Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Charles Darwin set out to explain the origin of not just one or a few species, but all species after the first – in short, all the diversity of life on Earth. The correct word for this is not evolution, but Darwinism.

...living things may look as though they were designed, but if Darwinism is true then this is only an illusion.

...the most fundamental problem of evolution, the origin of species, remains unsolved. Despite centuries of artificial breeding and decades of laboratory experiments, no one has ever observed speciation through variation and selection.

To order The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, click here. To find out more information about the book, visit the book’s website here.

Posted by Jonathan Wells at 7:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I recently received an e-mail asking about the most recent Mars lander (Phoenix) and the implications for intelligent design (ID) if amino acids, proteins, or life were found on Mars. The person asked, "would this not mean that Neo darwinism is correct and that life occurs if you 'just add water'?" I've posted a modified version of my reply to this person's question below:

These are complex questions you ask, but a scientific "conclusion" is only as good as the starting assumptions that underlie the scientific reasoning involved in making that conclusion. Now I am all for searching out the universe to determine whether life exists outside of Earth. But at present, the research that searches for extra-terrestrial life — while valid and interesting — is heavy laden with assumptions. Once you understand the scientific questions at stake, and the assumptions behind the conclusions that origin of life (OOL) theorists want to take from this research, I think you'll see that it poses little challenge to intelligent design (ID).

First, you have to understand that most OOL researchers and astrobiologists assume that if life exists somewhere, then it must have evolved. A striking example of this sort of assumption is found in a recent article in the Washington Post where NASA astrobiologist Paul Butler asserts that, "[i]f any extraterrestrial life is found in our solar system and we can determine it has no relation to life on Earth, then the assumption has to be that life of all sorts is quite common throughout the galaxies." Of course the his entire chain of reasoning depends on the assumption that wherever life exists, it evolved.

Reasoning under similar assumptions, the entire basis for excitement about life on Mars is the assumption that if it does exist there, then it arose through blind natural processes, thus proving that life can arise naturally. Do you see some logical jumps there, perhaps even some circular reasoning? OOL researchers want to find evidence of life on Mars because for them, it helps validate their belief that life evolves whenever the conditions are right. But if it is found there, how do they really know that it evolved naturally? That's a good question to which you won't get a good answer.

OOL theorists intuitively cannot deny that life is a highly improbable phenomenon. But somehow, they hope that if they find life elsewhere, then that means life is "less unlikely" to evolve, and they don’t have to worry so much about the empirical odds stacked against the natural formation of life. Even if they don't understand how life arose, they think that if life exists then that's proof that it readily forms without intelligent guidance. Their circular logic will now become even more apparent:

(1) OOL theorists think that life easily forms under the "right conditions," and therefore...
(2) ...if life exists on Mars, then for them that proves that life does form easily under the "right conditions"—after all, they know it formed naturally on both Earth and Mars, right?

No, that's NOT right: they never established a natural origin of life in the first place, and they ruled out the possibility of ID as a starting assumption. Were they to actually rule out ID on a scientific basis, they would have to independently demonstrate through laboratory studies that life can form naturally under completely natural conditions. In other words, as discussed further below, they would have to demonstrate that life's information can arise from a non-intelligent source. But they haven't done that—they just want to take for granted that the existence of life on other planets demonstrates that it evolved there, and therefore conclude that it evolves easily.

Mars as the Earth's Interplanetary Attic?
Second, if life is found on Mars, that doesn't necessarily mean that it originated there. Astrobiologists believe that Earth has very likely contaminated Mars with Earth-born microbes, as Earth rocks have been periodically ejected into space during meteorite impacts on Earth. In fact, the idea that other bodies like Mars or the Moon may serve as an "Interplanetary attic" for Earth rocks has been partly developed by Discovery Institute fellow Guillermo Gonzalez.

Just as we've found "Martian meteorites" on Earth, so Mars might have "Earth meteorites," in which case it is entirely possible that any life we find on Mars was in fact seeded—from Earth! (This is a lively possibility that is rarely stated by OOL researchers.) We have yet to find convincing evidence of any life on Mars (living or fossil), so it may be that Mars was given a helping of Earth's life, which apparently didn't take.

Many OOL researchers assume that (1) Life easily evolves under the "right conditions," and therefore (2) if life exists on Mars then that is simply further proof that (1) is true. Again, note the circular logic? To make their case, OOL theorists must independently prove (1) through laboratory studies before their theories can pose any threat to ID. (Note: This hypothesis might be testable: it may be possible to disprove an "Earth origin" for Martian life if hypothetical Martian life turned out to be significantly different, biochemically, from Earth life.)

The Origin of Life: "Just Add Water"?
Third, finding amino acids or other simple organic molecules is not necessarily equivalent to finding life or evidence of life's existence. Many such materials are readily produced through non-biological processes. Again, measure the Darwinist assumptions: (1) Life easily evolves under the "right conditions," and (2) therefore if we find amino acids, the best explanation is that it is the result of life that evolved. But if (1) is false then the conclusions that follow are worthless. We're back to circular logic. You have to independently prove (1) through laboratory studies before you can pose any threat to ID.

Thus, when asked whether originating life is more complex than "just add water," the answer is a resounding YES! Water is a necessary, but far from sufficient condition for the existence of life. Even if we could produce amino acids and all the other building blocks of life under naturally occurring conditions, that would not constitute life any more than putting all of the ingredients for a cake in a bowl and then letting it sit there would constitute a cake.

OOL theorists often dramatically oversimplify how life started when talking to the public. The famous origin of life researcher Stanley Miller, however, has been more candid in some of his statements. At an origin-of-life seminar I took from him during my undergraduate studies at University of California, San Diego, Miller plainly taught us that "making compounds and making life are two different things." Elsewhere Miller reportedly made a similar admission:

"Even Miller throws up his hands at certain aspects of it. The first step, making the monomers, that’s easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That’s very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly dripping. Just like it’s easy to make money in the stock market--all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it’s done."

(Peter Radetsky, "How Did Life Start?" Discover Magazine at http://discovermagazine.com/1992/nov/howdidlifestart153/)

1. Pre-biotic synthesis and the generating of a "primordial soup"
2. Polymerization of pre-biotic monomers into larger molecules.
3. Origin of a self-replicating molecule ("Pre-RNA World")
4. Evolution of the "RNA World"
5. Evolution of the "DNA / Protein World"
6. Origin of Proto-cells

Steps 3 or 4 maintain that sometime during the origin of life, there arose an RNA molecule, or pre-RNA information-bearing molecule, that was able to clone itself. If there are occasional mistakes in the replication process, those that are better able to survive and replicate tend to make more copies, and so on, and Darwinian evolution evolves it the rest of the way.

This origin-of-life hypothesis is implausible for a few reasons: Aside from the fact that chemists have not been able to synthesize RNA or an RNA-like information-bearing molecule under natural conditions and that we've never observed such a molecule that can adequately clone itself, the odds of getting just the right sequence of nucleotides to create a self-cloning RNA molecule is astronomically low. Even if we assume a sea of randomly sequenced RNA molecules, since there are no physical or chemical laws that mandate the order of nucleotide bases in RNA, the odds of getting a useless sequence are just the same as getting the right one. These all represent astronomically improbable events.

Imagine trying to order a relatively short RNA molecule--200 nucleotide bases--just right, so that self-replication can occur--by pure chance and sheer luck. The odds are 1 / 4^200. This is what ID folks like to call the “Information Sequence Problem”: Making chemicals might be possible, but how do you generate the information required for life? This question confounds origin of life theorists because they do not accept that new information comes from an intelligent cause. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer explains this:

[T]he need to explain the origin of specified information created an intractable dilemma for Oparin. On the one hand, if he invoked natural selection late in his scenario, he would need to rely on chance alone to produce the highly complex and specified biomolecules necessary to self-replication. On the other hand, if Oparin invoked natural selection earlier in the process of chemical evolution, before functional specificity in biomacromolecules would have arisen, he could give no account of how such prebiotic natural selection could even function (given the phenomenon of error-catastrophe). Natural selection presupposes a self-replication system, but self-replication requires functioning nucleic acids and proteins (or molecules approaching their complexity)—the very entities that Oparin needed to explain. Thus, Dobzhansky would insist that, “prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.” … As noted above, the improbability of developing a functionally integrated replication system vastly exceeds the improbability of developing the protein or DNA components of such a system. Given the huge improbability and the high functional threshold it implies, many origin-of-life researchers came to regard prebiotic natural selection as both inadequate and essentially indistinguishable from appeals to chance.

(Stephen C. Meyer, "DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation," pg. 246, Darwinism Design and Public Education (edited by Stephen C. Meyer and John Angus Campbell, 2004).)

"Experience affirms that specified complexity or information ... routinely arises from the activity of intelligent agents. A computer user who traces the information on a screen back to its source invariably comes to a mind, that of a software engineer or programmer. Similarly, the information in a book or newspaper column ultimately derives from a writer—from a mental, rather than a strictly material, cause. Further, our experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity or information (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source—that is, from a mind or a personal agent." (Ibid., pg. 262)

Taking a different approach, OOL researchers and astrobiologists find it much easier to just assume that life -- complete with its information-rich order -- can and does arise through blind chemical processes. And they know they're right, because they must be right, for life exists.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Joseph Bottum at First Things has an excellent essay on José Ortega y Gasset, the early 20th Century Spanish writer. In Ortega's masterwork, The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega describes a new sociological phenomenon: the "mass man." Bottum explains:

Ortega's accomplishment…was to identify a new sociological species: mass man. As The Revolt of the Masses explains, the mass man is not just an ordinary man, and he is not associated with any particular class. He is, rather, a product of European historical development, a kind of human being born for the first time in the nineteenth century…The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and—as Ortega remembers from Goethe—"to live as one pleases is plebian." The mass man "possesses no quality of excellence." He demands more and more, as if it were his natural right, without realizing that what he wants was the privilege of a tiny group only a century ago. He does not understand that technological wonders are the product of an intricate cultural process for which he should be grateful. [Emphasis mine].

Ortega's paradigm of "mass men" certainly rings true, and seems particularly true of modern ideologically-driven materialistic scientific culture. What is perhaps most astonishing about the rhetoric of contemporary Darwinists such as P.Z. Myers, Steven Novella, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Larry Moran is their ignorance of the cultural and historical origins of modern science and medicine.

Bottum explains:

The danger … lies in mass man's lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture. Here Ortega draws a critical distinction between civilization and culture. Civilization is the sum of the technical and technological tools that make life as we know it possible. And culture is that civilization's underpinnings—the set of ideas, motives, and religious truths that gave birth to civilization.

So, for instance, mass man is oblivious to the fact that much of what is known in modern times as science started as a theoretical or theological game in the seventeenth century. The serious underpinnings of science were apparent to René Descartes, for instance. One of the founders of modern science, Descartes points out in several of his letters that his philosophical conception of God is indispensable for his new conception of science—since it is a view of God as capable of changing even the truths of mathematics…In other words, it was a new theological concept that ignited the scientific project.

Ortega admits that scientific civilization can go on living without being continuously propelled by culture. He warns, however, that if we exhaust our cultural resources, we will roll back to the level of barbarism. Civilization is like a vending machine, whose buttons we press to get a desired good, but after a while it requires maintenance: "History tells us of innumerable retrogressions, of decadences and degenerations. But nothing tells us that there is no possibility of much more basic retrogressions than any so far known, including the most radical of all: the total disappearance of man as man and his silent return to the animal scale."

Eugenics and totalitarianism may be just the beginning of the transformation that materialism and the Darwinist understanding of man will bring to our civilization.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Many intelligent people use the "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" line—but they immediately get into trouble because, as I discussed in Part 1, the formal scientific definition of theory is typically understood to mean a "well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world." In other words, when talking to a scientifically minded crowd, calling evolution "just a theory" is not a good way to express scientific doubts about neo-Darwinism. As I noted in a previous post, an article recently in The Scientist observed that, "public discontent with classical evolution as an inclusive theory stems partly from an intuitive appreciation of its limits." Thus those who call evolution "just a theory, not a fact" are trying to communicate some legitimate underlying truth about their scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinism. They are simply using poor terminology to communicate their point.

