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Several Darwinist bloggers have taken exception to my observation that Darwinian stories about the origin of diseases contribute little of significance to medical education, research, or practice. Orac responds:
…that creationist neurosurgeon with a penchant for laying down hunks o' hunks o' burnin' stupid on a regular basis, that Energizer Bunny of antievolution nonsense, Dr. Michael Egnor has spouted off on evolution again in a way that got my attention. It came in response to a post by PZ about a conference he attended entitled Understanding evolution: the legacy of Darwin, which served as a launching pad for Dr. Egnor to go right down the rabbit hole…The stupid, it burns. It sears. My neurons are crying out in pain. Once again, Dr. Egnor trots out the tired old "Darwin inevitably leads to eugenics" coupled with his usual claims evolution has contributed nothing--or, as Dr. Egnor says it, nothing!--to medicine. Only Dr. Egnor could come up with something so utterly devoid of understanding, so scientifically ignorant, so full of the arrogance of ignorance...
Having gotten that off his chest, Orac, a surgical oncologist who doesn't post under his real name, continues:
[Egnor] tries to dismiss the very real contribution evolutionary biology had to make in understanding why the sickle cell hemoglobin allele is retained in human populations at such a high frequency event though it is so deleterious in homozygotes by attributing the insight to relevant basic sciences, but what led those "relevant basic sciences" to the concept of heterozygote advantage…was evolutionary theory, of course… Ditto bacterial resistance to antibiotics. These are not "just-so" stories. They are instances in which evolutionary theory makes predictions, and, in the case of bacterial resistance and sickle cell disease, biology fits those predictions...
Orac misses my point. I’m not arguing that the Darwinian stories are necessarily untrue. Many of them (e.g. the theory that children hate broccoli because their ancestors gained selective advantage via the avoidance of toxins) certainly seem a bit silly, and most are probably untestable in any way approaching rigor, but perhaps they're true, and perhaps they're false. What I'm arguing is that the truth or falsehood of Darwinian stories is of no tangible value to medicine. Consider the following example.
I would suspect that careful epidemiological studies of the British population would show that the prevalence and incidence of spina bifida increased following World War One. To my knowledge, this has not been investigated, but it would make sense if it were true, for the following reasons:
Britain suffered enormous casualties during the Great War, as did many other European nations. (I'm just using Britain as an example). It has been said, with asperity, that Britain lost a generation of men on the Western Front. Britain suffered 2,300,000 war casualties — forty four percent of mobilized men, with 703,000 men killed in battle or by disease. On just one day — July 1,1916 — 19,240 British soldiers died in the battle of the Somme. The young men who died were the best of their generation — healthy, and by definition capable of meeting the rigorous physical standards required for military service.
Of course, other British men with debilitating genetic disorders, such as men with spina bifida (which renders the afflicted congenitally paralyzed), were not in the trenches that day, because they were physically unfit for military service, or at least service on the front lines as infantrymen. It's safe to say that military age British men without spinal bifida were at greater risk of death in the war than were military age British men with spina bifida. Whatever the impediments faced by people with spina bifida — and they face many impediments — they were not called to serve and die in the trenches.
Spina bifida would then be a fine example of an environmental adaptation; it was protective against "acute lead poisoning" — protective against being mowed down by German machine gun fire on the Western Front. So, assuming for argument's sake that my hypothesis about the post-war epidemiology of spina bifida is true, the genes that give rise to spina bifida conferred a selective advantage on young British men in the period 1914 to 1918, and the differential survival (and reproduction) of that age cohort would explain a (hypothetical) increase in the incidence and prevalence of spina bifida in England in the post war period.
Interesting vignette, if true. I haven't a clue about its veracity. But here's the crux of my argument: military history, which is the basis for understanding this hypothetical blip in spina bifida in England in the 1920’s, is obviously not essential to medical education, research, or practice as relates to spina bifida. Military history may, if my inference is true, offer an explanation for changes in population frequency of the spina bifida genotype and phenotype in post-war England, but it's not in any way essential or even relevant to the medical management or understanding of spinal bifida. It's tangential at best, and such historical vignettes, interesting and perhaps of importance to historians, are of no practical use to physicians or medical scientists.
The analogy between my military history hypothesis and Darwinian theories of the origins of disease is quite close. Darwinian explanations for disease are historical vignettes. Darwinian stories are "military history" hypotheses about the ancient struggle for survival, a characterization long employed by evolutionary biologists, and I think an apt characterization.
I like a good story as much as the next guy, but Darwinian stories, which are orders of magnitude less credible and testable than military history, are, like my spina bifida hypothesis, worthless to modern medical research and practice. I've been educating students and other doctors about spina bifida and treating patients with spina bifida for 23 years, and my most active area of research is on a brain disorder (hydrocephalus) that afflicts most people with spina bifida. I use biochemistry, anatomy, physiology and microbiology in my work. My work is not advanced in any way by stories from military history.
Historical vignettes about differential survival and reproduction, whether from the Great War or the Pleistocene, contribute nothing of relevance to medical science.
Materialism
Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Superstition
1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition
2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
Mind
(in a human or other conscious being) The element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges.
Materialists have taken note of the growing efforts by non-materialist neuroscientists to point out the deep problems with the inference that the brain is entirely the cause of the mind. Materialist neuroscience, like materialist evolutionary biology, is a vacuous orthodoxy, and its proponents resent threats to their dogma. Darwinian explanations for functional biological complexity are nonsense, but some familiarity with the relevant science is necessary to understand that it is nonsense. Materialist explanations for the mind are transparent nonsense.
