universities are losing their jobs for dissenting from Darwinism or researching intelligent design.

A new website, AcademicFreedomPetition.com, has been launched to support the rights of teachers and students to learn all about evolution, and to protect the freedom of scientists to research alternative scientific theories such as intelligent design. Supporters of academic freedom can go to www.academicfreedompetition.com to sign the Academic Freedom Petition and stand up for science.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Board of Regents of the State of Iowa has denied the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU). Dr. Gonzalez’s appeal has been ongoing since the summer of 2007, when he was first denied tenure by ISU.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Board of Regents refused to give Dr. Gonzalez a fair hearing in his appeal,” said Gonzalez’s attorney Chuck Hurley. “They say in Iowa that academic freedom is supposed to be the ‘foundation of the university.’ That foundation is cracked.”

ISU has consistently maintained that Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure denial has nothing to do with intelligent design (ID). But secret e-mails exchanged by ISU faculty who voted against his tenure and statements in Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure file showed that intelligent design was the overriding factor in his tenure denial. The Board of Regents refused to admit much of this evidence into the record in Dr. Gonzalez’s appeal.

“The Board of Regents would not allow into the record extensive e-mail documentation showing that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure not due to his academic record, but because he supports intelligent design,” said Casey Luskin, Program Officer in Public Policy and Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute, where Gonzalez is a senior fellow. “Then the Board refused to grant Dr. Gonzalez the right to be heard through oral arguments. Does it come as any surprise that now they denied his appeal?”

“They’ve denied his due process rights throughout this entire appeal,” Luskin continued. “This kangaroo court decided its verdict long before today’s deliberations even began.”

“The most disheartening part of this appeal is that they refused Dr. Gonzalez the opportunity to present his case fully to the Board and to have face-to-face contact with the Board through oral arguments,” said Chuck Hurley.

“The Board of Regents had an opportunity to give justice to an outstanding scientist who is a leader in his field,” Luskin concluded. “Instead, they caved in to political pressure and threw academic freedom to the wind.”

Posted by Anika Smith at 10:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ed: Dr. Simmons sent us the post below, asking us to publish it in response to ongoing discussions of his recent debate with Dr. Myers.

Against Stupidity, God Himself Is Helpless — Old Jewish Proverb

Before the recent KKMS (MN radio) debate, Dr. P.Z. Myers blogged on Pharyngula that he would decimate me. Within minutes of the show’s conclusion, he blogged that he accomplished his goal, never conceding a single point from an hour long show. It is worth one’s while to read his blogs and those that follow as they readily speak to the character of these folks, much moreso than I could ever do. Richard Dawkins was also quick to compliment the professor and add to the feeding frenzy. Again, no concessions. They had their hearing aids turned off before the show even started.

Other than winning points for outright rudeness and making up fiction, what part of the debate did this tax-paid professor win? Could it be the five or so fossil pieces from dog-size animals that represent intermediate species between land animals and the quadrillion-cell whale with unexplained tons of blubber, communication skills that span thousands of miles, a windpipe separate from the esophagus (unheard of in land animals), segmental decompression, a heart the size of a Volkswagon, ability to dive thousands of meters deep or eat a krill diet? Or, was it the fact that a sperm and egg cell can unite to form a 10-75 trillion cell human being without going through 10-75 trillion trial and errors? Perhaps it was my misunderstanding of their ways of critiquing the theory of evolution? To me, it’s like having your brother correct your homework. Lastly, where is the rule that says one has to have an alternative and provable explanation for the origin of life before one can criticise Darwinian thought? Cannot a child point to the leaks in a dam and warn people of an impending flood without any knowledge about dam construction? Their rule, this requirement, doesn’t exist.

— Geoffrey Simmons, M.D.
Author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links

Posted by Anika Smith at 7:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In Part 1 I discussed the eminent and late origin of life theorist Leslie Orgel's criticisms of theories that self-sustaining metabolic pathways could spontaneously come into existence on the early earth and evolve into life. Orgel's was skeptical that this could occur because "the chance of a full set of such catalysts occurring at a single locality on the primitive Earth in the absence of catalysts for disruptive side reactions seems remote in the extreme." Indeed, according to Orgel, the type of complexity we normally find in the metabolic pathways of life require "a skilled synthetic chemist." But what if we assume that such pathways could come into existence? Even if such pathways existed, they would still be far from life as we know it, for they would somehow have to evolve into DNA-based life. Orgel thus also takes aim at the claim that such metabolic pathways can evolve into molecules carrying genetic information. As usual, the problem is that these vague explanations fail to account for the origin of the "information content" in life:

Genetic materials are then seen as late additions to already fairly complex evolved life forms. According to this view, a genetic material merely adds stability to systems that already have a substantial “information content.” It is not easy to translate these intuitions into schemes that can be examined critically, but I will try.

