Will Michael Shermer and Donald Prothero tell the truth about what happened to Richard Sternberg? That’s one of the open questions going into tonight’s debate in Los Angeles between Shermer and Prothero and ID proponents Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg. Shermer and Prothero have a record of misstating the facts about Dr. Sternberg’s persecution at the Smithsonian. It will be interesting to see whether they are willing to make their misstatements to Dr. Sternberg’s face.

For those interested in the truth about Dr. Sternberg’s mistreatment, a good place to start is Casey Luskin’s excellent rebuttal to some of Shermer’s earlier misstatements.

Those who want a more comprehensive recital of the facts should check out the reports issued by federal investigators at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel and a congressional subcommittee.

Posted by John West at 7:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last week National Geographic published an article, “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: 6 Bones of Contention,” that did a mixed job of conveying the pro-intelligent design (ID) viewpoint. When the article actually provided quotes from me (or other ID proponents) about ID—which I very much appreciated—it was accurate. When the article purported to convey the views of ID proponents, sometimes it went badly astray.

The article also provided the views of ID-critics, namely Donald Prothero. That’s fine, but unfortunately in each case, the pro-ID viewpoint was immediately rebutted by Prothero with zero sur-rebuttals defending ID. Dr. Prothero, who is a geology professor at Occidental College, is debating with Michael Shermer against Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg today in Los Angeles on the question of ID vs. neo-Darwinian evolution. What does Prothero's showing in this National Geographic article tell us about what to expect from him at tonight's debate?

Bone 1: Misdefining Intelligent Design
In the article’s opening section, National Geographic describes ID as follows: “many structures in plants and animals bear the unmistakable signature of design by a supernatural intelligence.” The article did not attribute that definition to me, probably because it directly contradicted the definition of ID I provided to the National Geographic reporter, Ker Than.

I explained that ID as a scientific theory merely appeals to intelligent causation because it respects the limits of scientific inquiry, and going so far as to identify the designer as supernatural would go beyond what a scientific investigation can tell us. This was discussed recently in Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design:

The reasons why ID merely appeals to intelligence and not to the “supernatural” are principled rather than rhetorical. As explained earlier, we have observation-based experience with intelligence, showing us that intelligence is the cause of high CSI. This allows us to scientifically detect intelligent causation when we find CSI in nature. But we have no observation-based experience with the supernatural, and thus a scientific investigation which detects high CSI in nature can infer intelligent causation, but such a scientific investigation could not go so far as to specify that the intelligence is supernatural.

Bone 2: Ignoring my Nuanced Argument About Eye Evolution
In part 1, "The Eyes of Vertebrate", National Geographic quoted Donald Prothero stating: "There've been multiple, very well-documented papers showing how complex structures like the eye can evolve in gradual steps from a simple eye spot that is just barely a light receptor all the way to things like the human eye.”

Prothero’s argument is exactly what I told the reporter Ker Than evolutionists would argue. The only feature that the standard eye evolution scheme evolves in a stepwise fashion is, as far as I can tell, the increase in concavity of the eye shape, and nothing more. There isn’t a Darwinian evolutionary explanation of the vertebrate eye in all its complexity. At most it only explains the concave shape of the eye, and as Michael Behe points out, standard explanations have almost completely ignored the evolution of the biochemistry of vision.

Bone 3: The Cambrian Explosion
When discussing the Cambrian explosion, National Geographic quoted Prothero as follows:

The Cambrian explosion was not an explosion at all. "It's a three-billion-year-old 'slow fuse,' and we have the fossil record that shows this," Occidental College's Prothero said.

In addition, "we now have fossils of all sorts of soft-bodied and microscopic things from before the Cambrian, and you can see very clearly how from simpler things you can get more complex things."

By “fuse,” he means that there’s a record out there which exists documenting the evolution of the Cambrian fauna. We do have a few soft-bodied fossils from the pre-Cambrian (Prothero probably has the Ediacaran fauna in mind), but they aren’t thought to be precursors to Cambrian fauna. And contra National Geographic’s claim that “[t]he Cambrian explosion was not an explosion at all,” many authorities have explained that the Cambrian explosion is a real phenomenon and that we are lacking a record that documents the evolution of animals. As Niles Eldredge writes:

The sudden and great proliferation of complex forms of sea-dwelling animal life came at the base of the Cambrian Period (now known to be about 575 million years ago); as we shall see later in this chapter, this event remains one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of life. … Careful paleontological detective work begun in the 1950s has revealed an extensive, if elusive, early fossil record. And this new Precambrian paleontology has made us take that early Cambrian event much more seriously, for it does not bear out the predicted long, slow history of diversification of complex life.

(Niles Eldredge, Life Pulse: Episodes from the Story of the Fossil Record, pp. 23-24.)

For perhaps three billion years, the highest form of life was an algal mat—thin layers of prokaryotic algae that trap and bind sediment. Then, about 600 million years ago, virtually all the major designs of animal life appeared in the fossil record within a few million years. We do not know why the “Cambrian explosion” occurred when it did, but we have no reason to think that it had to happen then or had to happen at all.

(Stephen Jay "In the Midst of Life..." in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, p. 139.)

[A]s explained on an intelligent-design t-shirt.

Fact: Forty phyla of complex animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, no forerunners, no transitional forms leading to them; ‘‘a major mystery,’’ a ‘‘challenge.’’ The Theory of Evolution – exploded again (idofcourse.com).

Although we would dispute the numbers, and aside from the last line, there is not much here that we would disagree with. Indeed, many of Darwin’s contemporaries shared these sentiments, and we assume -- if Victorian fashion dictated -- that they would have worn this same t-shirt with pride.

(Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich and Mark A. McPeek, “MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion,” BioEssays, Vol. 31(7):736-747 (2009).)

This is by no means the first time that Prothero has taken some poetic license in his interpretation of the fossil record. In 2008, Niles Eldredge published a scathing review of Prothero, where, though couched in highly technical and flowery language, Eldredge unmistakeably charges that Prothero doesn’t tell the whole story about the fossil record, namely the common pattern where we don't find transitional forms and instead find abrupt appearance of new species.

Bone 4: The Origin of Information in DNA
In part 3, "DNA", National Geographic says the following:

Once the molecular ingredients for DNA came together, natural selection took over to create increasingly complex--and yes, specific--molecules suitable for use in genetic code.

While no supernatural hand guided the evolution of DNA, "natural selection [was] a non-chance component," Prothero said.

In this case we’re talking about the origin of information in the first life-form. Prothero and National Geographic are wrong: there’s no replication without life, and there can be no natural selection before the origin of replication. So how did the information in the first life arise without selection? Without selection, we're forced to rely upon some chance-based mechanism, and there is no known chance-based mechanism that produces functional biological information (without the action of selection, which also isn't very good at producing new functional biological information). Thus, last year, origin of life theorist David Deamer stated that "I think genetic information more or less came out of nowhere by chance assemblages of short polymers." Like Deamer's statement, National Geographic's assertion "[o]nce the molecular ingredients for DNA came together..." is a non-explanation.

Prothero and his friends at National Geographic haven't yet explained the origin of genetic information. It would be better to admit that no materialist explanation yet exists for the origin of the genetic information than it is to pretend that such an explanation currently exists. For a much more thorough discussion on this point, see Signature in the Cell.

Bone 5: Flubbing the Flagellum
In Part 4, "Bacterial Legs", National Geographic quotes Prothero as follows:

scientists have discovered several intermediate steps leading up to the bacterial flagellum, Prothero said.

"There are semi-flagella in nature that are not as complicated as the bacterial one. All of this has been documented at great length, and [intelligent design proponents] ignore it over and over again."

What Prothero might have in mind is the Type III Secretory System (T3SS), a toxin-injection machine found in some bacteria that has about 10 proteins homologous to the flagellar proteins. ID proponents most certainly don’t “ignore” this structure; even the basic intro-level ID video “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” handily deals with this old (and weak) T3SS objection to flagellar irreducible complexity.

The problem is that phylogenetic data implies the T3SS could not have been a precursor to the flagellum. As a biologist quoted in New Scientist stated:

“Most researchers think the best options are flagellum-first or parallel evolution. One fact in favour of the flagellum-first view is that bacteria would have needed propulsion before they needed T3SSs, which are used to attack cells that evolved later than bacteria. Also, flagella are found in a more diverse range of bacterial species than T3SSs. ‘The most parsimonious explanation is that the T3SS arose later,’ says biochemist Howard Ochman at the University of Arizona in Tucson.”

(Quoted in Dan Jones, “Uncovering the evolution of the bacterial flagellum,” New Scientist (Feb 16, 2008).)

At best the T[3]SS represents one possible step in the indirect Darwinian evolution of the bacterial flagellum. But that still wouldn’t constitute a solution to the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. What’s needed is a complete evolutionary path and not merely a possible oasis along the way. To claim otherwise is like saying we can travel by foot from Los Angeles to Tokyo because we’ve discovered the Hawaiian Islands. Evolutionary biology needs to do better than that.

Bone 6: Bad Form and Bad Arguments Defending Whale Evolution
Finally, the National Geographic reporter asked me about whale evolution. My response was that let’s say, for the sake of argument, that some of these widely touted fossils do indeed potentially fit as intermediates between land-mammals and whales. Then what? In part 5, "Whales", Ker Than accurately quoted me as follows:

Whales "have a long generation time, and they don't have huge populations. They're like the worst-case scenario for trying to evolve structures rapidly," Luskin said. "To fix all the mutations needed to convert a little land mammal into a fully functional whale [in ten million years]--mathematically that's totally not possible."

