Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg recently revamped his 2008 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard University for an essay entitled "Without God" in The New York Review of Books. As the essay moves toward a close, Weinberg tells us:

the worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.

What, then, can we do?

that the first thing we need is a healthy dose of humor, beauty, inspiration, and honor. Regarding the need for humor, Weinberg rightly notes that,

In some of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, just when the action is about to reach an unbearable climax, the tragic heroes are confronted with some "rude mechanical" offering comic observations: a gravedigger, or a doorkeeper, or a pair of gardeners, or a man with a basket of figs. The tragedy is not lessened, but the humor puts it in perspective.

Living without God isn't easy. But its very difficulty offers one other consolation—that there is a certain honor, or perhaps just a grim satisfaction, in facing up to our condition without despair and without wishful thinking—with good humor, but without God.

But one day it dawned on me—as I believe it will one day dawn on Dr. Weinberg—that speaking of honesty, courage, and honor as though they were actually objectively honest, courageous, and honorable was inconsistent with naturalistic metaphysics. If you asked Nietzsche why one should forge his own way rather than follow herd morality, I believe he would have answered: "Are you kidding? Think about it. Which one would you prefer? Wouldn't you prefer this noble enterprise of making your own way? Oh, well maybe you wouldn't, Gage, you wretched sheep! Baaaahhhhhh!"

Or at least that's how I imagine him speaking. But, this is simply not convincing. The whole notion of an honorable and noble existence is a residue of Christendom that Nietzsche should have recognized and rejected.

And the same goes for Weinberg. The first question he should ask himself is why, if we live in a naturalistic universe, did it produce humans with a need to cope with a naturalistic universe? I mean, why does Weinberg feel so out of place? Shouldn't he feel at home if naturalism is the true metaphysic?

Moreover, Weinberg must understand that his coping mechanism (a heavy cocktail of humor, beauty, inspiration, and honor) is not the panecea for which he hopes. He is not being consistent here. If Weinberg can explain away religion and all other things as Darwinian adaptations...what does he think humor, beauty, inspiration, and honor are? Why is it that only traditional religion and morality are seen as undermined by the Darwinian mechanism? Looks to me like things he likes are reduced to mere chemicals in the brain while things he enjoys—like the inspiration he gets from Philip Larkin's poetry—he is unwilling to reduce.

Weinberg is trying to have his Darwinian atheism on the cheap. He cannot maintain that the universe has no inherent meaning, is essentially nihilistic, and still hold on to a handful of meaningful, comforting pleasures as though they had real value. To retain all of his physicalist reductionist explanations, his panacea must also be reduced.

Conversely, for Dr. Weinberg to have a truly courageous existence, courage must be real. Some of us may take comfort in the fact that Weinberg's Shakespearean analogy, if it holds any lesson for us, tells us that humor—far from being a meaningless adaptation—is real, for it was intended by intelligent design.

Posted by Logan Gage at 9:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The media is abuzz about a suggestion made by a Church of England spokesman that it should apologize for initially opposing Darwinian evolution back in Darwin's day. An Associated Press article in the International Herald Tribune says that "[t]he church did not take an official stand against Darwin's theories, but many senior Anglicans reacted with hostility to his ideas, arguing against them at public debates." The example given is the account of Bishop Wilberforce: "At a University of Oxford debate in 1860, the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, famously asked scientist Thomas Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed to be descended from a monkey." According to the legend, Huxley reportedly replied that he would "rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop." This has led to claims that Huxley vanquished Wilberforce, who in legend is reported to have said, "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands." But how much truth is in this legend?

In an essay titled "Darwinism and Religion: A Revisionist View of the Wilberforce-Huxley Debate," John Hedley Brooke, Professor of Science & Religion at Oxford University, argues, "One answer to the question why this celebrated exchange occurred at all is that it didn't - or at least that the legend is deeply misleading." According to Brooke this legend "probably was invented -at least in part."

Brooke continues:

In fact, the more closely we look at the legend the more suspect it becomes. The idea that Huxley won a famous victory was not even countenanced in Leonard Huxley's heroic Life. The result of the encounter, though a check to the anti-Darwinian sceptics, could not be represented as an "immediate and complete triumph for evolutionary doctrine". This was precluded by the "character and temper of the audience, most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort." One of Huxley's most recent and empathetic biographers, Adrian Desmond, agrees that talk of a victor is ridiculous. The Athenaeum put it rather well: the Bishop and Huxley "have each found foemen worthy of their steel, and made their charges and countercharges very much to their own satisfaction and the delight of their respective friends."

I am waiting for the Archbishop of Canterbury to apologize to Richard Dawkins for not resigning his office immediately when Dawkins announced that Christianity is a delusion, and a harmful one at that. The Church of England must have dawdled for at least a month before surrendering to Darwin.

(Phillip Johnson, private correspondence, with permission)

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

Over the coming months, the Texas State Board of Education will be deciding whether to remove or bolster its requirement that students learn the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories, "using scientific evidence and information." The pro-Darwin lobby group National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does not want that standard to be applied specifically to evolution. In fact, Texas Darwinists want that language completely removed from the Texas Science Standards. To reasonable people, it is apparent that investigating the “strengths and weaknesses [of scientific theories] using scientific evidence and information” is exactly what scientists do all the time. Discovery Institute believes that if scientists can dispute the core claims of neo-Darwinism (as these scientists do), then students can learn about those views:

Discovery Institute believes that a curriculum that aims to provide students with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories (rather than teaching an alternative theory, such as intelligent design) represents a common ground approach that all reasonable citizens can agree on.

(Discovery Institute Science Education Policy)

(Update 9-30-08: For another example, Dan Quinn of the Darwinist group "Texas Freedom Network" reportedly argues that "teaching the strengths and weaknesses of theories such as evolution has become 'code' for pushing those religion-based ideas in schools." Mr. Quinn's imaginative hypothesis requires that when the Texas science standards say teach the "strengths and weaknesses" that Texas science teachers are actually in on a big conspiracy where they all believe that the language really means "teach religion.")

For example, a recent NCSE press release states that learning about the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinism will "dilute the treatment of evolution." Not only is this a false claim, but it isn't even an argument: this merely shows that what the NCSE wants is the dogmatic presentation of only the pro-Darwin viewpoint in schools. For the NCSE, allowing students to learn about scientific critiques of neo-Darwinism will “dilute” their dogmatic approach.

Likewise, the NCSE quotes Texas Darwinists saying that teaching the strengths and weaknesses will “damage and corrupt science textbooks.” Again, such rhetoric is not an argument: it merely demonstrates Darwinists think it will “damage and corrupt” education if students learn that neo-Darwinism might have scientific flaws because in their dogmatic view, neo-Darwinian evolution has nothing that rises to the level of a weakness. Such authoritarian statements have no place in science, and they serve to indoctrinate students rather than teach students how to think critically and skeptically—like scientists.

But perhaps when it comes to evolution, that’s exactly what Texas Darwinists want.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 5:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

[Update 6/16/09: Quote in paragraph 4 clarified to make it clear that the quote did not come from Dr. Catherine A. Boisvert but was rather stated by the journal The Scientist. Any prior lack of clarity on the author of that quote was completely unintentional.]

Over the past couple years, Tiktaalik, a fish-fossil touted as documenting key aspects of the transition from fish to 4-legged tetrapods, has become a new celebrated icon of evolution:

• PBS's "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" featured Tiktaalik as their premier transitional fossil (an anachronism since the fossil wasn’t even reported until months AFTER the Dover trial concluded).
• The National Academy of Science’s 2008 "Science, Evolution, and Creationism" booklet also prominently features Tiktaalik, pushing it as "a notable transitional form."
• In early September, Carl Zimmer was so eager to mention Tiktaalik as a fossil that "illuminates our ancestors’ transition from sea to land," that he plugged it in a New York Times article about a video game that had absolutely nothing to do with Tiktaalik.

The latest retroactive confessions of evolutionist ignorance comes on the heels of a published re-analysis of the bones of Panderichthys. The study used CT scans to show Panderichthys apparently had a few well-defined radial bones in its pectoral fins. (Radial bones are found only in fish fins, but evolutionary paleontologists contend that radial bones are homologous to digits in tetrapod limbs.) When commenting on this new find, the paper’s lead author, Catherine A. Boisvert, boasted in an interview with The Scientist that "it is now completely proven that fingers have evolved from distal radials already present in fish that gave rise to the tetrapod." Boisvert also praised her findings, stating: "The disposition of distal radials in Panderichthys are much more tetrapod-like than in Tiktaalik."

Confident that Panderichthys fossil showed evolution better than Tiktaalik, Darwinists then proceeded to admit striking criticisms of Tiktaalik: The Scientist article stated, "Previous data from another ancient fish called Tiktaalik showed distal radials as well -- although the quality of that specimen was poor. And the orientation of the radials did not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint, parallel to each other." (emphasis added)

The "quality" of Tiktaalik as a fossil specimen was “poor”? When did we see evolutionists admit this previously? Never. They wouldn't dare make such admissions until they thought they had something better.

Moreover, now that we have Panderichthys, evolutionists are openly admitting that the orientation of Tiktaalik's radials do "not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint." That's a good point, but it's old news for readers of ENV: in August, I observed that Tiktaalik’s radial bones could not be likened to tetrapod digits unless you "[d]ramatically repattern, reposition, and transform the existing radials by lining them up, separating them out."

And now we must turn to Panderichthys. How convincingly "tetrapod-like" are its newly reported radial bones? Below is a picture comparing the radial bones in the fin of Panderichthys to the digits of a true tetrapod limb:

(Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, Catherine A. Boisvert, Elga Mark-Kurik, & Per E. Ahlberg, "The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits," Figs. 2c and 3d (Sept. 21, 2008); all text but radius (R), ulna (U), and ulnare (Ure) bone labels added by me.)

Michael Coates, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, called the new findings "intriguing" but is not convinced that the digit-like structures in Panderichthys's fin are the equivalent of our fingers.

For one thing, they seem unusually flat for radial bones, Coates said.

"Radials are generally cylindrical. When you look at [a] cross-section [of the digit], they're dumbbell-shaped."

The structures are so peculiar, they might just be fragments of damaged bone, he added.

(Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, Catherine A. Boisvert, Elga Mark-Kurik, & Per E. Ahlberg, "The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits," Fig. 2d (Sept. 21, 2008))

Given the jagged and "peculiar" shape of these "radial" bones in the scan seen above, and the fact that they are flat like the other nearby bones in the fin, Michael Coates makes a good argument that these alleged radials are really just "fragments of damaged bone."

In the same NG article, one of the paper's co-authors Per Ahlberg said that if Tiktaalik were to remain the form that is closer to tetrapods, then "finger development took a step backward with Tiktaalik, and that Tiktaalik's fins represented an evolutionary return to a more primitive form." In other words, at least some the alleged similarities to tetrapods found in these fossils do not actually represent features that are homologous to tetrapods, i.e. they are convergent similarities, also called homoplasies. This means that similarities between these lobed-finned fish fossils and tetrapods imply homology, except for when they don't, making the Darwinian rationale for inferring "homology" appear weak and arbitrary.

My main observation is this: if Panderichthys is dethroning Tiktaalik as the icon of the fish-to-tetrapod transition, what does that say about all the hype we've seen surrounding Tiktaalik? It says that "poor" and "primitive" Tiktaalik was never all it was hyped up to be.

