Don’t read into this post too much, but take it as a series of curious observations. We’re often told that Darwinism is like a scientific magic bullet that can solve anything. Darwinists love to quote Theodosius Dobzhansky saying, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” We’re also told that intelligent design threatens to destroy science. Nonetheless, I can’t help but notice that when engineers design technology to be sold to the public, they prefer to tell them about processes of intelligent design over unguided selection and random mutation. As a silly anecdote, I recently came across this Hyandai car advertisement, stating: “the i30 name has been chosen to reflect the car’s European styling and its all-round intelligent design.” I decided to see if there were other similar examples, and searches uncovered many examples.

The website “CarReview.com” reviewed the Honda Civic SI and praises its “very modern looking interior, with flowing lines and an intelligent design.” Indeed, Honda’s own website has a page with specs on the Honda S2000 roadster which states, “Further intelligent design details, such as lightweight valve springs and the use of low-friction plating, prove the Honda S2000 is a model of engineering perfection.”

A news article covering Nissan’s new “advanced vehicle-to-traffic-light communication technology” is titled, “Intelligent Design, Transportation-Style, From Nissan.” An article about the Toyota Camry states that, “[t]he 2006 Camry redefines global standards for comfort, safety and intelligent design.” Elsewhere Toyota announces an environment-friendly concept car which gets great fuel economy, in part, because “weight reduction is achieved by intelligent design of interior components, such as the instrument panel and heater modules.” Similarly, an article on Toyota.com about Camry Hybrids calls the car "a world-class sedan that not only redefines global standards for comfort, performance and intelligent design, but also is available, for the first time, with Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive."

A news release advertising a line of RV’s announces: “Intelligent Design Features Incorporated Into Fleetwood's 2006 Bounder Diesel and Expedition RV's.” Even Lexus gets into the action, reporting on its Lexus.com website that the inspiration behind the Lexus SC430, “was to create an elegant, sophisticated and intelligent design.” Indeed, a Wall Street Journal blog writes about Chrysler’s efforts to improve their products, titling the article, “The Case for Intelligent Design at Chrysler.”

These advertisements and reviews don’t say “random-variation-and-unguided-selection-based design.” They say “intelligent design.” And when advertisers mention the “evolution” of a product, you can almost surely bet that it’s intelligently guided “evolution,” not the Darwinian processes of random mutation and unguided natural selection.

And before you start to nitpick reasons why don't like this post, don't forget my words at the beginning: "Don’t read into this post too much, but take it as a series of curious observations."

Finally, if you want a nice example of an irreducibly complex system, try this YouTube video of a Honda Accord commercial. The commercial ends by saying, “Isn’t it nice when things just work?” You won’t find anyone suggesting that the machines in this commercial “work” due to anything other than intelligent design:

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Associated Press has an article on Louisiana’s Academic Freedom bill which quotes a Darwinist professor at Louisiana State University asserting that "biological evolution really is not scientifically controversial." The article did observe that biologist Caroline Crocker testified in favor of the bill, but left out the fact that multiple other scientists (including professional biologists) also testified that there are scientific problems with evolution. As I recount here, three professional biologists and one chemist, all with Ph.D.’s, testified about scientific problems with Darwinian evolution before Louisiana’s House Education Committee on Wednesday. But the Associated Press chose not to report that fact, instead deciding to serve as a checkpoint to prevent its readers from learning about scientists who doubt Darwin.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

In Part 1 I explained how Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll unashamedly agree that scientists should keep “quiet” about their support intelligent design (ID). In this final response, I will discuss how the scientific evidence cited by Boyle does little to demonstrate the power of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. In Alan Boyle’s attack upon Expelled, he uses biologist Sean B. Carroll as his big gun scientist to attack intelligent design, touting Carroll’s book Making of the Fittest. In that book, Carroll argues that “[t]he argument for design by some external intelligence is eviscerated.”

Last year I wrote a response to Carroll showing that many of his arguments are frankly unimpressive. As I recounted at that time, "If the loss of function by turning off genes, and the usage of the same genes to build organs in vastly diverse organisms—a fact cited by design-proponents as supporting common design—are the best facts [Carroll] can muster against design, then it would appear that ID has very little to fear from the discoveries of evo-devo."

Boyle claims that ID proponents are wrong to state that “that no new genetic information can possibly be created.” He purports to refute the claims of ID-proponents through the examples of "insertion" and “duplication”— but the examples he uses actually represent trivial increases in genetic “information,” and are not increases in meaningful genetic information, i.e. they do not generate new specified complexity. Boyle also claims that there can be "beneficial revision of genetic code." Let’s check Boyle’s citation for that claim.

Boyle cites to a study which makes the trivial finding that some humans have slightly different biochemical or genetic mechanisms for digesting milk. Interestingly, the article assumes that "[h]uman adults were not designed to digest milk," and therefore "[i]t took a genetic mutation to enable humans to tolerate lactose." But what if human adults originally were designed to digest milk, and the fact that some humans have different biochemical mechanisms for lactose digestion, and that some have lost that ability, simply reflects variations or degeneration upon the original design? This evidence might show that evolution is only good at degenerating or destroying function rather than creating it.

Moreover, there are 2 reasons to understand that this study did not really document the evolution of something "new." Note that the article states "human adults" cannot digest milk. This is because most children can digest milk, and lactose intolerance is typically caused by environmental conditions, i.e. the less milk you drink as you age, the more likely you are to become lactose intolerant. In fact, lactose intolerance takes place when your small intestine does not make enough lactase, an enzyme used to break down lactose in milk. So the difference between a lactose intolerant person and a lactose tolerant person is not the presence of a new enzyme, but the production of more of a pre-existing enzyme.

This study did not actually find evidence of the evolutionary acquisition of a new trait here, but rather found evidence for the prolonging of a pre-existing trait. And all humans produce lactase, so there has been no evolution of a new enzyme. Does this example represent the "evolution" of something impressive or new?

Boyle quotes biologist Sean Carroll asserting that when it comes to the validity of neo-Darwinism, "the ballgame is over." This is a premature calling of the game. According to Boyle, "Evo-devo" has solved all the serious problems in evolutionary biology. (Keep in mind that in his book Making of the Fittest, the best "evo-devo" evidence for evolution that Carroll could muster were trivial examples of loss-of-function, like loss of spots on butterfly wings or loss of eyes on blind cave-fish, or an ID-favorite, the re-usage of the same genes in different organisms!) Nonetheless, Boyle argues that we have seen evolution produce new features: "Scientists are analyzing and comparing the genetic codes for hundreds of species, and the results are shedding new light on long-running posers such as the evolution of the eye or the cousinly relationship between elephants and manatees." The truth that Boyle misses is that, as scientists analyze and compare the genetic codes for more and more species, they are finding that Phylogenetic trees are often in sharp conflict with one another. Again, let's check Boyle’s references.

He cites an article that claims that "[s]cientists knew that elephants are related to modern aquatic creatures such as manatees." This relationship has been claimed on the basis of DNA evidence, where Phylogenetic studies have compared the DNA of elephants and manatees and researchers suggest that they are closely related. But all that such studies have actually found is that elephants and manatees have similar DNA. Since their DNA might be similar due to functional requirements and not inheritance from a common ancestor, there’s no reason to presume that this data necessarily indicates common ancestry. But even if the similarities are derived from a common ancestor, the allegedly clear Phylogenetic relationship between elephants and sea cows seems to be the exception, and not the rule in systematics. De Jong (1998) observed that “the 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."

Another severe Phylogenetic conflict is seen in Boyle's reference regarding the "evolution of the eye" which opens by admitting, "While morphological comparisons of eye anatomy and photoreceptor cell types led to the view that animal eyes evolved multiple times independently, the molecular conservation of the pax6 eye-specifying cascade has indicated the contrary - that animal eyes evolved from a common, simple precursor, the proto-eye." In other words, evolutionary scientists were surprised to use that very different types of eyes use the same regulatory genes to control eye growth, because the standard Darwinian phylogeny would never have predicted this. In fact, such unexpected genetic similarity may instead provide strong evidence for common design.

Indeed, some of the very research of Boyle’s big gun, Sean Carroll, also shows that Phylogenetic trees commonly conflict with one another. In 2006, Carroll co-authored a study which acknowledged that "a large fraction of single genes produce phylogenies of poor quality," observing that one study "omitted 35% of single genes from their data matrix, because those genes produced phylogenies at odds with conventional wisdom." Such a selective use of data does not inspire confidence in the methods evolutionary biologists use to construct their phylogenetic trees.

The paper suggests that "certain critical parts of the [tree of life] may be difficult to resolve, regardless of the quantity of conventional data available." The excuse that Phylogenetic trees are difficult to construct because of insufficient data is no longer feasible. The paper even contends that "[t]he recurring discovery of persistently unresolved clades (bushes) should force a re-evaluation of several widely held assumptions of molecular systematics." Carroll of course is a committed neo-Darwinist. One assumption he does not re-evaluate is the assumption of common ancestry.

Carroll attempts to reconcile the genetic data with common descent by postulating rapid phases of evolution where there was insufficient time for enough differences in the DNA of different lineages to accumulate to allow modern biologists to resolve the evolutionary relationships. This becomes an exercise in neo-Darwinism explaining away the data. Perhaps the inability to construct robust phylogenetic trees using molecular data simply stems from the fact that neo-Darwinian common descent is wrong.

In the end, Boyle’s evidence for neo-Darwinism might be seen from a different angle—as evidence for intelligent design. Unfortunately, as I discussed in part 1, Boyle does not believe that scientists should not have the academic freedom to think such thoughts because they are too "wacky."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

We’ve known for a long time that MSNBC’s "Cosmic Log" writer Alan Boyle doesn’t like intelligent design, and in his coverage of Expelled, Boyle is no exception to the "checkpoint" pattern described earlier here on ENV. This time, he's got scientists from the academy "checkpoint" to back him up. Thus, he feels confident to attack Expelled as, "creepy … campaign ad, aimed at swiftboating science."

Enter Sean B. Carroll, a prominent biologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Boyle’s big gun who also happens to dislike intelligent design. Boyle quotes Carroll in a one-two punch that essentially states that scientists who support intelligent design should keep quiet about such views in the science classroom. Boyle writes:

Even at the time of 2005's Kitzmiller v. Dover court decision, it was clear that an argument based on academic freedom would be the next frontier for the intelligent-design debate. But the freedom to teach isn't absolute. It's subject to the usual checks and balances of academic institutions, plus the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion - and the idea that the content of a science class should be, well, based on science. That doesn't mean science teachers can't have wacky ideas. Some of the wackiest ideas have been held by the world's greatest scientists - including Isaac Newton, a religious heretic who calculated that the world would end in the year 2060. To Newton's credit, he kept relatively quiet about the wackier claims and pushed ahead with better ideas like calculus, optics and universal gravitation.

Carroll had similar advice for today's biologists: "The biology community will tell you that understanding genetics and evolution is fundamental to being a literate biologist. ... Do you want your kids to be taught by people who are living in the 18th century? I don't think so. They have a right to think these things or believe these things, but they have an obligation to be technically competent."

Alan Boyle of course has every right to believe that intelligent design is "wacky," and he has every right to promote that view. But should he advocate restricting the academic freedom of scientists who believe that there is merit to intelligent design—restricting the academic freedom of scientists who publish research and books supporting the theory and then dare to mention it in the classroom? Apparently, Boyle (with the back-up of Sean Carroll) think the answer is "yes," and they should be the arbiter of who gets academic freedom and who doesn’t in the debate over Darwin. As Gerald Schroeder says in Expelled, academic freedom exists, "but not if you’re on the wrong side of the wall"—i.e. there is no academic freedom if you support intelligent design.