But paleontologists have since shown that Darwin's guess wasn't that far from the truth. In the late 1970s scientists began unearthing fossils of "archaic" whales that were initially mostly terrestrial but that became more aquatic over time.

"We have the fossils showing how it happened," Prothero said. "Anyone who makes that argument is flat out lying about the fossil record."

In sum, if Prothero’s showing in this National Geographic article is any indication, he does best when the debates are rigged so that he’s always given the last word, he is granted free reign to deflect from difficult arguments through personal attacks, and he is carefully insulated from rebuttals. How will Prothero fare in a real debate where people are forced to behave in a civil manner and no one is around to protect him from rebuttals? I suppose we’ll see tonight.

[Postscript: It looks like my prediction was right: Prothero did not fare very well in an actual debate. See Rob Crowther's debate report for details.]

Posted by Casey Luskin at 4:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Most of us know that President Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned of the danger of the "military-industrial complex". Regardless of your particular stand on military spending, there is no doubt that he was substantially right about the enormous abuse of power and fraud in the defense industry.

Less known is the Eisenhower's second warning in the speech.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. [emphasis mine]

A remarkably succinct and accurate prediction of the situation we face today.

ClimateGate is the tip of the iceberg of the corrupt influence of our scientific elite on public policy, ranging from censorship of honest discussion of evolution in our schools to the 'Cap and Trade' boondoggle based on fabricated global warming science to the fraud and political power-play shaping up in Copenhagen to self-enriching pressure by scientists and industry to exempt human embryonic stem cell research from traditional ethical constraints on destroying human life.

We ignore Eisenhower's warning, and the overwhelming evidence before us now, at our own peril.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 1:38 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There's a totalitarian subtext to scientism. Scientism entails a militant certainty of truth, and an utter intolerance for dissent that is remarkably akin to totalitarian political movements. Scientism is increasingly a spawn of the political left, which has been the primary source of totalitarianism in the past century.

The reaction of Darwinists or of global warming scientists to even the most mild skepticism is remarkably vicious. They hunt down skeptics and suppress differing opinions using practically any means at their disposal. If a school district attaches a sticker to a textbook that says "Darwin's theory is a theory, not a fact, and evidence for and against it should be considered." it will find itself in federal court, facing financial ruin, with jail a possibility for individuals who don't comply. Who would have imagined, a few decades ago, that scientists would use courts to settle scientific disputes?

As the ClimateGate emails amply demonstrate, scientists who believe in global warming systematically exclude and professionally destroy scientists who express skepticism. The emails show a remarkable demand for doctrinal purity in climate science. These pro-global warming scientists manufacture a "consensus" using strong-arm tactics, and enforce it with singular purpose. And when asked why scientists use such brutal tactics, they reply 'because it's consensus science!"

Particularly disturbing to me is the appellation "denialism" applied to mere questioning of scientific orthodoxy. It's an effort to drive anyone who questions orthodoxy out of acceptable society. Bourgeoisie, reactionaries, revisionists, denialists. It fits well in the Leninist lexicon.

Melanie Phillips at the British Spectator has a fine essay on this totalitarian current in the global warming movement. It applies as well to other encroachments of scientism in our civilization.

Green Totalitarianism

Lord Lawson was right to call in today’s Times for an inquiry into the global warming scandal. As noted below, through a set of hacked emails a group of some of the most influential scientific proponents of anthropogenic global warming have been revealed to have been manipulating, suppressing and distorting scientific evidence in order to bolster their claim. They in turn have said the email messages have been taken out of context. And with so much material now in the public domain, it is possible that some of it has an innocent explanation. But in an awful lot of it it is hard to see such innocence. As Lawson observes:

There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay.

This is the kind of thing these emails have revealed.

Here is lead IPCC scientist Keith Briffa admitting:

I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same.

Here are Phil Jones, Director of the Hadley Centre’s Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University and Michael Mann, creator of the infamous (and false) ‘hockey stick curve’ that underpinned AGW theory, discussing how to suppress the work of AGW sceptics, including changing the peer-review rules to do so:

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

Here is Phil Jones proposing to delete data to avoid having to reveal it under a Freedom of Information request:

The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

And here is lead IPCC scientist Kevin Trenberth effectively acknowledging the sceptics’ case. On a thread fretting about the likely influence of the BBC’s ‘climate change reporter’ Richard Black in reporting that there had been no warming since 1998 and that Pacific oscillations would ‘force cooling for the next 20-30 years’, Trenberth wails:

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather)... The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!

This material has revealed what has been described as ‘Nixonian-style paranoid plotting’ by these scientists to defraud the public. Actually, I think it reveals something even worse.

What appears to be the case is that these scientists did not set out to mislead the world so much as try to force data which did not correspond to their ideology of anthropogenic global warming to support that ideology. For me, one of the most telling emails was this one from Phil Jones on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

Bottom line - their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility. (My emphasis)

In other words, despite the fact that science (or history) tells us that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, thus destroying the basis of the AGW myth that we are living through an unprecedented warming of the climate caused by carbon dioxide arising from industrialisation, it cannot be true – because the Hadley CRU Director’s ‘gut’ tells him so.

All the manipulation, distortion and suppression revealed by these emails took place because it would seem these scientists knew their belief was not only correct but unchallengeable; and so when faced with evidence that showed it was false, they tried every which way to make the data fit the prior agenda. And those who questioned that agenda themselves had to be airbrushed out of the record, because to question it was simply impossible. Only AGW zealots get to decide, apparently, what science is. Truth is what fits their ideological agenda. Anything else is to be expunged.

Which is the more terrifying and devastating: if people are bent and deliberately try to deceive others, or if they are so much in thrall to an ideology that they genuinely have lost the power to think objectively and rationally?

I think that the terrible history of mankind provides the answer to that question. Nixon was a crook. But what we are dealing with here is the totalitarian personality. One thing is now absolutely clear for all to see about the anthropogenic global warming scam: science this is not.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 9:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Although this year has been widely touted as the “Year of Darwin” because of its big Darwin-related anniversaries, the book reviewers at the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) in London seem less than enthralled with the year’s crop of pro-Darwin retreads from the publishing industry. Indeed, the TLS’s “Books of the Year” issue just released last Friday fails to include any of the year’s big pro-Darwin tomes such as Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True or even Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth among its “Books of the Year.” Instead, the only book so honored that focuses on the Darwin-ID debate is Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, which was selected by noted atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel.

If I were a Darwinist, I’d be more than a bit concerned. Even many of those sympathetic to Darwinian materialism aren’t expressing much enthusiasm anymore for the tired arguments of the Neo-Darwinists.

Posted by John West at 6:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has written an insightful essay examining the broader significance of the ClimateGate scandal, including its implications for the Darwin-ID debate. Noting that certain major media outlets have tried to spike the ClimateGate story, Chapman observes that "the story is just too compelling to suppress in other outlets and on the Internet." But he goes on to ask:

what will it take for the media to take up the exactly parallel case of scientists who question the ability of Darwinian natural selection to explain the origin of life and the development of species? In several instances (the Richard Sternberg case, the Guillermo Gonzalez case), email trails have shown a similar attitude of entitlement and coercion. And money in the form of federal grants also suggests a similar pattern of prejudice and cronyism in universities and research institutions, not to mention at supposedly scientific journals.

Or do the media really imagine that the case of climate change is unique?

Posted by John West at 12:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Wesley J. Smith has an excellent post at his First Things blog on how the recent ClimateGate scandal is just a symptom of a much broader problem involving the ideological corruption of science:

Global warming isn’t the only field in which we have witnessed this kind of brazen ideological corruption of science in recent years. I have seen the same approach taken repeatedly against heterodox views in the human cloning/ESCR controversy, to the point that people have been driven off of faculties or denied tenure. My colleagues at the Discovery Institute face a similar buzz saw in their pursuit of intelligent design hypothesis, and then are taunted by the censors for not being published in peer reviewed journals. Indeed, when Richard Sternberg published an ID article, he was attacked and slandered so mercilessly by the Darwinists, that it sent a clear and threatening message to all other journal editors that they publish ID-oriented papers at peril to their own careers.

Posted by John West at 5:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

British journalist Christopher Booker, writing in the British Telegraph, has a thoughtful essay that puts the various aspects of the ClimateGate scandal in context and provides insight into the relative impact of each component of the scandal.

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is--what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction--to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played--to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods--not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society--itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause--is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age

Particularly important is Booker's observation that the most devastating aspect of the scandal may be the computer codes that warmist scientists used to cook the data to show warming that didn't exist. Again:

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is--what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction--to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming.

This ties the story and the motives of the scientists together: they went to extraordinary lengths to withhold, hide, and even delete data and code even from legal Freedom of Information Act requests because the code itself was the reason--the only reason--for the warming in their published results. Without the code--which the scientists guarded so passionately that they were willing to break the law rather than reveal it--the raw data showed a flat temperature record with no evidence of warming.