Contradictory Confessions
The problem with making too many retroactive confessions of ignorance is that sometimes they contradict one another. For example, when Tiktaalik was reported, Darwinists attacked Panderichthys as being un-tetrapod-like, stating:

Panderichthys possesses relatively few tetrapod synapomorphies, and provides only partial insight into the origin of major features of the skull, limbs and axial skeleton of early tetrapods. In view of the morphological gap between elpistostegalian fish and tetrapods, the phylogenetic framework for the immediate sister group of tetrapods has been incomplete and our understanding of major anatomical transformations at the fish-tetrapod transition has remained limited.

(Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin, and Farish A. Jenkins, "A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan," Nature, Vol. 440:757-763 (April 6, 2006).)

Darwinists are famous for making retroactive confessions of ignorance, where they only admit how poor the evidence was for a given fossil transition after some new fossil (which supposedly better demonstrates evolution) is reported. Darwinists have used this approach multiple times in the past when discussing the alleged fish-to-amphibian evolutionary transition. (For example, please see here or here.) This behavior should leave critically thinking readers asking two questions:

• What admissions of ignorance aren’t they making about the transitional fossil du jour (in this case, Panderichthys)?, and
• How strong is the evidence for this evolutionary transition, really?

(Updated, 9:30 am PST)

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Nature recently had this to say in an editorial regarding our upcoming election:

The most worrying thing about a McCain presidency is not so much a President
McCain as a Vice-President Palin. Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor and McCain's
running mate, opposes all research into human embryonic stem cells. She is a
creationist....

Contrast that with Obama's statement on page 448, in which Nature asked him
about the teaching of intelligent design in science classes. It is not easy to
address students' questions about evolution without falling prey to the false
notion of 'teaching the controversy', as the Royal Society's director of
education discovered last week in a public-relations meltdown (see 'Creation
and classrooms'). But Obama could not be more clear: "I do not believe it is
helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific
theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental
scrutiny," he wrote.

Other Brits have been more thoughtful,

noting that Palin's statements basically said she supports students discussing alternative views—that there should not "be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

So no, Palin is not as radical or scarey as Nature and other sources would have you think.

Regarding Obama's position, as a thoughful person, I hope he comes to learn that ID proponents are not pushing to mandate the inclusion of ID in the classroom. Rather, what we have long been asking for is that Darwinism be taught in an even-handed way, with scientific evidence both for it and against it discussed. Rather than perpetuating misconceptions, it would be nice to see the post-partisan candidate come endorse such an even-handed approach which has the support of nearly three out of four Americans.

Posted by Logan Gage at 2:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In the media, Catholicism is the religious tradition most frequently, and misleadingly, held up for approbation as having no problem reconciling Darwinism with theistic faith. The tradition next most often cited as Darwin-friendly is my own, Judaism. You can bet a new Rabbis’ Letter in support of evolution will garner the usual uncomprehending applause.

Boasting 305 signatures so far, the letter holds that "It is possible to be inspired by the religious teachings of the Bible while not taking a literalist approach and while accepting the validity of science including the foundational concept of evolution."

The Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science From American Rabbis, as it’s formally called, has already scored an admiring report in the Chicago Tribune, full of the standard confusions. The article, like the letter, implies that what's at stake in the Darwin debate is nothing more than a contest between simple-minded fundamentalist literalism, which Judaism indeed has always rejected, and science.

In the lead paragraph, Rabbi Gary Gerson is quoted, affirming evolution as a confirmation of his faith, demonstrating the "higher order" in "creation." "We as Jews every day praise God for the times and seasons and the order of being, and that perhaps is the greatest miracle of all."

First of all, what does God’s ordering the "times and seasons" have to do with evolution? More fundamentally, Gerson and all the other signers of the Rabbis' Letter miss the point that it is the mechanism that Darwin proposed to explain how his tree of life developed that presents the really grave challenge to theistic faith.

God is understood by the Jewish and Christian traditions as the creator of our own world and all the life in it. What the work of creation entailed is a subject taken up by Jewish mysticism, kabbalah, a subject requiring the most intense erudition to begin to appreciate.

For his part, Darwin sought to explain how the various forms of life could have arisen, once the very first life was somehow seeded, without the need for divine interference. Natural selection and chance variation would do the entire job, he argued. As Darwin clarified in his Autobiography: "The old argument of design in nature…which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered." Nothing could be clearer. Read even in the most metaphorical manner, Genesis depicts God as directing and approving each stage of the world’s development: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (1:31). Darwin's theory obviates the need for such a creator.

The piece in the Tribune also cites a bogus legend that implies that Maimonides would approve of Darwinian evolution. The truth is quite to the contrary, as I've shown in Moment magazine and the Jerusalem Post.

Almost all the signers of the Rabbis' Letter are liberal clergy, from the Reform and Conservative denominations. Evidently, Orthodox rabbis mostly declined to sign or maybe they weren't asked. I'd like to think they were guided by the teachings of the German rabbi who inspired Modern Orthodoxy. Samson Raphael Hirsch in 1878 used the Biblical image of the idol Baal Peor, worshipped in the most grotesquely animalistic fashion (mixing defecation with sexual intercourse), to illustrate "the kind of Darwinism that revels in the conception of man sinking to the level of beast and stripping itself of its divine nobility, learns to consider itself just a 'higher' class of animal."

For a more historically informed perspective than you'll get in the Rabbis' Letters, a recent book from the University of Chicago Press is worthy consulting. In Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, edited by Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz, the more interesting essays describe attempts by rabbis and other Jewish leaders to find an appropriate response to Darwin's materialism, from the mid-19th century to today. Some of the research will surprise readers who assume that Jews have always been friendly to evolution.

In his own essay in the book, Swetlitz presents the opinions of prominent and theologically liberal rabbis, representing the Reform and Conservative movements, who wrote and gave sermons during the 1950s and ’60s, questioning natural selection as a mechanism sufficient to explain the development of life. In effect, they were premature advocates of intelligent design.

Posted by David Klinghoffer at 7:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2004, cognitive scientist Keith E. Stanovich took the position that junk DNA "is essentially a parasite," and that "junk DNA is a puzzle only if we are clinging to the assumption that our genes are there to do something for us."¹

In 2006, Michael Shermer asserted, “Rather than being intelligently designed, the human genome looks more and more like a mosaic of mutations, fragment copies, borrowed sequences, and discarded strings of DNA that were jerry-built over millions of years of evolution.”²

The following year, a human physiology textbook stated that “junk DNA” is "considered defective” and comprises “inherited sequences [that] perform no currently known ‘genetically useful’ purpose, yet they remain part of the chromosomes.”³

These sources promoting the classic “junk DNA” icon of neo-Darwinism need updating, as a Yale University news release from earlier this month recalls the fact that “[i]n the last several years, scientists have discovered that non-coding regions of the genome, far from being junk, contain thousands of regulatory elements that act as genetic ‘switches’ to turn genes on or off.” In this case, the junk triggered genes that control human thumb and foot development.

But this wasn’t the only interesting finding they made. According to the article, finding these genetic differences were “especially surprising, as the human and chimpanzee genomes are extremely similar overall.”

Most studies that have claimed that humans and apes have nearly identical genomes have primarily looked at the gene-coding portions of the genome, not the non-coding DNA (formerly claimed to be “junk”). Perhaps as biologists study the non-coding regions of our genome, they will find evidence that challenges two icons of evolution: Not only does “junk” DNA have function, but humans aren’t as genetically similar to apes as was once thought.

References Cited:
[1.] Keith E. Stanovich, The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin, pgs. 16-17 (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
[2.] Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, pg. 75 (Times Books 2006).
[3.] William D. McArdle et al., Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human Performance, pg. 1024 (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007).

Posted by Casey Luskin at 11:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

According to a Science Daily news release, engineers are turning to marine biology for insight into building better turbine blades and wings. The article reports that "[t]he shape of whale flippers with one bumpy edge has inspired the creation of a completely novel design for wind turbine blades. This design has been shown to be more efficient and also quieter, but defies traditional engineering theories." Apparently small bumps on the leading edge of the flippers create vortices as the whale moves through the water, and this uneven flow "help[s] to generate more lift without the occurrence of stall, as well as enhancing manoeuvrability and agility."

The authors of the article seem cognizant of the unwanted design overtones, and thus lead off the article with an otherwise superfluous evolutionary spin: "Sea creatures have evolved over millions of years to maximise efficiency of movement through water." Yet one scientist was quoted saying, "The lesson from biomimicry is that unsteady flow and complex shapes can increase lift, reduce drag and delay 'stall', a dramatic and abrupt loss of lift, beyond what existing engineered systems can accomplish." The alternative view, of course, is that “existing engineered systems” already contained this innovation before humans discovered it.

Attempts to quash the design overtones of engineers mimicking nature were also made in an MSNBC article earlier this summer, which explained that Polypterus senegalus (an African freshwater fish also known as the gray bichir) has "[i]ncredible fish armor [that] could suit soldiers." One scientist was quoted saying, "Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically inspired structural materials."

Apparently not wanting readers to consider any intelligent design implications from such statements, the article opens with the non-subtle but otherwise superfluous subtitle, "Millions of years of evolution could provide exactly what we need today." Another scientist is then quoted making a superfluous attempt to re-emphasize that point: "millions of years or hundreds of millions of years of evolution would be a good starting point for what we need for this day and age."

Blind and unguided processes created "exactly what we need today"? Well aren't we all just that lucky.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 7:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Rick Richman, editor of Jewish Current Issues, has an article in American Thinker about Neo-Atheism and the response to it from three different authors, including CSC senior fellow David Berlinski.

In April, David Berlinski, a secular Jew and well-known skeptic of Darwinism, who holds a Ph. D. in Philosophy from Princeton and has written widely on mathematics and science, published "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions." The book defends religion by attacking atheism's attempt to enlist science in its cause.

The book is written with Mr. Berlinski's characteristic literary verve. To a Nobel Prize scientist's argument -- offered at a conference on "science, religion and reason" -- that "for good people to do evil things, [it] takes religion," Berlinski responds: "Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental ballistic missiles, military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?"

"If memory serves," he writes, "it was not the Vatican."

It is ironic that what ultimately makes neo-atheism not only unconvincing but off-putting is the fact that it often exhibits the very fundamentalism it purports to find in religion: an absolute certainty in its views, an uncritical worship of its god -- science -- as a saving force, and a denigration of those who refuse to be saved. Berlinski, Novak and Wolpe, in their divergent ways, demonstrate that a religious outlook that does not deny doubt, values humility, and appreciates the implications of the miracle of our existence, is the more reasonable approach to life.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 4:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In an op-ed in Scotland's The Journal, student Simon Mundy connects the flak over Michael Reiss to Matt Damon's comments on Sarah Palin, pitying them both for being used by the intelligent design lobby (those cruelly powerful IDers!) and warning that ID "is coming perilously close to respectability." Quell horreur! But the best is at the very end, where Mundy writes:

The right to a dissenting opinion lies at the heart of our society. But future generations will not thank us for undermining scientific theories that have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

Can't you just see the astronomers coming after Copernicus, lining up and telling him in unison, "Hey, Copernicus, we support your right to think whatever you want, but it totally bites that you undermined Ptolemy. It was proven beyond all reasonable doubt before you came along!"