Sadly, Darwinists often then ridicule or scold Darwin-skeptics who use the "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" line by treating them as ignorant or uninformed regarding the proper definition of theory. Let’s explore what people really mean when they say "evolution is just a theory, not a fact," and then I’ll offer some final advice regarding how Darwin-skeptics can effectively communicate their doubts about Darwin.

All I wanted to say is that I’m a scientific skeptic of neo-Darwinism. How can I convey such skepticism without getting stepping on a semantic land mine and getting scolded by Darwinists?
Great scientific claims must be backed by great scientific evidence. When most people claim that "evolution is just a theory, not a fact," what they really mean is that there is not convincing scientific evidence to justify the great claim that all life is related through universal common ancestry and that it evolved via an process of unguided natural selection acting upon random mutation. Doubts about neo-Darwinian evolution might stem from:

It isn't just the New York Times that ignores the facts when reporting about the debate over how to teach evolution. Not to be outdone by its competitor the Washington Post catches up today with an ill-informed opinion piece (Evolving Toward a Compromise) that yet again completely misreports what is going on in the upcoming review of Texas' state science standards.

A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in the state's science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class.

The student uses critical thinking and scientific problem solving to make informed decisions. The student is expected to:
(A) analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information;

The authors don't get that point, like they don't get much else about evolutionary theory and how it is taught, and go to make a laughable presumption.

We presume that the Texas challenge will be found to violate the Constitution and that scientists will never accept the watering down of evolutionary concepts in the classroom.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwinists love to bash Darwin-skeptics who call evolution "just a theory, not a fact." The truth is that I rarely, if ever, hear people who are closely involved with the ID movement using this line to oppose evolution. The "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" phrase tends to come from the vox populi—intelligent people who studied this issue in their biology class or perhaps have read books like Darwin’s Black Box, Icons of Evolution, or Darwin on Trial, but otherwise don’t follow the issue very closely. As I discussed in Part 1, many of us who are closely involved with the ID movement actually agree with the Darwinists that the "evolution is 'just a theory', not a fact" line not only (in the technical sense) misuses the word theory but generally comes off as a meaningless statement. In this post I’ll offer four reasons why I think that Darwin-skeptics should not use the "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" line and answer the question, "Is it best for Darwin skeptics to call evolution ‘just a theory, not a fact’?"

Having taken over a dozen courses covering evolutionary biology at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, I’m a scientific skeptic of neo-Darwinism. But I’ve long opposed using such a rhetorical line of "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" to oppose evolution because it gets you caught up in a semantic debate over the proper definition of fact and theory, and communicates very little about the most important component of this debate—the scientific evidence. (For an early example of my writings on this topic, see my Response to the ACLU ID FAQ.) I’ll start with criticism of people on my own side of this debate by offering four reasons why I oppose using the "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" line:

1. The statement "evolution is just a theory, not a fact," hopes to convey some kind of skepticism regarding evolution, but it fails to adequately define the term. As we learned in Part 3, no one doubts evolution when it is defined as "populations of living organisms change over time." Evolution so-defined is an unquestionable fact. But when evolution is defined as "natural selection acting on random mutation serves as the primary driving force that built the complexity of life" or even "all species share a universal common ancestor" (collectively called "neo-Darwinian evolution") then you’ve traipsed into more controversial definitions of evolution.

2. The "evolution is just a theory" line is simply not a good way of expressing skepticism about neo-Darwinian evolution because it assumes that a theory is something which necessarily lacks evidentiary support. As we learned in Part 1, the problem with this phrase is that the word "theory" can indeed mean a scientific idea that is well-backed by large amounts of scientific evidence.

3. When someone says "evolution is just a theory," it sounds like the speaker cannot cite actual scientific evidence against evolution, and that the only objection the speaker can muster is based upon appealing to postmodern rhetoric which asserts that we really can’t know if anything is true. The truth is that science is capable of studying the validity of historical scientific theories such as neo-Darwinism, but the "evolution is just a theory" line makes it sound like the speaker is not interested in studying or discussing that evidence. In the debate over evolution, discussions of evidence are what matter most. As stated previously, calling something a theory doesn't necessarily tell you about the state of the evidence. The best way to express dissent from evolution is to actually discuss its failure to explain the scientific evidence.

4. The "evolution is just a theory" line can come off as if the speaker really thinks "evolution is just a guess so I don't have to believe it if I don't want to." In fact, neo-Darwinian evolution as a whole is not merely a guess, and most Darwinian scientists will provide reasons why they think it is the best explanation for the diversification of life. If you’re like me, and you think that neo-Darwinian evolution has scientific problems, then you should be able to provide reasons why you're a skeptic beyond stating "it's just a theory." As noted above, the best strategy is for you to be prepared to give a few specific scientific reasons why you question Darwinian evolution.

So if we shouldn’t call evolution "just a theory, not a fact" then how should us Darwin-skeptics refer to evolution? Theory? Fact? Hypothesis? Something else? I’ll explore this question in the final installment of this series, Part 5.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwinists claim that it is inappropriate to call "evolution a theory, not a fact" because a theory means "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world." In Part 1 and in Part 2, I discussed the fact that the word "theory" can have multiple meanings, ranging from a conjecture or guess (the soft definition) to "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" (the hard definition). In this installment, I will address the question, "Is it correct to call evolution a 'fact'?"

A new article in Current Biology about Darwin Day celebrations quoted Johnjoe McFadden from the University of Surrey stating that "evolution is no longer just a theory. It is as much a fact as gravity or erosion. Scientists have measured evolutionary changes in scores of organisms." The leading 20th century evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr quite dogmatically (and wrongly) claimed that, "No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact." Similarly, according to the ardently pro-Darwin U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), evolution is a "fact":

Is Evolution a Theory or a Fact? It is both. But that answer requires looking more deeply at the meanings of the words "theory" and "fact." (U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, pg. 11 (National Academy Press, 2008).)

The debate over evolution can be confusing because equivocation has crept into the discussion. Some people use evolution to refer to something as simple as small changes in the sizes of birds’ beaks. Others use the same word to mean something much more far-reaching. Used the first way, the term "evolution" isn’t controversial at all; used the latter way, it’s hotly debated. Used equivocally, evolution is too imprecise to be useful in a scientific discussion. Darwin’s theory is not a single idea. Instead, it is made up of several related ideas, each supported by specific arguments:***

The blog site Little Green Footballs has slandered Discovery Institute, whether intentionally or not, by implying that we are in league with Islamic radicals in Turkey. They base this fantasy, apparently, on a CBC radio report of a year ago that was so poorly researched that it called Discovery Senior Fellow David Berlinski "Paul Berlinski" and referred to us as the "Christian Discovery organization." Then they interview a host of people of varying views in Turkey who are critical of Darwinism and imply that they are all connected. They seemingly imply Discovery's involvement in this situation based on the fact that Berlinski was invited to speak at a conference held by the municipal government of Istanbul last year. Big deal. (Berlinski, by the way, is a secular Jew, so work with that fact for a while, boys.)

If people at LGF think they can make the case that Discovery Institute is somehow soft on Islamic radicalism and terrorists, perhaps they should pick up a copy of our Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter's new book, The Long War Ahead: And the Short War Upon Us. It is published by Discovery Institute Press and I challenge the LGF folks to read it—or any of my own writings on the Iraq War and the war on terrorism generally—and continue contending that this institute would ever have any truck with people—Muslim or otherwise—who doubt the danger of Islamic fascism.

Both the LGF blog and the CBC story have a naïve and simplistic understanding of the politics of Turkey today. As it happens, on most issues, including foreign policy, the more leftist party in Turkey is the "secularist" one that is now out of power. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), known as an Islamist party, is the more moderate party. That doesn’t mean that they are ideal. But it does mean that they are more willing, ironically, to advance freedom in the economy and religion and to support the U.S. in the war against terrorists. Christians overall backed that party in the last elections, which tells you which party they think is most tolerant. Prominent Jews have found them easier to work with. (Turkey recognizes Israel, by the way.) The European and American press, by and large, preferred them in the last elections. The secularists in Turkey, in contrast, for several decades have been the most repressive against all religions, as well as the more xenophobic on international affairs and trade.

Incidentally, the government has recently arrested members of an extreme Islamist group that it claims were planning a terrorist attack on the government!

I realize that this picture doesn't accord with one’s expectations—or, maybe I should say, prejudices. It also doesn’t mean that issues, like whether women in universities and businesses will be allowed to wear headscarves, are trivial. But it does suggest that there is nothing wrong with attending conferences put on by the Turkish government.

Within Turkey there also are different people who are anti-Darwinian—just as in the U.S. Some are, indeed, creationists and could be called fundamentalists within Islam. Many are not. There is one controversial creationist who goes by the pen name Harun Yahya and has published a lavish book against Darwinism and has raised the ire of the government on other grounds, but we have no connection with him or his products.

In contrast, we definitely do appreciate knowing Mustafa Akyol, a very different writer whose columns appear in the Turkish Daily News in Istanbul and the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard in the U.S. He is cited favorably by such publications as Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. For a time, Akyol volunteered with Harun Yahya’s group, but he broke with it in 2003, sharply disagreeing with many of its views, especially its link to anti-semitism. Akyol is not a creationist and he does support intelligent design. He also is pro-West, pro-religious tolerance, pro-free markets and anti-terrorist. The Economist rightly describes Akyol as "an advocate of reconciliation between Muslims and the West who is much in demand at conferences on the future of Islam" and who believes in "the compatibility between Islam and Western liberal ideals, including human rights and capitalism." (By the way, the Economist erroneously says that Akyol had a "fellowship at Discovery Institute." Akyol has not received funding from Discovery, but he did help organize the city-sponsored conference where Berlinksi appeared.)

Would LGF like to smear Akyol because they disagree with his support for design? Are they willing to smear Discovery because we know and like Mustafa Akyol? It is bizarre!

Posted by Bruce Chapman at 8:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, atheist author Christopher Hitchens calls intelligent design (ID) "tripe" and "a huge menacing lurch forward by the forces of barbarism." While supporting the evolution of humans, he asserts that there is "[n]o divine plan" and that "[e]verything works without that assumption." Hitchens laments the existence of religion because "millions of people in all societies still prefer the myths of the cave and the tribe and the blood sacrifice." (pg. 282) In his debate against Jay Wesley Richards, Hitchens reportedly argued against God by alleging that God would not create certain features we observe, to which Richards aptly replied, "A sneer is not an argument." Unfortunately, Hitchens is still using sneers as arguments. What’s more, it now seems that it is Hitchens who prefers myths about caves.

In a recent article published on Slate.com, Hitchens claims that intelligent design is refuted due to the presence of vestigial eyes on blind cave salamanders. He even got Richard Dawkins to back him up, saying: "Vestigial eyes, for example, are clear evidence that these cave salamanders must have had ancestors who were different from them—had eyes, in this case. That is evolution. Why on earth would God create a salamander with vestiges of eyes? If he wanted to create blind salamanders, why not just create blind salamanders?"

Ignoring the fact that Hitchens and Dawkins misconstrue ID in theological terms, the problem with the argument is that ID fully accepts that varying degrees of Darwinian evolution can take place, and in fact ID proponents regularly point out that evolution is quite good at effecting loss-of-function. While random mutations usually fail miserably at creating new complex biological functions, they are in fact quite good at messing up complex biological functions (or doing nothing). When natural selection occasionally prefers the "messed up" state, it's quite capable of preserving it. But the neo-Darwinian mechanism is not good at producing new complex functions. As I wrote earlier this year regarding species that live in caves:

[E]xamples 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.

("Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene")

Carroll gives a few other examples in his chapter explaining "the making and evolution of complexity." The first involves the fact that single mutations in various genes can abolish eyes or the pelvis in fish. These are simple mutations which turn off regulatory genes, thereby preventing an organ structure from forming. His second example deals with the loss of wing spots on butterfly wings. Again, the mechanism is a simple mutation which turns off the wing-spot genes. These examples all invoke loss of function by turning of pre-existing genes. Exactly how are the fittest made? Carroll’s examples don’t answer that question.

(Casey Luskin, "The Evolutionary Gospel According to Sean B. Carroll".)

Meanwhile, ID proponents seek to explain a far more interesting aspect of biological history: the origin of new complex biological features. Despite his quotation of Michael Shermer on the evolution of the eye, Hitchens has yet to do that.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In Part 1, I assessed the question of whether Darwinists are correct to define theory as a "well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or a "comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence" (the hard definition of theory). I found that they are correct to use such a definition, but that Darwinists sometimes overly downplay the fact that theory can also legitimately mean merely "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural," "contemplation or speculation," or "guess or conjecture" (the soft definition of theory). As I observed, Darwinists are also wrong to imply that scientists never use the term "theory" to mean "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural."

Previously I quoted Bruce Charlton, editor-in-chief of the journal Medical Hypotheses, observing that "[a]n old joke about the response to revolutionary new scientific theories states that there are three phases on the road to acceptance: 1. The theory is not true; 2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant; 3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along." Charlton goes on to contend that those who propose new revolutionary theories face difficult battles:

The defining feature of a revolutionary theory is precisely that it seeks to replace the assumptions of an already-existing theory – so a new theory cannot be evaluated on the basis of the assumptions of the old theory. This is why a new and revolutionary theory will almost invariably strike people as false. … The path to fame as a theorist surely is long, winding and replete with pitfalls.

This thus leads to the question, under such a strong definition of the term, does evolution qualify as a theory?

Assuming that we are using the hard definition of theory, different people will give different answers to that question. Under such an understanding of the term, if we define theory as "a more or less verified or established explanation," then theory is in the eye of the beholder. Darwin-skeptics will not agree that neo-Darwinian evolution is "a more or less verified or established explanation." But Darwinists will agree. So the question over whether neo-Darwinian evolution should be called a "theory" is not the core question of this debate. A better question would be: "Is neo-Darwinian evolution ‘a more or less verified or established explanation’?"

Darwinists have the right to believe that neo-Darwinian is a verified and established explanation--i.e. that it meets the hard definition of theory. But they do not have the right to insist that Darwin-skeptics must call evolution a "theory," so defined. While Darwinists are correct that the technical definition of "theory" means a well-established and verified explanation, they should not insist that evolution can never be called "just a theory." When they do this, they are actually imposing onto the debate their conclusion that evolution must be considered by all to be a verified and established explanation. Were they to tolerantly allow Darwin-skeptics to dissent from the orthodox neo-Darwinian position, Darwinists would not insist that Darwin-skeptics entirely abandon the phrase "evolution is just a theory."

However, given that the technical, scientific, hard definition of theory does typically mean a well-established and verified explanation, then it is best if Darwin-skeptics take the high road and avoid calling neo-Darwinian evolution "just a theory." And as we shall see in the next installment of this series, the question "is evolution a 'more or less verified or established explanation'"? is also a complex question, for it can also depend on the definition of "evolution."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted," Frankl continued, "with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of 'Blood and Soil.' I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Continue reading The Dehumanizing Impact of Modern Thought.

Posted by Richard Weikart at 6:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Click here to listen to an IDTF podcast featuring part of Stephen Meyer's opening remarks from this event.

What do intelligent design, evolution, information and purple people eaters all have in common? Well, they all took front stage at Freedomfest in Las Vegas last week when ID proponents Stephen Meyer and George Gilder squared off against Darwinists Michael Shermer and Ronald Bailey in debating whether there is scientific evidence for intelligent design in nature.

The debate was civil, and the audience appreciated the back and forth between the speakers and enjoyed being able to ask questions at the end of the formal debate—and even beyond that. For the rest of the evening following the debate itself Meyer and Gilder patiently answered questions and discussed the debate over evolution with conference attendees. At the end of the formal debate a poll of the audience showed them to be split pretty evenly for and against ID being science.

Stephen Meyer laid out a compelling case for intelligent design being a scientific theory. He briefly explained some of the things that design proponents point to as evidence for intelligent causation—the fine tuning of the laws of physics, the complex machinery at work in the cell, and information-rich digital code in DNA. Finally he explained

that intelligent design, like Darwinian evolution, is an historical science and should be compared in the same way. If you're going to explain an event from the past, you need to know that the explanation you're invoking has the power to produce that effect currently, and you need to know it based on your present experience, meaning that our present experience with cause and effect should guide our inferences from the past. Meyer asked: "What is the cause now in operation that produces information? Is there any cause that we know can produce information? And of course there is one, and only one, and that is intelligence." Thus the ID argument is not one from ignorance, but rather an argument based on what we do know and understand already, namely, how intelligence produces information. Not only is there evidence for ID, but the evidence is based on a scientific method of reasoning that Darwin himself used.

Michael Shermer has debated Stephen Meyer before, and as usual took the debate seriously and engaged in a vigorous attack on ID and defense of evolution. He eschewed the motive mongering that often comes up in debates like and stuck to arguing that intelligent design is not science.

Whether or not ID is religious is irrelevant, argued Shermer (*gasp!* — yes, he essentially said this). The bottom line is that ID isn't testable or falsifiable, claimed Shermer, and ID proponents haven't done enough research and science to develop ID into a testable scientific theory. His example was Lynn Margulies spending the last 35 years grinding out work on her endosymbiotic theory—research, experiments, publishing papers, presenting at conferences and so on. Shermer feels that ID scientists haven’t done this for their theory. It's up to ID scientists to make the case and sell it to the rest of the scientific community, said Shermer. "Science isn't a thing. Science is a thing that you do. It's something you actually go out and do. And so that's the bottom line." I guess he's not familiar with the Biologic Institute, or the lab research being done by scientists like Scott Minnich, Ralph Seelke and others.

Shermer's argument boiled down to this: even if you discover that life was designed, say by extra terrestrials, that just prompts another question. Who designed those guys? According to Shermer: "You see at some point you have to have some bottom up natural forces to answer the question where did life come from, where did all this complexity come from in the first place. Positing something from the top down simply begs the question, yeah interesting, but where did that come from? And where did that come from? At some point to do science you have to have some bottom up forces at work here." It would seem that no matter what evidence was presented to him, he would simply argue against any intelligence being the ultimate origin of information and design in the universe. For Shermer, there is no getting away from the presupposition that there must have been a materialistic cause.

Along the way, Shermer admitted that Darwinian evolution doesn't provide many answers, and then proceeded to throw Darwinism under the bus to show that ID isn't a satisfactory replacement theory. According to Shermer, just because Darwinian evolution doesn't stand up to scrutiny doesn't mean that intelligent design is the answer. ID has to stand or fall on its own merits regardless of Darwinism. "Even if that's the case, A is wrong, that doesn't make B right. B stands or falls by itself on its own evidence."

He repeatedly emphasized how much we don't know, arguing that we may someday find the answers to many of the questions as yet unanswered by modern evolutionary theory. After all, he reminded the audience, science is only 400 years old!

Stephen Meyer and George Gilder discuss ID with conference attendees.

George Gilder took a bit different approach in arguing that universe itself is contrived to produce humankind, and talked about the idea of some scientists that the entire universe is a quantum computer "pregnant with intelligence." He also explained that his skepticism of Darwinism came from his study of economics. Just as contemporary evolutionary theory rejects intelligence as the source of design in the universe, demand side economic theory rejects human intelligence as the source of new ideas, new things. "Demand side economic models leave no room for the entrepreneur as a creator, as an inventor, as an imaginative source of new ideas and new things." Gilder has often talked about this materialist superstition, which you can read more about here and here.

Ronald Bailey opened his presentation by saying he would take intelligent design seriously, and then proceeded to disrespect his audience by mocking it for the rest of his talk, instead going off about purple people eaters. If you want to punish yourself, you can read his remarks here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 5:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Many members of the general public who are skeptics of Darwinian evolution are intelligent people with a decent understanding of some of the scientific weaknesses with neo-Darwinian evolution. In fact, a recent article in The Scientist suggests that, "public discontent with classical evolution as an inclusive theory stems partly from an intuitive appreciation of its limits." (Eric Smith, "Before Darwin," The Scientist, June 2008:32-38.) But in this highly nuanced debate, such Darwin-skeptics must avoid semantic land mines if they are to accurately, clearly, and effectively communicate their views. I have often seen that some people who oppose neo-Darwinian evolution are fond of calling evolution "only a theory" or "just a theory, but not a fact." After using such a phrase, they are immediately scolded by Darwinists, who tell them that "a theory" is a "well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" and that evolution should be considered "both fact and theory." Ken Miller just wrote a book titled, "Only a theory," basically opposing people who use such an argument. Similarly, an opinion article recently condescended:

One of the greatest misconceptions about evolution is embedded in the misuse of the word 'theory' in its application to science. The common antecedents that result in this misuse of the word are manifested in either genuine ignorance, or disguised ignorance. People are either genuinely mistaken of the word's intent, or they are well aware of the word's scientific definition, but still use the nonscientific definition in an effort to spawn doubt. … Evolution, because it's a theory, is a higher form of knowledge than a fact.

Upon receiving such a scolding, the Darwin-skeptic who said that evolution is "just a theory, but not a fact" may feel quite bad. She innocently had no intent to violate any rules of semantics or misuse any terms; she merely wanted to communicate her skepticism of neo-Darwinism. In this tangled web of ambiguously defined terms, the Darwin-skeptic is then confronted by a number of confusing questions of rhetoric and semantics:

1. Are Darwinists correct to define "theory" as "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence"?

2. Under such a strong definition of "theory," does evolution qualify as a "theory"?

3. Is it correct to call evolution a "fact"?

4. Is it best for Darwin skeptics to call evolution "just a theory, not a fact"?

5. All I wanted to say is that I’m a scientific skeptic of neo-Darwinism. How can I convey such skepticism without stepping on a semantic land mine and getting scolded by Darwinists?”

These are all good questions. In a series of five posts, I will attempt to answer all five questions, exploring the argument that evolution is "just a theory, not a fact" and providing criticism of people on both sides of this debate, as well as some friendly communications advice for Darwin-skeptics. And from the outset, I should state that I have always opposed using the "evolution is just a theory, not a fact" line to communicate one’s skepticism regarding neo-Darwinian evolution.

Question 1: Are Darwinists correct to define "theory" as "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence"?

According to the 1998 edition of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, a theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, and tested hypotheses." In 2008, the NAS released a new edition, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, stating that a theory is "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence." Darwinists routinely invoke these and other similar definitions of "theory" when scolding Darwin-skeptics for calling evolution "just a theory, not a fact." Are Darwinists correct to define "theory" in this fashion? The answer to this question is both yes and no.

"Theory" can have multiple definitions. When I look up "theory" in my 1996 edition of Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (WEUDEL), the word “theory” has 7 or 8 different entries:

1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
3. Math. a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory.
4. the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.
5. a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles.
6. contemplation or speculation.
7. guess or conjecture.

The upshot of the soft definition of theory is that Darwinists who imply that the term "theory" can never mean that "conjecture or guess" are in fact wrong, because "theory" can in fact mean conjecture or guess. On the other hand, if you’re a Darwin-skeptic who thinks that "theory" necessarily means "conjecture" or a "guess" and can never mean a verified scientific explanation, then you are wrong: After listing these entries, my 1996 edition of WEUDEL elaborates on proper usage of the word "theory" within the scientific community:

1. THEORY, HYPOTHESIS are used in non-technical contexts to mean untested idea or opinion. The THEORY in technical use is a more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena: the theory of relativity. A hypothesis is a conjecture put forth as a possible explanation of phenomena or relations, which serve as a basis of argument or experimentation to reach the truth: This idea is only a hypothesis.