(Leslie E. Orgel, "The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth," PLOS Biology (January 2008, Volume 6(1):e18).)

Given the difficulty of finding an ensemble of catalysts that are sufficiently specific to enable the original cycle, it is hard to see how one could hope to find an ensemble capable of enabling two or more.

The lack of a supporting background in chemistry is even more evident in proposals that metabolic cycles can evolve to “life-like” complexity. The most serious challenge to proponents of metabolic cycle theories—the problems presented by the lack of specificity of most nonenzymatic catalysts—has, in general, not been appreciated. If it has, it has been ignored. Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own.

(Leslie E. Orgel, "The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth," PLOS Biology (January 2008, Volume 6(1):e18).)

At the beginning of this series I recounted that last year, Robert Shapiro, critiqued various origin of life scenarios, but proposed metabolic pathways as an alternative explanation of the source of life. Now the eminent origin of life theorist Leslie Orgel has posthumously shown that such explanations are presently found wanting. Different hypotheses are being tossed about by different scientists, but scientists are finding great deficiencies with each of these various hypotheses. In my view, perhaps the problem for all of these hypotheses is that life did not originate via blind chemical processes, because the language-based specified and complex information contained in DNA is precisely the type of code or language that, Stephen C. Meyer recognizes, “invariably originate[s] from an intelligent source, from a mind or personal agent.”

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As the debate over the science standards in Florida gets interesting, the Florida Baptist Witness just published an editorial by James A. Smith Sr. which sees the situation for what it is:

In spite of growing concern and opposition, Florida education leaders are on the brink of requiring an evolution-as-dogma approach to teaching origins in public schools in the Sunshine State.

Posted by Anika Smith at 10:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Rob Crowther recently discussed the fact that the proposed Florida Science Standards take an extremely dogmatic approach towards evolution education. The proposed standards assert that evolution is “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology,” and they claim that it “is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.” There are no mention of any scientific problems with neo-Darwinism anywhere in Florida’s proposed standards. Notwithstanding the extremely well-organized efforts of the Darwin-only contingent in Florida, Fred Cutting, a member of the Framing Committee for Florida’s science standards, has written and submitted a Minority Report to the State Board of Education that would introduce objectivity into the evolution curriculum.

Some time ago, Mr. Cutting inquired with us for information about solid evolution education, and we were happy to supply it, along with input on his draft Minority Report. Mr. Cutting has submitted an excellent proposal, which we hope will be considered seriously by members of the Florida State Board of Education. (By the way, we constantly receive inquiries from students, teachers, school board members, and other educators from all around the United States who want information about how they can teach evolution in a more objective fashion, and we help out whenever we can. If you need information or suggestions about supporting a teach-the-controversy approach in your own state or school district, feel free to contact us at cscinfo@discovery.org.)

It's important to highlight that the Minority Report filed by Mr. Cutting does not require the teaching of any alternatives to evolution, like intelligent design. One revealing aspect of Florida''s proposed standards is that their section on the Nature of Science states that students should “use critical and logical thinking, and the active consideration of alternative scientific explanations to explain all the data presented.” As Mr. Cutting writes in the Minority Report, “Somewhat inexplicably, there is no indicator in the proposed standards that applies this philosophy of science education to biological origins.”

Cutting's Minority Report further warns that “If Florida students are to remain competitive in science, students need to see how scientists debate important topics, such as Darwinian evolution or the chemical origin of life. “ The Minority Report thus proposes, the following:

“Students should learn why some scientists give scientific critiques of standard models of neo-Darwinian evolution or models of the chemical origin of life.”

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

The Florida state board of education is expected to adopt science standards later this month that will finally include the word evolution. The standards also include language calling for students to learn the argumentation of science and to examine all the data presented in order to learn critical thinking skills. This, too, is a good thing. But what if all the date isn't presented? What if only one side of the issue is presented? Then instead of students learning to critically analyze, they are simply getting a one-sided view of the subject. This is what happens all too often when biological evolution is presented. Students learn about evidence supporting Darwinian evolution, but seldom learn about any of the evidence that challenges it.