Consider the six characteristics of the mind, generally accepted by materialist and non-materialist scientists and philosophers. Each of the six poses enormous problems for a materialistic explanation:
Intentionality
Intentionality is the "aboutness" or meaning of a mental state, the ability of a mental state to refer to something outside of itself. Ink on paper has no meaning unless it is conferred by a mind, which wrote it or read it. Matter may have intentionality only secondarily ("derived intentionality"). The problem of intentionality is believed by many philosophers of the mind to be the most serious challenge to materialism. "Meaning" is imparted to matter by a mind; matter isn’t the source of meaning. Therefore matter (brain tissue) can’t be the entire cause of the mind.
Qualia
Qualia is subjective experience, which is first person ontology. You can describe pain, using science or literature or whatever. But the experience of pain is something qualitatively different. There is nothing in science which infers subjectivity — no "Newton’s Fourth Law" by which objective matter produces subjective experience. No material law or principle invokes subjectivity, yet subjectivity is the hallmark of the mind.
Persistence of Self-Identity
We are the same person throughout our lives, despite a continual turn-over of matter in our brains. The matter that constitutes your brain today is different matter, for the most part, than the matter that constituted your brain ten years ago. Furthermore, your brain matter is organized differently now than it was ten years ago. Yet your sense of identity, which is a fundamental characteristic of minds, is continuous over time. You are you, despite profound changes in brain matter and organization. What property then is the “same” that accounts for you being the same? It’s not matter and it’s not organization of matter. Hume thought that the sense of personal continuity was the result of a continuous string of memories, but his theory begs the question. Who is it that has the string of memories? Continuity of self is a prerequisite for a string of memories, so it can’t be the result of a string of memories. Persistence of self-identity through time can’t be explained materialistically; the most reasonable explanation is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is continuous over time.
Restricted Access
Restricted access means that I, and only I, experience my thoughts first-hand. I can choose to describe them to others, and others may be able to explain better than I some of the ramifications of my thoughts, but only I experience them. Even a lie-detector machine or a functional MRI doesn’t permit other people to experience my thoughts; they are merely material expressions of my brain activity, akin to speech. This is entirely unlike matter. I know the brain anatomy (matter) of my patients much better (usually) than they do. I know what their brains look like, whereas they have never actually seen them. Yet I have no first-hand experience of their thoughts, no matter how well I know their brain. We each have absolute restricted access to the experience of our own thoughts. Matter does not have this property, and therefore matter cannot be the entire cause of our thoughts.
Incorrigibility
Incorrigibility, which is related to restricted access, means the unassailable knowledge of one’s own thoughts. If I am thinking of the color red, no one can credibly refute that fact. Of course, I may be lying about what I am thinking, or I may be mistaken about the implications of my thoughts, but I experience my thoughts in a way that no one else does. If I say (honestly) that I like impressionist painting, it is nonsensical for someone else to assert, "You are mistaken; you don’t like impressionist painting." This incorrigibility isn’t a property of matter. I can hold an honest opinion that the hippocampus is in the parietal lobe (it isn’t; it’s in the temporal lobe). My interlocutor can point out that I am incorrect about the material issue (where the hippocampus is located), but he can’t plausibly argue that I’m wrong that I hold that opinion. Incorrigibility is a property of mind, but not matter.
Free Will
If the mind is entirely caused by matter, it is difficult to understand how free will can exist. Matter is governed by fixed laws, and if our thoughts are entirely the product of brain chemistry, then our thoughts are determined by brain chemistry. But chemistry doesn’t have "truth" or "falsehood," or any other values for that matter. It just is. Enzymatic catalysis isn’t true or false, it just is. In fact, the view that "materialism is true" is meaningless… if materialism is true. If materialism is true, than the thought "materialism is true" is just a chemical reaction, neither true nor false. While there are some philosophers who assert that free will can exist in a deterministic materialistic world (they’re called "compatibilists"), and some have argued that quantum indeterminacy may leave room for free will, the most parsimonious explanation for free will is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is undetermined by matter.
So is the materialist inference that the mind is caused entirely by the brain plausible? Please note that materialism has failed to offer any explanation for any of the six salient characteristics of the mind. Not a single salient characteristic of the mind is a property of matter. The strict materialistic explanation for the mind — the attribution of immaterial mental acts and properties to brain matter — is, by definition, a materialist superstition, a "false irrational conception of causation in nature maintained despite evidence to the contrary."
Of course, on reflection, we wouldn’t expect neuroscience to have important things to say about the material/immaterial nature of the mind. Neuroscience studies correlations between material events and behaviors, which are third-person objective phenomena; it has provided no explanation for subjective-first person processes, which is the essential quality of the mind. The assertion that neuroscience demonstrates the material nature of the mind is an ideological assertion, a misuse of neuroscience to serve a tenuous materialist agenda.
In Wolfgang Pauli’s deathless phrase, the materialist explanation of the mind ”isn’t even wrong.” It’s superstitious nonsense. Materialism can’t explain the mind, because the salient characteristics of mental states — intentionality, qualia, persistence of self-identity, restricted access, incorrigibility, and free will — do not admit material explanations.
A coherent and meaningful understanding of the mind requires a repudiation of this materialist superstition. Strict materialism offers some insight into behavioral correlations — behavioral arousal is associated with activation of neurons in the brainstem reticular activation system — but materialism offers nothing to explain the subjective properties of mental experience, which constitute the mind as we actually experience it. A genuine understanding of the mind must be open to immaterial causation, because there is nothing in materialist science (or materialist philosophy) that can account for subjective experience.
The viewpoint that matter has desires, intentions, and subjective experiences has a long history in human affairs. It was the foundation of Aristotelian natural philosophy — matter fell to the earth because it seemed to "desire" to return to its natural place. The ancient world was haunted with "sentient" inanimate objects — talismans, charms and idols. Children attribute wishes and feelings to stuffed toys. Since the dawn of man we have ascribed sentience and feelings and will to matter, and a salient triumph of modern science has been to expunge this attribution of subjectivity to matter. The work of physical science is to identify and if possible quantify regularities in the "third person objective existence" of matter. Matter has third person objective existence. The mind, as experienced, has first person subjective existence.