When a Darwin-skeptic says "evolution is a theory, not a fact," Darwinists often pounce and assert that the colloquial or "pejorative" (Glenn Branch's label) usage of "theory" can mean "conjecture" or "guess," but scientists never use the word "theory" to mean conjecture or guess. For example, Branch favorably quotes Ken Miller's 2007 edition of the textbook Biology, implying that there is a united front and complete conformity within the scientific community regarding proper usage of the word "theory": "In science, the word theory applies to a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations." Such Darwinist claims of unanimity within the scientific community are also questionable.

While scientists do typically imply the "hard" definition when using the word "theory," they don't always use it in that sense. If scientists always meant the "hard" definition of "theory," then scientists would virtually never use the phrase "new theory" because an idea does not attain the status of a theory until it becomes well-established and verified, withstanding many tests until it is no longer "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural." Yet a quick search of PubMed for the phrase "new theory" reveals dozens and dozens of hits from the technical scientific literature where scientists offered "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural" but called that explanation a theory.

Three recent examples of such usage of "new theory," where theory represented an unverified idea, will suffice.

In the April, 2008 issue of the journal Medical Hypotheses, editor-in-chief Bruce G. Charlton uses the phrase "new theory" multiple times. The meaning implied by the term "theory" in this case was a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact. As Charlton observes:

An old joke about the response to revolutionary new scientific theories states that there are three phases on the road to acceptance: 1. The theory is not true; 2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant; 3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along. ... Theory for scientists is like water for fish: the invisible medium in which they swim.

(Bruce G. Charlton, "False, trivial, obvious: Why new and revolutionary theories are typically disrespected," Medical Hypotheses Vol. 71:1–3 (2008).)

As a second example, a recent sociology paper from Archives of Suicide Research states, "Although the study has offered some support for the new theory, future research with more rigorous quantitative data needs to be conducted to further test the theory on a more comprehensive level." (J. Zhang, D. Lester, " Psychological Tensions Found in Suicide Notes: A Test for the Strain Theory of Suicide," Archives of Suicide Research, VOl. 12(1):67-73 (2008).) Clearly this study uses the word "theory" to describe a new idea that has not yet been fully verified nor accepted.

Finally, even within the context of evolutionary biology, theory can mean a new idea that does not yet have widespread verification or universal acceptance. A recent article in Current Biology entitled "Social Evolution: The Decline and Fall of Genetic Kin Recognition," by Andy Gardner and Stuart A. West of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, contains a subheading which asserts, "New theory confirms that genetic kin recognition is inherently unstable, explaining its rarity." Yet the article goes on to describe a vigorous scientific debate between evolutionary biologists about whether kin selection is a genetically viable explanation to account for the evolutionary origin of altruism and cooperation. According to the article, a new study concludes that "there is relatively poor empirical support for this mechanism in nature" because "[a] new theoretical study of genetic kin recognition … reveals that, left to its own evolutionary devices, this mechanism will drive itself to ruin." But other leaders in that field disagree, implying that this theory is not "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence."

There are many other examples from the technical literature where theory is used in a similar sense, and it does not mean "a more or less verified or established explanation." It should be clear that scientists sometimes DO use the term "theory" to refer to a new idea that has not yet undergone extensive testing and is simply "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural."

Conclusion
In closing, we must return to the question, Are Darwinists correct to define "theory" as "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence"? The answer is yes, but they are not entitled to claim that such a hard definition is the exclusively acceptable usage of theory both for scientists and non-scientists. Darwinists are wrong to imply that scientists always necessarily use the hard definition of theory, because even scientists occasionally use theory as if it means new idea, or a "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural."

The problem underlying debates over the proper usage of theory is that the term can have multiple definitions, even among scientists, ranging from "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions" to "a more or less verified or established explanation." But the upshot is this: Because the term "theory" can mean "a more or less verified or established explanation," it is inappropriate for a Darwin skeptic who is trying to communicate doubts about Darwin to use the "evolution is a theory, not a fact" line, because it ignores the truth that in many venues, theory does indeed mean, as WEUDEL explains, "a more or less verified or established explanation."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

So was Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) secretly a fundamentalist Christian, a mad man, or just plain ignorant? The great novelist (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) was, in his own telling, a "furious" critic of Darwinian theory. He based the judgment not on religion, to which biographer Brian Boyd writes that he was "profoundly indifferent," but on decades of his scientific study of butterflies, including at Harvard and the American Museum of Natural History. Of course, this was all before the culture-wide sclerosis of Darwinian orthodoxy set in.

As Boyd notes in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, "He could not accept that the undirected randomness of natural selection would ever explain the elaborateness of nature's designs, especially in the most complex cases of mimicry where the design appears to exceed any predator’s powers of apprehension."

Boyd summarized the artist's scientific bona fides in an appreciation in Natural History.

For most of the 1940s, he served as de facto curator of lepidoptera at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and became the authority on the little-studied blue butterflies (Polyommatini) of North and South America. He was also a pioneer in the study of butterflies' microscopic anatomy, distinguishing otherwise almost identical blues by differences in their genital parts.

According to Boyd, Nabokov wrote "a major article," subsequently lost, "with 'furious refutations of "natural selection" and "the struggle for life."'" He completed the paper in 1941 but all that survives is a fragment in his memoir, Speak, Memory:

The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction for me. Its phenomena showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things. Consider the imitation of oozing poison by bubblelike macules on a wing (complete with pseudo-refraction) or by glossy yellow knobs on a chrysalis ("Don’t eat me--I have already been squashed, sampled and rejected"). Consider the tricks of an acrobatic caterpillar (of the Lobster Moth) which in infancy looks like bird's dung, but after molting develops scrabbly hymenopteroid appendages and baroque characteristics, allowing the extraordinary fellow to play two parts at once (like the actor in Oriental shows who becomes a pair of intertwisted wrestlers): that of a writhing larva and that of a big ant seemingly harrowing it. When a certain moth resembles a certain wasp in shape and color, it also walks and moves its antennae in a waspish, unmothlike manner. When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in. "Natural Selection," in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of "the struggle for life" when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation. I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.

That’s what Amardeep Singh thought. He teaches literature at the same university (Lehigh) where Darwin-doubter Michael Behe has been made to feel very unwelcome. Singh comments in a blog entry that his students are startled to read the passage from Speak, Memory. I bet.

My students, I was happy to see, were a little shocked that someone with Nabokov's way of seeing things would say something that might even remotely be construed as Intelligent Design-ish. And indeed, Darwinian natural selection, as I understand it, does have a fine explanation for the "miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior": any mutant variety that doesn't exhibit a perfect imitation is going to get eaten. And if you have enough random-pattern butterflies getting eaten over time, eventually a strain that has a slightly better design is going to come around and not get eaten.

Posted by David Klinghoffer at 8:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Recently, Rob Crowther reported on the "Altenberg 16" conference that was planned for Altenberg, Austria. Sixteen leading leading evolutionary scientists -- who do not support intelligent design but do have doubts about Darwinism -- were to re-evaluate the core claims of neo-Darwinism.

The conference apparently did happen, as scheduled -- last week. We still don't have any report on what took place, but that the topic definitely will continue to prove interesting.

In advance of the conference, one participant, Massimo Pigliucci, tried to downplay the importance, asserting that there is "not a sign of 'crisis'" at this conference over neo-Darwinian evolution:

Now, did you see anything in the above that suggests that evolution is "a theory in crisis"? Did I say anything about intelligent designers, or the rejection of Darwinism, or any of the other nonsense that has filled the various uninformed and sometimes downright ridiculous commentaries that have appeared on the web about the Altenberg meeting? Didn't think so. If next week's workshop succeeds, what we will achieve is taking one more step in an ongoing discussion among scientists about how our theories account for biological phenomena, and how the discovery of new phenomena is to be matched by the elaboration of new theoretical constructs. This is how science works, folks, not a sign of "crisis."

I decided to ask [NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott] some questions since I'd interviewed her colleague [NCSE President] Kevin Padian about the "evolution debate", and he'd hung up on me. ...

...When I introduced myself to Eugenie Scott, who was unfamiliar with my stories on evolution, I asked her what she thought about self-organization and why self-organization was not represented in the books NCSE was promoting?

She responded that people confuse self-organization with Intelligent Design and that is why NCSE has not been supportive.

But what is most interesting is not just Pigliucci's failed attempt at damage control, but the NCSE's knee-jerk reaction against anything that isn't neo-Darwinian. It seems that the NCSE was indeed quite worried that this conference will do damage to neo-Darwinism. At the very least, this exchange exposes the NCSE's intolerant attitude towards non-Darwinian thoughts, even when the doubters don't support ID. Indeed, Mazur's reports reveal that various scientists and academics she has interviewed during her reporting about the conference have fundamental doubts about neo-Darwinism, but they are eschewed by the scientific community.

According to Mazur, there are "hundreds of other evolutionary scientists (non-Creationists) who contend that natural selection is politics, not science, and that we are in a quagmire because of staggering commercial investment in a Darwinian industry built on an inadequate theory." (emphasis added) One of those scientists is evolutionary biologist Stanley Salthe, who Mazur reports "can't get published":

Stanley Salthe, a natural philosopher at Binghamton University with a PhD in zoology – who says he can't get published in the mainstream media with his views – largely agrees with Lewontin. But Salthe goes further. He told me the following: "Oh sure natural selection’s been demonstrated . . . the interesting point, however, is that it has rarely if ever been demonstrated to have anything to do with evolution in the sense of long-term changes in populations. . . . Summing up we can see that the import of the Darwinian theory of evolution is just unexplainable caprice from top to bottom. What evolves is just what happened to happen."

But Salthe says you can’t dismiss the censorship going on in the evo debate. He recently sent me his correspondence with the Neo-Darwinian journal TREE (Trends in Ecology and Evolution) in which he asked them to publish his letter arguing to "save the phenomenon of convergent evolution even if it seems inconvenient" to the Darwinian perspective on organic evolution. Salthe was responding to an article TREE published suggesting the concept of convergent evolution be eliminated based on a totally genetic analysis. TREE refused to publish Salthe's letter.

According to Mazur, the same thing happened to chemist and engineer Stuart Pivar: "Stuart Pivar has been investigating self-organization in living forms but thinks natural selection is irrelevant – and has paid the price for this on the blogosphere." Once again, Mazur reveals that Darwinists are commonly intolerant towards people who doubt Darwin:

Pivar's also a keen observer of some of the conflicts of interest tainting science. He accuses the National Academy of Sciences of excluding other approaches to evolution but natural selection in their recent book Science, Education and Creationism.

Mazur further expounds upon the unwillingness of many Darwinian scientists to entertain these views that are critical of neo-Darwinism:

When I called Fodor to discuss the article, he joked that he was now in the Witness Protection Program because he'd been so besieged following the LRB piece. But we met for coffee anyway, on Darwin's birthday, as frothy snowflakes floated to ground around Lincoln Center. After a cappuccino or two, Fodor summed things up saying we've got to build a new theory and "all I’m wanted to argue is that whatever the story turns out to be, it's not going to be the selectionist story". Fodor also told me that "you can’t put this stuff in the press because it’s an attack on the theory of natural selection" and besides "99.99% of the population have no idea what the theory of natural selection is".

Science is based on a fundamental assumption: that the world can be explained by recurring only to natural, mechanistic forces. … this is a philosophical position. … The NABT leaves open the possibility that evolution is in fact supervised in a personal manner. This is a prospect that every evolutionary biologist should vigorously and positively deny.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

So far as I know, there is no name for a particular kind of science article in which an observation is offered of some sort of animal behavior, and then, under the Darwinian assumption that humans are simply advanced animals, concludes that the behavior is somehow indicative of how humans too should be able to act.

This week's model for human behavior comes, via Scientific American, from the Central Park Zoo, and involves two male penguins named Roy and Silo.