In Boyle’s world, academic "freedom” only exists to express disagreement with intelligent design. Is that really freedom?

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A new six part series of interviews has popped up on Youtube featuring attorney Ed Sisson. Sisson you may remember was a key player in the Kansas state board of education's hearings on science standards in 2005. He also happens to have been Dr. Caroline Crocker's pro-bono attorney when she was ousted from George Mason University for teaching some of the scientific evidence that challenges Darwinian evolution. So, he knows a bit about academic freedom and free open scientific inquiry. The main thrust in this interview is Sisson's contention that Darwinian evolution should be open to scrutiny, both in the classroom and the courtroom.

Sisson wrote to tell us about the video:

"Although I gave the talk two years ago, it only occurred to me in April, 2008, to do the edit (thank you Apple iMovie '08) and post it on-line, as a way of contributing to the success of the pending academic freedom bills in several states, and also to develop the idea of hearings and cross-examination. And in light of the fact that both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain voted for the pro-ID 'Santorum Amendment' back in 2001 (Senator Obama was not in office then), my video also raises timely issues for the Presidential campaign."

Here is part one of the series, all six parts of which are available at Youtube.

A series well worth checking out. You can watch a higher quality uncut
version here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Download this response as a PDF

Opponents of academic freedom in Louisiana have been putting out a smokescreen of misinformation in their effort to kill legislation to protect the rights of Louisiana's science teachers. Rather than discuss the real issues at stake, they are trying to get their way through misrepresentations, scare tactics, and the demonization of those who support honest discussion of scientific controversies. Their misinformation campaign shouldn’t be allowed to obscure key facts:

1. Louisiana's academic freedom legislation is not about "creationism." It’s about protecting the rights of teachers to teach good science.
Many teachers remain confused and fearful about what information they can legally teach regarding controversial scientific topics such as evolution. By enacting a limited right to objectively discuss conflicting scientific views in the classroom, proposed legislation would address this problem. Thus far, the main objection to protecting teacher rights in this area is the bogus claim that the legislation will somehow promote "creationism." Repeating the terms "creationist" and "creationism" ad nauseum, opponents of academic freedom clearly hope if they mention these words frequently enough they will stigmatize the legislation sufficiently to kill it. But their rhetoric ignores the actual language of the bills that have been proposed. The operative language of Sen. Nevers' bill merely requires educators to:

create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.¹

teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, critically analyze, and review, in an objective manner, the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.²

2. Louisiana's academic freedom legislation is legally sound.
Opponents of academic freedom are also trying to mislead lawmakers by implying that an academic freedom bill including the subject of evolution would be struck down in the courts or end up in costly litigation. This is a standard scare tactic that has been employed in other states. Despite such threats, at least nine states currently have state or local policies that protect, encourage, and sometimes even require teachers to discuss the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution:

Baton Rouge, LA – Yesterday the Louisiana House Education Committee unanimously passed SB 733, an academic freedom bill. The bill requires that Louisiana schools shall "create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." The passage followed testimony from four Ph.D. scientists, including three biologists, who testified in favor of the bill.

One biology professor from Louisiana College, Dr. Wade Warren, testified about how during his graduate studies at Texas A & M, the dean ordered him cease discussing scientific problems with students. Another biochemist, Dr. Brenda Peirson, testified about how random mutation and natural selection cannot produce many of the complex biological systems we see in the cell.

One of those scientists, Dr. Caroline Crocker, testified about her experience losing her job at George Mason University after she taught students about scientific arguments against neo-Darwinism. Southern University law professor and constitutional law expert Michelle Ghetti also testified that the bill was “perfectly constitutional.”

After the scientists and other educators testified about the scientific problems with neo-Darwinism and the need to protect academic freedom, one LSU Darwinist biologist, Dr. Bryan Carstens, who opposed the bill had the temerity to claim: “let us be clear that there is no controversy among professional biologists about fact of evolution.” The glaring weakness in his false argument was not lost upon members of the legislature: he was immediately pressed by one legislator on the committee who asked the following:

In the document you just read and gave to us, in bold print it says, ‘let us be clear there is no controversy among biologists about the fact of evolution.’ Did you hear the testimony of the other professors we had here that were speaking before this committee?

Dr. Carstens then showed his intolerance towards professional biologists who were Darwin-skeptics. Carstens refused to admit their existence and in fact only admitted that faculty who testified against evolution had Ph.D.’s in “chemistry.” Of course only one of the Ph.D.’s was a chemist, and three of them were professional biologists.

The truth of the matter is that Dr. Carstens’ entire statement shows the intolerance towards Darwin-skeptics in the scientific community: Not only was he unable and unwilling to admit, under oath, the existence of the three professional biologists who had just testified against evolution before the committee, but his statement asserted the blatantly false claim that “there is no controversy among professional biologists about fact of evolution.” It’s tough to convince people of that claim when three professional biologists testified otherwise.

Of course Dr. Carstens has every right to testify in favor of evolution (and against academic freedom). But to testify that there is “no controversy” among “professional biologists” implies that scientists who doubt Darwinism do not exist. Imagine you are an LSU biologist with fundamental doubts about Darwinism and you see your colleagues signing a statement asserting that your views don't exist. Would the declaration of the LSU biologists that there is “no controversy” over evolution make you confident that you have the academic freedom to express such dissenting views in the laboratory or the classroom? Of course not. Thus Dr. Carstens’ testimony, and his intolerant behavior, validate the need for this academic freedom bill.

It was clear from the hearing that Louisiana Darwinists are growing more and more desperate. Like their dogmatic compatriots in Florida who still proudly proclaim that academic freedom is “smelly crap” Darwinists are making absurd claims in their desperation to keep anyone from questioning Darwinian evolution as taught in public schools. American’s United for Separation of Church & State (AUSCS) is now attacking home-schoolers:

Yesterday’s hearing was packed with home-schoolers wearing stickers in support of the bill. Home schoolers won’t be affected by the measure, of course, so it doesn’t take much analysis to see what’s going on here. (Kids, you may have learned something about politics, but you flunked science. Be sure to tell your momma when you get home so she can change your report cards.)

SB 733 is a step backward, dragging science education in Louisiana toward the medieval swamp of theocracy.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In Louisiana, a state legislative committee unanimously has passed to the full state house a bill that will protect the rights of teachers to present scientific evidence both for and against modern evolutionary theory. A slew of local scientists were on hand to support the bill, along with educators and students. It's not hard to understand why when you know what the bill actually says:

"teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught."

After the clock ran out in Florida and Alabama, it seems that Louisiana might actually take a big step forward and send an evolution academic freedom act to the governor. Bills are still alive and under consideration in Michigan and South Carolina, as well.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is the third in a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain.

A design must be considered improbable if it is highly functional and durable yet too complex to have come about spontaneously or by intermediate steps. Think of the subway system in any large metropolitan area. Could the combination of tracks, stations, tunnels, signs, vending machines, stairwells, lighting, trains, billboards, ticket booths, turnstiles, benches, platforms, security measures, and restrooms have happened all at once or did it come about by stages? If these commuter systems were to follow the tenets of the theory of evolution, the tracks going off in every direction might be called links to the stations called species. How does one get from station to station without the tunnel, train, and tracks? In the theory of evolution, these kinds of intermediaries are abundantly missing.

The wombat has an upside-down pouch. Scientists presume, and it makes sense, that position prevents dirt from entering the pouch when the wombat is digging in the ground. Could there have been transitional species with pouches situated sideways, or did the first wombats have to scoop dirt out of their pouches every day?

Taken from: Billions of Missing Links (Harvest House Publishers, 2007)

Posted by Geoffrey Simmons at 8:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, I talked at length with a Washington Post editorial writer named Jo-Ann Armao. Ms. Armao said she was working on a possible editorial about the academic freedom bills on evolution currently being considered by legislatures of various states. I gave Ms. Armao a lengthy interview, providing a lot of background information and correcting various errors that have appeared in news coverage of the bills. The Post has now published its editorial on the topic, and it’s now evident that Ms. Armao simply didn’t care about facts. Ms. Armao had her spin, and even though the facts didn’t substantiate it, she was going to stick to it.

Predictably, the Post asserts that the academic freedom bills are about “inviting creationism back into the classroom.” Except that they aren’t. In fact, the bills repeatedly and explicitly state that they only protect the presentation of scientific information, and that they don’t authorize the promotion of any religious doctrine. I pointed this out to Ms. Armao in some detail. But it now turns out that the actual language of the bills didn’t matter to Ms. Armao. She already had the line she was going to take, and if the facts didn’t substantiate it, she obviously didn’t care.

The Post also absurdly claims that offering criticisms of Darwinism is tantamount to “question[ing] the existence of gravity or… suggest[ing] that two plus two equals anything but four.” Tell that to the more than 700 Ph.D. scientists at institutions such as Princeton, MIT, Ohio State, and the University of Georgia who have expressed their skepticism of the central tenet of Neo-Darwinism. Or to National Academy of Sciences biologist Lynn Margulis (no friend of intelligent design!), who has written that “Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity change shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations leads to speciation.” (Acquiring Genomes [2003], p. 29). I gave Ms. Armao an entire list of scientific controversies involving key aspects of biological and chemical evolution, including the origin of the first life, the role of mutations, the limits of natural selection, and the origination of animal body plans during the Cambrian Explosion some 500 million years ago. Such controversies are already discussed in the mainstream scientific literature—but teachers are being forbidden in many places from telling students about them.

I guess facts just don’t matter when the issue is evolution and you’re a writer for the Washington Post editorial page. After all, Post editorialists have a proud history of producing fact-free editorials on the topic (see here, here, and here). And the big media wonder why many citizens are turning to alternative sources for news and commentary?

Posted by John West at 2:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Of course not, as we all know. But someone forgot to tell Hector Avalos, a critic of my role in the movie “Expelled.”

In a radio debate with me on WHO in Des Moines this morning, Avalos (religion professor at Iowa State University) claimed that Hitler was a creationist. I objected to this ridiculous claim. I countered that Hitler may have believed in a God of some sort who created natural laws, but one of the laws he thought God had created was the law of evolution by natural selection and the struggle for existence. I then quoted from Hitler to demonstrate that he did indeed believe in human evolution. In an extended conversation about evolution on October 24, 1941, Hitler lambasted Christianity, claiming that evolutionary science showed the poverty of the church’s dogmas. Hitler then stated, “There have been humans at the rank at least of a baboon in any case for 300,000 years at least.”

Bizarrely, Avalos in his closing remarks then thanked me for conceding that Hitler was a creationist, because, he said, anyone believing in a God who created natural laws is a creationist by definition. Well, then Darwin must have been a creationist, too, when he wrote in The Origin of Species about “the laws impressed on matter by the Creator.” (p. 458 of the Penguin edition) So, according to Avalos, Darwin was a creationist, as is anyone who claims to believe in a God that created natural laws. Francis Collins in his book, The Language of God, makes clear that he believes in a God who created natural laws. Avalos, then, thinks Collins is a creationist.

Does Avalos really not understand the distinction between theistic evolutionism and creationism? Does he really not understand that Collins and other theistic evolutionists are not considered creationists by most people’s definition of the term? Does Avalos think he can just make up his own definitions during a debate?

Our debate was over the question: “Was Darwinism MORE significant than Christian anti-Judaism in explaining Nazi ideology?” In the course of the debate Avalos showed little understanding of German history or Nazi ideology. He never addressed the major aspects of Nazi ideology that were heavily influenced by Darwinism, but on which Christian anti-Judaism had no influence. I listed seven such features of Nazi ideology:

1. Nazi eugenics policies, which led to the compulsory sterilization of 200,000 disabled people, forced abortions for disabled, and in 1939 killing the disabled (about 200,000 disabled people were murdered).