Interestingly, in Florida Darwinian activists have crowed long and loud about attempts to insert intelligent design into the state science standards and to teach the theory in science classes. Although no one has proposed teaching intelligent design, and no one has suggested inserting anything about intelligent design into the standards, the Darwinists continue to falsely claim this is what is going on. (Not unlike Texas — do we see a new strategy developing?)

Today the Tallahassee Democrat published a short op-ed by one of the members of the committee that developed the new state standards, who is now submitting a minority report. He makes it very clear that intelligent design is not what is at issue, but rather teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

As a member of the Framers' Committee, I am submitting a minority report suggesting that the following language be adopted into Florida's science standards:

"Students should learn why some scientists give scientific critiques of standard models of neo-Darwinian evolution or models of the chemical origin of life."

I oppose including religion in the science classroom, and this proposal in no way brings religion into the science classroom. There are serious scientific critiques of neo-Darwinism that deserve to be heard by students. This is a scientific debate, not a religious one.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last year I blogged about Robert Shapiro's excellent article in Scientific American that gave cogent critiques of many standard models of the chemical origin of life. Shapiro critiqued the view that a primordial soup existed on the early earth that ultimately gave birth to a self-replicating molecule, which eventually evolved into RNA and then DNA. After critiquing this standard model, Shapiro gave his alternative explanation, proposing that life evolved from metabolic pathways that naturally occurred on the early earth. As I wrote at that time, Shapiro "gives scant explanation for how these life-like metabolic networks can come into existence naturally, and he gives no details as to how these thermodynamic states produce real life—life as we know it today."

Now Leslie Orgel, the eminent and late origin of life chemist has published (posthumously) a direct critique of Shapiro-like hypotheses which claim that life arose through metabolic pathways.

Orgel is no proponent of intelligent design. In fact, the purpose of his paper is to offer sage advice to those seeking to explain the origin of life via evolving metabolic pathways. As this 2-part blog series will show, Orgel clearly states that many new breakthroughs must be necessary before such origin of life theories are to be plausible.

Orgel recounts many obstacles to the spontaneous formation of metabolic pathways (also called "cycles") on the early earth. He observes that such cycles "must be evaluated in terms of the efficiencies and specificities that would be required of its hypothetical catalysts in order for the cycle to persist." In other words, Orgel inherently assumes there are irreducible thresholds of reactivity and numbers of catalysts that must be crossed in order for these metabolic pathways to exist.

But even according to Orgel, simply having such metabolic pathways is not enough, for "the identification of a cycle of plausible prebiotic reactions is a necessary but not a sufficient step toward the formulation of a plausible self-organizing prebiotic cycle. The next, and more difficult step, is justifying the exclusion of side reactions that would disrupt the cycle." Again, Orgel essentially assumes that cyclic metabolic pathways are irreducibly complex systems that require a large number of parts in order to function—including parts that allow them to avoid many side pathways that will disrupt the cycle. In Orgel's view, it is not plausible to contend that such complex systems, with all of their numerous required components, would simultaneously come into existence:

At the very least, six different catalytic activities would have been needed to complete the reverse citric acid cycle. It could be argued, but with questionable plausibility, that different sites on the primitive Earth offered an enormous combinatorial library of mineral assemblies, and that among them a collection of the six or more required catalysts could have coexisted.

(Leslie E. Orgel, "The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth," PLOS Biology (January 2008, Volume 6(1):e18).)

It is likely that such catalysts could be constructed by a skilled synthetic chemist, but questionable that they could be found among naturally occurring minerals or prebiotic organic molecules. ... It is not completely impossible that sufficiently specific mineral catalysts exist for each of the reactions of the reverse citric acid cycle, but the chance of a full set of such catalysts occurring at a single locality on the primitive Earth in the absence of catalysts for disruptive side reactions seems remote in the extreme. Lack of specificity rather than inadequate efficiency may be the predominant barrier to the existence of complex autocatalytic cycles of almost any kind.

Here are the facts of this situation:
(1) On Feb. 3, I posted this blog post. A co-worker had recommended that I include a graphic that said this was discussing peer-reviewed research. At the time, I had not seen ResearchBlogging.org and I was unaware of the fact that they requested registration in order to use their graphic. Important note: It should be clear that when I first posted my post, I had not yet seen ResearchBlogging.org and was unaware of how it worked.