Superstition is “a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.“ The foundation of the scientific revolution is the repudiation of the inference that matter has will, emotions and desires. If there is anything that modern science has demonstrated beyond dispute it is the gulf between objective and subjective ontology — between matter and mind. Yet the materialist superstition isn’t completely gone. It persists in its modern scientific manifestation — the inference that the mind is entirely caused by the brain — which is a superstition.
CSC fellow David Klinghoffer has a recent column in the Jerusalem Post which explains how intelligent design is different from creationism and examines the difficulty many religious believers have with Darwin's theory:
When Jews and Christians alike aren't being forced into false dilemmas, we are given alternatives to Darwinian theory that can be imagined as reconciling science and theology only if the whole subject is kept cloudy and confused.
Thus the two most recent popes have appeared to speak of the Church's comfort with "evolution" but without defining the term. Does it mean an unguided process or a guided one? One that gives scientific evidence of a Designer's purpose, or not?
The ambiguity and hedging probably comes from a fear of putting their Church on the losing side of a historic controversy, and an unfamiliarity with the scientific details.
This is the set up for -- you guessed it -- theistic evolution:
Thanks to the prevailing murkiness, Catholic doctrine is often identified in the media with "theistic evolution." Theistic evolution is another gradation of belief between creationism and Darwinism, but an unsatisfactory one. It boils down to the proposition that life's history was guided by natural laws that God designed but in such a way as to leave no evidence of that fact.
One problem with theistic evolution is that natural laws are predictable whereas Darwinian evolution, according to its own theorists, is entirely unpredictable. Think of those laws that govern weather patterns or the formation of geological features. Not so with Darwinian evolution, which can take any of countless very different directions. How could such a purposeless process reflect divine purpose?
Read the whole piece here.
Re: P.Z. Myers' recent post:
I'll be spending my day at this symposium, "Understanding evolution: the legacy of Darwin", most of today. It's about to start, so I'm not going to say much before I focus on the lectures, but it is open to the public, so if you're in the Penn neighborhood, come on down to Claudia Cohen hall, room G17 (which we have since learned is the famous old surgical demonstration auditorium), and listen in. I'll report later on the contents of the talks.
I’m having trouble finding the program Myers is referring to (why wasn’t I invited!?), but Claudia Cohen Hall is on the medical campus at Penn, so I surmise that the presentations will be on eugenics (apologies for it, I hope), which is Darwin’s only legacy to medicine.
But of course eugenics won’t be mentioned, except perhaps brief exculpations ("Eugenics was the misuse of Darwin's theory by a few rogue geneticists…"). No doubt the talks will be 'Children Hate Vegetables Because of Ancestral Reproductive Advantage of Avoiding Toxins' or 'We Will Evolve Oiler Skin Because of Frequent Bathing' or 'X-Linked Color Blindness Evolved to Help Paleolithic Male Hunters See Camouflage.' Believe it or not, these are actual cutting-edge evolutionary "theories."
Darwin's positive legacy to real medical science is non-existent. Darwinists append vacuous stories to actual scientific advances and claim that Darwinian fables provided indispensable guidance to the scientific breakthrough, when the opposite is true. Microbiologists, molecular geneticists, paleontologists, epidemiologists, etc. do the real science, and evolutionary biologists add the Darwinian narrative gloss. The evolutionary claim — usually part of a press release — is generally ornate ("Evolutionary Saltation Induced by Pleistocene Heterozygote Advantage…" or some such, which always boils down this template:
"Organisms that [insert actual scientific insight] gained reproductive advantage." Survivors
survived.
Darwin’s theory was (and is) indispensable for only one thing in medicine: eugenics. Eugenics is human breeding. Eugenics has been viewed as an imperative (and still is) by many Darwinists, because if the origin of human beings is natural selection ("survival of the fittest"), then human compassion for the weak (i.e. human civilization) impairs natural selection, and a corrective is needed to avert degeneration of our race. If we are evolving animals, then benevolence must be balanced by breeding if our species is to survive. This odious ideology, based on an odious (and scientifically vacuous) assertion that natural selection is the origin of man, is the foundation of eugenics, and is Darwin's only real legacy to medicine.
Fairy tales about the origin of illnesses and adaptations are worthless to medicine. The materialistic philosophical basis for Darwinism and the inference that humans evolved by natural selection have been catastrophic to medicine. Any genuine insight claimed by Darwinists, such as the dynamics of antibiotic resistance or of heterozygote advantage in such diseases as sickle cell anemia and malaria, is really gained by the relevant basic sciences (molecular genetics, microbiology, epidemiology), with no need for Darwinian just-so stories. For the past century, Darwin's only legacy to medicine has been eugenics. Darwinists are hoping that the salient modern human evolutionary adaptation is amnesia.
 Looking for a simple way to stand up for academic freedom on Academic Freedom Day? Let people know you support academic freedom by wearing an Academic Freedom Day t-shirt on February 12th, 2009. T-shirts come in a variety of styles and sizes and are inexpensively priced. Click here to browse the shirts and order one for yourself.
Don’t stand up alone. 
Get your friends and classmates to order t-shirts and organize an Academic Freedom Day event at your school, church, or organization. If you need ideas for what you can do to celebrate Academic Freedom Day, here's a list of five things to do. Or, you can e-mail us at academicfreedom@discovery.org.
And you can suit up your dorm or bedroom with an Academic Freedom Day poster or calendar to hang on your wall. Click here to order posters and calendars.
 As part of our efforts to support academic freedom on evolution, we are teaming up with the IDEA Center (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) to help students in starting an IDEA chapter on their campus. Such campus clubs are a fun and educational way for students to examine all sides of the debate over evolution.