And, as Booker points out, the CRU scientists at the center of this fraud are the leaders in the global warming field and their data and manipulations form the basis for much of the world's global warming science. These frauds are not bit players. They are the core of global warming science.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Iowahawk has a delightful post on a newly evolved species: climate researchers. Money quotes:

Like other species in the order homo scientifica, the climate researcher gathers and organizes data to lure grant money to the hive. In contrast to those other species, however, the climate researcher has evolved a set of complex violent behaviors to insure any data leaving the hive is perfectly adapted to nature's most lucrative and sweetest grants. It really is a marvel of natural selection, and explains why the climate researcher continues to thrive in any kind of weather condition...The ear-piercing screech of the swarm warns the intruder that they will cut off his peer review unless he retreats. But the the hungry skeptic is not so easily dissuaded, and returns to the hive with a Freedom of Information Act form demanding a copy of the hive's raw data... This sends the climate researcher drones into a wild frenzy as they scramble to find and conceal the scent of the preprocessed data. To bide time the Alpha Grantwriter offers the skeptic a copy of the hockey stick graph. The skeptic threatens a lawsuit with his stinger. Thinking quickly, the Alpha Grantwriter performs an elaborate dance, communicating that the original data has been eaten, possibly by graduate drone. He presents the skeptic with the dead bodies of 10 drones as a peace offering. Finally stymied in his efforts to reach the data, the skeptic flies away. The hive lives on...The climate researcher is in some sense a milestone in evolutionary biology. Ever since Darwin, we have understood that a particular species adapts to its environmental reality. Now for the first time, we are seeing evidence that environmental reality is adapting to a particular species. It's not really rocket science. Well okay, I suppose it's really not science at all.

Perhaps E.O. Wilson will write the final chapter on climate research.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's going viral. Very funny.

link

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Australian journalist Andrew Bolt has a succinct bit of advice to scientists about the ClimateGate scandal:

Climategate: a word of advice to the scientists

The tide is turning. and fast. There will soon be an accounting - and the mood and the money for it. The reputation of science - and of many scientists - will be damaged severely.

Until now those scientists who knew the science behind global warming theory was weak or flawed largely kept their doubts to themselves, out of fear or other forms of self-interest. I’ve had the emails from some confessing to just that.

But self-interest should dictate they now make a stand. They need to show, for their own sake and for the sake of science, that they were on the right side of this debate, even if belatedly. Already I see some speaking--one even writing a book--who did not speak two years ago. There must be more now, to halt this madness before even more harm is done.

A decade from now, when scientists and the public look back at this extraordinary scandal, this great fit of collective madness, the question will be asked: on which side were you?

Now is the time to make sure you can answer with pride. Speak up. Reveal. Undo the damage.

Bolt is right about this: there will be an accounting for this fraud. People are very very angry, and while the skeptics whose darkest doubts have been vindicated don't pull the levers of organized science (the frauds do that), there are some financial and political resources available to the skeptics who have been demanding integrity in science, and they understand now that this is war.

A cabal of leading scientists, politicians, and media concubines have conspired to lie about global warming. The reasons are obvious: power and money. The illusion of planetary crisis serves as vehicle for 'emergency measures to save the planet', which are merely measures to empower and enrich an elite few. Al Gore, carbon-credit entrepreneur who puts his 'mouth where his money is', had it figured out a decade ago. The fraudulent scientists who suckle off the 7 billion dollars spent this year alone on the global warming scam (more than the U.S. spends annually on cancer research and AIDS research) are merely using science, rather than hedge funds, to enrich themselves. Dr. Philip Jones, the chief of the Climate Research Unit in England who figures so prominently in the fraud revealed in the emails, has personally obtained 25 million dollars in research grants, mostly public money. As those who are reasonably acquainted with peer review and the "inside" perspective of a particular discipline of science will (privately) attest, even scientists who abjure from outright fraud often produce work that is at best insipid, and is more often than not aimed at securing funding irrespective of genuine scientific merit. A lot of published science, when not actually fraudulent, is more a peer-reviewed grant application than cutting edge research.

I'm not sure that the scientific community can or will respond to this debacle in a courageous or ethical way. The ID-Darwinism debate clearly demonstrates that venality and shameless self-interest, as well as a toxic leftist-atheist ideology, runs very deep in the scientific community.

Science surely provides much benefit to mankind, but we may need to pursue scientific truth with a different set of scientists than the ones we have now. Surely many many scientists knew of the frauds so clearly documented in the ClimateGate scandal; where were the august scientific organizations--the Royal Academy, the UN's IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science--while this fraud was growing and gaining power. The obvious truth is that these citadels of organized science were part of the fraud, or at least acquiescent in it. Several of the admitted ClimateGate fraudsters were in senior positions in these organizations.

We are on the verge of reorganizing our lives, our governments, and our economies on the basis of massive transparent scientific fraud. We may be able to avert more damage; I'm not sure. The bad guys here have all the influence and most of the money, and they are not hindered by ethics.

What can we do? Criminal prosecution of scientists who manipulate data would be a good start. Scientists who fake data and manipulate peer review to advance their agenda are no different than corporate executives who manipulate stock prices or lawyers who tamper with juries. Ultimately, perhaps massive defunding of organized science, and a new system of support for research that demands utter transparency and maximal accommodation of debate, may be the only way to defend ourselves from an utterly corrupt scientific elite.

It may well be that the public will be forced to protect itself from organized science, as we now protect ourselves from organized crime.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:29 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Science journalist and global warming alarmist Chris Mooney is many things.

From his own lavish blog bio at Discover Magazine:

Chris Mooney is a visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University and the author of three books: The Republican War on Science, New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science-- Storm World, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming--dubbed "riveting" by the Boston Globe, selected as a 2007 best book of the year in the science category by Publisher's Weekly, and winner of the American Meteorological Society's 2009 Louis J. Battan Author's award; and the forthcoming Unscientific America, co-authored with Sheril Kirshenbaum.



In addition, he is a contributing editor to Science Progress, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect magazine, and also writes "The Intersection" blog with Kirshenbaum. He is quoted regularly in the media and has appeared on many radio and television programs, including The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Among other accolades, in 2005 Chris was named one of Wired magazine's ten "sexiest geeks." In addition, The Republican War on Science was named a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times book prize in the category of "Science and Technology," and Chris's 2005 Mother Jones feature story about ExxonMobil, conservative think tanks, and climate change was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the "public interest" category (as part of a cover package on global warming). Chris's 2005 article for Seed magazine on the Dover evolution trial was included in the volume Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006. In 2006, Chris also won the "Preserving Core Values in Science" award from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. Chris was born in Mesa, Arizona, and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana; he graduated from Yale University in 1999, where he wrote a column for the Yale Daily News. Before becoming a freelance writer, Chris worked for two years at The American Prospect as a writing fellow, then staff writer, then online editor (where he helped to create the popular blog Tapped). Chris has contributed to a wide variety of other publications in recent years, including Wired, Science, Harper's, Seed, New Scientist, Slate, Salon, Mother Jones, Legal Affairs, Reason, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. In addition, Chris's blog, "The Intersection," was a recipient of Scientific American's 2005 Science and Technology web award, which noted that "science is lucky to have such a staunch ally in acclaimed journalist Chris Mooney." Chris speaks regularly at academic meetings, bookstores, university campuses, and other events. He has appeared at distinguished universities including the Harvard Medical School, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Rockefeller University, and Duke University Medical Center; at major venues such as the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and Town Hall Seattle; and at bookstores across the country, ranging from Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida to Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. In 2006, he was the keynote speaker for the 43rd Annual Dinner of Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties and the Edward Lamb Peace Lecturer at Bowling Green State University. In 2007, he was the opening plenary speaker at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia. Chris has also been featured regularly by the national media. He has appeared on CSPAN's Book TV, Fresh Air With Terry Gross, NPR's Science Friday (here and here), and The Al Franken Show, among many other television and radio programs. He has been profiled by The Toronto Star and The Seattle Times, and interviewed by many outlets including Grist and Mother Jones. To see a more comprehensive list of Chris's various writings, click here. For speaking engagements click here …

Mooney, leading science journalist and “one of Wired magazine's ten 'sexiest geeks'” has of course benefited lavishly from his passionate embrace of consensus science. He has extraordinary access to scientists, who understand that he is a “staunch ally," and he has leveraged his amicable access into best-selling books, as well as awards for "Preserving Core Values in Science," speaking engagements, and widespread acclaim in the science community.

But these are times that test science journalists. A week ago, hackers released 160 mb of emails, data, and computer code from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The data extends back a decade, and rather clearly documents an astonishing pattern of manipulation of evidence, concealment of doubts about the validity of global warming, destruction of data not favorable to global warming, fantasizing violence against prominent climate skeptic scientists, and a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. The data reveal extensive scientific misconduct and even criminal fraud in the top echelons of the pro-global warming scientific community.

Climate science is of course Money’s journalistic specialty, and you would assume that he would apply the same scrutiny to this massive evidence of climate science fraud that he applied to the "Republican war on science."

Well, no. This is Mooney’s initial post on his blog, in its entirety, about the ClimateGate scandal:

“Why Climate-Gate ain’t nothing”

By now you’ve probably heard (New York Times, Washington Post, RealClimate). A server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was hacked; hundreds of emails from climate scientists are now public due to this despicable act. Global warming deniers are having a field day, because in some of the emails, the scientists are acting like, you know, people. They are also acting like scientists under fire, which is what they were and are. The Climate Research Unit is headed by Phil Jones, who has been involved in the highly public and seemingly unending “hockey stick” battle–and so peering into the emails lets the skeptics and deniers once again claim there was some kind of bad science involved in this one particular study, a claim they’ve been making for almost a decade now.