Posted by Anika Smith at 7:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

For a most enlightening take on the Michael Reiss situation, listen to Casey Luskin's interview with Steve Fuller on ID the Future podcast:

Click here to listen.

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC’s Casey Luskin is joined by Dr. Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Dr. Fuller shares his perspective on the recent forced resignation of the former Director of Education at the Royal Society, Michael Reiss. Reiss is an ordained Anglican Priest, has a doctorate in biology, is currently a professor of science education at the Institute of Education at the University of London, and is widely regarded and respected as an expert in science education. Reiss stepped down from his position as Director of Education due to the controversy over his recently expressed opinions on creationism in the classroom. Listen as Dr. Fuller shares his belief that Reiss was forced to step down merely because he refused to say that creationism was false.

Posted by Anika Smith at 3:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The McCain-Obama sex education for kindergartners flap doesn't seem to be going away. Despite the best efforts of the traditional news media to deny reality, the facts have been trickling out thanks primarily to alternative media outlets like National Review Online (here and here), The Weekly Standard, and Rush Limbaugh.

But there is a whole lot more to this story that hasn’t been widely reported yet—and it needs to be.

As I documented in chapters 12 and 13 of my book Darwin Day in America, there is a growing movement in the United States to provide explicit sex education to very young children. I''s a movement that thoughtful parents have every right to be disturbed about. What is scandalous is the way "mainstream" reporters are doing their best to make sure nobody finds out what is actually being proposed.

First, a recap of the current brouhaha: The flap started earlier this month when the McCain campaign aired an inflammatory ad accusing Senator Obama of supporting a bill in the Illinois legislature that would have required comprehensive sex ed for children starting in kindergarten. For days, the ad was denounced by most major media outlets as a contemptible lie. Too bad the journalists making such claims didn't bother to read the legislation for themselves. Had they done so, they would have seen that the bill for comprehensive sex education supported by Sen. Obama clearly proposed expanding instruction about sexually transmitted diseases from grades "6-12" to grades "K-12" (see pages 1, 5, and 9 of the bill).

What has yet to be widely reported is that the bill supported by Obama is part of a much broader campaign by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to implement its radical Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten through 12th Grade in school districts across the nation. The SIECUS guidelines make clear that sex ed for kindergartners is precisely what the mainline sex education lobby wants right now, and last year the Obama campaign itself cited the SIECUS guidelines as an example of the kind of "age appropriate" sex education that Sen. Obama favors.

According to the SIECUS standards, children starting at age 5 are supposed to be taught about vaginal intercourse (p. 26), homosexual relationships (p. 29), same-sex marriage (p. 39), masturbation (pp. 51-52), unwanted pregnancies (p. 61), AIDS (p. 65), and other sexually transmitted diseases (p. 63). That's right, all this starting at age 5. If you don't believe me, read the SIECUS guidelines for yourself. One can support "age appropriate" sex education (as I do) without embracing SIECUS's intrusive effort to force five-year-olds to deal with all manner of explicit topics.

Unfortunately, SIECUS is far from a fringe organization. It is the leading "mainstream" sex education group in the United States. That's not to say it doesn't have a pretty sordid history. As I recount in detail in my book, SIECUS was founded by partisans of evolutionary biologist Alfred Kinsey, who revolutionized sexual morality by attempting to apply a reductionist Darwinian approach to human sexuality.

In Kinsey's view, so long as you could find a sexual practice occurring among animals somewhere in nature, that practice must constitute "normal mammalian behavior" and should not be condemned. Kinsey's approach led him to denounce efforts to stigmatize such behaviors as bestiality, and even to downplay the seriousness of child molestation. (For extensive documentation, see my book.)

Although SIECUS has always tried to cultivate a public image of moderation, in the past it has promoted the work of scholars with views even more radical than that of Kinsey. Indeed, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, SIECUS finally began to attract notoriety for promoting the views of sociologist Floyd Martinson, who claimed that incest could be a positive experience for children and who tried to legitimize child molestation by arguing that "in sex, as in most aspects of life, the older teach the younger." SIECUS founder Mary Calderone, meanwhile, argued for the "acceptance of the sexuality of children and infants," and urged that "this must happen if 3-year-olds are to achieve ownership of their own bodies with all of their functions." (You can find these views of Martinson and Calderone clearly expressed in their contributions to the 1981 book Sex Education in the Eighties: The Challenge of Healthy Sexual Evolution, a volume originally commissioned by the SIECUS board of directors). After facing scorching criticism for its association with such nutty views, SIECUS in recent years has backtracked, but its underlying agenda of undermining traditional sexual standards remains. (Again, for the details, read my book.)

I'm not exactly surprised that the traditional news media have botched the current story. Like media coverage of the evolution issue, reporting on sex education since the 1960s has been dominated by stereotypes and ideological bias. As I recount in my book, during the past four decades most "mainstream" journalists have chosen to depict nearly every controversy over sex education as a battle between the forces of enlightenment and moderation (represented by sex ed reformers) and the forces of darkness and extremism (represented by any parents or citizens who refuse to go along with the sex ed reformers agenda.) Journalists almost never expose the extremists who dominate the sex ed lobby itself. Fortunately, fewer and fewer people rely on the "mainstream" media as their only source for facts.

Posted by John West at 10:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Darwin Day in America, by John West, has garnered praise and driven Darwinists crazy with it's overwhelming preponderance of evidence showing that Darwinian biology and reductionist science have been used to degrade American culture over the past century through their impact on criminal justice, welfare, business, education, and bioethics.

It is in the area of eugenics that West has really exposed the devastating — and dehumanizing — consequence of Darwin's evolutionary ideas. A new review of DDA in the New Oxford Review gives a good overview of the book, but examines most closely the portions dealing with eugenics.

Writes reviewer Anne Barbeau Gardiner:

Scholars today place the blame for the eugenics debacle on politicians, but West finds it more accurate to describe the movement as "an effort by scientists to dictate government social policy based on their presumed scientific expertise." This was the first time they used science "to expand the power of the state over social matters."

Darwin Day in America is a thoroughly documented book (with almost 100 pages of endnotes) written in an easy, fluent style.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 8:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Late last night I posted my final rebuttals to the NCSE on OpposingViews.com. This makes 12 total rebuttals for the pro-ID side and zero for the anti-ID side (though Americans United did post a sur-rebuttal tellingly titled “You Lost the Case -- Get Over It”). Here are my links to my latest rebuttals:

(Note: The OpposingViews.com website has had a nasty habit of losing footnotes, so some footnotes may be missing. I'm told they will be fixing this problem soon.)

In my second rebuttal to the NCSE, I refute a Darwinist YouTube video that the NCSE cites to attack the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list. I periodically get e-mails from people asking about this video. A closer look easily shows that the video is factually bankrupt and should not be taken seriously. Below I've pasted my refutation of this video as...

...an excerpt from "Ask Questions & Think for Yourself: Science Is Not a Voting Contest," my rebuttal to the NCSE's second opening statement:

Since the NCSE wishes to deny that there is any credible dissent from neo-Darwinism, they argue that it is "possible to discredit" the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list by referring people to a YouTube video titled, "Evaluating an antievolution petition," created by some would-be internet critic.

That's right, the NCSE cites to a random YouTube video.

I don’t know anything about the person who created that video, but he clearly has major misunderstandings about the list. His false claims and misrepresentations are too numerous to catalogue, not the least of which is the fact that the version of the list he attacks in the video is a long-outdated version that may be up to 7 years out-dated, taken from a time when the list first started and had only about 100 signatories. Today the list has over 750 signatories. For the latest public version of the list, please see:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

Just some of the outlandish and false claims about the list in the video include:

The critic pulls a bait-and-switch by redefining evolution in a way that is clearly not intended by the list, and then claims that some list-members don’t belong under the definition that the list never intended to use. To be more specific, he defines evolution as "common descent," and then claims that some list-members don’t "doubt evolution," so defined and thus "shouldn’t be on the list." But the list has always been called "A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism"—using a neo-Darwinian definition of evolution as the claim that "random mutation and natural selection [can] account for the complexity of life" (from the list’s statement). The list is plainly not about skepticism of common descent; it’s about skepticism of the sufficiency of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. The fact that the critic finds list-members who accept common descent but doubt neo-Darwinism should not be surprising. The critic has given no good reason to explain why those list-members should be off the list.

The critic touts a bogus survey by claiming the list is discredited because he contacted people on the list who didn’t want to be on it. But this critic only contacted biologists, and of those biologists, only 16 replied. Of those 16, he only gives a couple examples of people who claimed that they didn’t want to be on the list. This means that he had contact with less than 2.2% of the total signers on the list. That makes for a pretty meaningless analysis of the list, as far as survey statistics go.

This critic makes a false criticism of the list by claiming that it "dishonestly" misrepresents the credentials of list-members by listing either their current institution or the institution where they earned their Ph.D. There is no dishonesty here: the list clearly states at the top of the first page that list-members can be listed by EITHER current institution OR location of Ph.D., as it reads: "Scientists listed by doctoral degree or current position." (emphasis in original) It’s obvious which scientists are listed by current institution and which are listed by Ph.D. institution: those listed by "Ph.D." say, simply, "Ph.D." For example, the critic attacks one list-member who is listed as "Ph.D. Neuroscience-Case Western Reserve" and the critic incorrectly charges that the list says that he "worked" at Case Western. In fact, the list clearly lists this biologist by his "Ph.D." Even worse, the critic claims that this scientist only went to Case Western for "undergrad." Perhaps it is ironic that the video flashed the word "Lie" at this point—because in fact the scientist in question did get his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve (his "undergrad" was completed at Michigan State University). Contrary to the critic’s false claims, there are no misrepresentations about the credentials of list-members in this regard.

The critic claims that some people asked to be removed from the list but were not. Again, his criticisms are misplaced because he uses a long out-dated version of the list. For example, he claims Fred Sigworth was not removed from the list, but in fact Sigworth has not been on the list for years. The critic again asserts that there were people who wanted to be removed from the list "7 years ago," but he never gives any examples to back up his charges and accusations. Had the critic used the current version of the list, he would have found that scientists like Sigworth were removed long ago.

The critic claims that biologists such as Ralph Seelke and Michael Behe are not true skeptics of "evolution" and don’t belong on the list. It’s incredible that someone would cite Behe (one of my pro-ID co-participants in this debate) in an attempt to boast about scientific support for neo-Darwinism. Moreover, Ralph Seelke just co-authored a textbook, Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism, that provides many potent criticisms of neo-Darwinism. Such scientists who the critic claims are "pro-evolution" actually have huge doubts about the core claims of neo-Darwinian theory. Due to the fact that the critic claims that leading Darwin-skeptics like Ralph Seelke and Michael Behe don’t qualify as dissenters from Darwinism, it’s clear to me that this guy really has very little clue of what he’s talking about regarding the list and his objections are neither credible nor compelling.