2. The drive for population expansion (Darwin claimed in Descent of Man that the birthrate should not be limited, because a higher birthrate was advantageous for evolution). Hitler often expressed the same view.

3. The need for living space (this was one cause of World War II, not just a minor feature). Hitler often expressed the need for living space in evolutionary terms.

4. Racial inequality – Darwin and Haeckel argued for human inequality on the basis of Darwinian evolution.

5. Anti-Marxism – The leading German Darwinist Haeckel argued that Darwinism disproved Marxism.

6. History as a racial struggle for existence.

7. The evolution of moral traits – Hitler believed that Jews had evolved bad moral traits, while Aryans had evolved good moral traits.

All these views were all upheld by prominent Darwinists on the basis of Darwinism. They permeated racial ideology in the pre-Nazi period. Hitler also upheld them and made clear they were central aspects of his ideology. Avalos completely ignored most of these points (many of which I had already made in my book, From Darwin to Hitler, so he should not have been surprised that I raised them).

Avalos focused all his attention on Nazi anti-Semitism. Fair enough. He showed that Luther made horrible remarks about Jews. However, Avalos claimed falsely that Luther’s anti-Judaism was essentially the same as Hitler’s. This not only shows that Avalos does not know how to properly make distinctions, but it shows complete ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology. Avalos did not distinguish at all between Luther’s stated reasons for persecuting the Jews—their religion, and Hitler’s stated reason for persecuting the Jews—their racial characteristics. He didn’t distinguish between Luther’s idea of killing rabbis who continue to illegally teach Judaism, and Hitler’s idea to kill all the Jews of Europe, men, women, and children, no matter whether they believed in Judaism or not. He didn’t distinguish between Luther’s desire to convert Jews to Christianity, and Hitler’s opposition to converting Jews to Christianity. As distasteful, shocking, and repugnant as Luther’s anti-Semitic views were, they were not simply the same as the Nazis (I ran out of time in the debate or I would have mentioned many other aspects of Hitler’s anti-Semitism that had nothing to do with Luther’s anti-Judaism, e.g., the idea of a Jewish world conspiracy; Hitler’s linking Jews with communism; the idea that Jews were sponsors of internationalism; the idea that Jews promoted liberalism and parliamentary democracy; Jews as controllers of the press and theater; etc., etc.).

I will leave it to listeners to decide who won the debate, but I left the debate doubting that Avalos knows much about German history, which was the major field of my Ph.D.

Posted by Richard Weikart at 1:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? A Friendly Conversation About Evolution
By Robert C. Newman, and John L. Wiester with Janet Moneymaker and Jonathan Moneymaker
InterVarsity Press, 2000, 146 pages
ISBN: 0-8308-2249-6

Feeling primitive? Unevolved? Inorganic? Then try a bowl of Primordial Soup! What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? is an illustrated friendly conversation about evolution and what science can explain about life. Aimed at younger students, this comic-book style work helps students understand if finch beaks really prove Darwinism is true or if the encoded message in DNA implies an intelligent designer.

The book opens by helping students to understand important terminology. What does evolution mean? Some people say evolution just means change through time. But simple evidence of change does not necessarily mean that new phyla can emerge or new body structures can evolve. Thus, we have microevolution and macroevolution.

The book explains in illustrated form why intelligent design is the best explanation for life. When we see letters on a hillside spelling out “Welcome to Victoria,” we have a valid rationale to believe that that the letters were designed. Similarly, if a radio signal from outer space said “hello earthlings,” we would have good reason to infer design. But what about when we find an encoded sequence in our DNA which, using a complicated sequence of biochemical commands, creates miniature motors which resemble human-designed engines? This and other topics concerning intelligent design are presented in clear language with a wealth of illustrations.

This book is a must read for young students who are still learning the basics of science but want to understand evolution and design. As Phillip Johnson wrote when he reviewed the book, it’s “more fun than a barrel of Australopithecines.”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Benjamin Wiker's latest book, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help, is fantastic. In fact, it's so great that even people who completely misunderstand his argument want to crib from his notes.

That's the most charitable conclusion I can come up with after reading The List Universe's "10 Books that Screwed Up The World." (Catchy title, huh?) There are other conclusions, of course... but I'll leave those to the reader.

Besides taking Wiker's title and repeating 5 of his selections (Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, Machiavelli's The Prince, Hitler's Mein Kampf, Sanger's The Pivot of Civilization, and Marx/Engels' The Manifesto of the Communist Party), as one commenter at The Point astutely observed, they may have plagiarized Wiker's list.

Take these extracts from the amazon site for Dr. Wiker's book:

* Why Machiavelli's The Prince was the inspiration for a long list of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand)

* Why Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto could win the award for the most malicious book ever written

* How Hitler's Mein Kampf was a kind of "spiritualized Darwinism" that accounts for his genocidal anti-Semitism

* How the pansexual paradise described in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa turned out to be a creation of her own sexual confusions and aspirations

And now from the listverse site:

9 Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead, 1928
On the list because: it turned out to be a creation of her own sexual confusions and aspirations

8 The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
On the list because: it was the inspiration for a long list of tyrannies (Stalin had it on his nightstand)

7 Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, 1925
On the list because: it helped spread Hitler’s genocidal anti-Semitism

2 The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848
On the list because: it could win the award for the most malicious book ever written

Odd?

I'd say plagiarism...

But wait, there's more! Gina Dalfonzo has correctly pointed out over at The Point that it's not the similarity in the choices alone that makes this shocking. It's the inclusion of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution as number 1 on their list.

While Wiker's work recommends actually reading each screwy book in order to understand its malice, the people behind this list remain strangely ignorant of Behe's work. Their explanation for why this belongs at the top? They're under the impression that Behe is a 6-day literal creationist.

This book has helped to fuel (through pseudo-science and untruths) the idea that evolution is false and that a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is the only possible manner in which the earth was created.

Posted by Anika Smith at 7:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

HIgh school biology teacher Doug Cowan has a letter in today's Wall Street Journal responding to a recent article which misreprsented his comments on the debate over how to teach evolution.

Science Looks at All the Evidence
May 17, 2008

Your article "Evolution's Critics Shift Tactics With Schools" (Currents, May 2) claims that I would "like a legal guarantee [so I] can teach as I see fit." Actually, I believe in teaching the prescribed curriculum, and I do so. But I don't think a teacher should be penalized for exploring required topics in greater depth, especially in cases where scientists have different views. One should have the freedom to pursue and teach all the evidence even if it leads to disturbing conclusions.

I teach students the evidence both for and against Darwin's theory, with the goal of fostering critical thinking, allowing them to arrive at informed conclusions. The core of evidence I teach that supports evolution is derived from fossil succession, anatomical and molecular homologies, natural selection-mutation, embryology, artificial selection and real-time observations from microbes and sickle-cell disease.

Doug Cowan

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

South Carolina Senator Mike Fair has submitted an Academic Freedom Bill into the South Carolina State Legislature. This is now the sixth academic freedom bill submitted this legislative session, as other bills have been submitted in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Alabama, and Louisiana. The text of Senator Fair’s bill would require that, “The State Board of Education, superintendents of public school districts, and public school administrators may not prohibit a teacher in a public school of this State from helping his students understand, analyze, critique, and review the scientific strengths and weaknesses of biological and chemical evolution in an objective manner.”

Meanwhile, like other commentators, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) cannot admit that South Carolina's state science standards require critical analysis of evolution. The NCSE recently reported that Senator Fair lost his push in 2006 to include an indicator requiring critical analysis of evolution into the South Carolina State Science Standards. But in fact he didn’t lose, for the South Carolina Science Standards now state, students will learn to “Summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” What part of “critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory” does the NCSE thinks doesn’t mean “critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory”?

As Senator Fair stated regarding his present bill, “The very nature of science is to ask questions and to go where the evidence leads.” If the evidence is on the side of evolution, then the NCSE has nothing to fear from this bill.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In this short video clip, CSC fellow Dr. Dean Kenyon answers a series of questions about his interest in biological origins and the ideas he expressed in his book Biochemical Predestination, and his skepticism of Darwinian theory.

This DVD is available from Access Research Network.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Steven Novella and I have been engaged in a vigorous blog debate (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, , and here,) about the mind/brain problem and about intelligent design. Dr. Novella, who presents himself as a pro-science 'skeptic' (he's president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society), is a passionate Darwinist and materialist. He blogs often on Darwinism, materialism, and "denialism" in science.

Monday morning I checked Dr. Novella's blog. I noticed that several (at least four) of his recent controversial blog posts were missing. The links are here, here, here, and here. I checked more closely— using my own previous links to the posts— and the posts (#165, #189, #260, and #283) were gone, without a trace and without an explanation. The blog posts dealt with his view that intelligent design wasn’t falsifiable and with the debate between materialists and dualists on the mind-brain problem. What was up?

I emailed Dr. Novella, and asked him:

Steven,

I've noticed a few missing posts on your blog. The posts were related to our on-going debate. Why are they no longer available? ...

Mike

So I publicly ask Dr.Novella this question: what happened to your blog posts? A post on your blog NeuroLogica to answer this question would be helpful.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"We should teach only science in the science classroom." Of course, who would disagree? The fact of the matter is, what happens in the science classroom -- as several textbooks can attest -- isn't always science, but often philosophy.

Why do so many fail to understand the difference? As Dr. Rebecca Keller, CEO of textbook publisher Gravitas Publications, explains,

The philosophical aspects of science are usually not discussed in elementary or high school grades and for that matter, neither are they taught to scientists. Most people and most scientists are completely unaware that science is any different than the philosophies that are currently masquerading as science.

Scientific materialism is the current philosophy that guides and interprets most of modern science. Most scientists are unaware that they operate from within this interpretative framework and as a result it has become science. But scientific materialism is not science. It is one way to interpret scientific information.

Keller's answer to this problem?

To get unstuck from the rut of dogmatic science, everyone should own their isms. Scientific materialism as an interpretative framework (and not defined as science itself) provides an important contribution to scientific investigation. But so do other perspectives. The controversy stirred by Intelligent Design has stimulated some fascinating research in the area of evolutionary biology, molecular biology, systems biology etc. (along with a lot of pain and suffering for those who dare challenge the dominate Darwinian paradigm).

Helping kids, of either perspective, sort out what is the practice of science from what is an "ism" of science, and giving them the tools to think critically about both science and philosophy liberates authentic inquiry- which is what real science is all about.

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last month, I blogged about a pre-med student who recently took the MCAT and found emotionally-charged pro-evolution-biased language on reading comprehension questions. As he concluded, the MCAT exam is "just supposed to be a way to evaluate how you process information, and they don't want to influence your reasoning by making you answer emotionally charged questions. This passage was distracting while I was taking the test. It was distracting because it's about an emotionally controversial topic, and I don't agree with everything they said. This crosses the line."

Following that post, another pre-med student (who is about to matriculate into medical school) contacted me and had this to say about the distracting pro-evolution bias on the MCAT:

I sat for the MCAT 3 times over the past few years. And on every MCAT examination there was more than one occasion where the topic of evolution was stated in either passage format (for the verbal reasoning section) or in the biology section. (Note: There are only a few verbal reasoning passages on each exam, and they are pulled from innumerable potential sources. Nonetheless, on one exam the MCAT-writers found room for TWO passages on evolution in the verbal reasoning section.) In every case, Darwinian evolution was presented as non-disputed fact.