(2) On Feb. 4, I became aware of the fact that ResearchBlogging.org requested registration to use their graphic, and I immediately attempted to register with ResearchBlogging.org so that I would not be in violation of their rules. In fact, I tried to register twice because when I submitted the registration request, I was directed to a page that looked something like garbled code. I tried a second time, and the same thing happened. So it wasn't clear to me if the registration process was working properly. I then submitted an inquiry to ResearchBlogging.org wondering if they could correct the problem. I asked them for guidance, requesting direction for how I should proceed in this situation.

(3) On Feb. 5, I received a response from Dave Munger from ResearchBlogging.org, and his response, among other things, directed me to this discussion page which stated that the graphic I originally used was copyrighted by them. At the time that I posted my post, I was not aware that the graphic I had used was owned by ResearchBlogging.org. Mr. Munger in fact never requested that I remove their graphic, and in fact I believe the rules are ambiguous, making it seem that it is possible that the graphic I used may be used while one is seeking an application with Researchblogging.org. Nevertheless, I never had any intention of violating anyone's copyright, and so I as soon as I saw this thread, I removed their graphic from this page and the EvolutionNews.org server at my own choice.

(4) In the response from ResearchBlogging.org, Mr. Munger also told me that, (a) they did indeed receive my registration requests, (b) registration requests were granted at their discretion, and (c) a discussion thread was taking place about whether I should be granted registration. I was told that, "At present, after 26 comments, the consensus appears to be that your post is in violation of our guidelines. If you believe your post does meet our guidelines, I would encourage you to post your explanation in the discussion there." The conclusion was therefore: "We can't approve your registration at this time because your post does not appear to follow our guidelines, but if you can show us either that your post does now follow the guidelines, or if you can append the post itself so that it follows the guidelines, then we'll proceed with approving your registration."

(5) On Feb. 5th, after receiving Mr. Munger's e-mail, I replied back to Mr. Munger cordially and told him that "I will post one comment at ResearchBlogging.org to clarify the facts of this situation, and state my position." Also on Feb 5th, I posted the following comment at ResearchBlogging.org to state my position on this matter:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Let me say that this website--which I just discovered yesterday--is both fascinating and useful. A wide variety of scientific topics are apparently discussed, ranging from science of the mind to cancer and disease research, to geology to evolution. I will most certainly revisit this site in the future, if for no other reason than the fact that it's a great way to stay informed about new scientific developments.

Second, I want to state upfront that I have no ill will towards anyone on this thread. But it saddens me that from the very first post on this thread and others, people were directing users to pages that made unjustified personal attacks against me (there are various examples on this thread, but here are two: "Casey Lying For Christ" and another user even linked a URL where people can talk about "about how terrible Luskin is"). People commonly make unjustified personal attacks against me, and my response is not to get mad or even get upset. Rather, my response is that it is to feel that this kind of behavior is saddening because it does damage to what might otherwise be a fruitful, friendly, and objective scientific debate. Regardless, I absolutely refuse to respond in kind as I do not make personal attacks against other people. That is my personal ethic, and though I am not perfect, I try to live up to it.

I am thus faced with two conflicting desires here: I have no desire to involve myself in a discussion that allows personal attacks, even allowing further personal attacks after warnings from the moderator, who is apparently permitting such personal attacks to stand. Nonetheless, I do desire to honor Mr. Munger's invitation to make a comment here and his attempt to keep the conversation focused away from personal attacks. My compromise is that I will make one, and only one comment. If people want to continue to make personal attacks, cite irrelevant issues like the Wedge Document, etc., so be it. I'm not here to engage in personal attacks.

I frequently discuss peer-reviewed research related to evolution at www.evolutionnews.org. In fact, when I posted my post at EvolutionNews, that's all I thought I was doing--I had no idea that rules, including copyright issues, existed for using the graphic nor did I have any idea that by using the graphic, I would be accused of breaking rules. Given my ignorance prior to using the graphic, I would not necessarily expect my post to conform to rules that I wasn't even aware of when I posted my post. Nonetheless, I believe that my post does not break any of the 9 rules. Here's why:

It satisfies Rules #1 and #2: Dr. Orgel’s paper was clearly a respectable "armchair theorizing" paper by an eminent chemist in a mainstream biology journal that represented his views after a lifetime of prestigiously-funded research. It was reviewed and edited by another eminent chemist from the same field, Gerald Joyce. Thus, the paper states: "This manuscript was completed by the author in September 2007. Gerald Joyce provided comments to the author on earlier versions of the manuscript and edited the final version, which was submitted posthumously. The author received longtime research support from the NASA Exobiology Program and benefited from many helpful discussions with Albert Eschenmoser."