IDEA Clubs are student-initiated clubs that foster academic freedom as students learn about scientific evidence that supports intelligent design and also learn about modern evolutionary theory. IDEA Clubs are a growing network of student-led clubs on university and high school campuses around the United States with thirty new chapters formed to date.
Visit www.ideacenter.org or e-mail Brian Westad at brianw@ideacenter.org for information on how you can start an IDEA club in your area.
In Texas, the far-left activist organization Texas Freedom Network is working overtime to try to gut the state's science standards. This week the Texas State Board of Education holds their regularly scheduled meeting and it seems the TFN will try and whip up a mob to lobby the board when they discuss the proposed update of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science.
TFN is parading a push-poll survey of scientists they did recently. They emailed over 1,000 scientists and science professors at Texas universities and less than half replied. Still, TFN is trumpeting that of the replies they did get, nearly all were in complete lock step with the Darwin-only lobby.
As Casey Luskin pointed out in an interview with the Star-Telegram: "It’s a self-selecting survey," Luskin said. "There’s a well-documented culture of intimidation that makes scientists uncomfortable expressing their doubts about Darwinism. This just serves to reinforce that climate of intimidation." Of course, it really isn't safe in Texas to speak out against Darwin. Just ask Professor Bob Marks at Baylor, whose lab was shut down by Darwinists who didn't like what he was researching. Can you imagine any scientist who doubts Darwin responding honestly to a survey like this in such a climate?
I'm not saying that there are a majority of scientists who doubt Darwin in Texas. But the minority is a silent one for sure, thanks to left-wing advocacy groups like Texas Freedom Network.
The Waco Tribune has an opinion piece today from one of the scientists selected as an expert reviewer of Texas' science standards. Charles Garner, a chemist at Baylor, writes: As the Texas Education Agency reviews the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, a controversy has developed about language in the current TEKS, which states:
“The student uses critical thinking and scientific problem-solving to make informed decisions. The student is expected to analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.”
This language promotes critical thinking skills. It has been in the TEKS for years. The TEKS guidelines are working fine and Texas students receive some of the best science education in the country.
Nonetheless, some activist groups are protesting the “strengths and weaknesses” language. You can read Garner's entire piece here.
The liberal Darwin lobby group Texas Freedom Network has just published a push-poll of scientists titled, "Survey of Texas Faculty: Overwhelming Opposition to Watering Down Evolution in School Science Curriculum." You might think this is good news, that there are a majority of scientists and professors who support the current TEKS which require students to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories.
Instead, TFN means exactly the opposite. Let me point out that THEY are the ones who want gut the state's science standards and water down the teaching of evolution. They want to remove the strengths and weaknesses language, language that has been in the TEKS for over a decade.
What is stunning is the TFN's jackbooted thuggery of threatening parents! Parents reading this should be enraged that liberal anti-science censors are now making veiled threats against any student that doesn't toe the Darwin party line. "Many of these science faculty members almost certainly help determine who gets into our state's colleges and universities," Eve said. "Their responses should send parents a clear message that those who want to play politics with science education are putting our kids at risk." Sounds ominous, doesn't it?
As for TFN's "findings," there’s nothing new here. As usual it's misleading, misrepresentative and misses the point.
The report highlights five key findings from the survey:
1. Texas scientists (97.7 percent) overwhelmingly reject "intelligent design" as valid science. Misleading: Intelligent design has nothing to do with the current discussion of proposed science standards. 2. Texas science faculty (95 percent) want only evolution taught in science classrooms Misrepresentative: Actually, they only want half of evolution taught. They are seeking to limit the free flow of information and censor science.
3. Scientists reject teaching the so-called "weaknesses" of evolution, with 94 percent saying that those arguments are not valid scientific objections to evolution. Misses the point: A majority of scientists rejected the Big Bang, too, but it turned out they were wrong. There are valid and significant scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution that students need to know about. Evidence is not contingent on a consensus. 4. Science faculty believe that emphasizing "weaknesses" of evolution would substantially harm students' college readiness (79.6 percent) and ability to compete for 21st-century jobs (72 percent). Misleading: What harms students is withholding information. How can students compete for 21st-century jobs learning only half the story? 5. Scientists (91 percent) strongly believe that support for evolution is compatible with religious faith. Misses the point: Who cares? This has nothing to do with religion.
The TFN is trying to gut the TEKS, in order to advance their own political agenda in the classroom. The current standards with the strengths and weaknesses language have been successfully in place for the past decade, and there's no good scientific or educational reason to remove that language.
Three of the six reviewers of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are recommending that students apply less, rather than more, critical thinking when studying evolution. In Part 1 I discussed the recommendations of David Hills, and in Part 2, I discussed the recommendations of Ronald Wetherington. Like Wetherington and Hillis, TEKS reviewer Gerald Skoog wants the TEKS to include many more standards on evolution which dogmatically only present the evidence for evolution. Here are some of the new standards he wants the TEKS to include:
"EXPLAIN HOW NATURAL SELECTION AND ITS EVOLUTIONARY CONSEQUENCES PROVIDE A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR THE FOSSIL RECORD OF ANCIENT LIFE FORMS, AS WELL AS FOR THE STRIKING MOLECULAR SIMILARITIES OBSERVED AMONG LIVING ORGANISMS."
and
"EXPLAIN HOW CERTAIN ANATOMICAL STRUCTURES ON FOSSILIZED VERTEBRATES AND COMPLETE OR NEARLY COMPLETE FOSSILS ARE USED AS EVIDENCE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF VERTEBRATES."