I find this not only poor science for those that are preparing to enter the medical field, but it also makes a very poor basis for assessing a person's competence in biology. Not only that, this is an incredibly stressful and tense test. I understand them testing our knowledge of evolution (as a hypothesis) on the biology section and I would not object to that. But why do they insist on using it unnecessarily in the verbal reasoning section on an exam, and always treating it as a widely accepted fact? It seems that they are using my acceptance of evolution as a measure of my competence as a doctor, and I find that to be both bad science and bad medicine. My ability to treat patients with care, compassion, and competence in no way relates to my beliefs about Darwinism.

Test me on dihybrid crosses, or the velocity of an object on an inclined plane. These are questions that have answers that are proven facts. But please don't treat speculations and hypotheses in a dogmatic fashion on an exam that bears so much weight for my future. The MCAT testers do just that with regards to evolution, exposing their agenda.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is one of a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain.

When it comes to citing examples of purposeful design, nearly every author likes to point out the hen’s egg. It’s really quite remarkable. Despite having a shell that is a mere 0.35 mm think, they don’t break when a parent sits on them. According to Dr. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen,

A bird egg is a mechanical structure strong enough to hold a chick securely during development, yet weak enough to break out of. The shell must let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, yet be sufficiently impermeable to water to keep the contents from drying out.

All hen’s eggs are ready to hatch on the twenty-first day. Every day is precisely preprogrammed. The heart starts beating on the sixth day. On the nineteenth day the embryo uses its egg tooth to puncture the air sac (beneath the flat end) and then takes two days to crack through the shell.

Taken from: Billions of Missing Links (Harvest House Publishers, 2007)

Posted by Geoffrey Simmons at 7:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Naturalism: A Critical Analysis
Edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland
With contributions by William Lane Craig, William Dembski, Stewart Goetz, John E. Hare, Robert C. Koons, J. P. Moreland, Paul K. Moser, Michael Rea, Charles Taliferro, Dallas Willard, David Yandell
Routledge, 2000, 286 pages
ISBN: 0-415-23524-3

This impressive volume contains critical essays on naturalism from the perspectives of theology, ethics, cosmology, ontology, and epistemology. Various Discovery Fellows make contributions including Robert C. Koons, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and William Dembski.

Koons begins by noting that there is a simple correlation between existence and the requirement of some non-natural first cause. He observes an irony that science thinks it requires naturalism, when our very ability to practice science, due to the orderly, reliable, and predictable behavior of the universe implies a non-natural intelligent cause. Scientific dependence upon naturalism is self-refuting.

Moreland quotes Plato to reveal that there really is nothing new under the sun: scholars have been debating naturalism for millennia, and naturalists have been ever pugnacious in their insistence that mutual co-existence is not an option. Moreland recounts that the great philosopher wrote in Sophist:

“They [naturalists] define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word. … On this issue an interminable battle is always going on between the two camps.”

Yet the battle may eventually be over if the cosmological data presented by William Lane Craig has anything to do with it. Craig recounts the history of cosmology from when where scholars celebrated an eternal universe with no beginning or end, to one where the universe either has a “supernatural cause” or “one must say that the universe simply sprang into being out of nothing” (Big Bang cosmology mandates an expanding universe that is finite in both space and time.). Craig recounts the words of one team of scientists: “The problem of the origin [of the universe] involves a certain metaphysical aspect which may be either appealing or revolting.”

William Dembski closes the volume by arguing that naturalism is no more supported by the scientific data in biology than it is supported in cosmology. Irreducible complexity in nature disallows the possibility that life arose via naturalistic mechanisms. It also signifies an intelligent cause that scientists cannot deny any longer.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Florida state legislature's inability to push through an academic freedom bill highlights the difficulty of passing any legislation, expecially one that has strong opposition. Any legislation dealing with the teaching of evolution is bound to face an uphill battle as Darwinists are effective at organizing groups and people to pressure the legislators. Where does that leave the teachers in Florida?

James A. Smith Sr. has some very interesting things to say about that, writing for the Florida Baptist Witness:

Lack of action was also harmful on the evolution issue.

Remarkably, the moderate Senate actually did the heavy lifting on evolution academic freedom led by conservative Sen. Ronda Storms (R-Brandon). And no matter what House leaders contend, the failure to send an evolution bill to the governor lies at the feet of the House leadership.

While I understand there were legitimate concerns on the merits of the competing approaches to academic freedom, the House leadership’s feet-dragging early on and the later decision to change course effectively made it extremely unlikely any kind of academic freedom bill would pass — in part, again, because of the moderate Senate.

It must be conceded the academic freedom issue got a late start due to the timing of the State Board of Education action on the new science standards in February, shortly before the beginning of the legislative session. Starting a major piece of legislation only two weeks before the session began made passage difficult. Further, and again, Gov. Crist refused to take a position on evolution academic freedom legislation, so passage by the Legislature may not have resulted in a new law.

The House leadership will say the clock ran out, although they insisted upon their perhaps better in substance language with less than five days left in the session when they had an opportunity to take the Senate language and send the bill to the governor.

Because of the House leadership’s decision, Florida teachers will be burdened with new science standards without the assurance that those who wish to offer scientific evidence critiquing Darwinian evolution will be protected from harassment or worse, as vividly illustrated at the collegiate and graduate levels in the Ben Stein documentary, “Expelled.” Children, who will learn only Darwinian dogma — which is philosophical naturalism, not science, are the losers for the House’s failure to act.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The documentary Expelled keenly observes that scientific ideas begin in the academy, but if they're to get out to the people, they must pass through a series of barriers and “checkpoints,” which means they can be hindered or stopped at any point along the way. In the film, the first checkpoint is the academy, which polices journals and controls research grants and funding. The second checkpoint is comprised of watchdog groups, like the NCSE, that work hard to organize and kindle opposition against Darwin-skeptics. The next checkpoint is the media, which carefully selects the sources of information it will broadcast to the public on this issue. When all those checkpoints fail, the final checkpoint is the courts. (This idea is explained in the diagram at left.) The film features various animated sequences explaining how Darwinists use these “checkpoints” to prevent scientific dissent from evolution from reaching the public.

Some members of the media don’t like being seen as a “checkpoint,” so they have been working hard in their coverage of Expelled and academic freedom legislation to misinform the public on these topics. The latest examples are a biased and error-filled post at the Chronicle of Higher Education by Richard Monastersky and a one-sided article about academic freedom legislation in the journal Science

Monasterky's post unashamedly praises the fact that “University professors have joined other science advocates to battle so-called ‘academic freedom’ bills under consideration in Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri.” Monastersky does his part to oppose academic freedom legislation, never quoting the actual text of the bills (which state that they “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine”) and instead quoting Barbara Forrest, who reportedly “called it a ‘stealth creationism bill.’” Monastersky apparently missed the fact that just last week, University of Missouri Professor of Medicine John Marshall testified in favor of an academic freedom bill before the Missouri House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education.

Monastersky shows his true colors in this debate by favorably referring readers to the NCSE and Panda’s Thumb for more information on the legislation. He even quotes Panda’s Thumb’s self-description as a blog for “defenders of the integrity of science.” In the one sentence where Monastersky mentions the proponents of the legislation, he writes: “The Discovery Institute, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design, supports the passage of the legislation.” He misrepresents our position because Discovery Institute has long opposed mandating intelligent design in the classroom, and these bills are not about pushing alternatives to evolution into schools. In fact, the bills in Michigan, Louisiana, and Missouri have language that would not even protect the teaching of scientific alternatives to evolution, such as intelligent design.

Science also recently published an article about the bills, which wrongly equates intelligent design with creationism and then states that "creationism is a mutating virus." The article quotes no supporters of the bill, and only quotes critics of the legislation. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of of the NCSE, was quoted echoing Barbara Forrest's talking points, falsely claiming that the academic freedom bills, "provide a permission slip for teachers to teach creationism." Again, Science chose not to even report any of the actual language of the bills (see above), which could never sanction the teaching of creationism.

What we see here is members of the media checkpoint working closely with the watchdog checkpoint to endorse the misinformation coming from the academia checkpoint. Collectively, they coordinate efforts to promote distorted and one-sided information about academic freedom legislation to the public. It seems that balanced and objective reporting on evolution has been expelled from Science and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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

Richard Dawkins just can’t seem to keep his foot out of his mouth. He has spent the last several weeks trying to recover from his embarrassing interview in the film Expelled where he concedes that intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis after all—so long as you limit the intelligence being studied to space aliens. Now, after denouncing Expelled as “wicked, evil” and an “outrage” for pointing out that Darwinism was one of the intellectual influences on Nazism, Dawkins has compared a popular Rabbi who dares to criticize him to Hitler! And he did it no less on World Holocaust Remembrance Day. No, I’m not joking. As I’ve said before, it’s getting really hard to parody the Darwinists. They do it so well themselves.

Dawkins’ latest target for invective is Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, one of America’s most popular rabbis. Rabbi Boteach is skeptical of Darwinian evolution, and he’s a critic of Dawkins’ effort to misuse science to disprove theism. In a speech last year at a conference where he appeared after Dawkins, Rabbi Boteach picked apart Dawkins’ misuse of science. That was too much for poor Prof. Dawkins, who a few days ago denounced the Rabbi’s comments as “a shrieking rant, delivered with an intemperate stridency of which Hitler himself might have been proud.” But the only ranting going on here is by Dawkins, who apparently has never listened to a recording of a speech by the real Hitler. Had he done so, he might have refrained from making such an over-the-top (not to mention tasteless) comparison. (Judge for yourself whether Rabbi Boteach’s speech reminds you of Hitler by watching it here.)

But there’s more. When Boteach criticized Dawkins for his rhetorical overreach, what did Dawkins do? Apologize? Of course not! Dawkins dug himself an even deeper hole. On May 8, he publicly responded to Boteach that he “did not say you think like Hitler, or hold the same opinions as Hitler, or do terrible things to people like Hitler. Obviously and most emphatically you don't.” Although this wasn’t exactly an apology, at least it was civil. But Dawkins couldn’t help himself, and so he started up again:

I said you shriek like Hitler. That is the only point of resemblance, and it is true. You shriek and yell and rant like Hitler… throughout your speeches you periodically rise to climaxes of shrieking rant, and that is just like Hitler. Incidentally, Dinesh D'Souza yells and shrieks in just the same way. I suppose it impresses some people, although it is hard to believe.

…when you turn to the subject of evolution, you don't know what you are talking about, so you yell and shriek to make up for it. Maybe yelling and shrieking works with an ignorant audience. It apparently worked for Hitler, but that is not a happy precedent. You should know better. Go and read some books about evolution, learn something about biology, and you'll then find that you can talk about it in a calm and civilised voice. You'll find that you won't need to yell and shriek like a madman, and you'll be all the more persuasive for it.

Where is the Anti-Defamation League when you need it?

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

Does the biology textbook Explore Evolution manufacture false controversies about evolution, while ignoring real ones?

That’s what biologist and science writer John Timmer claimed in a post earlier this week at Ars Technica. Timmer attended a two-day symposium on evolution at Rockefeller University and noted the many debates brewing there. “Evolution clearly has no shortage of controversies,” he concluded . But those real controversies have “no overlap,” he claimed, with the “ostensible” (i.e., fake) controversies supposedly “manufactured” by Explore Evolution. Bottom line for Timmer: while students may, or may not, need to learn about controversies in evolution – he leans strongly towards “not” – Explore Evolution is misleading at best, and the academic freedom bills being introduced around the country aren’t needed.