It satisfies Rules #3, #6, and #7: My post provided the complete formal citation in my post, and I also linked back to the original source. The post also contained original material that I wrote. These are black-and-white questions. Some people concede that I satisfied these. But the fact that some people have claimed that I did not satisfy a single rule makes me wonder about the fairness of some of the analyses presented here.

It does not break Rules #8 or #9: There is also the issue of my using the ResearchBlogging.org graphic. As I mentioned earlier, not having visited ResearchBlogging.org at the time I posted my post, at that time I was unaware that there was anything wrong with my using the graphic. However, I now have learned that ResearchBlogging.org has certain rules for using the graphic. Apart from using the graphic before registering (something I did not know I was supposed to do when I posted my post, but I tried to register as soon as I learned of the rules), I do not believe I have violated any of the rules: Even though Dave Munger never asked me to do so, I've removed the graphic from my post. Moreover, rule #9 indicates that a single instance of breaking a rule (in my case, unknowingly) does not warrant expulsion from ResearchBlogging.org. (Rule #8 is simply a rule stating that users may report abuses, and is not violable.)

It satisfies Rules #4 and #5: Many people on this thread have said that these rules represent the key issues. One would expect that therefore this would be the focus of the discussion. But it wasn't. Only 3 of the 30 posts here actually quoted my article, or discussed it in any meaningful way, to allege, using direct evidence, that I made any errors or misunderstood anything. Here are those posts with my response:

Post # 9: Claims I was wrong to state, “Again, Orgel essentially assumes that cyclic metabolic pathways are irreducibly complex systems that require a large number of parts in order to function”

My response: My comment is not mistaken. For example, Orgel states, "At the very least, six different catalytic activities would have been needed to complete the reverse citric acid cycle. It could be argued, but with questionable plausibility, that different sites on the primitive Earth offered an enormous combinatorial library of mineral assemblies, and that among them a collection of the six or more required catalysts could have coexisted." That seems to meet the definition of irreducible complexity.

Post # 11: “Just like the case of the ribosome, the evidence shows that the complexity of life requires an intelligent cause.”

My response: This was my personal commentary on the data (which is permitted by the rules), and was not intended to represent Dr. Orgel’s viewpoint. In fact I never claimed Orgel supported ID. In fact, I explicitly stated precisely the opposite, stating that "Orgel is no proponent of intelligent design. In fact, the purpose of his paper is to offer sage advice to those seeking to explain the origin of life via evolving metabolic pathways." In his e-mail back to me, Dave Munger stated, stated: "We welcome a variety of divergent opinions at ResearchBlogging.org, as long as posts follow our guidelines, designed to encourage reasoned and thoughtful discussion of peer-reviewed research." So there is no violation here, unless the pro-ID opinion is fundamentally disbarred from participation. In fact some users may seem to desire censorship of the pro-ID viewpoint, as one person wrote, "This is blatant abuse of the program to lend an air of credibility and should be stopped." In short, they just don’t want my application approved because it might “lend an air of credibility” to my views.

Post # 12: "Again, Orgel essentially assumes that cyclic metabolic pathways are irreducibly complex systems that require a large number of parts in order to function—including many side pathways that can remove products that will disrupt the cycle. Saying that cycles need side pathways is the exact opposite of what Orgel said in the original - cycles need to avoid side pathways to maintain themselves."

My response: In fact I quoted Orgel accurately, including the portion where he explicitly said that side-pathways must be avoided or they will disrupt the cycle. My comment, "including many side pathways that can remove products that will disrupt the cycle," was intended to show that there must be other parts present to avoid allow the cycle to avoid these side-reactions. But I can see how my statement is unclear and does not communicate that very well. In his e-mail back to me, Mr. Munger stated that I may amend my post if I feel it is necessary. In this regard, I've amended my post to fix this unintended unclear statement as follows: "Again, Orgel essentially assumes that cyclic metabolic pathways are irreducibly complex systems that require a large number of parts in order to function—including parts that allow them to avoid many side pathways that will disrupt the cycle."

I read and understood the article. I studied origin of life research in both my undergraduate and graduate studies at UC San Diego studying earth sciences, and taking courses and seminars learning from people like Jeffrey Bada, Stanley Miller, and others. I also conferred with a biochemist friend about the paper.

I won't enter a philosophical discussion about how "understanding" or "accuracy" might be a function of whether people agree with my commentary, which is obviously pro-ID. I'll just say that I am not so presumptuous to assume that if someone comes to a different conclusion than I do, that they therefore do not understand the topic, or were therefore necessarily inaccurate.