The first order of business in such an article is to make the behavioral observation. In this case, we find animals engaged in deviant behavior. We go now to the action in Central Park: "Two penguins," says writer Emily V. Driscoll,

native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo’s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

Where are the Anita Bryant's of the animal world when you need them?

After the behavioral observation comes the generalization. It is not only these animals who have decided to lead a life of bohemian extravagance: it turns out that such scandalous behavior is common in the animal kingdom:

Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.

After the behavioral observation and the generalization comes the human application, which consists of asking why it is that humans are so out of touch with their more distant evolutionary relatives. Here it is (you knew it was coming):

These observations suggest to some that bisexuality is a natural state among animals, perhaps Homo sapiens included, despite the sexual-orientation boundaries most people take for granted.

This scientific reasoning procedure—from observation of the behavior of particular animals, generalization to the entire animal kingdom, and finally the application to human beings—takes the following form, when stated as a syllogism:

Proposition #1: Birds do it
Proposition #2: Bees do it
Proposition #3: Even educated fleas do it
Conclusion: Let's do it, let's fall in love (with someone of the same sex)

It is a forceful piece of logical deduction, I think you'll agree. And yet there are weaknesses in this line of reasoning that publications like Scientific American seem willing to ignore in the interest of social progress. For example, if humans are to accept bisexuality as normal because it is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, then wouldn't humans be forced to find acceptable other, less becoming behavior which is even more common in nature?

What, for example, about sexual promiscuity in general? In a March 18, 2008 story in the New York Times, Natalie Angier explains that our tendency to condemn acts of adultery like that on display in the famous case of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer ignore the prevalence of such behavior among non-human creatures:

It’s all been done before, every snickering bit of it, and not just by powerful "risk-taking" alpha men who may or may not be enriched for the hormone testosterone. It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy.

Of course, I'm against letting Spitzer off the hook simply because his behavior is reflected in other species, and yet there is something about the process of comparing his behavior to that of the great grey shrike and the freshwater flatworm, as Angier does, that seems to throw the universe into balance.

In any case, if we are supposed to accept bisexuality because of two penguins in Central Park, then why not promiscuity? Romantic sponges, they say, do it. Oysters down in Oyster Bay do it. What, then, is preventing us from doing it as a part of the normal course of human affairs?

And then there is cannibalism. Cannibalism too is a common occurrence among the brutes. In a National Wildlife Federation article titled, "Eating Among Friends," by Dave Brian Butvill, we are regaled with manifold examples throughout nature of animals whose diet includes even members of their own nuclear animal families. "Cannibalism is surprisingly common in the animal world," says Butvill, "and biologists are discovering that it often makes good evolutionary sense to eat what you are":

"I would say that the majority of animal species that are carnivorous might, at some point in their lives, engage in cannibalism if the right conditions are present," says David Pfennig, a biologist at the University of North Carolina who studies the behavior. And in some cases, he and other scientists are finding that it makes perfectly good sense to eat among friends—even when you’re the meal.

Yes, I know. You are less appalled by animals eating others of their own kind than by the fact that there actually exist specialists in animal cannibalism in our universities. But there you have it: from the African Lion to the dime shaped fingernail clam, says Butvill, animals are having their close relations for dinner on a daily basis—and they are not surviving until the dessert course.

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it. Even lazy jellyfish do it. They all do it. So what's holding us up? Nothing, if Darwinian ethics is all you have to go by.

Obviously, there are some forms of animal behavior that are already common among humans. I am thinking specifically of the female histiostoma murchiei, a mite, which tries to create her own husband. But using the behavior of animals as a model is a dangerous business. The Ichneumon wasp tortures other insects; the female rheobatrachus, an East Australian frog, takes her eggs into her mouth and swallows them; and then there is the hippopotamus (a species in dire need of an Emily Post), which attracts its mate by urinating and defecating.

Where are the articles in science magazines touting these behaviors as models for human beings?

Finally, I'm trying to recall if there has ever been a case in which a woman has, immediately after a particularly romantic encounter with her mate, turned on him and eaten him. But if it ever were to happen, can we expect the Darwinists to come to her defense by pointing to the female redback spider? This spider (and here is where Darwinian ethics meets its Waterloo), along with a number of other spider species, eats the male immediately after mating.

It is, admittedly, a dastardly reversal of the more normal sequence, in which the human female first has the male for dinner, and only then submits to the conjugal act, but it is normal for many kinds of spiders. Is there any reason then, from a Darwinian perspective, to consider it abnormal if it were engaged in by humans?

Of course, farmers have known about the strange things that animals do for millenia. My stepfather was telling me just the other day about taking my boys out with him to feed the cattle, only to find, when he reached the herd, one of his two bulls directing his romantic attentions toward the other. Farmers are fairly familiar with this kind of behavior, but, innocent of the advanced Darwinian perspective, they have never attempted to derive a moral lesson out such incidents.

Besides, why it is that the higher animals (that's us, say the Darwinists) should model their behavior along the lines of the lower animals? I mean, isn't that one of the benefits of being a higher animal: that you can look down on those lower than you in the natural scheme of things, shake your head, and feel smug about your more civilized behavior?

If you can't do that, then what's the point of being a higher animal? That's what I'd like to know.

So while I am happy to know that Roy and Silo have found some sort of domestic bliss, I think in the final analysis, that there are few human lessons we can draw from it, other than that maybe there are Central Park Zookeepers who need something else to do.

Posted by Martin Cothran at 8:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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

The upright posture of plants is a striking design that falls short of a clear explanation. The pat answer is that prehistoric flat plants decided to go vertical to compete for more sun. But where did this need to compete arise? And how could a limp ground hugger accidentally develop systems to support excessive weight — maybe tons of wood — root systems to support the weight, transport systems to move the water and nutrients up, and defense mechanisms against weather and pests? Much of it had to be there at the same time. An analogy that I used in my previous book readily applies. The spontaneous appearance of an upright plant would be like taking a walk from New York City to Los Angeles and then pointing out how easy it was because your first step took you to Cleveland and the second one to Chicago.

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

Posted by Geoffrey Simmons at 7:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[UPDATE: I have responded to Carl Zimmer's critiques with updates and corrections, here.]

I recently picked up Your Inner Fish, a highly simplified science book written for a popular audience by paleontologist Neil Shubin that promotes the alleged intermediate fossil between fish and tetrapods, Tiktaalik roseae. On page 83, Shubin’s book contains a nice diagram comparing the skull-components of a human head to the skull of a primitive craniate fish. It’s a vague comparison that does little to convince that fish-heads formed the template for mammal heads. But that’s not the focus of Shubin’s book. The primary feature that excites Shubin and other evolutionary paleontologists about Tiktaalik isn’t found in its head: it’s that this fossil is allegedly "a fish with a wrist … part fin, part limb." (pg. 38-39) What is conspicuously missing from Shubin’s book is any diagram (like the one comparing fish heads to human skulls) comparing the bones of the "wrist" of Tiktaalik to a real tetrapod wrist, thereby demonstrating that Tiktaalik actually has a wrist.

Hoping to find a diagram that shows how the bones in Tiktaalik’s fin are similar to a tetrapod wrist, I turned to Shubin’s original paper in Nature, "A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan." The abstract of this paper claims that Tiktaalik has "a functional wrist joint," so I presumed that there would be further discussion in the paper about the supposed wrist, perhaps with the diagram I sought. So I searched the paper: not only is there no diagram comparing wrists, but the word "wrist" is not found anywhere else in the paper; the only occurrence of the word "wrist" is the assertion in the abstract, quoted above.

Shubin has another paper in Nature specifically on Tiktaalik's fin, entitled, "The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb." In this paper, there’s much more discussion of the "wrist," as the first sentence of the abstract contains a confession of retroactive ignorance that states, "Wrists, ankles and digits distinguish tetrapod limbs from fins, but direct evidence on the origin of these features has been unavailable." Shubin et al. go on to acknowledge, "Limb skeletons differ from those of fins mainly by the presence of bones that comprise mobile wrists, ankles and digits." It would thus indeed be very impressive to find a fish with a wrist, ankle, or digits in its fin. Does Tiktaalik have these bones?

When discussing Tiktaalik’s "wrist," Shubin says he "invites direct comparisons" between Tiktaalik's fin and a true tetrapod limb. Surely this paper must have a diagram comparing the "wrist"-bones of Tiktaalik to a true tetrapod wrist, showing which bones correspond. So again I searched the paper. And again he provides no such diagram comparing the two. So we are left to decipher his jargon-filled written comparison in the following sentence by sentence analysis:

1. Shubin et al.: "The intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik have homologues to eponymous wrist bones of tetrapods with which they share similar positions and articular relations." (Note: I have labeled the intermedium and ulnare of Tiktaalik in the diagram below.)

Translation: OK, then exactly which "wrist bones of tetrapods" are Tiktaalik’s bones homologous to? Shubin doesn’t say. This is a technical scientific paper, so a few corresponding "wrist bone"-names from tetrapods would seem appropriate. But Shubin never gives any.

A diagram comparing Tiktaalik’s bones to a true tetrapod wrist would have, at this point, been supremely helpful. But as I noted, Shubin doesn’t provide one. In fact, the closest thing I can find to a description explaining which bones in Tiktaalik are similar to real tetrapod wrist bones is found in his book Your Inner Fish, where he asserts that Tiktaalik’s fin has the basic bone pattern of tetrapod limb: "one bone—two-bones—lotsa blobs—digits arrangement." (pg. 39) So I will try to provide my own analysis.

Based upon the diagram below, it is obvious that Tiktaalik and true tetrapods have the "one bone" starting point (i.e. the humerus). But that’s not very interesting, because many living fish have a "one bone" starting point (which one might call a "humerus") which just serves as a bone that articulates the rest of the fin. Let’s continue on to see if the rest of Shubin’s statement is defensible:

2. Shubin et al.: "In both Tiktaalik and early tetrapods, the ulnare is block-shaped and articulates with multiple radials or digits, whereas the intermedium is a simple rod."

This is simple enough to comprehend given the diagram I made below based upon his Nature paper. But this is just a descriptive sentence and doesn’t talk about evolution.

(Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: "The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb" (by Neil H. Shubin, Edward B. Daeschler, & Farish A. Jenkins Jr, Nature, Vol 440:764-771 (April 6, 2006); figure resized to fit the page except for the text; click for the original full figure)

3. Shubin et al.: "The formation of a mobile transverse joint at the distal margin of these bones in Tiktaalik presages the establishment of a functional proximal carpal joint."

Merriam-Webster: Presage:

1. something that foreshadows or portends a future event : omen
2. an intuition or feeling of what is going to happen in the future

Let’s go back to Shubin’s claim that Tiktaalik has a "one bone—two-bones—lotsa blobs—digits arrangement" pattern in its fin, just like a tetrapod limb. Digits are part of fingers or toes that have a grasping capability. It’s tough to grasp something with one bone in your finger, so these don’t deserve to be called digits. In fact, Clack and Ahlberg explain that Tiktaalik’s radial bones are clearly not digits:

Although these small distal bones bear some resemblance to tetrapod digits in terms of their function and range of movement, they are still very much components of a fin. There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example, Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning.

(Ahlberg & Clack, "A firm step from water to land," Nature, Vol. 440:747-749 (2006).)

Also conspicuously missing from Tiktaalik is the "lotsa blobs" section, i.e. in less simple terms, it lacks anything resembling the group of 5 or so carpal bones found in the true wrist of Tulerpeton. Tulerpeton clearly has a wrist—the mass of bones between the radius, ulna, and the digits. Where is this in Tiktaalik? It isn’t there, unless one imagines severe readjustments of bones that would have been necessary to effect such a transformation.