Now, when he wrote his blog entry, Timmer hadn’t actually read Explore Evolution. His comments about the book were based on what he could glean from the book’s website, and from other writings by its authors.

But, as Timmer will see when his review copy of Explore Evolution arrives (one is on its way to his office in New York), the book does not manufacture the controversies it reports and many of the very debates he saw firsthand at the Rockefeller symposium were already featured in Explore Evolution’s pages.

To take one example, students who might have learned from the book about the ideas of Canadian molecular geneticist W. Ford Doolittle, concerning problems with molecular homology would have been primed to ask Doolittle questions following his Rockefeller lecture.

In other words, those students would have been well-educated. Amazing, isn't it?

Open Any Evolutionary Biology Journal: Controversies Abound, at All Levels

First, let’s correct the record. Timmer writes that Explore Evolution “presents common descent as controversial exclusively within the animal kingdom.” That’s false: the book considers, in some detail, molecular evidence, such as ORFan sequences (i.e., genes with no known homologues) and variant genetic codes, that is used to evaluate relationships among single-celled organisms. Thus, Timmer’s claim that the controversies on display at Rockefeller have “essentially no overlap with the areas that Discovery would like to pretend are controversial” is simply wrong.

More seriously, Timmer should know that a single symposium – even one as fascinating as the Rockefeller event – does not a science make. Consider the topic of anatomical homology, central to arguments about the common ancestry of the animals. Explore Evolution focuses on the revolution in evolutionary theory’s understanding of homology that has been brought about by discoveries in developmental biology and genetics within the past two decades. Many biologists unfamiliar with these findings still hold the standard textbook view that homologous anatomical structures are caused by homologous genes and developmental pathways.

But those textbooks need to be updated. As Günther Wagner (2007, 473) notes,

Intuitively, one would expect that the historical continuity of morphological characters is underpinned by the continuity of the genes that govern the development of these characters. However, things are not that simple: one of the most important results of the past 15 years of molecular developmental genetics is the realization that homologous characters can have different genetic and developmental bases. This seems paradoxical, because the historical continuity of morphological characters implies continuity of the (genetic) information about the characters.

Are students likely to learn about these discoveries from their standard biology textbooks? No. Will they learn about them in Explore Evolution? Yes.

Or consider Timmer’s discussion of what he sees as a settled climate of opinion about the efficacy of natural selection:

Explore Evolution seems to think a reply can be made to the arguments in favor of natural selection. Based on the symposium, the scientific community clearly doesn't. Selective pressure made appearances in nearly every session.

Maybe, but that’s not because the role of natural selection in biological explanation is uncontroversial, as Timmer asserts. Big fat volumes seeking alternatives to selection – Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s massive Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Oxford, 2003) tips the scales at 794 pages, printed in a magnifier-begging tiny font – dedicated symposia, and indeed entire research programs within evolutionary theory derive from a deep dissatisfaction from the neo-Darwinian emphasis on the centrality of natural selection. Michael Lynch of Indiana University (2007, xiii) expresses this dissatisfaction about as bluntly as anyone could:

…it is quite remarkable that most biologists continue to interpret nearly every aspect of biodiversity as an outcome of adaptive processes. This blind acceptance of natural selection as the only force relevant to evolution has led to a lot of sloppy thinking, and is probably the primary reason why evolution is viewed as a soft science by much of society.

Timmer calls Explore Evolution’s discussion of natural selection “hallucinatory” – on the contrary, if anything, the book soft-peddles the problems. Again, will students learn about these debates from their standard texts? Almost certainly not.

The Coming Crisis for the Science Establishment

No, I don't much like the paranoid or ominous-sounding phrase "science establishment," but for the moment, it will have to do. (I have in mind organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the major professional scientific societies that regularly issue anti-ID edicts [you know who you are], and lobbying groups such as the National Center for Science Education.) There is a growing disconnect between statements issued for public consumption by "the establishment," about the certainties of evolution, and the actual state of evolutionary theory, as one finds it in the primary research literature, at meetings (such as the one Timmer attended, and where I often find myself), and in personal conversations and communications with evolutionary biologists. I speak from long experience. As that distance -- that disconnect -- increases, an inevitable crisis looms.

Here's an example. Natural selection, as Darwin discovered, explains the origin of biological complexity, novelty, and innovation. There's a stock phrase that populates any number of official statements about evolution. One could utter that statement in any biology classroom around the USA, and no one would blink. You know: Darwin found the process by which new structures evolved where they did not exist before.

Now here's the opening argument from a research paper I happen to be reading this week, from the evolutionary theoretician Armin Moczek (2008):

Given its importance and pervasiveness, the processes underlying evolutionary innovation are, however, remarkably poorly understood, which leaves us at a surprising conundrum: while biologists have made great progress over the past century and a half in understanding how existing traits diversify, we have made relatively little progress in understanding how novel traits come into being in the first place.

What happens to the credibility of the science establishment -- on the subject of the bona fides of standard evolutionary theory -- when "Darwin already explained that, put your hand down" comes into contact with "Well, we don't really know?"

Not letting the kids talk about it...there's a winning strategy.

References

Lynch, Michael. 2007. The Origins of Genome Architecture. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.

Moczek, Armin. 2008. On the origins of novelty in development and evolution. BioEssays 30:432-47.

Wagner, Günther. 2007. The developmental genetics of homology. Nature Reviews Genetics 8:473-479.

Posted by Paul Nelson at 12:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history.  Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of “junk” DNA, now known to have function.  In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function. 

Here’s where it gets interesting: Functionless structures may have been originally designed but were later rendered functionless by natural processes. For example, if you leave a laptop computer on the top of a mountain for 1000 years where it is exposed to the natural elements, it likely will no longer work. But that does not mean the laptop was not originally designed. In the same way, examples of loss-of-function in organisms may be best explained by natural processes of random mutation and natural selection. In this regard, features like functionless eyes on blind cave fish are probably best explained by Darwinian evolution. This poses no challenge to the validity of intelligent design in other cases. ID is far more interested in explaining the GAIN of biological function rather than loss of function.

Like other types of “junk” DNA, Darwinists have almost universally considered pseudogenes to be evolutionary garbage--once-functional genes that were rendered functionless by random mutations. But a recent article in Nature concludes the following:

“Our findings indicate a function for pseudogenes in regulating gene expression by means of the RNA interference pathway.”

Posted by Casey Luskin at 6:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Denialist" has become the slur du-jour of materialists. Dr. Stephen Novella, ardent acceptist, takes me to task for denying the truth of his personal materialist ideology of mind-brain causation. He believes that the brain causes the mind entirely, without remainder. I believe that the brain causes the mind partly, with remainder. He’s a materialist, I’m a dualist. That makes Dr. Novella angry:

Dr. Egnor must be tired of always being wrong - or at least he would be if he had the insight and intellectual honesty to see how persistently wrong he is. Alas, so far he has not demonstrated such insight. I have been engaged in an ongoing blog debate with Dr. Michael Egnor, who writes for the propaganda blog…Egnor has mangled most of his arguments, has misrepresented my opinions, has cruelly assaulted logic (as you can see he has a proper home at the Discovery Institute) - but now he demonstrates that he is incapable of reading a simple sentence and comprehending its meaning…His arguments are persistently wrong. He has not acknowledged his prior egregious errors - which is evidence for lack of insight and/or intellectual dishonesty. He completely misrepresented what I wrote -so either he did not understand it, or didn’t care. Egnor has mangled his arguments and abused logic. These are NOT personal attacks - these are legitimate criticisms of his behavior.

My "cruel assault on logic" and "incapability of reading a simple sentence" have seduced me into very bad behavior…denialism:

This is, in fact, a common strategy of denialism in general - the denial of legitimate science. Denialists would have us believe….This is the dance that denialists do…This is another example of what I have written about before - that denialists confuse questions at different levels of understanding….But like those other denialists…[emphasis mine]

When it comes to materialism, I’m a denialist to the bone. But what is it about my denialism that so infuriates Dr. Novella? He deigns to inform:

Dr. Egnor…forced me to spell out in detail the logic behind my statement.

In a paper published in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience — "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain" — Chun Siong Soon and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany show that brain activity may precede conscious decision-making by as much as ten seconds. Subjects were asked to push a button with either the right hand or the left hand, which they were free to choose. Seven to ten seconds before the conscious decision, brain activity sometimes appeared that appeared to correlate with unconscious decision making. The correlation was slight. The specific hemisphere in which the brain activity occurred correlated with the hand used sixty percent of the time (no correlation at all would be fifty percent).

Dr. Novella sees clear evidence…to support his own materialist ideology! He writes:

Given my recent posts concerning materialism vs dualism (does the brain cause mind), I also want to point out that this research falls squarely in the materialism camp. Causes precede their effects - brain activity precedes conscious awareness and action - the brain causes mind. That much seems pretty clear.

I disagreed. I pointed out that Chun’s study merely demonstrated that an unconscious mental state may (weakly) correlate with a simultaneous unconscious brain state. That correlation wasn’t evidence either way for causation, which is the issue in the materialism/dualism debate. Perhaps the unconscious mind caused the brain state, or perhaps the brain state caused the unconscious mind. Perhaps the causation is more complex. Chun’s study didn’t address these issues.

This observation led to Dr. Novella’s pique:

Dr. Michael Egnor…has cruelly assaulted logic…he is incapable of reading a simple sentence and comprehending its meaning…His arguments are persistently wrong. He has not acknowledged his prior egregious errors - which is evidence for lack of insight and/or intellectual dishonesty.

Correcting my "cruel assault on logic" and my "intellectual dishonesty," Dr. Novella sets me straight:

Further - there are two types of correlation to consider in this study, and Egnor is choosing the one that he feels makes his point without ever acknowledging that he is doing so. One correlation is the correlation between brain activity and the decision-making process. This correlation in the study is very strong. The other correlation is between the particular pattern of brain activity and the specific choice that is made - this correlation is weak in the study: only 60%.

There are indeed two types of correlation in Chun's study. The first type is the correlation involving general brain activity recorded 7-10 seconds before the subjects made the conscious decision to use a specific hand to press the button. However, the recording of "brain activity" 10 seconds prior to the decision merely means that the subjects were thinking 10 seconds before the decision — it provides no evidence as to what they were thinking about. The regions of the brain that were activated are known to be associated in some circumstances with planning, but the association is often nebulous, and activation of these regions provides little in the way of information about the content of the thought. Perhaps they were thinking, "What if I don’t feel like pressing the button at all," or "what shall I get for lunch?" or "how much are they going to pay me for doing this?" The mere recording of generic brain activity during the study is meaningless, because the subjects were continuously conscious, and there’s no clear evidence, without hemispheric localization, to infer that the brain activity involved an unconscious decision about hand selection, which was the whole point of the study. So Dr. Novella’s assertion that the first brain activity correlation was "very strong" suggests that Dr. Novella didn’t understand the study. Ten seconds before subjects pressed the button there’s no doubt they were thinking about something.

It’s what they were thinking about — subconsciously — that matters and that was the point of the study. And it’s the side of the brain activity — the laterality and its correspondence to hand selection — that matters. It is only this second correlation that pertains to this question of hand choice. Yet this correlation is very weak. Forty percent of the time the brain activity was on the wrong side of the brain, and this would contradict the hypothesis that the activity represented lateralized planning. And of course 50% correlation — a shift of only 10% of the data from the correct to the incorrect hemisphere — would lead to a conclusion of mere chance, with no correlation at all with planning.

So Dr. Novella describes as "very strong" a correlation that means nothing (brain activity occurs in conscious subjects), and claims as vindication for his materialist ideology a marginal correlation between brain and hand lateralization that is barely greater than chance.