Regarding rules #4 and #5, I see no evidence that I have broken rules #4 or #5 here. Given that these were the only complaints, I can only conclude that in fact my discussion was actually quite accurate.

My final conclusion:
In conclusion, these are your rules. I didn't know about them when I posted my post, but I think I nonetheless have not violated any of them. I'll respect Mr. Munger's decision, whatever it is, and whatever its stated or unstated justification is.

If you decide to allow my registration--superb! I’m not doing this to get “credibility” but because like all of you, I too love science and I’d like to think that this is a website worth contributing to. If my registration is permitted, I'll gladly contribute to what I hope this website is all about.

But if you don't want to follow your own rules, that is saddening, and it would not be the first time that a different set of rules has been applied to ID proponents vs. other scientists. Indeed, I find it most likely that one user admitted the most forceful reason why my registration would be denied: "This is blatant abuse of the program to lend an air of credibility and should be stopped."

But I’ll respect Mr. Munger’s decision, whatever it is, and the stated and unstated reasons are. I just hope that this does not become another example where, as in many corners of academia, "We welcome a variety of divergent opinions," as long as those opinions do not support intelligent design.

But I won’t presume that Mr. Munger will make such an inappropriate decision, and I’ll respect whatever he decides in the future. If anyone would like to contact me personally, please feel free to do so at cluskin@discovery.org.

Sincerely in good will and friendship,

Casey Luskin

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

A roundtable symposium was recently held at by John Brockman entitled, “Life: What A Concept!” discussing how life arose. Participants included some huge names in origin of life research and genomics, such as Freeman Dyson, J. Craig Venter, George Church, Robert Shapiro, Dimitar Sasselov, and Seth Lloyd. None of the participants are favorable towards intelligent design, but the transcript of their conversations suggested that the ribosome may exhibit “irreducible complexity” (their words). It’s clear that these anti-ID scientists don’t even understand exactly how life works, much less do they know how it arose naturally, but that they are nonetheless taking an evolution-of-the-gaps approach, assuming that complex micromolecular machines like the ribosome will (despite their present appearances) indeed turn out to be reducible, and assuming that they evolved in a step-by-step fashion. Craig Venter, a leader in genomics and the Human Genome Project, stated:

We talked about the ribosome; we tried to make synthetic ribosomes, starting with the genetic code and building them — the ribosome is such an incredibly beautiful complex entity, you can make synthetic ribosomes, but they don't function totally yet. Nobody knows how to get ones that can actually do protein synthesis. That is not building life from scratch but relying on billions of years of evolution.

The ribosome, both looking at the past and at the future, is a very significant structure — it's the most complicated thing that is present in all organisms. Craig does comparative genomics, and you find that almost the only thing that's in common across all organisms is the ribosome. And it's recognizable; it's highly conserved. So the question is, how did that thing come to be? And if I were to be an intelligent design defender, that's what I would focus on; how did the ribosome come to be?

The only way we're going to become good scientists and prove that it could come into being spontaneously is to develop a much better in vitro system where you can make smaller versions of the ribosome that still work, and make all kinds of variations on it to do really useful things but that are really wildly different, and so forth, and get real familiarity with this really complicated machine. Because it does a really great thing: it does this mutual information trick, but not from changing something kind of trivial, from DNA to RNA; that's really easy. It can change from DNA three nucleotides into one amino acid. That's really marvelous. We need to understand that better.

But isn't it the case that, if we take all the life forms we have so far, isn't the minimum for the ribosome about 53 proteins and 3 polynucleotides? And hasn't that kind of already reached a plateau where adding more genomes doesn't reduce that number of proteins?

VENTER: Below ribosomes, yes: you certainly can't get below that. But you have to have self-replication.

CHURCH: But that's what we need to do — otherwise they'll call it irreducible complexity. If you say you can't get below a ribosome, we're in trouble, right? We have to find a ribosome that can do its trick with less than 53 proteins.

VENTER: In the RNA world, you didn't need ribosomes.

CHURCH: But we need to construct that. Nobody has constructed a ribosome that works well without proteins.

VENTER: Yes.

SHAPIRO: I can only suggest that a ribosome forming spontaneously has about the same probability as an eye forming spontaneously.

CHURCH: It won't form spontaneously; we'll do it bit by bit.

SHAPIRO: Both are obviously products of long evolution of preexisting life through the process of trial and error.

CHURCH: But none of us has recreated that any.

SHAPIRO: There must have been much more primitive ways of putting together

CHURCH: But prove it.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)