But there is another living organism that has a bone-structure resembling Tiktaalik’s "One bone—one bone—two bones with various radials—one bone with various radials—one bone with various radials," etc. pattern. But it isn’t a tetrapod; it’s a fish. The lungfish has a bone structure very similar to "One bone—one bone—two bones with various radials—one bone with various radials—one bone with various radials" (see page 35 of Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and compare). But the lungfish conspicuously doesn’t have a wrist. And given its non-tetrapod, fish-like morphology, and lungfish are of virtually no use in explaining the origin of limbs:

The limbs, of course, occupy pride of place in any analysis of tetrapod origins. The pattern of internal structure of the osteolepiform limb as in Eusthenopteron and Sterropterygion is clearly homologous with that of tetrapods with respect to the humerus/femur or ulna and radius/tibia or fibula, but little else. It would also be a mistake to exaggerate the extent to which osteolepiform fishes actually used their fins as arms and legs; the fins in the forms that we know are all small and feeble (compared even with the large fins of porolepiforms, coelacanths, and the modern lungfish Neoceratodus, which have a different internal structure). These fishes obviously could not live out of water because they would suddenly be unsupported and feel the force of gravity."

(Keith Stewart Thomson, "The origin of the tetrapods," American Journal of Science (1993) 293-A:33-62 (January).)

New Scientist is up in arms over the successful passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act ("New legal threat to teaching evolution in the US"). NS Reporter Amanda Gefter devotes the article to the narrative of Barbara Forrest, portrayed as a weary warrior against the powers of darkness (that would be us, in case you're wondering). While this makes for an interesting, Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass foray into utter nonsense, the falsehoods and misinformation presented as historical fact need correcting.

The most obvious untruth is Gefter's regurgitation of the old myth that intelligent design came after Edwards v. Aguillard, the 1987 case where the Supreme Court ruled creation science unconstitutional. As a matter of historical record, intelligent design can be traced back to ancient Greece, and the modern theory of ID was born by the early 1980s, as Jonathan Witt recounts in "The Origin of Intelligent Design."

Of course, there are more subtle and pernicious problems with this article. Two scientists are included in the description of Barbara Forrest's league of LSEA opponents, but the four who testified in favor of academic freedom are never mentioned, because for Darwinists and the MSM reporters who "frame the issue," they must not exist.

Explore Evolution is portrayed as an intelligent design book which those clever little Discovery Institute minions designed to present ID arguments, hiding their intent by omitting any mention of intelligent design itself. In reality, Explore Evolution is a textbook devoted to the arguments for and against Darwin’s theory – nothing more and nothing less. The book doesn’t mention intelligent design because the arguments it presents aren’t about ID. (Check out the link and see for yourself.) Criticisms of Darwin's theory do not equal intelligent design.

While she doesn’t interview many supporters of the bill, Gefter does manage to bring in some voices from the fringes, like Pepper Hamilton's ACLU lawyer Eric Rothschild, who paints the bill as a disingenuous religious bid which is "better camouflaged now," with "the final version" of the bill including "a statement that the law should not be taken as promoting religion."

Actually, the bill contained that language from its inception. The sample legislation available at AcademicFreedomPetition.com and mentioned in the article includes that language. It was never "added in" by anyone, but was always the stated purpose and intent of the bill:

Section 7. Nothing in this act shall be construed as promoting any religious doctrine, promoting discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promoting discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.

Gefter would better serve New Scientist's readers by researching the true history of both intelligent design and the LSEA for a dose of reality.

Posted by Anika Smith at 11:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Saturday night in Las Vegas will be hot. Outside it will be 100+ degrees. Inside Bally's will be hot too, when CSC Director Stephen Meyer and Discovery senior fellow George Gilder face off with Darwinists Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and Ronald Bailey, science writer for Reason. The debate question: "Is there scientific evidence of intelligent design in nature?"

The debate is the closer of a three day conference, Freedomfest that will feature other speakers like Steve Forbes and Ron Paul, as well as other debates, such as Friday night's between Dinesh D'souza and Christopher Hitchens.

C-SPAN is scheduled to cover the debate and we'll let you know when they plan to air as soon as that is announced.

http://www.freedomfest.com/debates.htm

George Gilder
Steve Meyer
Discovery Institute
-vs-
Michael Shermer
Publisher, Skeptic Magazine, columnist,
Scientific American
Chip Wood (moderator)

DEBATE
"Is There Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design in Nature?"

George Gilder, Editor in Chief of Gilder Technology Report, is Chairman of Gilder Publishing LLC. He is also a co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute where he directs Discovery's program on high technology and public policy. Mr. Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, as Program Director for the Manhattan Institute, and as a frequent contributor to A.B. Laffer's economic reports and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. In the 1980s he also consulted leaders of America's high technology businesses. According to a study of presidential speeches, Mr. Gilder was President Reagan's most frequently quoted living author. In 1986, President Reagan gave George Gilder the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. He is the author of numerous books including The Spirit of Enterprise (1986), Microcosm (1989), Life After Television (1991), Telecosm (2000) and The Silicon Eye (2005). Mr. Gilder is a founder of and contributor to Forbes ASAP, and a contributing editor of Forbes magazine. He is a frequent writer for The Economist, the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Stephen C. Meyer is director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Dr. Meyer is internationally recognized for his work on the scientific and philosophical aspects of the biological origins controversy. He earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin of life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Previously he worked as a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company after earning his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Geology. Dr. Meyer has co-written two books: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press 2004) and Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe (Ignatius 2000). His next book, The Signature in the Cell, will be published in 2009 by Harper Collins. He has authored numerous technical articles as well as opinion pieces in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Houston Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, First Things and National Review.

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

In the past, I have observed that the newsmedia and scientific establishment commonly promote the Darwinist bias against intelligent design (ID), where the media "carefully selects the sources of information it will broadcast to the public on this issue." (To see how various groups in the establishment serve as checkpoints to prevent scientific information that challenges neo-Darwinism from reaching the public, observe the diagram at left.)

National Geographic (NG) is doing its job as a media checkpoint, promoting biased information to the public on ID. In an article yesterday about a new fish fossil-find, the NG news headline states, "Odd Fish Find Contradicts Intelligent-Design Argument." According to the story, “Intelligent design advocates have seized on the idea of instant flatfish rearrangement as evidence of God or another higher being intentionally creating new animal forms.” The article then claims that a new Nature paper has reported the discovery of a transitional flatfish fossil that refutes this "intelligent design argument" (more on the fossil below). The article not only misrepresents intelligent design by conflating it with creationism, but it fails to report about the part of the paper exposing that, according NG's own standard, the flatfish fossil record is not "consistent" with neo-Darwinian evolution.

First, NG claims that ID refers to "God or another higher being," but NG ignores the fact that intelligent design does not try to address religious questions about the identity of the designer. While ID proponents may have their own individual personal views about the identity of the designer, the theory of ID itself does not identify the designer.

Second, NG ignores the fact that intelligent design does not require special creation, and is in fact compatible with common ancestry:

"Intelligent design does not require organisms to emerge suddenly or to be specially created from scratch by the intervention of a designing intelligence. To be sure, intelligent design is compatible with the creationist idea of organisms being suddenly created from scratch. But it is also perfectly compatible with the evolutionist idea of new organisms arising from old by gradual accrual of change. What separates intelligent design from naturalistic evolution is not whether organisms evolved or the extent to which they evolved, but what was responsible for their evolution." (William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution, pg. 178 (InterVarsity Press, 2004).)

So perhaps some creationists have talked about flatfish (specifically, the flounder)—but it seems that it is the Darwinists at NG who have sought to masquerade creationism as "intelligent design." Apparently, when Darwinists in the media want to report about intelligent design the facts don’t matter: they simply consult creationists rather than actual scientists in the ID movement.

Tacit Admissions That the Fossil Record’s General Pattern Conflicts with Natural Selection
As will be discussed below, these new fossils do NOT document any impressive type of evolution. But what is most interesting about the NG article is not the meager degree of evolutionary change allegedly documented by these fossils, but NG’s tacit admission that fossil morphology changes that happen “suddenly” are not “consistent” with natural selection. As the article states:

So the change happened gradually, in a way consistent with evolution via natural selection—not suddenly, as researchers once had little choice but to believe, the authors of the new study say.

(Anne Minard, Odd Fish Find Contradicts Intelligent-Design Argument, National Geographic News, July 9, 2008.)

So does the fossil record bear out predictions of Darwinian gradual change or sudden change? Let’s look at what Darwinists say about the overall pattern of the fossil record, as stated on JudgingPBS.com:

[A] textbook published just six years ago acknowledges that the fossil record has not given clues to help explain the origin of animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion:

"Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, 'fully formed,' in the Cambrian some 550 million years ago...The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla."

But this is not the only such "explosion" in the fossil record. Paleontologists have observed a fish explosion, a plant explosion, a bird explosion, and even a mammal explosion. Abrupt explosions of mass biological diversity seem to be the rule, not the exception, for the fossil record. Transitions plausibly documented by fossils seem to be the rare exception. As leading evolutionary biologist, the late Ernst Mayr, wrote in 2001, "When we look at the living biota, whether at the level of the higher taxa or even at that of the species, discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent. . . . The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates."

This phenomenon exists not only at the species level but also at the level of higher taxa, as one zoology textbook discusses: "Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group."

(JudginbPBS.com, The abrupt appearance of biological forms, internal citations removed)

A Floundering Transitional Form?
The fossils that were found were little fish fossils that are species of flatfish. Known living species of flatfish (like the yummy flounder, sole, or halibut) are unique in that as adults, the eyes sit on the top of the head, rather than on the sides of the head, like most fish. But young flatfish DO have eyes on the sides of the head--their eyes migrate to the top during development. Now observe the meager scope of evolutionary change allegedly documented by these fossils: they have some skull features similar to known living flatfish, but their eyes remain on the sides of the head, like normal fish. As the abstract of the paper says, "Most remarkably, orbital migration was incomplete in Amphistium and Heteronectes, with eyes remaining on opposite sides of the head in post-metamorphic individuals."

Forgive me if I'm not highly impressed with the degree of "evolution" documented by these fossils. Do they explain how halibut and sole evolved to have eyes on the top? Not really. The eyes on these fossils weren't in an "intermediate" location, halfway from the sides to the top. Their eyes are on the sides on the side of the head, much like normal fish. The only interesting thing about these fossils, as far as evolution is concerned, is that they share some other skull features--the asymmetrical eye sockets--that are unique to "eyes on top" flatfish.

Some other questions must be asked.

How do we know that these represent the evolutionary intermediate ancestors of flatfish? We don't: The paper reports that they appear in the fossil record at the same time as "eyes on top" flatfish, so their placement in the fossil record does not make them a candidate for being the actual ancestors of flatfish.

And do these fossils show how the "eyes on top" condition evolved in typical flatfish? No. Assuming these fossils are related to flatfish, for all we know, perhaps the "eyes on top" condition is the primitive basal condition for flatfish, and the "eyes on side" condition was evolved simply through LOSS of genes causing eye migration during early development. In other words, perhaps these newly discovered fossil fish species lost the genes for eye migration so the eyes got "stuck" on the sides of the head after the bones ossified. Genetically speaking, that seems like the easiest way to account for these fish. But in such a scenario, these fish would be descended from "eyes on top" flat-fish, and are not their evolutionary descendants, not precursors. At best, these fossils document a new morphological state that at best shows fairly trivial evolutionary change or loss of function--not "major morphological transitions" (as the paper's author claimed).

In fact, the paper's author admits that according to the fossil record, we don’t know where the overall clade of flatfish came from, and that many types of flatifsh (including these new finds) appear around the same time in a "sudden" fashion:

Amphistium and Heteronectes are contemporaries of the earliest members of many derived pleuronectiform lineages, including the oldest known sole. The sudden appearance of anatomically modern pleuronectiform groups in the Palaeogene period matches the pattern repeated by many acanthomorph clades. Inferring interrelationships between higher groups in this explosive radiation has proved difficult, and an unresolved bush persists.

(Matt Friedman, "The evolutionary origin of flatfish asymmetry," Nature, Vol. 454:209-212 (July 10, 2009).)