Furthermore, even if one accepts this weak correlation, the correlation does little to advance the materialist theory of causation of the unconscious mental process. Both materialists and dualists believe that brain activity often correlates with mental activity. It's causation that we disagree about, and as we'll see, careful consideration of the results of Chun's experiment cast doubt on the strict materialist theory of brain-mind causation.

Do Chun’s results (60% correlation with hand choice; 40% lack of correlation with hand choice) really mitigate in favor of the materialist hypothesis? Consider Dr. Novella’s own criterion for this debate:

"If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain, then we will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it."

Dualism predicts the inverse:

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

Keep in mind that materialism posits that mind states are always identical to brain states, because mind states are brain states, entirely. The materialist prediction is that the correlation between mind state and brain state must be 100%, minus experimental error. Dualism posits that the correspondence between mind states and brain states is not exact, because there are aspects of mind states that are not identical to brain states. Dualism predicts that the correlation is less than 100%, and that this lack of correlation cannot be explained away entirely as experimental error.

Chun’s research shows that 40% of the time there is no unique brain function lateralized to the hemisphere involved in the hand choice, despite the presumption that an unconscious mental state is active at that time. Their research reveals very poor correlation between mind states and brain states. Is the correlation very poor — not much more than no correlation — entirely because of experimental error (if materialism is true), or is the correlation very poor because... part of the mind state isn't caused by the brain state (if dualism is true)? If materialism is true, and the actual correlation is 100%, then the experimental error of Chun's experiment is so high as to render the results virtually worthless. If that's true, why would Dr. Novella choose this research to lend support to his theory? And why would the experimental error be so high? fMRI is one of the most sensitive methods we have of non-invasively measuring local neuronal activity. Its spatial resolution is excellent (3 to 6 millimeters), and it is so precise and so reliable that we use it to plan surgical resection of tumors and epileptic foci very close to critical brain regions. Was the failure of fMRI to detect any lateralizing activity in 40% of patients entirely due to error inherent in the technique? Is Dr. Novella claiming that those subjects had no unconscious processing? If Dr. Novella is claiming that the experimental error is genuinely 40% (which it must be if materialism is true), what evidence can he provide that all of the lack of correlation is mere error? Can Dr. Novella cite any other fMRI studies that have demonstrated such astonishingly high experimental error? Does he even understand that there is a problem with his claims about the research?

Then of course there's the most parsimonious explanation: there is poor correlation between mind state and brain state measured by fMRI because the mind state isn't entirely caused by the brain state. What if the failure to detect lateralized brain activity in 40% of subjects were not caused entirely by experimental error, but was partly the result of an absence of specific brain activity synchronous with unconscious planning? With lack of correlation at 40%, most researchers (without an ideological bias) would conclude that the processes — the mind state and the brain state — were obviously not identical. That would be clear evidence for dualism — the theory that the mind is not entirely reducible to the brain.

Dr. Novella seems unaware of the implications of the very research that he cites. By his own criteria, the evidence of very poor correlation between brain state and mind state mitigates in favor of the dualist view, not the materialist view.

Ironically, Dr. Novella asserts that this evidence — evidence that by his own criteria mitigates against materialism and for dualism — falls clearly into the materialist camp. No doubt it does. Weak and misinterpreted evidence seems to pile up in the materialist camp.

Dr. Novella is a materialist ideologue. He has difficulty drawing coherent scientific inferences, and his rhetorical style is little more than condescension and contempt. He brooks no questions. When it comes to challenges to his personal materialistic ideology, Dr. Novella sneers, dissembles, and ultimately invokes parsimony:

The problem with [dualism] is that it is unnecessary - it is adding an unnecessary step and violates Occam’s razor.

William of Occam was a 14th Century English scholastic philosopher and a father of modern epistemology. He was also a Franciscan friar, and by his vows (…God is Spirit, and man is created from dust and in God’s image…) — he was a dualist.

So even dualists end up, posthumously and incongruously, in the materialist camp. Denialists are everywhere.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The mainstream media's “framing” of the evolution-debate would have us believe that Darwin-skeptics are the ones who make religious arguments and try to push religion into the science classroom. But the evidence shows that the Darwinists are often the ones who push religion — and in an unashamed manner, at that. A recent UC Irvine news article reports on a lecture given by leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala where he suggested that religion should be discussed in science classes. Ayala said, “the fact that science is compatible with religion is an important thing to state in science classes.” He continued making religious arguments for evolution, contending, “The theory of evolution is better for religion than intelligent design.”

But the most peculiar statement by Ayala was, “[I]t is not impossible that evolution was guided by God.” I do not find that statement odd because I think it is wrong — in fact, I personally completely agree with Ayala’s statement. No, the statement is strange because Ayala himself made arguments last year that seemingly flatly contradict any God-guided evolution. In an article Ayala published in the prestigious scientific journal, Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) USA, he stated, “In evolution, there is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations." How would Ayala reconcile those seemingly contradictory statements? He doesn’t say.

In fact, Ayala’s 2007 PNAS article starkly promotes materialist views of evolution: He concludes that "evolution conveys chance and necessity jointly enmeshed in the stuff of life; randomness and determinism interlocked in a natural process..." Ayala’s PNAS article contends that it was “Darwin’s greatest accomplishment” to remove "a Creator or other external agent" from biology. Just to make sure you aren’t bringing any kind of purpose or teleology into evolution, Ayala’s 2007 PNAS article explains that an evolutionary account "does not necessitate recourse to a preordained plan, whether imprinted from the beginning or through successive interventions by an omniscient and almighty Designer." Ayala isn't saying that this "preordained plan" might exist, for he is adamant that "Biological evolution ... is not the outcome of preconceived design." (emphasis added) He forcefully concludes in his PNAS article that Darwin completed a “conceptual revolution” that “is nothing if not a fundamental vision that has forever changed how mankind perceives itself and its place in the universe.”

Those statements were made in 2007, but yet now Ayala contends that “it is not impossible that evolution was guided by God” and that therefore “science is compatible with religion.” Unfortunately, Ayala has yet to provide a clear, detailed rationale for how he reconciles all of those statements.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to today’s ScienceDaily, “New Evidence Suggests a Symbiogenetic Origin for the Centrosome.”

But the evidence suggests no such thing. Instead, it points to the willingness of evolutionary biologists to believe just-so stories, and to the ideological corruption of the National Institutes of Health and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Centrosomes (“central bodies”) are fascinating organelles. In undividing eukaryotic cells one is located next to the nucleus, where it serves as the organizing center for microtubules that make up the “cytoskeleton.” The cytoskeleton gives the cell its shape and serves as the highway system along which many intracellular components are transported to their proper locations. (See the cell animation sequence in the movie “Expelled.”) Just before cell division the centrosome duplicates, and the two centrosomes then form the poles of the cell division “spindle,” a very complex apparatus composed of microtubules that emanate from the centrosomes. The spindle distributes chromosomes to the daughter cells, each of which also inherits one centrosome.

Even though centrosomes control many features of the cell (such as its morphology and the process of division), they are of much less interest to neo-Darwinists than cell nuclei, because centrosomes contain no DNA [¹], so they cannot provide the DNA mutations that are assumed to be the raw materials for evolution. Thus many aspects of centrosomes, including their chemical composition, structure, function, and mode of replication—not to mention their origin—are (in the jargon of we-now-know-almost-everything Darwinists) “poorly understood.”

Along come Mark and Mary Anne Alliegro of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In the abstract of an article published online May 5 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (the complete article is not yet available, except to PNAS subscribers), the Alliegros report that some RNAs they extracted from surf clams are “centrosome-associated transcripts representing a structurally unique intron-poor collection of nuclear genes.” Since a subset of these RNAs “contain functional domains that are highly conserved across distant taxa,” the Alliegros conclude that they may “serve as cytological progenitors of the centrosome and may support a symbiogenetic model for its evolution.”

Wait a minute. As the ScienceDaily press release explains, “only two cellular components—the mitochondria and the chloroplasts—are generally accepted by evolutionary biologists as having a symbiogenetic origin.” This is because only mitochondria and chloroplasts (as far as we know) contain DNA that is inherited independently of the nuclear DNA. Since these tiny organelles contain DNA and look a bit like bacteria, the hypothesis of symbiogenesis asserts that they were once free-living prokaryotes that were engulfed by other prokaryotes to form eukaryotic cells. The hypothesis has lots of evidentiary problems, but whatever plausibility it seems to have with regard to mitochondria and chloroplasts completely evaporates in the case of centrosomes.

The problem is not just that centrosomes contain no DNA. The most solidly established function of centrosomes is that they serve as the organizing centers for microtubules, but microtubules occur only in eukaryotes, not in prokaryotes. Furthermore, centrosomes in animal cells contain two turbine-like centrioles oriented at a right angle to each other. Nobody knows for sure what centrioles do, nor why they occur in orthogonal pairs, and their origin is a complete mystery. There is no evidence that centrosomes or centrioles ever existed — or ever could have existed — in anything other than eukaryotic cells. The idea that free-living centrosome-like organisms were once engulfed by other primitive organisms is about as implausible as you can get, and the implausibility is not lessened by the presence in centrosomes of RNAs “that are highly conserved across distant taxa.”

In this case, evolutionary jargon has taken the place of clear thinking. Yet the National Institutes of Health supported this medically useless speculation with our tax dollars, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA elevated it to the status of “peer-reviewed” science—part of the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution.

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

¹ W. F. Marshall and J. L. Rosenbaum, "Are There Nucleic Acids in the Centrosome?" Current Topics in Developmental Biology 49 (2000): 187-205.

Posted by Jonathan Wells at 12:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Biologic Institute director Douglas Axe has an intriguing and worthwhile essay posted online, "Leaping into Trouble," where he points out that:

Darwinists have always recognized the existence of an intuitive barrier that prevents many of us from joining them. Human understanding of complex things is strongly shaped by our experiences with human technology. You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate in some way the extraordinary difficulty of getting physical systems to perform extraordinary tasks. Technology doesn’t just happen. It only comes with sizable investments of genius and diligence, along with more than a little patience.

Posted by Anika Smith at 8:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Note: This is the first of a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain.

Velvet worms are thought to be descended of insects, but the evidence for this is scanty; they look a lot like worms, and they have remained unchanged for millions of years. They live along fallen leaves in tropical forests and have two nozzles, one on each side of their head, which can fire off a very quickly drying glue at their prey. These two sprays crisscross back and forth, as if lassoing the victim. Once the victim is securely ensnared, the worm bites a hole in its body, injects digestive juices, and then slurps up the dissolving victim. Curiously, this glue does not dry within the worm’s body, and its digestive juices are well contained. Imagine the difficulty if the intermediate glue dried within the velvet worm, clogging the nozzles, or dried too slowly, allowing the victim to get away before becoming ensnared.

Taken from: Billions of Missing Links
Copyright © 2007 by Geoffrey Simmons, M.D.
Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR
Used by Permission
www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Posted by Geoffrey Simmons at 2:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

I have always admired G. K. Chesterton's dictum that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, but I never appreciated the full scope of its application until reading John Derbyshire's recent review of Ben Stein's "Expelled" at National Review Online.

"What on earth has happened to Ben Stein?" asks Derbyshire. "He and I go a long way back." Are the two close? Are they old pals who have been through a lot together? "No," he says, "I've never met the guy."

But wait. How can this be? How can Derbyshire have forged this bond of friendship with Stein without actually knowing him? "Though I've never met him," he explains, "I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him."

Got it.