This video also makes false scientific claims. For example, the critic claims that molecular-based phylogenetic trees agree with phylogenetic trees based upon the fossil record "seamlessly." Trisha Gura wrote an entire review article in Nature entitled "Bones, Molecules or Both?" devoted to examining the difficulties encountered by evolutionary scientists when trying to reconcile molecule-based phylogenetic trees with phylogenetic trees based upon bones. In Gura’s words, the commonality of these conflicts has led to great "evolution wars" among evolutionary scientists over whether they should use "bones," "molecules," or "both" when constructing phylogenies. As Gura observes, there are "disparities between molecular and morphological trees."⁸ Similarly, a review article by Colin Patterson dimly concluded, "As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology."⁹ Another science article likewise wrote, "That molecular evidence typically squares with morphological patterns is a view held by many biologists, but interestingly, by relatively few systematists. Most of the latter know that the two lines of evidence may often be incongruent."¹⁰ Finally, Matthew Wills studied whether fossil data has helped improve the congruence of phylogenetic trees and concluded, "Despite increasing methodological sophistication, phylogenies derived from morphology, and those inferred from different molecules, are not always converging on a consensus."¹¹ In contrast to the claims of the video critic, morphological, fossil, and molecular data data do not fit together "seamlessly" when used to construct phylogenetic trees.

The critic also claims that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) provide unequivocal evidence for common descent, even though biologists are beginning to suspect ERVs have function and are not merely functionless genetic "junk."¹²

Towards the end of the video, the critic performs a meaningless calculation which allegedly gives the list "every mathematical concession possible" and claims that only 0.00275% of scientists reject "evolution" (which he defines as "common descent"). But the calculation makes no reasonable "mathematical concessions" to the list since his statistic makes the unashamedly false assumptions that (1) all 3,661,320 scientists that he claims exist have been contacted to sign the list and therefore that number can be placed in the denominator to determine the total percentage of scientists who doubt Darwinism, and (2) that even among those scientists who were contacted, that all who doubted neo-Darwinism chose to sign the list. Assumption (1) is false because of course only a fraction of all scientists are probably even aware of this list. Assumption (2) is false because I personally know a significant number of Ph.D. scientists—particularly professional biologists—who doubt neo-Darwinism and would like to sign the list, but are afraid to do so because they fear what might happen to their careers if the sign it. So the statistic at the end of the video is meaningless.

Finally, it should be observed that the video constantly flashes irrelevant graphics referring to young earth creationist groups and personalities that have nothing to do with the narration. At one point the video calls the U.S. the "United States of Jesus." Some people may find this kind of thing really funny, but the video is clearly not a serious or credible attempt to rebut the list. Given the NCSE’s claim to be religion-friendly and the fact that NCSE’s executive director Eugenie Scott has admitted that "most ID proponents do not embrace a Young Earth, Flood Geology, and sudden creation tenets associated with YEC,"¹³ it would seem that the NCSE is contradicting itself by promoting this video. Apparently the NCSE is so desperate to deny the existence of scientific dissent from neo-Darwinism that it is resorting to relying upon this non-credible, inaccurate, and factually bankrupt YouTube video.

References Cited:
[8.] Trisha Gura, "Bones, Molecules or Both?," Nature, Vol. 406:230-233 (July 20, 2000).

[9.] Colin Patterson et al., "Congruence between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies", Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol 24:179 (1993).

[10.] Masami Hasegawa, Jun Adachi, Michel C. Milinkovitch, "Novel Phylogeny of Whales Supported by Total Molecular Evidence," Journal of Molecular Evolution, Vol. 44, pgs. S117-S120 (Supplement 1, 1997).

[11.] Matthew A. Wills, "The tree of life and the rock of ages: are we getting better at estimating phylogeny," Bioessays, Vol. 24:203-207 (2002).

[12.] See Andrew B. Conley, Jittima Piriyapongsa and I. King Jordan, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," Bioinformatics, Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008); Daisuke Kigami, Naojiro Minami, Hanae Takayama, and Hiroshi Imai, "MuERV-L Is One of the Earliest Transcribed Genes in Mouse One-Cell Embryos," Biology of Reproduction, Vol. 68:651-654 (2003).

[13.] Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, pg. 128 (Greenwood Press, 2004).

Posted by Casey Luskin at 4:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In his book Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, biophysicist Cornelius G. Hunter explains that in Darwin’s day, some of the most commonly used arguments for evolution were theological arguments, not scientific. It seems that little has changed in the past ~150 years. Last year we reported that UC Irvine evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala was making religious arguments for evolution. Likewise, in a recent news article, George Coyne, a Catholic priest, reportedly said people should oppose intelligent design (ID) and accept evolution because ID allegedly "belittles God." While reflecting upon his new crusade, Coyne said, "I am going to, for better or worse, take on the intelligent design movement in this country … I'm not going to apologize on the statements I make." Last year, when arguing in favor of neo-Darwinian evolution, Coyne stated that “[i]f we take the results of modern science seriously, it is difficult to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient…"

Now then, I must ask, whose view is it that actually "belittles God"?

Posted by Casey Luskin at 11:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you watch baseball then you are probably familiar with the time-honored tradition of a team president or general manager expressing on Tuesday night after a game how they stand 100% behind the manager, who is summarily fired on Wednesday morning. Such statements of support are almost always a signal that the end is near for a team’s manager.

Consider this statement in The Times last Friday, reportedly issued by the Royal Society in the wake of Prof. Michael Reiss, a biologist and the Society's director of education, suggesting discussion of creationism in science classes to explain how it isn't science, but Darwinian evolution is.

“A spokesman for the organisation, which counts 21 Nobel Prize winners among its Fellows, confirmed yesterday that Professor Reiss’s views did represent that of its president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and the society.”

Now you can’t even mention creationism to say it isn’t science. It’s as if the idea itself doesn’t exist. As far as the Royal Society is concerned, if a student asks a question about creationism, the answer is, "No comment."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 11:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The recent comments by a Royal Society scientist and education expert about creationism being taught in science classes in the UK have got PZ Myers' panties all in a bunch. Of course, Myers' panties are used to being in a bunch because it doesn't take much to get his dander up.

To be clear Discovery does not support the inclusion of creation science in science curricula. However, teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory, such as Darwinian evolution, is a far cry from teaching creationism, or any other alternative views.

For Myers it is too much for anyone to even suggest discussing creationism with the intent to knock it down, and ultimately to uphold a dogmatic view of the Darwinian orthodoxy.

This is an important distinction that is blurred by most people who advocate that tired old slogan, "teach the controversy" or "teach both sides". There is only one side, the pattern of the evidence. There are, of course, cases where the evidence is still open to interpretation, and there it is appropriate to present a more ambiguous answer and explain how scientists are still working to resolve the problem.

Discovery "believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned."

What are the cases where the evidence is still open to interpretation I wonder? Would it be discussion of Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings?

Haeckel's infamous embryo drawings obscured the differences between vertebrate embryos in their earliest stages, leading to widespread belief in the false idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (i.e. development replays evolutionary history). The factual data reveal that vertebrate embryos develop very differently from their earliest stages in a pattern that is unexpected if all vertebrates share a common ancestor.

A friend of mine tells me that the only things he remembers about evolution from his high school biology course are photos of black and white peppered moths resting on light and dark tree trunks. They were presented as the classic case of Darwinian evolution in action, explaining how a trait that enhances survival could be acquired through an unguided material process.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, most biology textbooks featured photos of peppered moths (scientific name: Biston betularia) on tree trunks. Canadian textbook-writer Bob Ritter explained why in 1999: High school students are “very concrete in the way they learn,” he said. “The advantage of this example of natural selection is that it is extremely visual.”

Soon after 2000, however, the peppered myth succumbed to mounting scientific criticisms. The most embarrassing was that peppered moths in the wild don’t normally rest on tree trunks, and the textbook photos had been staged — as The New York Times pointed out in an article on scientific fakery in 2002. Darwinists trying to save the peppered myth turned what should have been a quick and merciful death into a long and painful demise, but it expired anyway. Most biology textbooks have now dropped it entirely.

(1) Is the 99% Human/Chimp DNA-similarity statistic accurate? While recent studies have confirmed that certain stretches of human and chimp DNA are on average about 1.23% different, this is merely an estimate with huge caveats. A recent news article in Science observed that the 1% figure "reflects only base substitutions, not the many stretches of DNA that have been inserted or deleted in the genomes."1 In other words, when the chimp genome has no similar stretch of human DNA, such DNA sequences are ignored by those touting the statistic that humans and chimps are only 1% genetically different. For this reason, the aforementioned Science news article was subtitled "The Myth of 1%," and printed the following language to describe the 1% statistic:

• "studies are showing that [humans and chimps] are not as similar as many tend to believe";
  
• the 1% statistic is a "truism [that] should be retired";
  
• the 1% statistic is "more a hindrance for understanding than a help";
  
• "the 1% difference wasn't the whole story";
  
• "Researchers are finding that on top of the 1% distinction, chunks of missing DNA, extra genes, altered connections in gene networks, and the very structure of chromosomes confound any quantification of 'humanness' versus 'chimpness.'"

Indeed, due to the huge caveats in the 1% statistic, some scientists are suggesting that a better method of measuring human/chimp genetic differences might be counting individual gene copies. When this metric is employed, human and chimp DNA is over 5% different. But new findings in genetics show that gene-coding DNA might not even be the right place to seek differences between humans and chimps.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 1:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Bastion of ignorance"? "Right-wing political ideology"? "Pseudo-scientific claptrap"? Not exactly the sorts of taunts you expect from a purportedly calm, collected, objective scientific source like the president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Undoubtedly, such over-the-top rhetoric brings coos of approval from ID's most vehement critics, such as those at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).

Gregory A. Petsko, president of the ASBMB, recently published an article in ASBMB Today attacking intelligent design (ID) printing the rhetoric quoted above. But that's not all he did. His article (which was also published in the journal Genome Biology) goes so far as to insinuate that people believe in religion due to "insecurity and need for certainty" and suggests that students at Christian private schools should "be forced to consider the possibility that there is no God, or that the Muslim faith, or Hindu faith, or Jewish faith, might be the true one". The NCSE, which claims it is both pro-Darwin and religion-friendly, must have liked Petsko’s article, because they are now promoting it on their website:

"Two articles in the August 2008 issue of ASBMB Today react to recent creationist initiatives. ASBMB's president, Gregory A. Petsko of Brandeis University, pulls no punches in his column, beginning, ‘They're at it again. Armed with another new idea from the Discovery Institute, that bastion of ignorance, right-wing political ideology, and pseudo-scientific claptrap, the creationist movement has mounted yet another assault on science. This time it comes in two flavors, propaganda and legislative.’"

("Creationist initiatives denounced in ASBMB Today," NCSE Website, last visited 9/15/08)

Unfortunately, Petsko's article only gets worse.

First, Petsko’s article attacks the Louisiana academic freedom law because it allegedly permits the teaching of "creationism." What part of the law’s provision that, "This Section 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 nonreligion" does Petsko not understand?

Next, following the lead of Darwinists like Bryan Carstens, Petsko is also unable to acknowledge the existence of scientists who dissent from neo-Darwinism, stating, “Just because a few misguided so-called scientists question the validity of the concept of evolution doesn’t mean there is a controversy.” In Petsko’s version of reality, the professional Ph.D. scientists who testified before the Louisiana State Legislature about scientific problems with neo-Darwinism, or these 700+ scientists, are now merely "so-called scientists" who might as well believe "the earth might be flat" (Petsko’s words).

With scientists like Petsko presiding over over major scientific organizations, it’s no wonder our country faces a stark need for legislation like Louisiana’s Academic Freedom law to protect the academic freedom of educators who question evolution.