Of course, none of this is at all relevant to the climate issue today. It’s a nasty, ugly sideshow. The science of climate change doesn’t stand or fall based upon what a few scientists said in emails they always thought would remain private. And as for the “hockey stick”; well, fully four years ago, in The Republican War on Science, I explained why the right was using this as a distraction from the real issues:

…although it might create good publicity, the Right’s selective attack on [hockey stick study lead author Michael] Mann’s work ultimately presents a huge diversion for policymakers trying to decide what to do about global warming. Mann points out that he’s hardly the only scientist to produce a “hockey stick” graph–other teams of scientists have come up with similar reconstructions of past temperatures. And even if Mann’s work and all of the other studies that served as the basis for the IPCC [2001] statement on the historical temperature record are wrong, that would not in any way invalidate the conclusion that humans are currently causing rising temperatures.

“There’s a whole independent line of evidence, some of it very basic physics,” explains Mann.

That’s even truer now than it was in 2004, when I interviewed Mann, or 2005, when The Republican War on Science actually came out.

The fact is that no matter what a few scientists may have said in emails, we have to go to Copenhagen and deal with our warming, melting planet. That’s what matters. The rest of this is hot air, and–unless it can somehow be channeled to power a few wind turbines–it doesn’t do us or the planet any good.

Who knew that plausible deniability is one of the "core values of science"? Mooney’s “Why Climate-Gate ain’t nothing” post generated 180 comments, mostly scathing and mostly criticizing Mooney and fraudulent climate science (from Discover Magazine readers!), so Mooney spun again:

The "ClimateGate Burden" of Proof

After the large volume of climate skeptic/denier comments that came in yesterday disagreeing with my post on the relative insignificance of ClimateGate, I feel that more needs to be said. This time, let me couch my argument in a different format, so that perhaps it will be better understood.

Those of us who think this is all smoke and no fire are starting from the following position: There is a massive body of science, tested and retested and ratified by many leading scientific bodies, showing that global warming is real and human caused. So then we pose the following question: What would it take for “ClimateGate” to significantly weaken this body of evidence in a serious way?

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that all of the worst and most damning interpretations of these exposed emails are accurate. I don’t think this is remotely true, but let’s assume it.

Even if this is the case, it does not prove the following:

1) The scientists whose emails have been revealed are representative of or somehow a proxy for every other climate scientist on the planet.

2) The studies that have been called into questions based on the emails (e.g., that old chestnut the “hockey stick”) are somehow the foundations of our concern about global warming, and those concerns stand or fall based on those studies.

Neither one of these is true, which is why I can say confidently that “ClimateGate” is overblown–and which is why I’ve never been impressed by systematic attacks on the “hockey stick.” Even if that study falls, we still have global warming on our hands, and it’s still human caused.

My sense is that the climate skeptic commenters we’re seeing aren’t actually familiar with the vast body of climate science work out there, and don’t realize how most individual studies are little more than a drop in the evidentiary bucket. It is because of the consilience of evidence from multiple studies and fields that we accept that climate change is human caused, and it is because of the vast diversity and number of scientists, and scientific bodies, who find that evidence compelling that we talk of a consensus.

I don’t see how anything about “ClimateGate” changes this big picture significantly–and again, that’s even if we assume the worst about what the emails reveal

Mooney's second post generated 371 comments, mostly scathing and mostly criticizing Mooney and fraudulent climate science.

Mooney neither quotes nor analyzes any of the 1000 or so ClimateGate emails, nor does he discuss any of the hundred megabytes of data and computer code that reveals systematic manipulation to coax warming out of reluctant data (so 'man-made' global warming is real, in a sense). In fact, Mooney shows no familiarity at all with the 160 mb of emails and data, although the internet is on fire with detailed quotes and analysis. Mooney merely asserts that

...no matter what a few scientists may have said in emails, we have to go to Copenhagen and deal with our warming, melting planet.

Admittedly, Mooney has been busy. Too busy to analyze any of the emails or data that document scientific misconduct and fraud. No time for science journalism here. Yet Mooney insists that we pony up trillions of dollars and get right to work restructuring our lives, our governments, and the world economy along the lines that Mooney and his award-bestowing-to-Mooney science patrons demand. He insists that doing exactly as scientists say is “what matters”. Why should humanity be any different than Chris Mooney?

Scientific American revealed perhaps too much when it purred "...science is lucky to have such a staunch ally in acclaimed journalist Chris Mooney." Can we trust staunch-ally-science-journalists like Mooney to investigate science fraud? One wonders what would have become of Watergate, if the Nixon administration had bestowed preemptively such lavish acclaim on Woodward and Bernstein ('Preserving the Core Values in Government')--and Woodward and Bernstein accepted. WaPo headline, circa 1974: "Why Watergate Ain't Nothing."

But heck, I’ve got a little time, and Copenhagen’s a couple of weeks away, so let's take a look at just one of the emails. This is just one (of dozens) of incriminating emails that have attracted quite a bit of scrutiny from scientists, bloggers and journalists who are not burdened by Mooney’s busy award-receiving schedule.

“Phil Jones” is the director of the Climate Research Unit in England and one of the world’s leading global warming scientists. “Mike” is Michael Mann, a Penn State climatologist who is the author of the famous “Hockey Stick Graph”, which purports to show a radical increase in global temperatures in the past several decades.

From: Phil Jones
 To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
 Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or 
first thing tomorrow. 
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
 to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual 
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH l and
 N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
 data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers 
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones 
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia 
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK [Emphasis mine]

The salient phrase is this:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
 to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

“Mike’s Nature trick”? Jones is referring to a data manipulation used by climatologist Michael Mann to generate his famous “Hockey Stick Graph,” which is an icon of global warming science.

But what precisely does Jones mean by “trick”?

Now there are three meanings that could be assigned to “trick”:

1) Neat handy little technique for doing something innocent
2) A deception
3) An work-related act performed by a prostitute

So which kind of “trick” was Jones referring to?

Jones offers the answer in the next clause:

…to hide the decline.

Ahhh. “Hide” means to conceal (it doesn’t likely refer to an animal skin) and “decline," in an e-mail about temperature data, refers to a decline in temperature--i.e. global cooling. So Dr. Jones provides his own explanation for his use of “Mike’s Nature trick." Translated into normal language, Jones’ “trick” was "…to hide the global cooling."

A leading British climate scientist acknowledges that he and an equally prominent American climate scientist use a “trick” to hide global cooling in their published data.

To an award-winning science journalist who specializes in the investigation of climate science, this may sound like it "ain't nothing." But to me it sure doesn't sound right. So let’s review the possible meanings of Jones’ “trick."

1) “Trick”: a neat handy little technique for doing something innocent

Not likely, because “…to hide the decline” isn’t to do something innocent.

2) “Trick”: a deception

Yep.

3) “Trick”: a work-related act performed by a prostitute.

A spot-on description of Mooney’s science journalism.

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

The silence of the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere on the ClimateGate scandal is remarkable.

For years, readers of Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, Neurologica, WhyEvolutionIsTrue, Denialism, Respectful Insolence, and other militantly ‘pro-science’ blogs have been treated to rants about the need to protect the integrity of science from frauds and ideologically motivated practitioners. Of course, ‘protection of the integrity of science’ in the faux 'pro-science' blogsphere has generally meant suppression of skeptics who question so-called 'consensus science' on Darwinism and on Anthropogenic Global Warming. ‘Protection of science’ has more often that not entailed personal invective, recourse to ‘consensus’, advocacy of professional destruction of skeptics, deference to scientific authorities, censorship, and judicial coercion.

The ClimateGate e-mails and data sets obtained from the Climate Research Unit in England reveal scientific misconduct and criminal fraud on a massive scale. This documented pervasive scientific fraud suggests a darker meaning of 'consensus' in 'consensus science'. The Brahmins of climate science are, by their own words, frauds. Data on global temperatures was faked, withheld, and, if sought by skeptics with sufficient vigor, deleted. Climate scientists conspired to undermine peer review and to destroy the careers of other scientists who attempted to replicate their results. Exhortation to integrity and transparency was utterly absent from the communications. The e-mail conversations, had they been those of business executives, would invoke R.I.C.O. statutes. Trillions of dollars, and the economies and even governmental structure of many nations, depend on the integrity of this science. And there is no integrity.

Yet the militant pro-science blogsphere has been silent about this enormous scientific scandal.

Compare the pro-science blogosphere’s silence about fraud and scientific misconduct in climate science to another recent controversy in science: the appointment of Francis Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Collins is a scientist of the highest professional and personal reputation. His scandal, according to the science blogsphere, is this:

He’s a Christian who publicly talks about his belief in God.

The ‘pro-science’ blogsphere… exploded.

P.Z. Myers

This is a big one for me: he will use his position to act as a propagandist for Christianity, entirely inappropriately. We already saw this in the announcement of the completion of the draft of the human genome project, where he actually brags about getting Clinton to include religious language in his speech, and where he himself made claims about the DNA sequence being "the language of god". The head of the NIH isn't just an administrative position; it's a political position, and the appointment of a loudly evangelical Christian to that spot is sending a political message. There are enough of us even louder atheists out here who will make a stink over any attempt on his part to use the accomplishments of science under the NIH to proselytize, that he's going to have to be very cautious in his statements from now on…integrity. Collins hasn't got it.

Jerry Coyne:

I expect Collins to resign from BioLogos if he wants to maintain any scientific credibility. Yes, the guy has every right to believe what he wants, but a director of the nation’s most prestigious research foundation has to have some standards, and BioLogos [Collin’s Christian website] is beyond the pale.

Russel Blackford:

Nonetheless, Collins' overall worldview, as summarized in his lecture slides, is that of man with a desperate account of our place in the universe. He appears determined to hang on to a belief in human exceptionalism and a supernatural component to our nature, despite all the evidence. His actual views are a weird mix of legitimate science and traditional evangelical doctrine.