But as Stephen C. Meyer observed in his report, by focusing only on the molecular and fossil data that supports Darwinian evolution, this standard would misinform students about the evidence for common descent. As Meyer wrote: For those who insist that there are no "weaknesses" in the traditional case for universal common ancestry, let me cite a few examples: (1) The fossil record shows a pattern of explosions of new life-forms that contradicts the predictions and expectations of universal common descent and suggests the possibility of a discontinuous (polyphyletic) view of the history of life, rather than a continuous (monophyletic) view of the history of life. … (2) … there are numerous cases where conflicts exist between different types of gene-based evolutionary trees, thus challenging the very evidence and methodology used to infer common descent from "molecular homologies." Finally, Skoog wants students to "DESCRIBE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONCLUSION THAT THE MILLIONS OF DIFFERENT SPECIES OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MICROORGANISMS THAT LIVE ON EARTH TODAY ARE RELATED BY DESCENT FROM COMMON ANCESTORS." What exactly might those "implications" be? Are they the sort of "implications" that Stephen Jay Gould wrote of when he said: First, Darwin argues that evolution has no purpose. . . . Second, Darwin maintained that evolution has no direction. . . . Third, Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature. Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity Or are they the consequences that William Provine had in mind when he wrote, Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. Of perhaps they're the kind of "implications" that Ken Miller wrote about in his textbook when he said, "Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical Materialism…"
Skoog isn't clear, so we're left to wonder exactly what kind of "implications" he wants students to learn about.
In Part 1 I discussed how some Darwinist reviewers of the Texas Science Standards are opposing giving students the opportunity to use critical thinking skills when learning the modern Darwinian theory of evolution.
One glaring difference between the reviews submitted by those opposing critical thinking on evolution and the reviews of those supporting it is the lengths of the respective sets of reviews. The TEKS reviews submitted by Stephen Meyer, Ralph Seelke, and Charles Garner in support of students applying critical thinking skills to evolution were each over 25 pages in length. In contrast, two of the three Darwinist reviewers submitted reviews that were 8 pages or less. It seems that some of the Darwinist reviewers didn't take much time to give comprehensive evaluations of Texas science education for the Texas State Board of Education and rather had one primary concern and agenda: to ensure that evolution is taught dogmatically in Texas.
In his short 8-page review, TEKS reviewer Ronald Wetherington predictably uses the same approach. He states that the "strengths and weaknesses" language should be removed from the TEKS entirely: "The 'strengths and weaknesses' phrase was common to the earlier standards and has been changed in the pre-high school grades except for this one. It should also be eliminated here." So according to Wetherington, if some grades and subjects don't implement a strong critical thinking standard, then none should. Is that a logical way to strive for excellence in science education?
Wetherington goes on to say that that neo-Darwinian evolution "is one of the central paradigms of biology and has positively influenced both chemistry and geology as these fields, in turn, have reinforced the scientific strength and validity of the evolutionary concept. Avoiding it is a disservice to science education."
The proposed TEKS don't "avoid" evolution, and in fact they contain extensive sections covering evolution (using the specific word "evolution" multiple times) within multiple subject matters and multiple grades. It would be hard to find subject that is given such a broad treatment in the proposed TEKS. What Wetherington apparently only wants is science education that gives a disproportionately large focus on evolution, where students to learn about where the evidence has "reinforced the strength and validity of the evolutionary concept."
I will discuss more problems with the Darwinist reviews in a third post.
In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin famously wrote, ''A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.'' One might think that modern proponents of Darwin’s ideas would endorse his approach to scientific thinking within evolution education, but it’s not so. The Texas State Board of Education recently received reviews of the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) from six science reviewers.
Three of those reviewers—who are scientific skeptics of Darwinian evolution—support TEKS that would give students a strong grounding in critical thinking skills by asking them to "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information."
Three other reviewers, however, are Darwinists who oppose giving students that opportunity to use such critical thinking skills when learning about Darwin’s theory and other scientific theories. One immediately apparent difference between the two sets of reviewers is that the reviews that supported critical thinking skills were each over 25 pages long, but two of the three Darwinist reviewers submitted reviews that were under ten pages.
It seems that these reviewers have one main concern and one main agenda: to ensure that evolution is taught dogmatically in Texas.
As a first example, in his short 7-page review, University of Texas Austin evolutionary biologist David Hillis wrote that the TEKS language should be revised to read "analyze, review, and critique examples of scientific hypotheses as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information." This missing word here is the word "theories" because Hillis wants to remove the application of this standard to scientific "theories," thereby forcing students to treat certain popular scientific theories—like Darwinian evolution—as unquestionable fact.
Hillis also implies that some students are too young to critique certain concepts, saying that "asking students in Grade 5 to analyze, review, and critique any modern scientific theory is absurd; how can any students in K‐ 12 be expected to evaluate the enormous body of evidence that leads to current scientific consensus?" But if we can teach students about scientific views that support the "consensus," then doesn't this mean students have the right to hear there are scientific views that question it? Also, does this imply that older students are mature enough to critique the "consensus" view? Apparently not—for as we saw even within high school, Hillis would not allow students to learn about the weaknesses of scientific "theories" that are the consensus view.
Hillis' approach will stifle critical thinking and teach students how to conform and think as dogmatists, not skeptically-thinking scientists. More problems with the Darwinist TEKS reviewers will be discussed in future posts.
Anyone who was awed when they watched Jurassic Park and saw realistic-looking dinosaurs walking around on the big screen for the first time should take a moment to remember Michael Crichton. Crichton, a famous science-fiction author, wrote the books that became the Jurassic Park movie series, as well as many other popular novels. He also had an appreciation for the importance of dissenting views within the scientific community and was a keen observer of how some in the scientific community use rhetoric to quash minority scientific viewpoints. Crichton passed away earlier this month after losing a battle with cancer, so in remembrance of Michael Crichton, I’d like to re-post this quote from a speech he gave that was recently reprinted in the Wall Street Journal:
”I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
“Let's be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. . . .