And what of the paper’s confession that the clade as a whole appears in a "sudden" fashion where there is an “explosive radiation”? According to NG, such fossil data should not be considered "consistent with evolution via natural selection." But of course, like a good science media checkpoint, National Geographic chose not to report about the above-quoted part of the paper.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

The Washington Post's Michael Gerson recently wrote:

The latest findings of the Pew Forum's massive and indispensable U.S. Religious Landscape Survey reveal some intriguing confusion among Americans on cosmic issues. About 13 percent of evangelicals, it turns out, don't believe in a personal God, leading to a shameful waste of golf time on Sunday mornings. And 9 percent of atheists report that they are skeptical of evolution. Are there atheist creationists?

However, perhaps many of these atheists, while not being creationists, are simply skeptical of the Darwinian mechanism. (Gerson seems to miss that lack of belief in Darwinism is not the same as creationism—at least if words are to have any meaning.) Clearly they have to believe in some sort of naturalistic evolution. But that doesn't mean they think there is good evidence for Darwin's particular theory of natural selection.

But hey, if Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett can argue that belief in God is a trick of our brain evolution, I suppose our brains can play all sorts of tricks on us leading to not only false but contradictory beliefs. It should (but does not) surprise me that no one can be found arguing that lack of belief in God is a trick of the human evolution. Today I have a podcast arguing that far from evidencing that God is a trick of the brain, the latest findings of cognitive and developmental psychology actually buttress theistic belief.

Posted by Logan Gage at 1:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Floyd & Mary Beth Brown at Townhall.com understand what really happened in Louisiana when Gov. Jindal signed the LSEA, calling it "an important blow for academic freedom." Their news analysis piece, "Evolutionists Fear Academic Freedom," gets it right: academic freedom is a common-sense approach with bipartisan support, evolutionists are truly afraid of the scientific challenges to Darwinism that critical thinking might lead to, and the mainstream media (in this case, the New York Times in an editorial) works to discredit Darwin skeptics and apply national political pressure on local and regional decision-makers:

One would think legislation which allows an environment that promotes "critical thinking" and "objective discussion" in the classroom would please everyone -- it did the bipartisan group of legislators in Louisiana -- but such is not the case. The New York Times felt threatened by the legislation, calling it "retrograde," naming its editorial on the topic, "Louisiana’s Latest Assault on Darwin." They were attempting to pressure Gov. Jindal to not sign the law, using a number of tactics including implicit ridicule, subtle belittling insults and untruths.

Posted by Anika Smith at 8:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

CSC's John West has a very good piece at National Review Online today. Defending the Louisiana Science Education Act, West echoes the themes and ideas that he wrote about in his book Darwin Day in America, pointing out that in today's schools

political correctness, not critical thinking, is what most students are learning.

Yet in many schools today, instruction about controversial scientific issues is closer to propaganda than education. Teaching about global warming is about as nuanced as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Discussions about human sexuality recycle the junk science of biologist Alfred Kinsey and other ideologically driven researchers. And lessons about evolution present a caricature of modern evolutionary theory that papers over problems and fails to distinguish between fact and speculation. In these areas, the "scientific" view is increasingly offered to students as a neat package of dogmatic assertions that just happens to parallel the political and cultural agenda of the Left.

Fearful of being branded "anti-science," some conservatives are skittish about such efforts to allow challenges to the consensus view of science. They insist that conservatives should not question currently accepted "facts" of science, only the supposedly misguided application of those facts by scientists to politics, morality, and religion. Such conservatives assume that we can safely cede to scientists the authority to determine the "facts," so long as we retain the right to challenge their application of the facts to the rest of culture.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:05 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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

The adhesive used by barnacles is among the strongest in the world. It is reported that a layer merely 3/10,000 of an inch thick can support a weight of 7000 pounds. This relative of the shrimp and crab glues its head down and keeps its feet up to catch the next meal. Its adhesive sets in water at any temperature and will not dissolve in most acids, bases, and solvents. Fossil records suggest it has been used by barnacles unchanged for 400 million years. Nothing seems to be known about its intermediates before that.

Mussels have a similar glue, which sets underwater and has enormous strength. It takes about five minutes for the mussel to create a “dab” of this glue beneath its foot on a piling or rock. Twenty dabs will do it, and the job can be completed overnight. Imagine the consternation of intermediate species when they secreted what they thought was glue, but kept being washed away by the waves. Or the species that couldn’t store their glue and found their bivalves stuck together.

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

Posted by Geoffrey Simmons at 7:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There are literally dozens and dozens of pro-ID websites and blogs on the internet. Every once in a while, I like to highlight the ones that I visit either on a regular or occasional basis. I’m sure there are other good ones, so if you have any suggestions please send them to me at cluskin@discovery.org. In no particular order, here’s the list:

Noted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, whose academic freedom was trampled at Iowa State University for being a proponent of intelligent design theory, has taken a new teaching and research position as an associate professor in the physics department at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Grove City College is a completely independent, Christian, liberal arts college that is ranked among some of the best colleges and universities in the nation.

Gonzalez will oversee the College’s new observatory, acquired from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. According to the College, there are plans for the remote structure to be the basis for an astronomy minor as well as to be used for faculty and student research. The observatory is about an hour's drive north of Grove City and houses a robotic 20-inch telescope, which will be remotely operable.

Generous donations from Discovery Society supporters have helped build a base of financial support for Dr. Gonzalez to continue his cosmological research. Gonzalez will both teach and have time to continue his research, especially during the summers. He plans to use the observatory to study photometric variations of sun-like stars to determine if the Sun's level of variation is exceptional. And, also to observe transits of planets orbiting other stars. Other research will make use of computer simulations.

“Having ready access to a state-of-the-art robotic telescope will make it more likely that I can obtain useful data,” says Gonzalez. “In addition, I plan to continue observing at McDonald Observatory in west Texas at least once a year.”

“Astronomical observations related to astrobiology or comparison of the Solar System's properties to other planetary systems serve to test the Privileged Planet thesis,” added Gonzalez. “Any research relating to the Privileged Planet thesis is relevant to ID.”

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

Click here to listen.

Next time someone tells you intelligent design is “based on religion,” you might point him to American Founder Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. As I explain in a special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion.

Ironically, the critics of intelligent design often think they are defending the principles of Jefferson. The National Council for the Social Studies, for example, claims that intelligent design is religion and then cites Jefferson’s famous Letter to the Danbury Baptists calling for a “wall of separation” between church and state. The clear implication is that Thomas Jefferson would agree with them that intelligent design is religion. A writer for Irregular Times goes even further, insisting that “the case of Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution to allow for the mixing of religion and government to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design.”

In reality, Jefferson did not believe that intelligent design was a religious doctrine. In a letter to John Adams on April 11, 1823, he declared:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. (emphasis added)

The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.

As I document in my book The Politics of Revelation and Reason, Jefferson was hostile toward traditional Christianity and lashed out in private at those who believed in the divinity of Jesus. He even created his own redacted version of the New Testament from which he cut out the miracles. So he certainly can’t be accused of trying to promote “Christian fundamentalism.”

That makes his defense of intelligent design as based on unassisted reason rather than divine revelation all the more powerful.

If more people knew about Jefferson's real views on intelligent design, they might not be so quick to accept bogus claims that it is simply repackaged theology.

Posted by John West at 12:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

The following information was suppressed by Louisiana Advocate reporter Will Sentell in his story titled "La. alone with controversial science law." Contrary to Sentell's report, Louisiana is definitely not alone in promoting the critical analysis of evolution.

This background information was sent to Mr. Sentell after he interviewed Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute and before he filed his article. But he apparently didn't want to let the facts get in the way of his story:

As of 2008, eight states have adopted statewide laws or science standards that (1) encourage or require critical analysis of evolution or (2) protect the freedom of teachers to present scientific criticisms of evolution. In addition, in at least three states, local school districts have adopted such policies.

Mississippi
"No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life." House Bill No. 214, enacted into law in 2006.

Minnesota
"The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including... [the] theory of evolution...." Minnesota Academic Standards, History and Nature of Science, Grades 9-12, available at tis.mpls.k12.mn.us/Science.html (last visited Sept. 9, 2005).

Missouri
"Identify and analyze current theories that are being questioned, and compare them to new theories that have emerged to challenge older ones (e.g., Theory of Evolution…)." Missouri Science Standards, at http://www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/GLE/SciGLE_FINAL-4.2005.pdf.

New Mexico
Students will "critically analyze the data and observations supporting the conclusion that the species living on Earth today are related by descent from the ancestral one-celled organisms." New Mexico Science Content Standards, Benchmarks and Performance Standards, Standard II (Life Science) (Biological Evolution) (9).

Pennsylvania
"Critically evaluate the status of existing theories (e.g., germ theory of disease, wave theory of light, classification of subatomic particles, theory of evolution, epidemiology of AIDS)." Pennsylvania, Academic Standards for Science and Technology, Standard 3.2.12.

South Carolina
“Summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” South Carolina Biology Science Standards, indicator B-5.6 available at: http://www.myscschools.com/offices/cso/standards/science/documents/ScienceStandardsNov182005trackingremovedwbiofootnote_000.doc

Ouachita Parish, Louisiana (2006)
Ouachita Parish Science Curriculum Policy Adopted November 29, 2006

RESOLUTION ON TEACHER ACADEMIC FREEDOM TO TEACH SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE REGARDING CONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS:

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Constitution declares that among the legitimate ends of government is “to promote the education of the people” (1), and;

WHEREAS, Congress in 2001 declared that “Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.” (2), and;

WHEREAS, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that it is possible for “scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories [to] be taught” (3), and;

WHEREAS, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has found that it is legitimate for school districts to pass curricular policies for such purposes as advancing critical thinking, fostering informed freedom of belief, and to disclaim any intent to impose an orthodoxy of belief on students (4), and;

WHEREAS, diverse organizations including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Civil Liberties Union have acknowledged that “any genuinely scientific evidence for or against any explanation of life may be taught” (5), and;

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has promulgated certain Science Framework, and;

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Science Framework at page 11 holds that, “scientific information is continuously open to review and modification” (6), and;

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Science Framework at page 11 further states that, “for scientific ideas to become widely accepted, peers must review, analyze, and critique results” (7), and;

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Science Framework at page 19 declares that, “the process of scientific inquiry involves ‘thinking critically and logically about the relationships between evidence and explanations, constructing and analyzing alternative explanations, and communicating scientific arguments’” (8), and;

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Science Framework at page 12 indicates that science should be “presented as a... continuing process for extending understanding of the ultimate, unalterable truth” (9), and;

WHEREAS, it has come to the attention of this Board that some science teachers in the parish school system are uncertain of what can be taught about particular scientific theories;

THEREFORE, the Board of Education of Ouachita Parish School District adopts the following policy and directs that it be inserted in the District’s listing of curriculum and instruction policies which is posted online at www.opsb.net.

TEACHER ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN SCIENCE EDUCATION WHEN COVERING CONTROVERSIAL SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS:

The Ouachita School District understands that the purpose of science education is to inform students about the scientific evidence and to help them develop critical thinking skills they need in order to become scientifically minded citizens. The District also understands that the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the District’s expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects.

The District shall endeavor to create an environment within the schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately to differences of opinion about controversial issues. The District shall also endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies. Toward this end, teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.

Notes
(1) Louisiana Constitution, Preamble; (2) H.R. 1 – “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001”: Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference, Title I, Part A, item 78, edworkforce.house.gov; (3) Edwards v. Aguillard, 107 S.Ct. 2573, 2583 (1987); (4) Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, 185 F.3d 337, 344-46 (5th Cir. 1999); (5) Joint Statement of Current Law on Religion in the Public Schools (4/12/1995) Religion In The Public Schools: A Joint Statement Of Current Law http://www.aclu.org/religion/schools /16146leg19950412.html (Accessed July 20, 2006); (6) Louisiana Science Framework, page 11; (7) Ibid; (8) Ibid, page 19; (9) Ibid, page 12.
http://www.opsb.net/downloads/forms/Ouachita_Parish_Science_Curriculum_Policy.pdf

Lancaster, California (2006)
Lancaster School District Science Philosophy

The Science curriculum of the Lancaster School District is standards-based and reflects the fundamental belief, as stated in the 2004 Science Framework, “that all students can acquire the science knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the world that awaits them.” To provide students with a high degree of science literacy the following expectations should be met:

The goal of science education is to encourage inquiry, investigation and understanding.
The domain of the natural sciences is the natural world. Science is limited by its tools—observable facts and testable hypotheses.