Steven Pinker:

I have serious misgivings about Francis Collins being appointed director of NIH. It’s not that I think that there should be a religious litmus test for public science administrators, or that being a devout Christian is a disqualification. But in Collins’s case, it is not a matter of private belief, but public advocacy. The director of NIH is not just a bureaucrat who tends the money pipleline between the treasury and molecular biologists (which is how many scientists see the position). He or she is also a public face of science, someone who commands one of the major bully pulpits for science in the country. The director testifies before Congress, sets priorities, selects speakers and panelists, and is in many regards a symbol for biomedical research in the US and the world. In that regard, many of Collins’s advocacy statements are deeply disturbing.

Evolgen:

[Is] Francis Collins a viable candidate? I argue NO. Collins is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The importance of biology in the near future of science is undeniable, so a biologist would be a good choice (as would a chemist or physicist). He is also an Evangelical Christian who has made his beliefs well known in a book and various magazine articles. Nisbet argues that Collins' religious faith would allow him to reach to a large portion of America (i.e., the religious nutjobs that currently takes anti-science positions).
I think Collins has no academic credibility. What I mean by that is that Collins is unqualified for the position he currently holds… The reason Collins is unqualified for his current position is his public displays of ignorance regarding evolutionary biology. This is important in respect to NHGRI because so much of genomics research relies heavily on evolutionary theory.
Here are a few examples of Collins displaying his ignorance:…He wrote heavily about what he calls "Moral Law" in his book. He believes that current research cannot explain human morality, therefore goddidit. This is a god of the gaps argument. However, in making his argument, he disregarded large swaths of research on the evolution of altruism, thereby artificially increasing the gaps. This is brought up in a review of Collins' book and this Scientific American article (I quoted the relevant part here)

Michael Schermer

There is no question that Francis Collins is qualified scientifically to direct the National Institutes of Health, but I have two reasons for believing that there is a nontrivial chance that his religious convictions will influence his decisions as a policy maker for science.
One, the very nature of being an evangelical Christian — which Dr. Collins self-identifies as — means that you should evangelize for the Lord. Serious evangelicals evangelize not just on Sundays, but everyday, in every way, never hiding their lantern under a bushel, as proclaimed in Matthew 5:16: “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” The whole point of being an evangelical Christian is to love the Lord openly and try to bring to Christ as many people as possible; otherwise you wouldn’t be an evangelical. I know because I was once an evangelical Christian, having been born again in 1971 and for many years devoting my life to evangelizing for Christ, first to my fellow high school students, then as an undergraduate at Pepperdine University (a Church of Christ institution), and later going door-to-door. I was doing God’s work, and what could be more important than that? In the evangelical worldview there really is no separation of church and state. Yes, Jesus told us (in Matthew 22:21) to “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, but that applies to specific things like taxes and tithings, not the general goal of bringing all Americans to the Lord. So I worry that Dr. Collins’ evangelical enthusiasms may blur the lines separating the profane and the sacred, church and state, Caesar and God

P.Z. Myers summed up the science blogsphere’s response to the scandal of Collin’s appointment:

…there is discussion going on all over the place…

None of these blogs, at the time my writing of this post, has any discussion about the massive scandal in Climate Science. What duplicity. A Christian is appointed to a government science post, and the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere explodes. When a movie- a freakin’ movie (Expelled)- is released, the pro-science blogsphere descends into a vortex of angst that persists to this day. Yet when the integrity of a major field of global science is destroyed- not threatened, but destroyed- by smoking-gun evidence of massive systematic scientific misconduct and fraud, the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere gets writer's cramp. Dead silence.

Note to the investigators pouring over the thousands of ClimateGate e-mails, computer code, and data: Keep up the scrutiny. The integrity of science must be protected. If you find any evidence that any of these scientists went to church or were planning to make a movie, contact the science blogs immediately.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Christopher Monckton has a good essay on Pajamas Media on the growing ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails and data reveal that the leading scientists in the global-warming alarmist community faked and destroyed data and took measures to prevent other scientists from examining or critiquing their work. Monkton is the chief policy advisor to the England’s Science and Public Policy Institute, and served as Margaret Thatcher’s policy advisor from 1982 to 1986. He has been a vocal advocate for integrity in science and a harsh critic of global warming alarmism.

Monckton:

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little. The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals. With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offenses and, if thought fit, prosecute. But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.

The 'pro-science' blogsphere has been silent about this scandal, which is likely to be the second-worst example of scientific fraud in modern times (you know the worst example). Where are Myers, Coyne, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, Dunford, Orac, Dawkins, Novella, and the brownshirts at Denialism blog on this catastrophe for science? Where is the demand for transparency and accountability and integrity. For that, you have to look to the skeptics, to the people who are challenging 'consensus science'.

'Consensus science' isn't science. 'Consensus' is an attribute of politics, not science. Science inherently involves utter transparency and rigorous and respectful open debate. Real scientists welcome scrutiny and critique; the hallmark of a good scientist is that a good scientist reserves his most rigorous scrutiny for his own work. Censorship, invocation of 'consensus science' to elide scrutiny, real or threatened use of judicial coercion, and professional destruction of skeptics- which are characteristic tactics of global warming alarmists and of Darwinists- are tactics used to circumvent the scientific process.

Invocation of 'consensus science' is merely a tactic to insulate bad science from scrutiny. 'Consensus science' is to science as money-laundering is to finance.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 12:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's the question that bothers many Darwinists: why doesn't everyone believe us? This is compounded of course by the fact that most of the people Darwinists interact with in the mainstream media believe everything anyone in the scientific establishment tells them (see: ClimateGate) as if it were gospel truth, causing them to wonder why a solid year of attention paid to Charles Darwin and his 150-year-old book isn't convincing anyone.

As John West explains at ID the Future podcast, people have good reasons for rejecting Darwinian evolution, based on both the scientific evidence and the way it purports to overthrow long-cherished ideas about human dignity, morality, and God.

Click here to listen.

This is a hard pill for many Darwinists to swallow, particularly those who themselves uphold traditional morality and belief in God, but since they have no problem seeing no problems with the mounting scientific evidence against Darwin's theory, it's not too difficult for them to turn a blind eye to the social implications of Darwinian evolution.

Witness this Reuters interview with Nick Spencer, Director of Studies at Theos (and formerly a researcher for The Henley Centre, interestingly enough). He immediately discounts the fact that dissent from Darwinism might have nothing to do with intelligent design (don't just take my word for it — take the Altenberg 16's!) and instead blames Herbert Spencer's popular phrase, "survival of the fittest," for leading people to encounter Darwinism on a popular level as "doctrine."

Of course, as Nick Spencer readily admits, Darwin's most ardent defenders then and now advance these philosophical conclusions (e.g., there is no God, no moral absolutes, etc.), but he doesn't see any connection. Instead, Spencer argues that "it’s quite possible to be an evolutionist and not to hold that philosophy about life, to be an evolutionist and still to believe in God, and morality, and purpose, and design, and that’s what I think we should aim for."

I'm not sure he's read Origin, but he certainly hasn't read Darwin's Descent of Man. Or even a Ken Miller biology textbook. The whole point (even for a TE like Miller) is that Darwinian evolution is, by definition, a purposeless process.

Does Darwinism jive with traditional morality and faith in God? It's a question worth exploring... but don't look to places like Theos for any acknowledgment that the question even has merit.

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is being named one of the top books of 2009 in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement (TLS) annual “Books of the Year” issue, officially due out later this week. The selection was made by prominent philosopher (and noted atheist) Thomas Nagel at New York University. The books issue is not online yet, but the TLS website has posted a preview of Nagel’s endorsement of the book:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

Signature in the Cell was previously named one of the top ten best-selling science books of the year by Amazon.com.

Posted by John West at 11:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

Eco-science has a checkered past. And, we are learning, a checkered present. In what is shaping up as one of the biggest science scandals in modern times, hackers have obtained thousands of e-mails, computer codes, and data sets from climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England. The CRU is one of the world’s leading climate research institutions; its scientists play central roles in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The e-mails involve conversations between CRU scientists and scientists from all over the world who support the theory of man-made global warming. The content of the e-mails is astonishing.

British journalist James Delingpole has a synopsis of the scientific misconduct and criminal fraud revealed in the e-mails that have been analyzed thus far:

1. Manipulation of evidence. In one email, the CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones apparently confesses to having played with data – most unscientifically – in order to achieve his desired end. "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." (Professor Jones has defended himself, somewhat disingenuously you might think, by saying that "trick" – in the world of science – has no negative connotations).

2. Concealing private doubts about whether the world is really heating up. One scientist expresses his frustration that the global temperatures are not behaving as he feels they ought to behave: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

3. Destruction of evidence (following a Freedom of Information request – almost certainly an illegal activity): "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."

4. Fantasizing violence against prominent climate sceptic scientists: "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.'

5. Gloating over news of the death of a prominent climate-change skeptic, Australian John L Daly, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site: “In an odd way this is cheering news.”

6. Attempting to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (ie the period from about 900 to about 1200 when global mean temperatures were considerably warmer than they are now): "……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…."

7. And, perhaps, most damningly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority: “I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

The pro-global warming scientists repeatedly and openly discuss fabrication of scientific evidence, systematic efforts to circumvent release of data that would permit others to replicate their published results, destruction of climate data to avoid Freedom-of-Information Act disclosure, and political efforts to remove scientists who question their pro-global-warming assertions from editorial boards. The evidence of scientific misconduct and actual criminal fraud on the part of these scientists is already massive, and detailed analysis of the e-mails and data sets is only in its early stages.