“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. .”
(Michael Crichton, "'Aliens Cause Global Warming'," reprinted in Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2008.) Rest in peace, Michael Crichton.
One Grand Prize Winner will take home $500
Discovery Institute is sponsoring a student video and essay contest to commemorate Academic Freedom Day, February 12, 2009, on Charles Darwin’s bicentennial.
Darwin once wrote, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” That famous quote will be the touchstone for students to communicate support for academic freedom to explore the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.
“The next generation values open dialogue in a way that is aptly expressed in their creativity and imagination,” Discovery Institute Director of Communications Robert Crowther said. “This is a fun way to honor that expression and encourage critical thinking on the issue.”
The video and essay contest is open to high school and college students and will be judged based on creativity, accuracy, and persuasiveness. One grand prize winner will be announced and have his or her entry officially unveiled at academicfreedomday.com on Academic Freedom Day, Feb. 12th 2009.
The grand prize winner will be awarded $500 and selected by an illustrious panel of leaders in the ID movement. Entrants in the video category will be able to share their videos online and at social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.
Click here for more on the video and essay contest.
For more information on Academic Freedom Day, visit www.academicfreedomday.com.
This is the sixth installment of a blog series responding to John Timmer's online review of the supplementary biology textbook Explore Evolution (EE). The first part is here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here, the sixth here.
7. Timmer’s Mis-Aimed Critique of Inquiry Based Learning
Timmer calls Explore Evolution’s use of Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) a "sham" because he asserts the textbook "abdicates the responsibility for reasoning entirely." But his criticism is bogus. EE contains multiple sections that encourage students to weigh the evidence and consider open-ended questions about the evidence like, "Which picture best illustrates the history of life?," "Do all living things, past and present, share a common ancestor?," "Can natural selection produce fundamentally new organisms from pre-existing ones?," and "Are there other similarities that point to common ancestry?"
A comparison to other textbooks quickly shows EE’s use of IBL is vastly superior to most mainstream biology textbook treatments of evolution, which tend to force rote memorization of Darwinism, and offer little meaningful IBL on evolution.
For example, in Miller & Levine’s treatment of avian evolution, students are asked "Why do you think that birds evolved from dinosaurs?," and "What are the two alternative explanations for the evolution of modern birds?" (Miller and Levine, 2008, p. 807) Students are never encouraged to think outside of the evolutionary box created by the text, and in all questions, an evolutionary reptile-to-bird transition is taken as a given. Likewise, Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell’s textbook Biology: Concepts and Connections, forces students to think only within the Darwinian box: "Write a paragraph briefly describing the evidence for evolution," it asks. (Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell, 2003, p. 279)
Other textbooks like Raven & Johnson’s Biology don’t even ask questions allowing students to evaluate the evidence, and instead just make dogmatic claims like, "the evidence for Darwin’s theory has become overwhelming" because "information from many different areas of biology—fields as different as anatomy, molecular biology, and biogeography—is only interpretable scientifically as the outcome of evolution." (Raven, Johnson, Losos, and Singer, 2005, p. 453)
Holt’s Life Science asks students to only consider how "organisms can be compared to support the theory of evolution" or "how fossils provide evidence that organisms have evolved." (Holt, 2001, p. 176, emphasis added) Likewise Sylvia S. Mader’s 2007 edition of Essentials of Biology carefully steers students away from any meaningful critical thought over evolution, asking students to "Explain why evolution is no longer considered a hypothesis." For students who cannot regurgitate from the text, the proper "answer" is given directly below the question -- up-side-down, so students don’t have to hunt too hard for the "correct" answer: "Evolution is supported by many diverse and independent lines of evidence." (Mader, 2007, p. 225)
Many more examples could be given, but sadly, these textbooks are only following the proscription of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences which recently charged that schools should teach no evidence against evolution because "[t]here is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution," which is "so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter" it.
If anything is a "sham," it is this kind of IBL which stifles creative and critical scientific thinking, and forces rote memorization of the "overwhelming evidence" showing only "support" for the "fact" of evolution, never encouraging students actually engage their minds to consider that some scientific evidence might challenge neo-Darwinism. A comparison between EE and other textbooks shows the great need for textbooks like EE that actually do encourage students to engage in real critical thinking over evolutionary biology.
References Cited:
Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece, Lawrence G. Mitchell, and Martha R. Taylor, Biology: Concepts and Connections, Benjamin Cummings, 4th Ed., 2003.
Holt Science & Technology, Life Science: California Edition, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 2001.
Sylvia S. Mader, Essentials of Biology, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine¸ Biology, Prentice Hall, 2008.
Peter H. Raven, George B. Johnson, Jonathan B. Losos, Susan R. Singer, Biology, McGraw Hill, 7th Ed., 2005.
Next  year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. As you can imagine, Darwinists have a full year of celebrations planned, and February 12th, Darwin’s birthday, is likely to be the high water mark for most of those celebrations. Every year Darwin Day celebrations get more and more elaborate and outrageous. Celebrants decorate evolution trees, sign Darwin carols and odes to natural selection, and eat from the tree of life.
Naturally, we don't want you to miss out on the fun. On Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by defending the right to debate the evidence for and against evolution and turn “Darwin Day” into Academic Freedom Day.
We have plans for celebrations of our own, celebrations that will help to promote academic freedom in line with the words of Darwin himself: “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and argument on both sides of the each question.”
Our plan is to get student groups and clubs, as well as individual students, to organize Academic Freedom Day events, on or about Feb. 12th. These events can be as simple as having a table on campus where people can sign the Academic Freedom Petition and find out more about academic freedom on evolution. Or the events can be more elaborate, including screening Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, or Icons of Evolution on campus.
Visit the new Academic Freedom Day website, or e-mail us at academicfreedom@discovery.org for more information.