The character of science is open to inquiry. The curriculum promotes student understanding of how we come to know what we know and how we test and revise our thinking.

To be fully informed citizens, students do not have to accept everything that is taught in the natural science curriculum, but they should understand the major strands of scientific thought, including its methods, facts, hypotheses, theories and laws.
Students should learn that science never commits itself irrevocably to any fact, hypothesis, or theory, no matter how firmly it appears to be established. Evolution, then, should be taught as theory, as opposed to unalterable fact. Discussions that question the theory may be appropriate as long as they do not stray from the current criteria of scientific fact, hypothesis and theory. Science instruction must respect the private beliefs of students, but discussion in this regard should not be part of the science curriculum.

Students are given opportunities to construct the important ideas of science, which are then developed in depth, through inquiry and investigation.

The three basic scientific fields of study—earth, life and physical sciences—are taught and connections among them developed.

Science is presented with its applications in technology and its implications for society.
Science is presented in connection with the students’ own experiences and interests, frequently using hands-on experiences that are integral to the instructional sequence.
Instructional strategies and materials allow several levels and pathways of access so that all students can experience both challenge and success.

Textbooks are the major, but not sole, source of the curriculum; everyday materials and laboratory equipment, video and software, as well as other printed materials such as reference books and periodicals provide a substantial part of the student experience.

Assessment programs should be aligned with the standards-based instructional program. Student performance and investigation play the same central role in assessment as they do in instruction.

Posted by John West at 12:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[UPDATE: Previously there was a mistake in the quote indicating Missouri was the state with the law regarding evolution. This has been corrected to Mississippi.]

The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge Louisiana today published a front page story about Louisiana’s new law regarding teaching of evolution that contains a completely false statement in the lead.

The paper reported an unnamed official stated that “Louisiana is the only state in the nation that has enacted a law that could change the way evolution is taught in public schools.” Louisiana recently enacted the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) which protects teachers that encourage critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics.

Discovery Institute provided a four page document that included information on the state law enacted in Mississippi in 2006 which reads:

“No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life.” House Bill No. 214, enacted into law in 2006.

In addition to citing the two state laws, the document included information on six state’s science standards, and three school district policies –including the Ouichita Parish School District in Louisiana— that all encourage teaching both the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.

“The reporter acknowledged receipt of the information in an e-mail and thanked us for sending it to him,” said Crowther. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he knew the lead of his story was false when he turned it in. Journalistic integrity seems to be a forgotten thing in Louisiana.”

Critics have smeared the LSEA by falsely claiming the law would allow the teaching of creationism or other religious beliefs, when doing so is in fact forbidden by the act. Section 1D of the bill clearly states that it "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion."

The Advocate article also tries to scare people into thinking that the law is unconstitutional and will be sued. In fact, the director of the Louisiana ACLU conceded that the bill is actually fine as written.

According to a Louisiana TV station: “ACLU Executive Director Marjorie Esman said that if the Act is utilized as written, it should be fine. …”

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The groundbreaking textbook, Explore Evolution: The Case For And Against Neo-Darwinism (Hill House Publishers 2007), continues to make inroads in science education. Recently Kirkus Discoveries issued a fair and favorable review of Explore Evolution saying:

“through succinct language and extensive use of illustrated sidebars and summary boxes, an impressive amount of terrain is covered in a colorful and lively fashion.”

Explore Evolution is unique among biology textbooks because it focuses on the evidence and arguments for and against the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. The book has been carefully structured to help students and teachers weigh the evidence and engage in informed debate.

And now there are new companion curriculum materials to help educators in presenting the information in Explore Evolution.

• PowerPoint slide shows keyed to the chapters in the textbook;
  
• Test bank with test questions;
  
• Sample lesson plans keyed to the chapters in the textbook; and
  
• DVD clips for use in class.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 7:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.The new war is not about evolution and creation, but about Darwinism and something called ‘intelligent design.'

Intelligent design maintains that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than unguided natural processes. Since ID relies on evidence rather than on scripture or religious doctrines, it is not creationism or a form of religion.

ID restricts itself to a simple question: does the evidence point to design in nature?

ID does not deny the reality of variation and natural selection; it just denies that those phenomena can accomplish all that Darwinists claim they can accomplish.

ID does not maintain that all species were created in their present form; indeed, some ID advocates have no quarrel with the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor. ID challenges only the sufficiency of unguided natural processes and the Darwinian claim that design in living things is an illusion rather than a reality.

To order The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, click here. To find out more information about the book, visit the book’s website here.

Posted by Jonathan Wells at 7:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There's a longstanding debate among scholars about whether it was Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, or someone else who first conceived of the idea of natural selection. Many credit Alfred Russel Wallace, who with Darwin co-presented their theory of natural selection to the Linnean Society of London, exactly 150 years ago today. (For a nice news piece on this topic, see here.) Some people celebrated this event by proclaiming, as Johnjoe McFadden did yesterday in the London Guardian, that "Darwin and Wallace destroyed the strongest evidence left in the 19th century for the existence of a deity." Darwin might have agreed, since he once wrote that "[t]here seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws." But few seem to remember that, contrary to Darwin, Wallace actually believed that it was possible to detect design in nature. As Wallace wrote:

"[T]here seems to be evidence of a Power which has guided the action of those laws [of organic development] in definite directions and for special ends. And so far from this view being out of harmony with the teachings of science, it has a striking analogy with what is now taking place in the world..."

(Alfred Russel Wallace, An Anthology of His Shorter Writings 33-34, (Charles H. Smith ed. Oxford University Press, 1991).)

It's also worth remembering how we discussed the irony of Wallace's view in Traipsing Into Evolution:

While Wallace certainly ascribed more religious meaning to his concept than was warranted by the data, he nonetheless recognized that it was possible to detect design in nature. It is ironic that Judge Jones' decision effectively renders unconstitutional the views of the co-founder of the modern theory of evolution.

(David K. DeWolf, John G. West, Casey Luskin, Jonathan Witt, Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision, pg. 18 (Discovery Institute Press, 2006).)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

P.Z. Myers takes me to task for this irony that I recently pointed out : the data he cited to argue that Christian faith and prayer were irrelevant to advances in cancer care actually came from a children’s hospital— St. Jude’s Hospital— that was founded explicitly on Christian faith. In fact, St. Jude’s Hospital was founded explicitly on a prayer. Myers sneers at my observation, and he extols science and mocks the culture of faith from which modern science and medicine arose:

Hmmm. Given that the data shows a change, a rise in cancer survival within the past few decades, was there some breakthrough in prayer efficacy 20 years ago? Thumbs in vs. thumbs out in the folded hands thing? Accent on the "A-" or on the "men!"? Sudden change from the old useless lazy god to a new and improved go-getter god? I suspect the correlations all show the effectiveness of entirely secular improvements in treatment, since the god-stuff hasn't changed from it's [sic] usual ineffectiveness at all…Egnor makes much of the fact that churches built hospitals, and that the data came from a religiously funded organization. Christians aren't that stupid; they can recognize a successful paradigm when they see it, and can jump on the bandwagon quite well. These hospitals founded by churches are using medicine, not faith, to do their healing. We're sloshing about in the mud of religion, so you can't credit the muck when something rises above the superstition to shine simply because everyone's hands are filthy with dirt…Faith and prayer do nothing.

On August 1, 1872, the journal “The Fortnightly Review” published this essay :

“Statistical Inquiries Into the Efficacy of Prayer”

The efficacy of prayer seems to me a simple, as it is a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. Whether prayer is efficacious or not, in any given sense, is a matter of fact on which each man must form an opinion for himself. His decision will lie based upon data more or less justly handled, according to his education and habits. An unscientific reasoner will be guided by a confused recollection of crude experience. A scientific reasoner will scrutinise each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system…The greater part of mankind, during all the historic ages, have been accustomed to pray for temporal advantages. How vain, it may be urged, must be the reasoning that ventures to oppose this mighty consensus of belief! Not so. The argument of universality either proves too much, or else it is suicidal. It either compels us to admit that the prayers of Pagans, of Fetish worshippers, and of Buddhists who turn praying-wheels, are recompensed in the same way as those of orthodox believers; or else the general consensus proves that it has no better foundation than the universal tendency of man to gross credulity…[Atheists]can dwell on the undoubted fact, that there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them, through the endless reactions of physical laws, among which the hereditary influences are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past, that they have a brotherhood with all that is, and have each his own share of responsibility in the parentage of an endless future. The effort to familiarise the imagination with this great idea has much in common with the effort of communing with a God, and its reaction on the mind of the thinker is in many important respects the same. It may not equally rejoice the heart, but it is quite as powerful in ennobling the resolves, and it is found to give serenity during life and in the shadow of approaching death.

The author of this essay was Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton shared Myers’ exaltation of science and disdain for Christian faith and prayer, although Galton’s views are more nuanced and less explicitly venomous than Myers'.

Galton was the father of eugenics— the application of the principles of scientific breeding to human beings. Scientific eugenicists were without exception Darwinists, and the rationale for eugenics was explicitly based on a Darwinian understanding of the origin of man. According to Darwin’s theory, man arose from lower animals by a purely materialistic process of random mutation and natural selection. Divine agency— design— of any kind was denied. Natural selection entailed struggle for existence— “survival of the fittest”— and eugenicists noted that ordinary human compassion and altruism had undesirable effects on human ‘stock’ that enabled survival of the weak and that degraded the human race. In fact, eugenecists were particularly despondent about improvements in medical care, such as the smallpox vaccine, that allowed less robust people to survive epidemics. Charles Darwin, in the sixth chapter of "Descent of Man", explicitly lamented the impact of the smallpox vaccine on the quality of the human race:

…the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this [vaccines to prevent epidemics] must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

Eugenicists had a scientific answer to the problem of 'allowing our worst (human) animals to breed': take control of human reproduction. Scientific breeding of human beings was the eugenic answer to mankind’s woes. Eugenics dominated medical science and practice in the United States for half a century, and was indispensible to German medicine in the 1930’ s and early 1940’s.

Myers of course isn't an explicit eugenicist. Few Darwinists are anymore, although there are exceptions. To paraphrase Myers, Darwinists aren't that stupid; they can recognize an unsuccessful paradigm when they see it, and can jump off the bandwagon quite well. Yet modern Darwinists haven't left the procession. Myers embraces whole-heartedly Galton's fundamentalist Darwinism and atheist-materialist view of the relationship between science, faith, and medicine. Galton and Myers — scientists without medical training or experience— were and are ignorant of the culture that actually gives rise to advances in medical care. Genuine advances in modern medicine, such as vaccines and the remarkable improvements in the cure rates for childhood leukemia, are the result of a complex interplay of good science, compassionate care, and the passion of many ordinary men and women to better the lives of others, often at great sacrifice to themselves. Genuine advances in modern medicine are the products of a culture— Christian culture.

Galton’s idolatry of science and his rejection of Christian faith— a view hardly distinguishable, except by its erudition, from Myers' view— had a profound influence on 20th century medical science and practice. Ideas have consequences, and ideas have antecedents. The science that rose from these atheist and Darwinist ideas— the science of eugenics— gave rise to the darkest era in the history of medicine. Myers' virulent Darwinism and his anti-Christian bigotry are just uncommonly repellant expressions of Galton's intrinsically repellant ideology. The metaphysical basis for eugenics— the Darwinist understanding of human origins— lives on in the atheist claque in contemporary science.

What is it about Myers’ exaltation of science and hatred of Christian culture that we still don’t understand?

Posted by Michael Egnor at 6:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)