Finally, none of this compares to Petsko’s argument about why religious schools should force students to consider atheism (discussed briefly above). To elaborate more on Petsko's argument, he writes:

[I]f we accept the creationists own rationale for this bill, then shouldn’t right-wing fundamentalist Christian schools be forced to “teach the controversy” about religion? It’s a much more controversial subject than science. Shouldn’t their students be forced to consider the possibility that there is no God, or that the Muslim faith, or Hindu faith, or Jewish faith, might be the true one? Or that there are so many different translations of the Bible that there is no way of knowing which one is the “word of God”?

(Gregory A Petsko, "It Is Alive," ASBMB Today, pages 3-4 (August, 2008); also published in Genome Biology, Vol. 9(6), Article 106 (June 23, 2008).)

Premise 1: Public schools are supposed to promote evolution;
Premise 2: Private religious schools are supposed to promote religion;
Conclusion: Therefore if you allow public schools to attack evolution, it’s only fair to force private religious schools to attack religion.

Even more troubling is that under Petsko's vision of fairness, it seems that he wishes the government could force private religious groups to attack their own religious viewpoints. Thankfully, the First Amendment provides the protection that no law may prohibit "the free exercise" of religion. In other words, you cannot force private religious groups to attack their own religious viewpoints. Does Petsko support this First Amendment principle?

Petsko closes with more anti-religious rhetoric and a call to "familiarize ourselves with the facts of evolution so that we can mount a spirited defense against the forces of ignorance and charlatans who would exploit human insecurity and need for certainty." I'm all for learning about evolution, and I'm all for combatting ignorance, but not using the kind of anti-religious agenda that Petsko clearly wishes to integrate into such evolution-education.

Petsko ends by saying that "Carl Sagan memorably called science 'a candle in the dark'" and that "the darkness is around us, closer than you think sometimes." With influential scientists like Petsko threatening scientific, educational, and religious freedom, and the NCSE happily endorsing his editorial on its website, perhaps the darkness is "closer than you think" indeed.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Those of you who read A.C. Grayling's arrogant and intellectually vacuous thrashing of Steve Fuller's new book, Dissent Over Descent: Evolution's 500-Year War on Intelligent Design, will want to know that Fuller now has a reply available at the New Humanist.

Grayling's method is to simplify opponents' arguments to the point of misrepresenting them. Just as bad, Grayling's "review" reveals a woefully disappointing grasp of the the origins of modern science and the history of Christianity. One begins to wonder whether the days of truly intellectual atheists are over. Perhaps it is no longer possible for atheists, uneducated in the history of Christianity and its doctrines, to level serious, challenging criticisms of the faith. It seems they just have too little knowledge. And in this case, this theological miseducation leads Grayling to misunderstand the history of modern science and spew 19th century clichés about "religion" the way Matt Damon regurgitates Maureen Dowd's anti-Palin talking points.

The review was so smug and flimsy that Fuller's smack-down reply is warranted. Do have a look.

Posted by Logan Gage at 1:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today a story on the new video game Spore in Education Week has some interesting comments from Barbara Forrest and commentary on evolution:

The game allows users to create living things, from their inception as “pond scum” to fully evolved beings, by choosing advantageous features. Players can also build civilizations and entire worlds.

The theory of evolution, advanced most famously by Charles Darwin, posits that humans and other living things have evolved over millions of years through the process of natural selection —basically, survival of the fittest —along with random mutation.

In allowing students to control how a creature evolves, Spore employs a process of "external manipulation" that mainstream scientists would reject as unscientific, said Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University, in Hammond, who has written extensively about the history of evolution study. For instance, the scientific consensus is that “intelligent design,” or the idea that features of living things show signs of having been created by a master hand, is religion, not science.

So Spore is really a game about intelligent design, not unguided Darwinian evolution. Surely this makes Spore completely worthless to someone as concerned with science education as Barbara Forrest, right?

Actually, Forrest goes on to explain that, while she considers it unscientific, Spore "could bolster some students’ interest in the topic of evolution."

Thank you, Dr. Forrest. We whole-heartedly agree. In fact, it's been our experience that intelligent design in general excites students and interests them in evolution, a good thing for science education. Of course, we don't advocate teaching ID in the classroom, but we do maintain that students should be able to learn about this theory and reinvigorate their study of biology.

Posted by Anika Smith at 7:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If you haven’t followed the evolution debate in England of late, this week the The Royal Society Director of Education, Prof. Michael Reiss, said creationism should be discussed in science classes. Of course, he recommended teachers attack it as unscientific. Even that suggestion "provoked fury" — to put it mildly — in dogmatic Darwinian circles in Britain. Or, as one British paper put it, this will kick off "a row amongst the country's top boffins."

That's to be expected since this marks a virtual 180 degree change in policy from the Royal Society’s previous opinion that creationism should never be mentioned in science classes. Today Reiss clarified his remarks: "The Royal Society is opposed to creationism being taught as science."

Not surprisingly, the media in the UK have largely conflated creationism with intelligent design, simply inserting the phrase intelligent design when in fact what is being discussed is clearly young earth creationism.

There is one notable exception.

The Times news page is the only major UK media outlet I’ve seen that gets the definitions right. In a sidebar that was apparently in yesterday’s print edition, and finally went online this morning, they define creationism and intelligent design separately and correctly.

Creationism
The Universe and living organisms originated from acts of divine creation. This belief embraces the Biblical account and rejects theories in which natural processes are central, such as evolution. Some creationists have accepted geological findings and other methods of dating the Earth, insisting that such accounts do not necessarily contradict Biblical teachings

Intelligent Design
Certain features of the Universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process such as natural selection. Proponents insist that it is not based on the Bible, claiming that its roots include the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, who, they say, articulated early versions of the theory
Sources: New Oxford Dictionary of English, Times Database

In recent years, the doctrine of intelligent design has emerged, asserting that some aspects of the natural world are too complex to have developed by small changes over long periods, and are evidence, rather, of a divine intelligence at work.

Though it appropriates the language of science, intelligent design is not a scientific theory but a variant of creationism. It has no programme of research and has proposed no way by which its claims can be tested.

The claim that there is no intelligent design research underway is demonstrably false, as one can see by simply going to the Biologic Institute website. And ID scientists and theorists have made many claims that can be tested. Read "The Skeptical Rejoinder," chapter 16 of The Privileged Planet, which explains a number of ways the intelligent design propositions put forth in that book might be falsified. What's laughable is that while Darwinists in the media are claiming the theory is not testable, their counterparts in some science labs claim to have already tested ID and found it wanting. You can't have it both ways.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this summer we highlighted Susan Mazur’s reporting about the Altenberg 16 conference, in which Mazur wrote that 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." Many Darwinists, needless to say, did not like Mazur’s reporting, and they attacked her harshly. They probably are also not going to like Mazur’s latest article, where she interviews University of California, Santa Cruz origin of life researcher David Deamer. When asking Deamer about the "origin of the gene," he replied, "I think genetic information more or less came out of nowhere by chance assemblages of short polymers."

Might I suggest that intelligent design is a better explanation?

Stephen C. Meyer argues in his chapter, "DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation," in Darwinism, Design and Public Education that, "since experience affirms mind or intelligent design as a necessary condition (and necessary cause) of information, … the specified and complex arrangement of nucleotide sequences—the information—in DNA implies the past action of an intelligence." (pgs. 265-266) Meyer's forthcoming book, due out next year, will deal extensively with information, DNA, and the scientific evidence supporting intelligent design in the origin of life.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

You may have seen the latest video making the rounds this week from Matt Damon, attacking Sarah Palin because he doesn't know anything about her (his words, not mine). It's like he read a bad Maureen Dowd column and regurgitated the unfunny parts — that is, the whole thing.

The best comment, and the most relevant to our readers, Damon makes at the end:

I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. That's an important — I want to know that, I really do, because she's going to have the nuclear codes. You know, I want to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago... we can't, we can't have that.

Posted by Anika Smith at 4:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

If it's September, it's time for creationism in schools. That's how some would like it, anyway.

The truth is that ...

... the key public policy question today is not whether creationism or intelligent design should be required in classrooms (even the major ID proponents don’t want that), but whether scientists, teachers, and students should have the academic freedom to discuss the scientific evidence that challenges Darwin’s theory as well as the evidence that supports it. In short, the current public policy debate over the teaching of evolution is about academic freedom and free speech.

Science journals are already filled with debates over whether microevolution can be extrapolated to explain macroevolution, whether random mutations are a true source of major evolutionary innovations, and whether a gradual Darwinian process can account for events in the history of life like the Cambrian explosion some 500 million years ago. If scientists can debate these issues in their science journals, why can’t students discuss them in the classroom?

Polls since 2001 have consistently showed that the vast majority of the American public wants to see evolution taught, but taught with full disclosure. Near or more than 70% of Americans want biology teachers to present both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 10:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Behe and I have posted our first couple objections to the opening statements posted by critics of intelligent design (ID) on OpposingViews.com. Before I discuss those, I want to provide the insightful comments of a friend who read the debates, and wrote me the following:

Just a quick perusal of the discussion page for the “Does Intelligent Design Have Merit” shows how the opponents of ID cannot even address the question from a scientific (methodological) standpoint. Eight of 12 comments on the Yes side deal with the scientific merits of ID and only one of 11 comments on the No side actually deal with scientific critiques of ID. Why can’t the opponents of ID respond in a scientific and methodic way to the question posed? Just my humble thoughts as a non-scientist observer.

This lurker makes a great point: Quite tellingly, the vast majority of the critics' opening statements focus on harping upon the alleged religious motives, beliefs, and affiliations of ID proponents, or the larger philosophical implications of ID. I anticipated this tactic, and refuted it in my third opening statement titled, "Any Larger Implications Do Not Disqualify ID From Having Merit."

With more rebuttals to come, Dr. Behe and I have now collectively posted 3 rebuttals to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, as follows:

• Michael Behe's, "A Bogus Philosopher-King "
  
• My "Motives Don't Matter & Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander
  
• My "Will Americans United Retract Their Demonstrably False Claims?"

"Will Americans United Retract Their Demonstrably False Claims?"

By Casey Luskin

In its first opening statement, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) makes various demonstrably false claims while arguing that "Intelligent Design is Unconstitutional." AUSCS’s writer is apparently writing anonymously, but I suspect that he or she is a magician, because they think that that AUSCS can make various works published by ID proponents magically disappear simply by asserting that they don’t exist. In seriousness, the real question I will pose at the end of this rebuttal is Will the AUSCS be willing to retract its demonstrably false claims?

AUSCS's Demonstrably False Claim #1:
AUSCS claims that ID’s "advocates seem unable to get their ideas published in peer-reviewed journals."

This claim is demonstrably false. Intelligent design (ID) proponents have published peer-reviewed scientific articles supporting their pro-ID arguments. A listing of some of these articles can be found online at:

Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated), at http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

As explained on that page, some of the scientific journals and other prestigious academic sources that have published peer-reviewed scientific publications by ID proponents supporting core ID arguments include:

• Protein Science
  
• Chaos, Solitons and Fractals
  
• Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington
  
• Journal of Molecular Biology
  
• International Journal of Fuzzy Systems
  
• Cambridge University Press
  
• Annual Review of Genetics

AUSCS's Demonstrably False Claim #2:
AUSCS claims that Discovery Institute was “[u]nable to respond to [Judge Jones’] powerful opinion” in the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling. AUSCS must have missed Discovery Institute’s many responses to the Kitzmiller ruling. I should know about these responses: I spent many dozens of hours co-authoring both a book (titled Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Decision)and a law review article, providing potent rebuttals to Judge Jones’ factual and legal claims in the Kitzmiller ruling. Not only did we respond to Judge Jones' arguments in the Kitzmiller ruling in great detail, but to my knowledge our book was the first book published focused entirely on Judge Jones’ opinion. The AUSCS deals with our arguments in those rebuttals by claiming that those rebuttals don’t exist.