 MSNBC recently had an article titled "Fine-feathered dino sported bizarre bird tail," reporting on the find of Epidexipteryx hui, a "pigeon-sized dinosaur that lived more than 100 million years ago [that] sported four ribbon-like tail feathers." (See right for an artist’s imaginative interpretation of the fossil.) One of the original paper's authors states, "Although this dinosaur cannot be the direct ancestor for birds, it is one of the dinosaurs that have the closest phylogenetic relationship to birds." The article also contains other quotes with typical Darwinist rhetoric like, “[t]his find confirms the link between dinosaurs and birds.” But are other interpretations possible? Unreported in the media is the fact that the paper contains language directly hinting that Epidexipteryx hui could also be "interpreted as secondarily flightless." In other words, Epidexipteryx hui may not have been a "feathered dinosaur" at all, but instead was a bird that lost its ability to fly while retaining feathers. There are many well-known modern-day examples of secondarily flightless birds, e.g. the well-known ostrich. In fact, what the media never tells us is that similar interpretations have already been made for other alleged "feathered dinos."
Bird evolution expert Alan Feduccia believes that "Caudipteryx and Protoarchaeopteryx, in fact, are replete with features of secondarily flightless Mesozoic sauriurine birds…" (The Origin and Evolution of Birds, pg. 396, Yale University Press, 1999.) Likewise a Nature paper from 2000, co-authored by five scientists, suggested that "Caudipteryx was a secondarily flightless, post-Archaeopteryx, cursorial bird" because "it [is] a striking coincidence that the only unambiguously feathered theropod was also the only known theropod likely to have utilized locomotory mechanisms identical to those of cursorial birds." Feduccia writes: Given the now substantial evidence that certain taxa once thought to be dinosaurs (e.g. Caudipteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, and the Oviraptosauria; Maryanska et al. 2002) are most likely secondarily flightless birds, and the new hypothesis that certain dinosaurs were secondarily flightless descendants of Mesozoic birds (Paul 2002), we must now carefully consider the possibility that there may have been a number of radiations of secondarily flightless Mesozoic birds that evolved morphologies quite similar to theropod dinosaurs. It seems that the "feathered dino" interpretation may be driven by an attempt to fit these fossils into the standard evolutionary paradigm, not the data. Unfortunately, the view that these fossils are not feathered dinos but are rather secondarily flightless birds is a possibility that is not being communicated to the public in the media.
Discovery senior fellow Wesley J. Smith has returned to podcasting with What It Means to Be Human, a podcast about the many policies and proposals in bioethics, bioscience, and animal liberation that threaten the idea of human exceptionalism and undermine universal human rights:
 Click here to listen.
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at Discovery Institute, explains why human exceptionalism is so important for universal human rights.
There is a war being waged against unique human worth on many fronts, from personhood theory and the animal liberation movement to radical environmentalism and philosophical materialism. Very powerful forces have dedicated themselves to convincing us that we really aren't all that important. Smith explains these attacks and shows why human exceptionalism must be defended for the sake of human rights everywhere.
Mr. Smith has written extensively on human exceptionalism and bioethics, garnering him the Human Life Foundation’s 2008 Great Defender of Human Life Award in October. He posts regularly at Secondhand Smoke: Your 24/7 Seminar on Bioethics and the Importance of Being Human.
CSC Fellow Forrest Mims has been honored by Discover Magazine, which has placed him on their list of "50 best brains in science." Not bad company he's keeping, with Steven Hawking, Bill Gates and others. Post-Darwinist has a nice write up congratulating Mims on the honor and recounting some of what he's gone through to get this far as a scientist: Congratulations to Forrest Mims, a voice for real science in the midst of a mass of taxpayer-funded propaganda for unbelievable beliefs that happen to be held by scientists.
Mims is an instrument designer, science writer and independent science consultant. He has made regular observations of the ozone layer, solar ultraviolet radiation, photosynthetic radiation, column water vapor and aerosol optical thickness since 1989 at his Geronimo Creek Observatory in Texas. He cofounded MITS Inc., the company that introduced the first microcomputer, and Science Probe magazine, which he edited.
Mims is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Rolex Award for Enterprise (1987) alternate and 1993 (laureate). He received the Industrial Research IR-100 Award for inventing a miniature eyeglass-mounted travel aid for the blind. He is currently expanding his regular atmospheric measurements to include studies of airborne bacteria, mosquito visual response and tannin distribution in annual growth rings of Taxodium distichum (baldcypress). His scientific pursuits, science data and publications can be viewed online at www.forrestmims.org.
This is the sixth installment of a blog series responding to John Timmer's online review of the supplementary biology textbook Explore Evolution (EE). The first part is here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here.
6. Timmer’s Double Standard on Textbook Treatments of Evolution
Timmer repeatedly attacks EE for allegedly trying to "divide and conquer" evolution because it discusses the different lines of scientific evidence (i.e. fossil, anatomical, molecular) regarding common descent in separate sections. Timmer’s criticism reveals either his gross ignorance of how contemporary biology texts cover evolution, or that he's using a blatant double standard. EE was written to complement the coverage of evolution in standard biology textbooks, and so it follows the approach used by most biology textbooks, which divide the evidence for common descent into separate sections dealing with fossils, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, embryology, and biogeography. (See for example, Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell, 2003, pp. 260-263; Mader, 2007, pp. 224-227; Raven & Johnson, 2005, pp. 460-466.)
If Timmer wants to argue for a different way of presenting the evidence for evolution, fine. But he should acknowledge up front that most biology textbooks—not just Explore Evolution—fail to follow his preferences. Attacking EE simply because it follows the approach adopted by most biology textbooks is unreasonable.