The contents of these e-mails should end the scientific careers of many of the scientists involved. They have collaborated in gross scientific misconduct. Indeed, the fabrication and destruction of data financed by public funds for the purpose of influencing public policy on a global scale is a criminal act, and many of these scientists should be prosecuted criminally. If these scientists were stockbrokers or business executives, they would be on their way to prison. This scandal, involving scientific data that is set to influence the expenditure of trillions of dollars and even influence the structure of governments and regulation on a global scale, dwarfs Enron and Madoff.

Just as disturbing as the smoking-gun evidence for scientific misconduct and fraud is the apparent absence of dissent from these practices by any of the scientists involved in these e-mail correspondences. This misconduct and even criminal behavior seems to be accepted without question, as an intrinsic part of climate science. It would be naive to believe that this misconduct involves only one field of science. In what other areas of science are fraud and scientific misconduct an accepted part of the culture?

The CRU e-mails reveal that many of the leading pro-global warming ‘scientists’ aren’t really a collaborative of professional scientists searching for the truth about the climate; they’re an international crime syndicate.

Posted by Michael Egnor at 11:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

More details are now coming out from the lawsuit filed against the California Science Center by the American Freedom Alliance (AFA), filed in the Superior Court for the State of California for the County of Los Angeles (Central District). AFA's lawsuit contends that the California Science Center engaged in viewpoint discrimination when cancelling AFA's contract to screen the pro-intelligent design (ID) documentary Darwin’s Dilemma at the Center’s IMAX Theatre on October 25th. As discussed below, AFA's complaint contains e-mails from California Science Center staff revealing that the Center cared more about how it would be perceived by ID-critics in the scientific community for renting its facilities to screen a pro-ID video than it did about AFA’s constitutional rights.

The abrupt cancellation of AFA’s event was first reported by the Los Angeles Daily News, and has previously been covered by Discovery Institute here, here, here, and here.

The complaint corrects a common misstatement about this case, accurately noting, “Discovery Institute was not a party to the contract between the Plaintiff [California Science Center] and Defendants [American Freedom Alliance] for the screening of ‘Darwin’s Dilemma.’”

E-mails Show Viewpoint Discrimination
Most importantly, as noted the complaint contains e-mail documentation exposing the actual reason that the California Science Center cancelled AFA’s contract to screen Darwin’s Dilemma. As the complaint shows, the California Science Center’s e-mail officially cancelling AFA’s contract unashamedly reveals that the Center was most concerned about its “reputation” in the scientific community and its “relationship” to other scientific groups after having rented its facilities to a pro-ID group, throwing AFA’s constitutional rights under the bus. The complaint states:

On October 6, 2009, Christina M. Sion, Vice President of Food & Event Services at CENTER, (hereinafter “SION”) wrote an e-mail to DAVIS [President of the AFA] stating that “we are cancelling your event at the California Science Center.” SION’s e-mail stated:

“It has come to our attention that in a press release issued October 5, 2009 by the American Freedom Alliance, it is inferred that the California Science Center as [sic] a Smithsonian Institute affiliate is co-sponsoring the Darwin Debates. Your event is a private event held on the California Science Center property but is not affiliated in any way with the California Science Center or the Smithsonian. This press release has damaged our relationship with the Smithsonian and the reputation of the California Science Center. According to the Event Policies and Procedures that you signed to reserve the date for the event, you agreed to submit all promotional materials to the California Science Center for review and approval prior to printing or broadcast. Because you did not obtain this approval and the press release has had significant negative ramifications, we are canceling your event at the California Science Center.” (emphases added)

Thus, the October 5th Discovery Institute press release which Sion complains about not only wasn’t issued (or controlled) by the AFA, but it also wasn’t inaccurate. Thus, AFA’s lawsuit correctly notes that “The contract states nothing concerning promotions of the event by third parties nor requiring the monitoring, oversight, management, or control of third-party promotions.”

That being the case, what was the real reason the California Science Center cancelled AFA’s contract?

Sion’s e-mail unwittingly also exposes the real reason AFA’s contract was apparently cancelled: The California Science Center was worried that publicity about its rental of facilities to screen a pro-ID video had “damaged our relationship with the Smithsonian and the reputation of the California Science Center.” And consider Sion's closing statement: “Because you did not obtain this approval and the press release has had significant negative ramifications, we are canceling your event at the California Science Center.”

Just what are those “negative ramifications”? And do they offer just cause to breach a contract? We’ve already established that the AFA didn’t need approval for a third party publicity statement it didn’t control. All that’s left is the California Science Center’s concern that public knowledge that a pro-ID event was going forward was perceived to have “significant negative ramifications.”

Is that a valid reason to cancel a contract? The California Science Center is a department of the State of California that rents its facilities for use by private groups. As a government facility, the First Amendment prohibits it from refusing to rent to private groups based upon a distaste for the viewpoint of the speech expressed by the group. That’s called viewpoint discrimination. Yet the California Science Center seems more concerned about purported "damage" to its "reputation" and perceived "negative ramifications" stemming from AFA's pro-ID viewpoint than it does with AFA's constitutional rights to express that viewpoint at a government-owned forum. AFA appears to have a strong case that the Center engaged in viewpoint discrimination.

(It goes without saying that the California Science Center has long-hosted exhibits promoting evolution. I personally remember visiting the Center in the elementary school when it was known as the “California Museum of Science and Industry.” My public elementary school took a trip to the museum and we were taught about the evolution of dinosaurs.)

Local Academics Complained about the AFA's Pro-ID Event
AFA’s complaint further elaborates on the “negative ramifications” felt by the California Science Center. It turns out that various Los Angeles area academics had expressed strong opposition to the California Science Center renting its facilities for a pro-ID event. As Hilary Schor, USC professor of English, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies and Law stated in an e-mail that was forwarded to a curator at the California Science Center, “I’m less troubled by the freedom of speech issues than why my tax dollars which support the California ‘Science’ Center are being spent on hosting religious propaganda”.

AFA’s lawsuit complaint aptly observes that “[t]his sentiment, written by a law professor, sadly demonstrates a purposeful indifference to constitutional protections enshrined and safeguarded in the Bill of Rights.”

The complaint also shows that a curator at another Los Angeles area museum expressed angst that the California Science Center was renting its facilities for a pro-ID event.

There is also evidence that the Smithsonian Institution itself intervened in the situation and may have pressured AFA to cancel the event. After detailing the Smithsonian’s long history of opposing academic freedom for intelligent design, the complaint quotes a Los Angeles Daily News article where Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer acknowledges that he “spoke” with the California Science Center after becoming “concerned by the inference … there was a showing of the [Darwin’s Dilemma] film at a Smithsonian branch.” Kremer’s statements directly suggest that the Smithsonian opposed any “inference” that it was connecting to the showing of Darwin’s Dilemma.

AFA's lawsuit complaint sheds more light on what occurred. The day before Chris Sion cancelled AFA’s event, Smithsonian Affiliates Director Harold Closter wrote to a California Science Center staff member that expressing concern that a “press release” (the one issued by Discovery Institute) made it appear as if the Smithsonian was linked to AFA’s event. He wrote, “We are concerned that [the EVENT] not be represented as a Smithsonian event or program or anything with which we have any involvement.”

Feeling pressured by the Smithsonian, it seems that the California Science Center decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was simply to breach contract and cancel AFA’s event.

Based upon this and other evidence, the lawsuit argues that the California Science Center’s complaint about press releases “was contrived as a pretext by Defendants for cancelling the event when the real reason for cancelling it derived from hostility to the viewpoints expressed in ‘Darwin’s Dilemma’ … By asserting a breach of contract argument, Defendants sought to shroud themselves within a cloak of plausible deniability for violating Plaintiff’s constitutional rights.”

And all AFA wanted to do was rent a facility to show a pro-ID video. Imagine that.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (2)

A lawsuit has been filed against the California Science Center by the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) for cancelling the AFA’s contract to screen the Darwin’s Dilemma documentary on October 25th. According to AFA’s press release:

American Freedom Alliance (AFA), a non-profit group, has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against a popular science museum for cancelling an event exploring the topic of intelligent design. The group says its free speech rights were violated when the California Science Center (CSC) abruptly reversed a decision to allow the showing of a pro-intelligent design documentary at the museum’s IMAX Theater. The program was also scheduled to screen a pro-evolution film, but, the lawsuit alleges, museum officials were fearful of having intelligent design discussed in any context.

The lawsuit is believed to be the first since the 2005 case of Kitzmiller v. Dover to consider the public’s right to learn about intelligent design. While that case focused on whether a public school violated the First Amendment “No Establishment Clause” by instructing students about the theory, AFA’s lawsuit alleges that the museum violated its First Amendment rights by caving in to demands within the scientific and academic communities to deny intelligent design a public forum for discussion.

Discovery Institute is not a party to AFA’s lawsuit, nor was it a party to AFA’s original contract with the California Science Center. AFA’s statement explains that:

The lawsuit alleges that CSC officials conspired to drop the event because they did not want the museum to be viewed as legitimizing intelligent design as a scientific theory. It alleges that the museum’s CEO/President, Jeffrey Rudolph, was pressured to cancel the event by colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Southern California, the Huntington Library and elsewhere. The complaint further alleges that because the CSC is a state agency, it violated AFA’s First Amendment right of free speech by attempting to suppress legitimate discussion of the controversial topic.