For readers who would like to read our rebuttals (including AUSCS's writer) here are the citations (links are provided in the footnotes, below):

• David K. DeWolf, John G. West, Casey Luskin, Jonathan Witt, Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision (Discovery Institute Press, 2006)
  
• David K. DeWolf, John West, Casey Luskin, "Intelligent Design will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover," 68 Montana Law Review 7 (Winter, 2007)

• Employed a false definition of ID that presumed that ID requires “supernatural creation” – a position refuted during the trial by ID proponents who testified in court;
  
• Ignored the positive case for ID and falsely claimed that ID proponents make their case solely by arguing against evolution;
  
• Overstepped the bounds of the judiciary and engaged in judicial activism by declaring that ID had been refuted when in fact the judge was presented with credible scientific witnesses and publications on both sides showing evidence of a scientific debate;
  
• Used poor philosophy of science by presuming that being wrong precludes being scientific;
  
• Dangerously stifled scientific advance by taking the level of support for a theory as a measure of whether an idea is scientific;
  
• Blatantly ignored and denied the existence of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific publications that were in fact testified about in his own courtroom;
  
• Blatantly ignored and denied the existence of pro-ID scientific research and data that was in fact testified about in his own courtroom;
  
• Adopted an unfair double-standard of legal analysis where religious implications, beliefs, and motives count against ID but never against Darwinism;
  
• Violated a fundamental cardinal rule of constitutional law by declaring a religious belief to be false from the bench of a U.S. government court;
  
• Engaged in much judicial activism by presuming that it is permissible for a federal judge to define science, settle controversial social questions, settle controversial scientific questions, settle issues for parties outside of the case at hand so that his ruling would be “a primer” for people “someplace else,” and declare certain religious beliefs to be false.

"When the testimony at trial revealed the religious motives and questionable conduct of the individual school board members and the poor impression the board members had made upon Judge Jones, it became increasingly clear that the school board would lose. However, the Discovery Institute maintained that there was no reason for the judge to conflate the actions of the school board with those of the 'IDM.' There was also no reason for the judge to try to resolve the scientific controversy over whether a theory that pointed to intelligence as a possible explanation for a scientific phenomenon should be recognized as scientific."

I have no stake in defending everything Dover did: they rejected the policy advice of Discovery Institute and paid for it dearly. Unfortunately, Judge Jones ruled on issues that were far broader than those necessary to resolve the case. For more details, see my fifth opening statement, "ID is Constitutional and has Education and Legal Merit."

AUSCS's Demonstrably False Claim #3:
As will be seen below, AUSCS makes the demonstrably false claim that Discovery Institute’s only response to Judge Jones was that we “accused Jones of plagiarizing portions of the ruling.” This is another blatantly false claim, for we never accused Judge Jones of plagiarism. In fact, we explicitly explained in our "Backgrounder on the Significance of Judicial Copying, plagiarism was not our argument:

“Are you accusing Judge Jones of plagiarism or any other violation of judicial ethics? No. As the report reads, ‘Proposed findings of fact’ are prepared to assist judges in writing their opinions, and judges are certainly allowed to draw on them. Indeed, judges routinely invite lawyers to propose findings of fact in order to verify what the lawyers believe to be the key factual issues in the case. Thus, in legal circles Judge Jones’ use of the ACLU’s proposed ‘Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law’ would not be considered ‘plagiarism’ nor a violation of judicial ethics.’”

An Answer, and a Question for AUSCS:
Finally, AUSCS asks, “If the IDers have evidence, let's see it.” It’s easy to pretend there is no scientific evidence for ID when you deny the existence of the peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific publications discussing that evidence. Regardless, my co-particiapnts and I have discussed much of this evidence in our opening statements, including:

• My first opening statement: "ID Uses Scien. Method; Infers Design by Testing Positive Predictions"
  
• My second opening statement: "Intelligent Design Has Scientific Merit in Paleontology"
  
• Michael Behe’s third opening statement: "The Sophisticated Nanotechnology of the Cell Reeks of Design"
  
• Jay Richards’s second opening statement: "Is There Merit for ID in Cosmology, Physics, and Astronomy?"

• Will you admit that you were wrong about Discovery’s responses to the Kitzmiller ruling and ID’s peer-reviewed scientific articles?
  
• Will you stop making these false arguments in future public venues?

Posted by Casey Luskin at 4:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The website OpposingViews.com is currently hosting an online debate between intelligent design (ID) proponents and critics on the question "Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?" Michael Behe, Jay Richards, and I (Casey Luskin) head up the pro-ID side. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), The Ayn Rand Institute, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) take the anti-ID side. Last night they posted the opening statements from all parties. Now there are opportunities to make rebuttals, and then there will be final opportunities for surrebuttals, concluding the debate. Some highlights of the first round of posts include:

I have thus far refrained from blogging about the new video game Spore that is being widely discussed in the media for one reason: anyone can see that Spore is not really about evolution by the Darwinian mechanism; it’s about evolution by intelligent design (ID). Even in his recent September 2 New York Times article, "Gaming Evolves," Carl Zimmer reports that "Spore was strongly influenced by science, and in particular by evolutionary biology" but admits that "[t]he step-by-step process by which Spore’s creatures change does not have much to do with real evolution." One biologist was quoted saying, "The mechanism is severely messed up." And just what is that "severely messed up" mechanism? The answer is obvious: as an article in Time Magazine points out, "You could read Spore equally easily as a model of evolution or of intelligent design, with you in the role of Intelligent Designer." And given that Spore's creatures are all intelligently designed, Zimmer’s article unwittingly describes a game that sweeps away many favorite Darwinist objections to ID.

(Update: Spore creator Will Wright now acknowledges in a USA Today article the obvious point that Spore "has aspects of intelligent design.")

Objection 1: Functional similarity implies homology, refuting design. Darwinists commonly take functional similarity as evidence for inheritance from a common ancestor (i.e. homology) (except for when such similarities imply convergent evolution). But there are other possible explanations. Designers regularly re-use parts that work in different designs. In Zimmer’s article, he reports that one biologist who played Spore "stretches the body to give it a neck" and "adds a pair of kangaroolike legs." But any cursory glance finds Spore's creature creators regularly re-use bipedal locomotion or long necks in their designs (for some cool examples, see here, here, here, or here). To be sure, inheritance from a common ancestor is one way to explain many similarities among organisms. But so is common design, as Spore's designs illustrate for us.

Objection 2: Clumsy design refutes design. Darwinists (including Zimmer) love to argue that clumsy or inefficient design necessarily refutes design. Not so, if you’re using Spore’s Creature Creator. For example, this poor catlike creature walks awkwardly on its back and would make a quick lunch for any predator. Or consider this creature that seems to be missing some vital organs. This creature seems a little topheavy for its one leg—not an elegant or efficient design for locomotion. This poor guy needs no explanation. Again, Spore's designs remind us that inefficient or clumsy designs can still in fact be designed. Hopefully this observation will help some Darwinists to abandon their misapprehension that design is detected based upon the "elegance" or "optimality" of the design, for in reality we detect design based upon the presence of an informational signature know to be uniquely produced by intelligent agents: complex and specified information.

Objection 3: Detecting design requires knowledge about the designer. Objectors to ID often say things like "ID should tell us the designer’s identity," or, "Who designed the designer?" Browsing on YouTube I can find hundreds if not thousands of Spore creatures that were designed by people whose real names, parents’ names, and tribes of origin I know nothing about. We don’t have to know who the designer is, or who spawned the designer, to be able to detect design.

Objection 4: Computer simulations demonstrate evolution, thereby refuting design. As noted earlier, Zimmer’s article makes it clear that Spore does not model biological reality. But he nonetheless claims that other computer programs do simulate real evolution, touting Avida as a simulation that "allows tiny computer programs to behave like real organisms" because they can "make copies of themselves and mutate (randomly changing lines of programming code)." Yet an argument can be made that Avida is little better than Spore at modeling evolution. As we saw in Objection 1, Spore users can pick from pre-defined parts in order to design functional organisms that can walk, jump, swim, etc. The phrase evolution by intelligent design again comes to mind, because the parts from which the designer can choose are intelligently designed to help ensure some level of functionality. In fact, the same criticism can be said of Avida, where the types "mutations" are pre-defined, such that there really aren’t "randomly changing lines of programming code," but rather the Avida simulation swaps in pre-defined functional computer commands as "mutations." As William Dembski explains,

[The Avida] simulation requires that complex systems exhibiting complex functions can always be built up from (or decomposed into) simpler system exhibiting simpler function. This is a much stronger assumption than merely allowing that complex systems may include functioning subsystems. Just because a complex system can include functioning subsystems doesn't mean that it decomposes into a collection of subsystems each of which is presently functional or vestigial of past function and thus amenable to shaping by natural selection.

(William Dembski, Introduction to Uncommon Dissent (ISI Books, 2004).)

Objection 5: Occasional fossils bearing “transitional” traits refute ID. Could Zimmer really write a New York Times article on evolution without touting the Darwinists’ new favorite example of an allegedly transitional fish fossil, Tiktaalik? Of course not: Zimmer's goal is to tout evolution to the public, and the graphic accompanying his article about Spore is not the expected picture of a Spore creature but an entirely out-of-place artist's reconstruction of Tiktaalik.

Zimmer recently wrote a non-response to me that dramatically misstated my rebuttal that paleontologist Neil Shubin was flat wrong to claim that the fish fossil Tiktaalik has "a wrist." But Zimmer's new New York Times article states that Shubin and Spore-creator Will Wright apparently used Spore to recreate a "Tiktaalik" Spore-creature which reportedly "crawled on land and thrived." As I discussed previously, given that Tiktaalik lacks legs and feet, there is no evidence that it would "thrive" or "crawl" on the land. As one authority explained, if anything, "in the absence of legs [a fish] body would have dragged or flopped when the animal moved." It seems that Zimmer and Shubin are now resorting to fantastical video game simulations to tout Tiktaalik to the public as evidence for evolution.

Despite the fact that the real Tiktaalik would never "crawl" on the land, one cannot help but recognize that Spore’s fantasy-Tiktaalik — which could live in both aquatic and terrestrial environments — was designed. This illustrates the fact that sometimes designers make designs that are intended for multiple environments, challenging claims that Tiktaalik's alleged transitional status necessarily refutes design.

Evolution Thrives Only in Spore’s Fantasy Land
As I concluded in my response to Zimmer, "Tiktaalik’s wrist exists in the minds of Darwinists with overactive imaginations." Zimmer now reports that Shubin was "enchanted" by Spore, and said, "you can’t help but feel amazed how, from a few simple rules and instructions, you can get a complex functioning world with bodies, behaviors and whole ecosystems." Perhaps Shubin’s enchantment and amazement stems from the fact that Spore is a video game that is intelligently designed to allow users to create fantasy worlds where evolution really can take place. It thus seems fitting that only in the fantasy world of Spore were Darwinists actually able to give their precious Tiktaalik a real wrist, thereby allowing it to "crawl on land and thriv[e]."