In fact, Derbyshire displays an amazing ability, far beyond that of the rest of us, to engage with people and things even though he has had no direct contact with them. Take "Expelled" for example. "So what's going on here with this stupid 'Expelled' movie?" he asks — a question which could have been answered by the simple expedient of actually watching it. A man with Derbyshire's special talent, however, is not hampered by such constraints:

No, I haven't seen the dang thing. I've been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro ... and con, and I can't believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing.

That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it. This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review movies he has never seen. It is perhaps fortuitous that Bill Buckley, the founder of National Review, recently passed from among us: this is a talent I am not sure he would have fully appreciated.

This ability to judge a movie without having to suffer the indignity of actually watching it surely sets Derbyshire apart. Who else could accomplish the task with so few tools: a little hearsay, a few second hand reports—and perhaps a Ouija board. This is a critical skill at which the rest of us can only marvel.

Most film critics attend screenings; Derbyshire conducts a séance.

And what does Derbyshire think of "Expelled" after not having seen it? Very little, it seems. "It's pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance..." One would think, given Derbyshire's method of reviewing movies, that he would have a greater appreciation for ignorance and the uses to which it can be put.

But with his judgment in the can, Derbyshire, like his friend Stein in the movie itself, goes hunting for answers to the question of how could Stein have participated in such an unseemly project. "The first thing that came to mind," he offers, "was Saudi money."

That's right. Saudi money.

Now I will confess that the oil-rich Saudis are not high on my list of people in whose interest it is to explain the dinosaurs away. But as unlikely as this thesis may sound, we must remember with whom we are dealing here, and how far his apparently occult powers of perception seem to extend. Derbyshire may indeed have never met a Saudi, or even been to their country, in which case, who could contend with his knowledge on the subject?

Derbyshire himself has to finally abandon this explanation. "For one thing, Stein is Jewish." There you go. "For another, he is rich, and doesn't need the money." Too true. And then there is Stein's character, which Derbyshire testifies to on the basis of the long and intimate association that he has not had with Stein: "No," he concludes, "Ben Stein is no crook."

The kind of long, painful process Derbyshire goes through to conclude that Stein is not, in fact, motivated by men wearing white robes (No, not those. We don't need to suggest that theory, since it might involve another long thought process and derail Derbyshire from his greater purpose) is one he might well have chosen instead to apply to the merits of the movie itself.

But why bother?

One of the beauties of Derbyshire's sibylline method of reviewing movies is that it places the reviewer at a safe distance from the actual film itself, allowing the critic to say things about the film that are unconstrained by what is actually in it. The downside, of course, is that the reviewer may get it all wrong and look like a complete idiot. But it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to place him in this latter category, largely because we have actually read his review, thereby placing us perhaps too close to the subject for proper judgment.

But those looking for weaknesses in Derbyshire's review would point to things like his criticism of the quality of the graphics in the movie, which were actually quite good (though probably not as impressive when, as in Derbyshire's case, you don't actually see them), and to his uncritical acceptance of virtually every wild-eyed allegation made against the production of the film.

But these indiscretions are tolerable compared with the alternative. In fact, the best defense of Derbyshire's critical approach of not directly exposing himself to the things he criticizes is to point out what happens when he does.

Although Derbyshire turns his nose up at actually seeing the movies he reviews, he is willing to get his hands dirty when it comes to creationists themselves. And indeed we have to admire Derbyshire's noble effort to actually get to know these people. It is admirable that he would lower himself to do this given the distasteful nature of the whole business:

Individual creationists can be very nice people, though they get nicer the further away they are from the full-time core enterprise of modern creationism at the Discovery Institute. The enterprise as a whole, however, really doesn’t smell good. You notice this when you’re around it a lot.

So even though Derbyshire has largely forsaken the direct application of his senses as a basis for making judgments, at least he has not lost all of them. He can "smell" these creationists, and, if they are not too densely congregated, he can even tolerate the odor. It is a measure of his commitment to the truth that, despite the offense to his olfactory sense, he is still willing to pursue it no matter into what unpleasant situations it might lead him.

One can imagine him, conducting his research at a local Baptist church social, reaching out to shake with his right hand, while holding a handkerchief to his nose with his left. But for a man concerned with the very fate of Western civilization, it is a sacrifice he is willing to make.

Yes, Western civilization: This is what Derbyshire feels is at stake in the debate over Intelligent Design, and it is "creationists" who threaten it. And who are these creationists? They are "shifty," dishonest, nasty, and (I hesitate to repeat the term in the context of a Derbyshire film review) uninformed. They even have "bad manners."

Apparently, they weren't observing proper table etiquette at that Baptist social.

And to what can we attribute these moral shortcomings? Again, Derbyshire has a hypothesis. But, unlike the Saudi Theory of Why Ben Stein Supports Creationism, this one somehow makes it through Derbyshire's rigorous verification process: "My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are."

His proof for this theory? The fact that many Intelligent Design advocates deny they are creationists. Now one explanation of why these people might deny they are creationists is the fact that they actually aren't. But this doesn't fool Derbyshire. No, sir. These people are, he says,

a handful of eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories, and [who] set about presenting themselves to the public as “alternative science" engaged in a “controversy” with a closed-minded, reactionary “science establishment” fearful of new ideas.

Derbyshire does not offer any actual proof for this. In fact, he doesn't even give examples of the misrepresentations he says characterize the movie. "The misrepresentations in Expelled are far too numerous for me to list here, and the task is unnecessary since others have done it." After all, he didn't bother to watch the movie before reviewing it, so why should he offer actual proof of what is wrong with it?

"Western civilization has many glories," he says:

There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.

It is on behalf of these testaments to greatness (and, oh, did he forget to mention good manners?) that Derbyshire charges Intelligent Design with "blood libel on Western Civilization." After all, would these achievements even have been attempted if it hadn't been for Darwin? Would the painting, and music, and architecture of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries have even been possible without the concept of Natural Selection? Is there any great building in Rome or Florence or Vienna that does not know owe its very existence to ...

Oh, wait.

Darwin didn't come along until the 19th century, did he? In fact, almost all of the things in Derbyshire's list of great Western achievements were accomplished by men who believed that this world was ... the product of design.

But what about science? We can't say that science isn't in danger from these dishonest, shifty, unmannerly people, can we?

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone.

Of course, at least Stein has actually seen the world, which is more, Stein might respond, than Derbyshire has done with his movie. In fact, that a man whose preferred means of critiquing movies is akin to looking into a crystal ball would venture to criticize anyone for being unscientific is an irony perhaps too obvious for a mind as esoteric as Derbyshire's to notice.

Well, okay, but how about Rudyard Kipling, whom Derbyshire quotes as an example of someone who courageously manned the battlements in the defense of the West, and whose name he invokes as a model of how we too should stand in the fight against the barbarians who now go under the name "creationists"?

Kipling? The author of the Just So Stories, in which the peculiarities of various animals are explained in mythological terms ("How the Camel Got his Hump," "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin," "How the Leopard Got His Spots")? That Kipling? Well, okay, he's not exactly the paragon of science, but okay. We're hip with that.

For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.

Trouble is, if it is Kipling's cause in which Derbyshire wants Ben Stein to join him, it is Derbyshire, not Stein who will have to rethink his position in order to do so.

I just want to see the look on Derbyshire's face when, after Stein has joined him on the battlements and they are singing their rousing war songs, they get to this particular stanza:

God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

("Recessional," by Rudyard Kipling)

Oh, and for Derbyshire's sake we should probably point out that the deity referred to here is not Darwin.

Posted by Martin Cothran at 7:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Much the way Marxist determinism was marshaled in the past to explain practically everything, an "evolutionary advantage" is now sought. Endless grant money seems to be available and journalists are eager to report the research speculations as "science." I am collecting a file of such stories.

So here I am trying to figure out how a study might be concocted to explain this moving account of a sports team that showed great conscience and panache. Surely someone can get a government grant to find a Darwinian answer to replace the common sense one.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 12:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

Over at Reason.com, Ronald Bailey has taken the Michael Shermer (i.e. Fact Free) approach to attacking Expelled. Bailey charges that "the film is entirely free of scientific content—no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for 'intelligent design' (ID) theory is given." But last time I saw the film, it featured well-credentialed scientists arguing that natural selection lacks information-generative power and arguing the digitally-encoded information in DNA and highly efficient micromachines and factories in the cell strongly indicate an intelligent cause. Bailey makes the simplistic (and inadequate) argument for neo-Darwinism based upon the fact that the fossil record shows that species have changed over time and younger fossils more closely resemble living species than older fossils. But this argument makes three mistakes:

(1) 2001 car models more closely resemble 2008 car models than do 1922 car models, but no one is arguing that cars evolved without intelligent design;
(2) It ignores that ID does not dispute the notion that species on earth have changed over time, but merely disputes the claim that the main driving force generating all complex biological features is natural selection acting on random mutation; and
(3) It forgets the much bigger problem that Neo-Darwinism has trouble explaining the paucity of intermediate forms in the fossil record;

Bailey Endorses Discriminating against Pro-ID Scientists
But the most incredible parts of Bailey's review aren't those mistakes: he tries to diminish the attacks upon the academic freedom of ID proponents by saying that "the worst thing they suffer is the loss of their jobs. That's not fun, but it's not the gas chamber either." So it's no big deal, according to Bailey, if ID proponents are being fired, as long as they aren't being killed. Is that the society we all want to live in? Would Bailey make the same comments if we were talking about discrimination against minority ethnic groups or homosexuals? I think not.

Bailey Mimics Shermer: Deny Discrimination and Blame the Victims
Bailey also adopts the Shermer-style while discussing the persecution of Richard Sternberg: he ignores all the evidence of discrimination against Sternberg and parrots Sternberg's persecutors as evidence that there was no persecution. Interestingly, Bailey prefaces his discussion of Sternberg by citing the alleged "creationist" connections of Sternberg and Stephen Meyer. Why would this be relevant to talk about unless Bailey felt that somehow it would legitimize attacking Sternberg? In other words, Bailey believes that being a Darwin-skeptic delegitimizes your academic stature.

Bailey similarly attacks Caroline Crocker because she believes that, "There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution." Again, why is that relevant to point-out unless he thinks that her expressing such a viewpoint would be grounds for legitimately discriminating against her?

Finally, when discussing the denial of tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, Bailey cites an atheist religion professor, Hector Avalos (who persecuted Gonzalez at Iowa State), to attack Gonzalez's scientific arguments for cosmic design. Again, Bailey justifies discriminating against Gonzalez because Gonzalez supports ID:

Did Gonzalez fail to get tenure because of his ID views? Although the university denies it, my guess is probably yes. Why? On the evidence of The Privileged Planet, Guillermo's colleagues could reasonably worry that his ID views weren't likely to lead to fruitful research results. Gonzalez was not thrown into a concentration camp for his views. He just didn't get tenure.

Bailey's Double Standard
Bailey attacks the film because one of the producers is "a Christian evangelical software millionaire," devoting much space to attacking ID by asserting that the "Wedge Document" expresses religious motivations behind ID. Bailey apparently never stops to consider the hypocrisy of his charges, because throughout the film, Darwinists happily express, on camera, anti-religious motivations for promoting evolution. As one review of the film discusses:

[P.Z.] Myers, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, compared religion to a hobby, saying it brings some people the type of comfort one can find in knitting.

“What we have to do is get it to a place where religion is treated at the level it should be treated,” he told Stein in the on-screen interview. “That it’s something fun that people get together to do on the weekends and really doesn’t affect their life as much as it has been so far.”

Devaluing religion, Myers said, would benefit society by providing “greater science literacy, which is going to lead to the erosion of religion and then we’ll get more and more science to replace it, and that will displace more and more religion, which will allow more and more science in, and we’ll eventually get to the point where religion has taken that appropriate place as a side dish rather than a main course.