“Certain museum officials and their cronies in academia and throughout the scientific community are part of a subtle but effective movement to marginalize a scientific theory that challenges their world view,” said AFA’s attorney, William J. Becker, Jr., of The Becker Law Firm in Los Angeles. “The public should be allowed to make up its own mind whether intelligent design has any merit. Any time public officials stand in the way of legitimate debate, they reveal their hostility toward intellectual freedom, which the Constitution is designed to safeguard.”

Posted by Casey Luskin at 12:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As part of the recognition of this being the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species, CNN.com today published this piece by CSC Director Stephen C. Meyer.

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Stephen Meyer says there are scientific reasons to doubt consensus about Darwin's theory

Meyer: Fossil record challenges idea that organisms evolved from a single ancestor

Meyer: There is compelling scientific evidence of actual intelligent design

While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon.

Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that Darwin disproved once and for all the argument for intelligent design from nature.

And that of course is why he remains hugely controversial. A Zogby poll commissioned by the Discovery Institute this year found that 52 percent of Americans agree "the development of life was guided by intelligent design." Those who are not scientists may wonder if they have a right to entertain skepticism about Darwinian theory.

We are told that a consensus of scientists supporting the theory means that Darwinian evolution is no longer subject to debate. But does it ever happen that a seemingly broad consensus of scientific expertise turns out to be wrong, generated by an ideologically motivated stampeding of opinion?

Read the rest here.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 12:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

May a teacher answer questions from students about her personal religious beliefs or her beliefs on Darwin’s theory of evolution? That’s the issue addressed in Moore v. Gaston County Board of Education, where a lower federal court found it legal for a agnostic teacher who supported evolution to express his views in response to student questions about what he believed. Would a teacher who doubts Darwinism also be granted the academic freedom to openly answer student questions about whether she finds evolutionary biology persuasive?

1. Summary

A student teacher, George Moore, sued the Gaston County School District in North Carolina after being dismissed because he supported evolution in class by giving “unorthodox answers to student questions (derived from the day's lesson text) about creation, evolution, immortality, and the nature and existence of God”⁵⁵ while substitute teaching for a seventh grade history class. A student had asked Moore if he “believed that man descended from monkeys”⁵⁶ and Moore affirmed his support for Darwin’s theory of evolution. The students then asked Moore whether he believed in Adam and Eve, whether he thought the Bible should be taken literally, if he believed in an afterlife, and other questions about the Bible.⁵⁷ Moore replied that he was agnostic towards religion and was subsequently relieved of his teaching duties.⁵⁸ Moore brought suit arguing that his in-class statements were given merely in response to student questions.⁵⁹ Noting that the state has a “vital interest in protecting the impressionable minds of its young people from any form of extreme propagandism in the classroom,” the district court upheld Moore’s right to freedom of expression to answer the students’ questions.⁶⁰ The court held that it was appropriate to side with Moore because preventing teachers from answering such questions from students would “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”⁶¹

2. Importance and Commentary

Under Moore, if students inquire about a teacher’s personal views on biological origins, the teacher may answer honestly without worry of advancing religion. Of course, Moore’s holding applies not only to teachers that support Darwinian evolution, but also to those who dissent from Darwin’s theory. As the district court found:

To discharge a teacher without warning because his answers to scientific and theological questions do not fit the notions of the local parents and teachers is a violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. It is "an establishment of religion," the official approval of local orthodoxy, and a violation of the Constitution. ⁶²

Thus, when students inquire about a teacher’s views on evolution, under Moore that teacher may answer those questions regardless of whether she supports Darwinism, or dissents from Darwinian evolution. Moore also has implications for teachers that want to teach their own unorthodox viewpoints in the classroom. The court decried the fact that “[r]eligious or scientific dogma supported by the power of the state has historically brought threat to liberty, and often death to the unorthodox”⁶³ and balanced teacher academic freedom against a desire to “protect[] the impressionable minds of its young people from any form of extreme propagandism in the classroom.”⁶⁴ Also balanced against academic freedom was a need to preserve order in the classroom and prevent disruption. ⁶⁵ Teacher freedom of speech was supported by the court’s finding that “the Supreme Court has on numerous occasions emphasized that the right to teach, to inquire, to evaluate and to study is fundamental to a democratic society.”⁶⁶ Such findings could support the academic freedom of teachers to teach scientific viewpoints that dissent from neo-Darwinism, provided that they are presented in an objective, nonpropogandistic fashion which does not disrupt the normal curriculum. Moore stands for the protection of such teacher academic freedom even when the teacher is presenting “unorthodox” views.

Finally, the court was troubled by the district’s lack of standards for teacher speech.⁶⁷ The court found that the teacher “had the right not to be relieved of his teaching opportunity for unconstitutional reasons.”⁶⁸ This implies that teachers have constitutionally protected freedom to express criticisms of neo-Darwinism in response to student questions without fear of losing their jobs. It also implies that there may be legitimate grounds to protect teacher freedom of speech to teach scientific viewpoints that may be considered “unorthodox.”

[Editor’s Note: This survey of Moore v. Gaston County Bd. of Educ, is an excerpt from the article “Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the Teaching of Biological Origins,” Hamline University Law Review, Vol. 32(1):1-64 (Winter, 2009), published by Hamline University School of Law. This excerpt covers the case Gaston v. Gaston County Bd. of Educ.; the full article can be read here.]

References Cited
[55.] Moore v. Gaston County Bd. of Educ., 357 F. Supp. 1037 (W.D.N.C. 1973) at 1037.
[56.] Id. at 1038.
[57.] Id.
[58.] Id. at 1038-39.
[59.] Id.
[60.] Moore, 357 F. Supp. at 1040.
[61.] Id. at 1040 (citing Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967)).
[62.] Id. at 1043.
[63.] Id. at 1042.
[64.] Id. at 1040.
[65.] Id. (“[Any] conduct . . . in class or out of it, which for any reason—whether it stems from time, place or type of behavior—materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.”) (quoting Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 513 (1969)).
[66.] Moore, 357 F. Supp. at 1039-1040.
[67.] Id. at 1040-1041.
[68.] Id.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 8:24 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to a recent online report from Wired Science, “On one of the Galápagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.”

If it were true, this would be very important news. Evolutionary biologists have long recognized that Charles Darwin (despite the title of his most famous book) failed to solve what he called “the mystery of mysteries,” — the origin of species. Darwin argued that it happens by natural selection acting on small variations, but no one has ever observed the origin of a new species (“speciation”) by this process. Evolutionary biologist Keith Stewart Thomson wrote in 1997 that “a matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of evolution's smoking gun,” and “the smoking gun of evolution is speciation, not local adaptation and differentiation of populations.” Before Darwin, the consensus was that species can vary only within certain limits; indeed, centuries of artificial selection had seemingly demonstrated such limits experimentally. “Darwin had to show that the limits could be broken,” wrote Thomson, “so do we.” ¹

According to Wired Science, the mystery is now solved. “Evolution’s smoking gun” has been found.

Or has it? Darwin called The Origin of Species “one long argument.”² Some of Darwin’s modern followers have claimed to observe speciation by natural selection, but the evidence doesn’t support their claim. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design ³ I called it “one long bluff,” and the report in Wired Science is part of the bluff.

Forget the fact that the Galápagos finches did not shape “the theories of a young Charles Darwin.” On the voyage of the Beagle Darwin collected nine of the islands’ thirteen species, but he identified only six of them as finches. Except in two cases, Darwin failed to observe any differences in the birds’ diets, and even then he failed to correlate diet with beak shape. Only after the Beagle returned to England did ornithologist John Gould begin to sort out the birds’ relationships, and much of the information Darwin provided turned out to be wrong. He never even mentioned the finches in The Origin of Species, and they were not named “Darwin’s finches” until 1936. As for the claim that they impressed Darwin as evidence of evolution, historian of science Frank Sulloway wrote in the 1980s, “nothing could be further from the truth.” ^{4 5}

The deeper problem with the Wired Science report is not its perpetuation of the legend of Darwin’s finches, but its false claim that biologists have now “witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.” This is not what Peter and Rosemary Grant reported in their scientific article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ⁶

According to the Grants, in 1981 they found an unusually large male medium ground finch (scientific name: G. fortis) on the island of Daphne Major that they labeled 5110. They inferred that it had probably immigrated from the nearby island of Santa Cruz—though they could not be certain. For 28 years, the Grants followed all known descendants of this presumed immigrant, and genetic analysis suggested that after 2002 the descendants of 5110 bred only with each other (and were thus “endogamous”). The inbred group had a distinctive song that may have contributed to its reproductive isolation from other medium ground finches that were in the same area (“sympatric”).

But the Grants did not go so far as to label the inbred descendants a new species. “We treat the endogamous group as an incipient species because it has been reproductively isolated from sympatric G. fortis for three generations and possibly longer.” But an “incipient species” is not the same as a new species. In The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote: “According to my view, varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them, incipient species.” ⁷ But how can we possibly know whether two varieties (or races) are in the process of becoming separate species? Saint Bernards and Chihuahuas are two varieties that cannot interbreed naturally. The Ainu people of northern Japan and the !Kung of southern Africa are separated not only geographically, linguistically, and culturally, but also (for all practical purposes) reproductively. Are dog breeds and human races therefore “incipient species?”

There’s no way we can know, unless we observe varieties becoming separate species at a future date. Designating two reproductively isolated populations “incipient species” is nothing more than a prediction that speciation will eventually occur. It is a far cry from observing the origin of a new species.