The same can be said for Timmer’s criticism of EE for only discussing the fossil bird Archaeopteryx when covering the origin of flight. Timmer complains that "[n]one of the other fossils on either side of the transition to flight are deemed worthy of mention." Disregarding the fact that Timmer himself fails to name any of these allegedly "worthy" transitional fossils in his critique, it must be noted that most high school textbooks (which EE is supposed to complement) also do not mention bird fossils beyond Archaeopteryx when discussing the evolution of flight. Miller & Levine’s 2008 edition of Biology has an entire section titled "Evolution of Birds," but the only fossil species named is Archaeopteryx. Miller & Levine's Biology asserts that "new fossils of ancient birds are being found all the time," but much like Timmer, the textbook gives no names or specific examples of what those fossil species are.
So once again, Timmer holds Explore Evolution to a standard that he’s not willing to apply to other biology textbooks.
References Cited:
Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece, Lawrence G. Mitchell, and Martha R. Taylor, Biology: Concepts and Connections, Benjamin Cummings, 4th Ed., 2003.
Holt Science & Technology, Life Science: California Edition, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 2001.
Sylvia S. Mader, Essentials of Biology, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine¸ Biology, Prentice Hall, 2008.
Peter H. Raven, George B. Johnson, Jonathan B. Losos, Susan R. Singer, Biology, McGraw Hill, 7th Ed., 2005.
The Biologic Institute has an excellent article discussing how biologists are copying the "brilliant designs" they see in nature for technological purposes. We've discussed this intriguing phenomenon of biomimetics many times before here on ENV. (For a couple examples, see here, here or here.)
The presumption of evolutionary biologists, of course, is that these "brilliant designs" evolved by natural selection preserving random, but beneficial mutations. Engineers operating under such presumptions have thus tried to mimic not only the "brilliant designs," but also the evolutionary processes that allegedly produced the designs. Biologic's article notes that one success story of such methods was the case of NASA engineers who used evolutionary computing to produce a better antenna.
Did they use truly Darwinian "evolutionary computing?” The article goes on to discuss how design parameters were smuggled into the simulation, such that it really wasn't a truly unguided Darwinian evolutionary scenario.
So what exactly can unguided Darwinian evolutionary computing actually produce? Probably not very much, but this is a research question that Biologic is attempting to tackle. As their research page says, they are exploring "fundamental laws governing the origin of information" by "building and testing computational models that mimic the role of genetic information in specifying functions by means of structure-forming sequences."
For more on Biologic's published research into evolutionary computation, see Intelligent Design Lab is Going Where no Evolution Simulation has Gone Before.
With the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth looming, lecture halls are booked up with Darwinist celebrations and attacks on intelligent design. A couple of the usual suspects on the Darwin birthday circuit are Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott.
Recently, I saw that they would both be speaking at the University of Central Florida, at the behest of the university's biology department. The topic? For Coyne it was intelligent design, and for Scott it was academic freedom (seriously). So, I thought I'd inquire as to whether or not UCF would be balancing these anti-ID lectures with views from the other side. Here's the response I got:
Dear Mr. Crowther,
I have read the letter you sent University of Central Florida President John C. Hitt in regard to UCF’s Department of Biology’s “Darwin Bicentennial Seminar Series.”
As one of the seminar’s organizers, President Hitt has asked me to reply to your letter.
This seminar series seeks to bring outstanding scientists to UCF to discuss how Darwin and evolution have influenced our understanding of nature. As have many other academic institutions, UCF has organized a series of lectures during the Darwin bicentennial as an opportunity to provide public education on evolution as the foundation of the biological sciences.
Scientists at UCF agree with the position expressed in the National Academy of Sciences publication, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, that there is no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution. Therefore, the Biology Department will not include a discussion about intelligent design in this series.
Although I understand your passion about this subject, I hope you understand the position taken by the UCF scientists who have organized this seminar series.
Sincerely,
Christopher L. Parkinson, Ph.D
(emphasis mine) Not including a discussion about intelligent design? How then do you explain the title, and entire subject, of Coyne's lecture? According the UCF newsroom, Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago will speak about “Intelligent Design Versus Evolution.” And, Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, who will speak about “Florida’s Academic Freedom Bills: Creationism du jour?”
Scott and the NCSE are one of the biggest opponents of intelligent design being taught in a science classroom and she has written several books, including “Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools.” Contrary to Parkinson's assertion that intelligent design is not part of the discussion, in these two talks it is clearly the entire discussion. As usual, in academia it's okay to talk about ID if you want to attack it. But if you want to provide a different view and advocate for ID ... sorry they don't want students to hear anything like that.
This isn’t unusual. Academic freedom legislation in six states last year — legislation meant to foster a civil discourse about the case for and against Darwinian evolution in classrooms — was opposed by Darwinists who continually seek to stifle scientific inquiry and censor the flow of information to students.
Currently in Texas there is a move afoot to remove from the state’s science standards a statement reading The student is expected to: analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information; Darwinists simply don’t want students to be able to learn about both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution, whether it be in a lecture at university that alleges it wants to be “more inclusive and diverse” or in science standards guiding the flow of information to our students.
Three of six experts selected by the Texas State Board of Education to review a proposed update of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science have recommended that the TEKS retain controversial language calling on students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories in order to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills.
“Some activist groups are pressuring the State Board to cut that language from the TEKS in order to artificially shield Darwin’s theory from the normal process of scientific inquiry,” said Casey Luskin, an education policy analyst at Discovery Institute. “However, as these three experts point out, examining the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories is a core part of the scientific process, and abandoning such critical analysis merely to satisfy ideological demands of Darwinists harms students by giving them a false view of scientific inquiry.”
“Science education that does not encourage students to evaluate competing scientific arguments is not teaching students about the way science actually operates,” emphasized expert reviewer Dr. Stephen Meyer in his written report submitted to the Texas Educa |