Posted by Casey Luskin at 1:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Predicting is very difficult, especially when it is about the future," Yogi Berra is reported to have said. Phillip Johnson, writing in May's Touchstone, says

I think of the great Yogi’s maxim whenever I hear theistic evolutionists warn intelligent design theorists against committing what they call the “God of the gaps” fallacy. Their point is that it is futile to rely on “gaps” that the theory of evolution has not yet explained as places where divine acts might be necessary, because those gaps will inevitably be filled as science progresses. Eventually, God will be squeezed out of these spaces, with consequent embarrassment to the cause of religion.

Johnson goes on to wonder why many Christian theistic evolutionists think God is a poor designer if he has to get his hands dirty and do something directly. See the rest of his article here. But for a thoughtful and more in-depth treatment of "God-of-the-gaps" reasoning, see physicist David Snoke's "In Favor of God-of-the-Gaps Reasoning."

Posted by Logan Gage at 8:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Since being picked by McCain as his choice for Vice President, Sarah Palin has garnered a lot of attention, not least of which is for her views on how to teach evolution. A quick Google News search returns over 1,500 articles about that very subject, just since last weekend.

Not surprisingly, the media has completely misconstrued her views so that right now it is

difficult to know for sure what her position on teaching evolution really is. The terms have been purposely improperly defined (or not defined at all in some cases), and creationism has been conflated with intelligent design.

Until today there was only one article I'd seen that got it right. And that was published in another country!

So, I was very pleasantly surprised today when I was pointed to Jeremy Pierce's very thorough blog post about what Sarah Palin's views might be on evolution, creationism and intelligent design. Pierce has researched everything published on Sarah Palin's views and compared the actual recorded comments to what is carelessly being bandied about not just on blogs but in the MSM. His post is absolutely devastating in its critique of reporting on Palin and the evolution debate. Be sure to read it here.

In addition it highlights -- yet again -- the biases in play at Wikipedia.

The other place this has been an issue is in Wikipedia. As soon as I heard that she was going to be the nominee, I went to her article to fill out my understanding of her. I knew a fair amount about her, because her name had been floated as a possible VP pick as far back as late 2006. (It's pretty crazy for the mainstream media to act as if they'd never heard of her. She's been a regular topic on the election blogs for months now among those who have been speculated as potential running mates. I've seen her name turn up as often as Romney's and Pawlenty's, and no one else comes up as often as those three.) So I knew something about her term as governor and high popularity in her state, and I knew about her decision to carry her Down Syndrome child to term. However, I didn't know all the fine-print on positions that weren't part of what she'd specifically done as governor, and this was one of them.

I was surprised to see in her Wikipedia article that she advocated the teaching of both views side by side, because I had expected her to be a little more libertarian than that. Its description of her would have her requiring biology teachers to teach something that hardly any high school biology teacher actually believes. Well, I was right. That wasn't her view. I followed the link given in support, and it went to the same article from the actual time of that debate. So whoever wrote it had no excuse. They had the article that gave her actual view and either didn't read it carefully or deliberately misrepresented her view.

I edited the article to reflect her actual position a little better. Someone then created a separate article for her positions and removed my edited description from her main article. Someone else came along and saw it not there and gave the NYT misrepresentation with a link to that article. I edited it again to reflect her actual position and linked back to the original article, removing the NYT reference that adds nothing because it isn't an independent source at all. I left several notes in the discussion page to explain all this, but those got archived very quickly and are no longer on the main discussion page. The new statement later got removed again because of its presence in the positions article. But then someone added it again with something mostly ok (although I'm not entirely happy with the wording). It's been pretty annoying, to say the least.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last Sunday morning, MSNBC's "Meet the Press" (hosted by Tom Brokaw) interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty about whether "creationism vs. evolution ... should be taught side by side in public schools." Pawlenty observed that Brokaw should be talking about intelligent design (ID), not creationism: "In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed. Not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated." Pawlenty said that the decision should be left to local districts. Discovery Institute, of course, has long-opposed mandating ID in public schools.

Continuing to call the issue "creationism vs. evolution" and failing to acknowledge intelligent design, Brokaw then asked political strategist Mike Murphy how the teaching of "creationism vs. evolution" would "cut with the independents." Also confused and mistaken, Murphy replied, "It's trouble."

In fact, polls have shown that large percentages of Independent voters — and even strong majorities of Democrats — support both teaching ID alongside evolution as well as the far more modest proposition to simply teach both the scientific evidence for and against evolution, without teaching ID.

A 2006 Zogby Poll found that 74% of Independent voters and 60% of Democrats support the view that biology teachers should teach Darwinian evolution, but also the evidence against it. The poll also found that 65% of Democrats and 79% of Independents support the view that "When Darwin's theory of evolution is taught in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence that points to an intelligent design of life." This bears repeating: 79% of Independent voters supported teaching ID when evolution is taught. 86% and 85% of Republicans in the poll supported these positions, respectively.

In these politically polarized times, on how many issues do over 60% of Democrats and over 70% of Independents agree with a viewpoint held by over 80% of Republicans? It seems that Brokaw and Murphy may need to re-analyze the poll data about where the majority of Americans truly stand on the reasonable proposition that evolution should be taught in a non-dogmatic and critical fashion.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This story by Laurie James Barker in the Fort Worth Weekly completely misrepresents not just the important issue of how evolution is taught in Texas, but also the views and policy positions of Discovery Institute. Ms. Barker didn’t bother to talk with anyone at Discovery Institute, or it seems to even adequately research our organization. Never mind that she’s produced an extremely biased polemical piece, as opposed to objective reporting of the issue.

There are numerous factual errors, errors of omission and such, but for brevity I will simply focus on a few of her mistakes.

First, Barker misrepresents the credentials of Discovery Institute’s scientists and scholars and through her writing leads the reader to believe that those affiliated with the Institute do not have scientific degrees. This is simply untrue.

She writes:

Chief among the proponents of intelligent design are the “fellows” at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. According to its web site, the institute’s Center for Science and Culture is run by a group of “more than 40 … biologists, biochemists, chemists, physicists, philosophers and historians of science, and public policy and legal experts.” The web site states that the institute is not a religious organization and also maintains that intelligent design is not the same as creationism.

One of the center’s primary goals is to support research by scientists and other scholars challenging various aspects of Darwinian theory. The CSC’s leaders have advanced degrees — but they aren’t scientists: Director Stephen Meyer has a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science, while Associate Director John G. West holds a doctorate in government.

One of the hallmarks of the institute, according to many scientists, is that the CSC generates pseudo-scientific research, done by researchers with Ph.D. credentials, to bolster claims concerning intelligent design, to build support for that idea as a credible scientific theory. Of course the proponents of intelligent design also include those with legitimate hard-science backgrounds, like McLeroy and Maddox.

The Discovery Institute was the prime source of information for a group of school board members in Dover, Pa., who, like the seven Young Earth philosophists on the Texas SBOE, wanted to put forth their version of natural history. In 2004, Dover school administrators, at the insistence of the district’s board, added the following sentence to the biology curriculum: “Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.”

The Discovery Institute’s policy of promoting intelligent design as secular science was thwarted in Pennsylvania, but it may well reappear in Texas.

As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community. … Instead of mandating intelligent design, Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks. It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned.

What it amounts to is a gathering of 16 biologists and philosophers of rock star stature – let's call them "the Altenberg 16" – who recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence.

"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."

Posted by Robert Crowther at 2:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Press reports on Governor Palin as the Republican nominee for Vice President featured her position in 2006 on the teaching of alternatives to evolution: "Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools." Palin later clarified: "I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum."

On this thin reed stand accusations that Palin is a "creationist." But if that makes someone a "creationist," then the ranks of the creationists include the Democratic party's 2008 nominee for Vice-President, both of its 2008 runners-up for the Presidential nomination, and both its 2004 nominees for President and Vice President, as well as Republican 2008 Presidential nominee McCain. In 2001, Biden, Clinton, Edwards, Kerry and McCain all voted for a mandatory teach-the-controversy approach to be the law of the United States.

The phrase "the Santorum Amendment" has long triggered debate among those who follow the controversies surrounding the teaching of evolution. In June 2001, then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum introduced an amendment to the "No Child Left Behind" education bill. His Amendment read:

It is the sense of the Senate that—

(1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and

(2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject.

Today, what is important is the vote in the Senate whereby the Senate adopted the Amendment as a proposed law of the United States. 91 Senators voted that the Amendment should become the law of the United States. Only eight Senators voted against it (the 100th Senator, Dodd, was absent). Senator Obama had not yet been elected to the Senate, so he of course did not vote. The vote is recorded at p. S6153 of the Congressional Record, June 13, 2001.

91 Senators voted to make it the law of the United States that "where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject."

Senators who voted for this to become the law of the United States included the Democratic Party’s 2008 nominee for Vice-President, Joe Biden. Senator Obama’s closest competitor for the Democratic 2008 Presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, voted for the Amendment to become law, as did the third-place candidate, John Edwards (and Biden, for that matter, was also a candidate for the Presidential 2008 nomination). So too did the Republican 2008 nominee for President, John McCain.

Four years ago, the Democratic party 2004 nominee for President was John Kerry; its nominee for Vice-President was John Edwards. Both Kerry and Edwards voted for the Amendment to become law.

In 2004, a major-party nominee for President and a major-party nominee for Vice President were both on record voting for the Santorum Amendment. And the same is true in 2008; the only difference is that in 2008, the two persons represent different parties, while in 2004 both represented the Democratic party.

Biden, Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, & McCain — four Democrats and one Republican who all vied for the Presidency or Vice Presidency in 2008 or 2004 — all voted for it to become the law of the United States that "where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject."

Something to keep in mind when partisans start claiming that the only candidates for federal office who advocate "teach the controversy" are Republican governors from rural states, such as Palin or Huckabee or Jindal.

There's a reason for the bipartisan support at America's highest political level for "teach the controversy:" the people want it. First, polling consistently shows, since 1982, until as recently as May of 2008, that 80% of the American people believe either that God created man in present form (44% in 2008) or that God intelligently guided evolution (35% in 2008). See http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm. The most recent poll I've found on the specific question of teaching "the controversy" (Zogby 2006) says almost 70% agree that "Biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it" (of course, the mainstream says there is no "scientific" evidence against it, but the public believes there is and that it ought to be taught).

In a democracy such as ours, elitists who not only deny what the people want, but sneer and snicker at the people in the process, usually find that they are the ones who don't get what they want.

Another thing for partisans to keep in mind, the next time they want to indulge in the pleasure of invective and insults at a position held not only by a few public figures, but by a very large majority of the American people, whose respect for science in general has earned them the reciprocal respect of individual scientists whose careers have been nourished by the people whom the scientists are so tempted to scorn.

Posted by Edward Sisson at 7:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As students around the country gear up to head back to classes and homework, some of them will be learning the complete story of evolution for the first time.

Adopted by secondary schools and colleges, Explore Evolution (Hill House Publishers, 2007), the first biology textbook to present the arguments for and against neo-Darwinism, is invigorating the study of biology for a new generation of budding scientists.