“If you separate out the ethical message from religion, what have you got left? You’ve got a bunch of fairy tales.”

Dr. Peter Atkins, professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford, was more direct in his ‘Expelled’ assessment.

“Religion, it’s just fantasy, basically,” he said. “It’s particularly empty of any explanatory content and is evil as well.”

So it seems that the double-standard type-reasoning used at Reason.com construes any statements about religion as criticism against ID proponents but ignores anti-religious statements when they come from leading Darwinists. A more blatant double-standard would be hard to imagine. (For more rebuttals regarding the "Wedge Document," see here, here, here, or here.)

Conclusion
Ronald Bailey's review of Expelled is surprisingly candid in that he unashamedly endorses the intolerance towards ID in academic circles. Not only does he justify discriminating against ID proponents because of their views, but he suggests adopting a double-standard, where alleged religious motives count ONLY against ID but anti-religious intentions never count against Darwinism. Bailey might not realize this, but his intolerant statements justify the fundamental premise behind the Expelled film: there is discrimination against ID proponents in the academy. For this reason, I'm glad he published his review for all to see.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Berlinski is back at NRO with a take down of the odious and tiresome John Derbyshire. Derbyshire has sunk to new lows recently in his attacks on Discovery Institute, Expelled, and anyone who has the temerity to advocate intelligent design or simply question Darwinism. Berlinski is in no mood to pull his punches in going after Derbyshire.

Having not seen the documentary that he proposes to criticize, Derbyshire is nonetheless quite certain that he knows what it conveys. “It is pretty plain,” he asserts, “that it is a piece of creationist porn.” Perhaps I will be forgiven for suggesting that John Derbyshire’s late-night scrutiny of the Internet may have corrupted his habitual search for le mot juste. Expelled has nothing to do with creationism, and if it is pornographic, the details have not become widely known.

Expelled makes a point far plainer than pornography and points to a phenomenon just as widespread. The scientific community is intolerant of dissent and morbidly so when it comes to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Those who reject criticism because it is unwelcome have in John Derbyshire acquired an ally of the best sort. He is not disposed to ask questions of his friends; and he is eager uncritically to attack their enemies.

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There's a fascinating new series of video clips about all manner of subjects called What You Ought To Know. This clip on intelligent design and evolution is one of the best summaries of the debate I've ever seen, and all done in just a few minutes. With some laughs thrown in even.

Now that you've watched that, watch this clip on Open Minds and think about how you felt when you watched the first one.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Well, it's official. The Florida House of Representatives refused today to pass the academic freedom measure on evolution previously passed by the state Senate, and so the measure is now dead because the legislative session has ended. Supposedly, the Florida House refused to pass the Senate bill because it favored a stronger measure to require the critical analysis of evolution. As a former political science professor, I can tell you that this explanation doesn't hold water. If the Republican House leadership in Florida really supported academic freedom on evolution, they would have passed the Senate bill. Instead, they shamefully passed a bill earlier this week with language that the Senate had previously rejected, knowing full well this would likely mean the death of any legislation on the topic. What has just happened in Florida smacks of classic back-room politics by politicians who are trying to play both sides of an issue. Maybe I'm wrong and something else was going on, but I've yet to hear any credible explanation for why the House did what it did. If you are a Florida citizen concerned about academic freedom in your state, you should start demanding some answers right at the top, starting with Florida's Republican Speaker of the House, and the House sponsor of the poison pill "critical analysis" bill that everyone knew the Senate wouldn't accept. At the very least, those responsible for this shouldn't be allowed to take credit for trying to pass an academic freedom bill that they obviously wanted killed.

The good news in all of this is that this issue isn't going away. There are still bills active in Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, and Michigan, and we understand that legislation is going to be proposed in even more states. More importantly, we still live in America, and although Darwinists are doing their best to shut down and intimidate anyone who raises questions about Neo-Darwinism, we still have free speech, and they can't prevent people from hearing about the debate in the public arena, no matter how hard they try.

Posted by John West at 4:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s Wall Street Journal is running an article about the growing battle over academic freedom on evolution. For the establishment media, the article is pretty standard-issue—which means it’s fairly shallow, conflates lots of things, and is written almost entirely from the Darwinists’ point of view. But the fact that the Journal is highlighting this issue at all shows how the academic freedom issue may be reaching a level that is hard to ignore. A couple of the specific problems of the Journal piece: In the article proper, the reporter doesn’t allow us to respond to the phony claim that there are no scientific criticisms of Darwinism, although we were allowed to briefly make our points in an internet-only graphic (to which the National Center for Science Education was given a lot more space to respond). And the reporter--as is typical--substitutes her own tendentious definition of intelligent design for the one ID proponents actually use. A reminder: If you want to show your support for genuine academic freedom on evolution, go to www.academicfreedompetition.com and sign the petition, and then take your friends to see Expelled!

Posted by John West at 10:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There are people who apparently have a deep-seated need to believe that Intelligent Design proponents are really creationists in disguise, and that once they have control over the nation's schools, they're going to rip off their clever scientist disguises to reveal men in short sleeve dress shirts and horn-rimmed glasses who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Acting on a preordained set of instructions, this view seems to suggest, they will proceed to outlaw any mention of evolution in schools, and will execute plans that involve, among other things, taking students on weekly field trips to Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

It is a frightening vision of the future: a flood of creationism let loose on the nation's schools. The end of science is near, and to ride out the crisis, ID critics are building themselves a rhetorical ark and bringing the fallacies aboard two by two.

The charge that ID is part of some creationist conspiracy was recently reiterated by Larry Arnhart, the author of Darwinian Conservatism. Arnhart, a professor at Northern Illinois University, writes in a recent post about the "Rhetorical Blunder in Ben Stein's 'Expelled'," a blunder which has to do, he thinks, with what is really behind Intelligent Design.

The first thing you should do when you write about someone else's blunders is not to make them yourself in the process of doing so. It just looks silly. But Arnhart makes one that he repeats throughout his entire discourse on the inadvisability of blunders.

Arnhart makes the following statement about "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed":

This movie is the latest project of the Discovery Institute in promoting the political rhetoric of "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science.

But Arnhart's main objective in the article is to bolster the "It's a Creationist Plot" theory about Intelligent Design. "The folks at the Discovery Institute," he asserts, "have made a big mistake in their production of this movie." The mistake (which Discovery doesn't make) in making this movie (which it didn't make either) is a contradiction Arnhart claims to have detected:

On the one hand, the rhetorical strategy of the Discovery Institute is to say that "intelligent design" is not a creationist religious belief but pure science, and therefore teaching "intelligent design" in public high school biology classes does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition on establishing religion. On the other hand, the popular success of the Discovery Institute's rhetoric depends on appealing to Biblical creationists who assume that "intelligent designer" is just another name for God the Biblical Creator.

Darwinists have clearly not developed a sense of consistency. Maybe Nature is saving that for the next step up in the evolutionary progress of their species.

In "Expelled," which Discovery made but really didn't, this contradiction, says Arnhart, is on full display:

When Bruce Chapman — President of the Discovery Institute — is interviewed by Stein, Chapman says that journalists distort the true position of intelligent design by saying that it's a creationist religious belief, because the "intelligent designer" is clearly God. Chapman vehemently denies this. But then for the rest of the movie, it's asserted that anyone who denies "intelligent design" is therefore an atheist who denies the existence of God!

I think what Arnhart means to say here (I'm trying to bail you out here, Larry) is that the movie claims that anyone who is a Darwinist is an atheist who denies the existence of God. But note that it isn't proponents of ID who make this claim in the movie, but proponents of Darwinism in the form of people like Richard Dawkins. This has, of course, sent the ID critics into paroxysms of indignation because they seem to think that casting Dawkins in a lead role is somehow misrepresentative of the public debate over Intelligent Design.

The only adequate response to this is to point them to the sales figures of Dawkin's books. And those by his fellow Neo-Atheists--Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett--haven't been too shabby either. The Darwinists who disagree with the Neo-Atheists, like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Educators (NCSE), get upset every time anyone talks to Dawkins about this issue on the grounds that she and her more presentable colleagues are the ones people should be listening to.

Well, maybe they should. But are they? And who is Eugenie Scott anyway? Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion hit #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. How many books has she sold? If Eugenie Scott wants to be a big star in the next Ben Stein movie, then she's going to have to do a better job getting her literary career off the ground. That's all there is to it.

Eugenie, we'll be pulling for you.

To keep asserting that the Neo-Atheists are not at the heart of the debate over ID is to simply have ignored the press coverage of this issue over the last couple of years. These are, in fact, the people who are among the most visible opponents of Intelligent Design. And it isn't as if people like Scott were not included in the movie; they were (despite their lack of star power).

But Arnhart and other critics of the movie feel somehow that the makers of an admittedly partisan movie about Intelligent Design have some kind of obligation to comprehensively state their opponents' case for them in their little hour and a half. Here is a group of people who have control of virtually every scientific professional association, every public university science department, and every secular textbook publishing house — and they want the producers of "Expelled" to use the 90 minutes of equal time they paid for to make the other side look good.

Go figure.

I suppose we should all be happy that ID critics have gotten religion on the issue of accuracy in the media and are now so intent on preaching it to the multitudes. But their conversion has come a little late, hasn't it? Where were the Defenders of Truth like Arnhart when PBS was doing a hatchet job on Intelligent Design in NOVA's "Judgment Day," which was supposed to be, not a partisan, but an unbiased account of the controversy? Well, the one most like Arnhart — namely, Arnhart himself — was praising it.

Arnhart attempts to sound unbiased on the Intelligent Design debate — a pose he strikes often on his blog:

The problem, however, is that both sides of this debate are caught up in a frenzy of rhetorical posturing that makes it impossible to have a thoughtful exchange of competing ideas.

I'll have to admit, Arnhart does look noble in his objective pose. But if you're looking for an unbiased view of the debate, you'll have to look to someone other than Arnhart, whose claim that he is monitoring both sides of this debate for rhetorical posturing is, alas, a rhetorical posture.

Posted by Martin Cothran at 5:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to a press release just issued, the Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society has announced that it will defend Premise Media's use in Expelled of a clip from John Lennon's song "Imagine." Yoko Ono, EMI and Columbia have all filed suit against Premise, which has claimed they used the clip under the fair use doctrine.

“The right to quote from copyrighted works in order to criticize them and discuss the views they may represent lies at the heart of the fair use doctrine,” said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project. “These rights are under attack here, and we plan to defend them.”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (reviewed brilliantly by George Gilder in the new National Review) is just arriving in book stores, while in Paris an entirely different, and also invaluable, book, Origines (Origins), has been published this week in French by Saint-Simon.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 6:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Florida citizens who support academic freedom legislation on evolution might want to ask some tough questions of House Republican leaders in their state. Rather than pass an academic freedom bill previously adopted by the state Senate, the Florida House earlier this week adopted its own seemingly tougher measure that would actually require critical analysis of evolution. But wait: the Florida Senate had previously rejected the House approach, and with only a week left in the legislative session, Florida House members had to know that it would be extremely difficult to hammer out a new bill that could pass both houses within the remaining time. If the Florida legislature adjourns without passing an evolution academic freedom bill--after both legislative chambers previously approved bills on the topic by strong margins--Florida's House Republican leadership will need to explain why they allowed academic freedom for Florida teachers to be sabotaged. I hope I'm wrong, but it's beginning to look like someone in the Florida House leadership is intentionally trying to kill the academic freedom bill. If so, that's outrageous, and I hope concerned citizens in Florida will demand some answers.

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