While we've documented several textbooks which teach bogus information to students, it's good to remember that there are texts out there that not only teach correct and current information on evolution, but do so in a way that gets young minds involved and interested in the exciting questions of science.

Explore Evolution has been featured in Science, was on the cover of WORLD Magazine, and received a favorable review from Kirkus Discoveries, which noted Explore Evolution's "[s]ubstantive food for thought about natural selection and universal common descent."

For more information on Explore Evolution, visit the website here.

Posted by Anika Smith at 6:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home (fee for access US $29.95).

Prof. Nagel's paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America's highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity, not the emotional advocacy excitement for any side — that it is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel's article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.

As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes — not an accident, in other words — but was the product of an intelligence — a perpetrator.

But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data — fingerprint or DNA banks — it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the "I.Q." of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. The mental and conscious processes going on in the criminal's mind are outside the scope of the sciences of chemistry and physics.

Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it. Everyone who has read or watched a Sherlock Holmes story knows this.

Prof. Nagel applies this principle to the evolution/intelligent design debate. Assuming, for purposes of argument, even though he himself is an atheist, to label the intelligence "God," he says "the purposes and intentions of God, if there is a god, and the nature of his will, are not possible subjects of a scientific theory or scientific explanation. But that does not imply that there cannot be scientific evidence for or against the intervention of such a non-law-governed cause in the natural order" (p. 190). In other words, Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence — a person — did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime.

Therefore, Prof. Nagel says, it potentially can be scientific to argue that the data of DNA and life points to an intelligent designer, even if science cannot tell you the identity of the designer or what is going on in the designer's mind.

The Professor then turns to whether any of the intelligent design proponents actually are presenting such a scientific argument. After all, just because it is theoretically possible that someone might present such a scientific argument doesn't mean that any particular individual currently is actually doing that.

Professor Nagel has read ID-supportive works such as Dr. Behe's Edge of Evolution (p. 192). He reports that based on his examination of their work, ID "does not seem to depend on massive distortions of the evidence and hopeless incoherencies in its interpretation" (pp. 196-197). He reports that ID does not depend on any assumption that ID is "immune to empirical evidence" in the way that believers in biblical literalism believe the bible is immune to disproof by evidence (p. 197). Thus, he says "ID is very different from creation science" (p. 196).

Prof. Nagel tells us that he "has for a long time been skeptical of the claims of traditional evolutionary theory to be the whole story about the history of life" (p. 202). He reports that it is "difficult to find in the accessible literature the grounds" for these claims.

Moreover, he goes farther. He reports that the "presently available evidence" comes "nothing close" to establishing "the sufficiency of standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of life" (p. 199).

He notes that his judgment is supported by two prominent scientists (Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, writing in the Oct. 2005 book Plausibility of Life), who also recognized that (prior to offering their own theory, at least) the "available evidence" did not "decisively settle[]" whether mutations in DNA "are entirely due to chance" (p. 191). And he cites one Stuart Kauffman, a "complexity theorist who defends a naturalistic theory of emergence," that random mutation "is not sufficient" to explain DNA (p. 192).

Prof. Nagel acknowledges that "evolutionary biologists" regularly say that they are "confiden[t]" that "random mutations in DNA" are sufficient to account for "the complex chemical systems we observe" in living things (p. 199) — but he disagrees. "Rhetoric" is the word Professor Nagel uses to rejects these statements of credentialed evolutionary biologists. He judges that the evidence is NOT sufficient to rule out ID (p. 199).

He does not, however, say that the evidence compels acceptance of ID; instead, some may consider as an alternative to ID that an "as-yet undiscovered, purely naturalistic theory" will supply the deficiency, rather than some form of intelligence (p. 203).

In light of these considerations, Prof. Nagel says that "some part of the high school curriculum" "should" include "a frank discussion of the relation of evolutionary theory to religion" but that this need not occur in biology classes if the biology teachers would find this too much of a "burden" (p. 204). Significantly, Prof. Nagel — who is a professor of law as well as a professor of philosophy — concludes that, so long as the proposal is not introduced by religiously-motivated persons "as a fallback from something stronger," but by persons "more neutral" or "without noticeable religious beliefs," it would be constitutional to "mention" ID in public school science classes, because doing so genuinely furthers "the secular purpose of providing a better understanding of evolutionary theory and of the evidence for and against it" (p. 203). He makes clear that the "mention" must be a "noncommittal discussion of some of the issues" (p. 205).

He acknowledges the prevailing attitude in the mainstream science community is that ID represents a "fundamentalist threat," fearing that allowing even a noncommittal discussion of ID in science classes could lead to the fundamentalists gaining the power to suppress "the right to teach evolution at all" (p. 205). He also acknowledges the possibility that students who arrive in class with religious objections to evolution already in mind may seize on the mere mention of ID as a basis for "build[ing] much more than is warranted" from that favorable mention (p. 204, quoting Kent Greenawalt’s Does God Belong in Public Schools?).

But to Prof. Nagel, these fears are not sufficient to bar, as a matter of constitutional law, the accurate statement, in public school science classrooms, that intelligent design, while possibly wrong, is a scientific approach to the question of how DNA and the complex chemical structure of life came to achieve its present form (pp. 204-205).

Prof. Nagel makes clear his right, as an intelligent, educated a "layman" (p. 199), to judge for himself the evidence that random mutation is a sufficient explanation for DNA and the complex chemical systems of life. He rejects any rule that well-educated, intelligent laymen such as himself must simply accept the assertions of the leading evolutionary biologists that the evidence in favor of evolution disproves intelligent design. Using his informed judgment, he rejects the claim that the scientific data "decisively" disproves intelligent design. He, an atheist, says that as a matter of science, intelligent design could possibly be correct. And he says it would be constitutional to say as much in a public school science class.

For all those who, like myself, have some education in science (at MIT while earning a bachelor of science in architecture, I earned As and Bs in physics, chemistry, calculus, introductory astrophysics, and ecology), have maintained a lifelong interest in science, and who became interested in this issue out of their intellectual curiosity about science, Professor Nagel's conclusion both is very refreshing, and really rather obvious.

The mainstream science community's crusade against fundamentalism seems unnecessary in the eyes of persons such as myself, who never encountered any fundamentalists at any point in grade school, high school, university, and thereafter, nor in my children's education. When I interested myself in the data, my heart was empty of both a fear of fundamentalism, and a longing for fundamentalism. Prof. Nagel has approached the data with the same freedom from bias.

Perhaps fundamentalism is a stronger force than my experience reveals. But that should be irrelevant to the scientific analysis of data. The emotionalism which scientists have brought to this issue since before the Scopes Trial, even if directed against a real, rather than imaginary target, has introduced a non-scientific motivation into the hearts of evolutionary biologists that has biased and rendered unreliable their evaluation of the data, especially the relatively recent data concerning DNA and molecular biology.

Moreover, those who are convinced that we are not-very-far-descended from troupes of apes that engage in group dominance struggles should monitor themselves for the possibility that they are engaged less in a search for truth than in a search for dominance. An Achilles' Heel of modern science is the satisfying sense of pride that comes from having successfully dominated the people around you. Its origin is from the apes and its goal is to flatter emotion, not to facilitate reason.

Posted by Edward Sisson at 6:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Evolution News & Views is pleased to welcome new contributor Ed Sisson to our team. Ed has long been involved in the battle for academic freedom. You may remember him from the Kansas state board of education's hearings on science standards in 2005 or as Dr. Caroline Crocker's pro-bono attorney when she was ousted from George Mason University for teaching some of the scientific evidence that challenges Darwinian evolution. We highlighted a series of Youtube videos featuring Ed earlier this year.

Ed's biography, in his own words:

EDWARD HAWKINS SISSON, born in Washington, D.C. to a Navy officer father and a sixth-generation Washingtonian mother, attended eight elementary and middle schools in Virginia, Connecticut, California, Maryland, and Hawaii before becoming a boarding student at St. Albans, the private high school in Washington D.C. affiliated with the National Cathedral. His sole award on graduation (1973) was Most Promising Filmmaker; his sole high school elective office was to the school chapel vestry. At Pomona College he studied English, Philosophy, and Filmmaking before transferring to MIT to earn a bachelor of science in Architectural Design (1977). Finding the practice of architecture less stimulating than expected, he turned down his acceptance to MIT's Master of Architecture program and became a producer of experimental multi-media & avant-garde theater, based in San Francisco and on tour across the US and Europe (1978-1987). His productions played in venues from small avant-garde theaters to 1,000+ seat houses such as UC Berkeley Zellerbach Hall, the historic Herbst Theater in San Francisco Civic Center, UCLA Royce Hall, and the Kennedy Center Opera House. His productions toured overseas to major international festivals in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Poland; his last production was selected by the US government to represent the US at major European festivals. After these successes he decided to earn a law degree, graduating magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center (1991). His first brief, while a law student, was in the U.S. Supreme Court; his side won 5-4 in Thurgood Marshall's last decision (Burns v. US, 1991). Also in 1991 he married the daughter of a former Iowa Governor, in an Episcopal ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral: the minister who officiated was a woman; one groomsman was not only openly gay, but visibly ill with the AIDS that killed him exactly one year later; and another groomsman was African-American. Sisson has never been a traditionalist. Since divorced, he has two children, a son and a daughter. After clerking for a federal judge, in late 1992 he joined the large law firm Arnold & Porter, and was elected partner seven years later. He specialized in suing the government; his largest commercial victory was $401 million (American Savings v. US; reduced on appeal to $55 million). He also maintained an extensive pro bono practice, including for the Clinton Administration transition (1993) drafting ethics rules; for D.C. government reform efforts; and for indigent minority clients, seeking to protect the rights of a postal worker, a shooting victim, a man convicted of drug dealing, and a woman convicted of bank robbery. He worked to obtain the first-ever posthumous Presidential pardon, issued by President Clinton (1999) to overturn the racially-motivated court-martial of the first African-American graduate of West Point, Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper (class of 1877). He also assisted human-rights activists in Iran, the former Yugoslavia, and North Korea, and was long-time counsel to the National Endowment for Democracy. Also as part of his pro bono practice, in 2004 and 2005 he assisted university science professors — most notably, Dr. Caroline Crocker (featured in the Ben Stein film Expelled) and other science PhD’s who find scientific merit in the pro-intelligent design critique of mainstream evolution, and who suffer government-directed discrimination as a result. At the 2005 Kansas "evolution hearings" Sisson was slated to cross-examine the science witnesses for the majority view, but they boycotted the proceedings. He left Arnold & Porter in January, 2006, and suspended his commercial legal practice to pursue a number of fiction and nonfiction writing projects, including plays and historical novels.

Posted by Anika Smith at 6:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In light of the recent focus on the presidential election, and speculation on Sara Palin's views on teaching evolution, it is worth thinking about what a President’s role in this issue should be. Last year, Logan Gage laid out the case for a limited but important Presidential role regarding contentious scientific issues like evolution.

I’m curious, is there anyone on the stage that does not believe in evolution?” came the question at the first Republican presidential debate. Much has been made of the fact that three candidates raised their hands. The candidates were not allowed to elaborate, but what should they have said had they more time?
...
But the question still arises, what does all this have to do with being president? Though he is not commander in science, the president can create an atmosphere of openness, freedom and honest dialog on this culturally hot subject. Many Americans are increasingly alarmed at the intolerance in this discussion at government and government-funded institutions.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 6:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)