Indeed, in their scientific article the Grants acknowledge that “many episodes of incipient speciation probably fail for every one that succeeds.” In the present case, “it is too early to tell whether reproductive isolation is transitory or is likely to be enduring. The odds would seem to be against long-term persistence of the immigrant lineage as a reproductively isolated population.” Among other things, it could go extinct due to inbreeding or an environmental catastrophe. Or it “might disappear through interbreeding with other G. fortis.”

Interbreeding among supposedly reproductively isolated species of Galápagos finches is nothing new. The Grants themselves reported widespread hybridization among those species in the 1990s.^{8 9} This is one reason why, according to a November 16 report in the journal Nature, “the Grants aren't yet ready to call 5110's lineage a new species.” Indeed, “the Grants think there is only a small chance that 5110's descendants will remain isolated long enough to speciate.” ¹⁰

So, will the inbred population described by the Grants become a new species? Maybe; maybe not. Does the Grants’ work explain how different species of finches descended with modification from a common ancestor? Maybe; maybe not. Does the report in Wired Science mean that “biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two?” Absolutely not.

By the way, none of this has anything to do with ID, which asserts only that some features of living things are better explained by an intelligent cause than by unguided processes. The splitting of one species into two species that are very similar to each other (as the Galápagos finches are) could happen without design. No, the issue is honesty in science reporting, and whether — when it comes to the central claim in Darwin’s theory, from which all else follows — modern Darwinists have anything better to offer than one long bluff.

References:
¹ Keith Stewart Thomson, “Natural Selection and Evolution's Smoking Gun,” American Scientist 85 (1997): 516-518.

² Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 459.

³ Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006).

⁴ Frank J. Sulloway, “Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend,” Journal of the History of Biology 15 (1982): 1-53.

⁵ Frank J. Sulloway, “Darwin and the Galápagos,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 21 (1984): 29-59.

⁶ Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant, “The secondary contact phase of allopatric speciation in Darwin's finches,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (published online before print November 16, 2009).

⁷ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 111.

⁸ B. Rosemary Grant & Peter R. Grant, “Evolution of Darwin’s finches caused by a rare climatic event,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 251 (1993): 111-117.

⁹ Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant, “Hybridization of Bird Species,” Science 256 (1992): 193-197.

¹⁰ Daniel Cressey, “Darwin's finches tracked to reveal evolution in action: A new species of finch may have arisen in the Galapagos,” Nature (published online November 16, 2009).

Posted by Jonathan Wells at 8:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Download the full "Truth or Dare with Dr. Ken Miller" Lecture Guide Permission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use.

Behe puts it even more clearly in Darwin’s Black Box: “Although useful for determining lines of descent...comparing sequences cannot show how a complex biochemical system achieved its function—the question that most concerns us in this book. By way of analogy, the instruction manuals for two different models of computer put out by the same company might have many identical words, sentences, and even paragraphs, suggesting a common ancestry (perhaps the same author wrote both manuals), but comparing the sequences of letters in the instruction manuals will never tell us if a computer can be produced step-by-step starting from a typewriter....Like the sequence analysts, I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form?”¹⁸

Miller’s citation of similarities in DNA sequences in no way refutes irreducible complexity, nor does it demonstrate a stepwise Darwinian evolutionary pathway.

Second, even though intelligent design is not necessarily incompatible with common descent (more on this later in Section IV), it should be noted that many of Dr. Miller’s centerpiece examples of evidence for common descent turn out to be quite weak.

As noted, functional genetic similarities may result from common design rather than common descent. After all, designers regularly re-use components or parts that work in different designs—such as re-using cars and wheels in airplanes, or re-using keyboards on both laptops and cell phones. Thus, when we find functional genetic similarity in different organisms, it might indicate common design.

Though he might not admit it, some of Miller’s arguments implicitly concede this point. Miller contends that the way to refute design is not to find shared functional similarities but to find supposed nonfunctional “junk” DNA. As Miller writes: “Intelligent design cannot explain the presence of a nonfunctional pseudogene, unless it is willing to allow that the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, however, can explain them easily. Pseudogenes are nothing more than chance experiments in gene duplication that have failed, and they persist in the genome as evolutionary remnants of the past history of the b-globin genes.”¹⁹

Though Miller wrote those words in 1994, he continues to use the β-globin pseudogene as a refutation of ID—it was his centerpiece example of a pseudogene in his 2005 Dover testimony, in his 2008 book Only a Theory, and it’s often mentioned in his lectures. Privately, Miller has cited such pseudogenes as “case-closed” evidence of common descent because “common ancestry is the only possible explanation for so many matching errors in the same gene.”²⁰

Dr. Miller may be closing this case prematurely. Two authors wrote in Annual Review of Genetics: “pseudogenes that have been suitably investigated often exhibit functional roles.”²¹ According to these authors, functions include “gene expression, gene regulation, [and] generation of genetic (antibody, antigenic, and other) diversity.”²¹ They further suggest that conserved DNA sequences in pseudogenes implies they have function: “Pseudogenes exhibit evolutionary conservation of gene sequence, reduced nucleotide variability, excess synonymous over nonsynonymous nucleotide polymorphism, and other features that are expected in genes or DNA sequences that have functional roles.”²¹ Following such sound logic, the British pro-ID group Truth in Science recounts how Miller’s favorite example—the β-globin pseudogene—shows evidence of conserved sequence, implying that it could have function, which would refute Miller’s centerpiece evidence of a functionless, junk DNA “pseudogene”:

“The very fact that the beta-globin pseudogene appears to be conserved in humans, chimpanzees and gorillas speaks eloquently of the fact that this DNA has some important biological function. Genetic sequences are conserved and maintained when any mutation would render them non-functional (or less functional) and when any loss of activity is damaging the organism’s prospects of survival. Such sequences are said to be under purifying (or stabilising) selection which means that deleterious mutations are removed from the gene pool restricting genetic diversity. … According to the recent review by Sasidharan and Gerstein: ‘Although pseudogenes have generally been considered as evolutionary 'dead-ends', a large proportion of these sequences seem to be under some form of purifying selection - whereby natural selection eliminates deleterious mutations from the population - and genetic elements under selection have some use.’ In the case of the beta-globin pseudogene, Wanapirak et al. have reported amazing conservation in the fine structure of the DNA with identical super-helical twists in the human, mouse, bovine, rabbit and chicken genomes. It needs to be remembered that maintenance of the genetic integrity of these structures is biochemically costly. It takes energy to duplicate DNA. The replicating machinery in the cell has built-in proof reading and excising enzymes that constantly check for mutation and damage. Numerous repair mechanisms have been identified to correct genetic damage and to excise incorrect sequences.”²²

Finally, a piece of evidence Dr. Miller commonly cites as demonstrating human/chimp common ancestry is the fusion of chromosome 2 in humans, which he argues has a structure similar to what one would expect if chimp chromosomes 2a and 2b were fused together, end to end. Without belaboring the details (which are covered elsewhere²³), the evidence for human chromosomal fusion simply indicates that our ancestors once had 48 chromosomes. But it tells us nothing definitive about whether our lineage leads back to a common ancestor shared with with apes. Human chromosomal fusion merely shows that at some point within our human lineage, two chromosomes became fused. That’s it.

If we step outside the Darwinian box, then the following scenario becomes possible: (1) The human lineage arose separately from that of apes with 48 chromosmes, (2) a chromosomal-fusion event occurred, and (3) the trait spread throughout the human population. In such a scenario, the evidence would appear precisely as we find it, without any common ancestry between humans and apes. The two diagrams at right show two models for explaining the evidence for human chromosomal fusion.

At most, the fusion evidence confirms something we already knew: humans and apes share a similar genetic structure. But this might have been predicted by morphological studies without considering evolution. Again, common design can also account for such functional genetic similarities, and the fusion evidence does not demonstrate that humans share a common ancestor with apes.

Dr. Miller may reply that his model predicts the fusion evidence. But if we didn’t find evidence for fusion in human chromosome 2, would that really refute Darwinism? No. Evolutionists would just claim that the fused telomeres and extra centromere were deleted.

[Editor's Note: Ken Miller speaks regularly on intelligent design (ID), and for years has repeatedly promoted the same misrepresentations of ID when speaking on the topic. This is Part 3 of a series of posts that comprise a lecture guide for those listening to lectures by Dr. Miller against ID. When this series is complete, the entire lecture guide will be released as a single document.]

References Cited:

[17.] The Edge of Evolution, p. 95 (2007).

[18.] Darwin's Black Box, pp. 175-176 (1996),

[19.] “Life’s Grand Design,” Technology Review, Vol 97(2): 24-32 (February / March 1994).

[20.] Private correspondence with Dr. Miller.

[21.] Evgeniy S. Balakirev, and Francisco J. Ayala, Pseudogenes, "Are They “Junk” or Functional DNA?,” Annual Review of Genetics, Vol. 37:123–51 (2003), emphasis added.

[22.] “The Changing Face of Pseudogenes,” Truth in Science (internal citations removed).

[23.] See And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Miller's Cold (Chromosomal) Fusion (Updated)
or Weird Science

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

In less than two weeks we will witness the rematch of the decade as Stephen Meyer and Michael Shermer face off on the question of intelligent design versus evolution.

These two men have met several times before, most recently at Freedomfest in Las Vegas in 2008 (click here for video). They also sparred in 2005 at Westminster College and appeared together on Lee Strobel's Faith Under Fire program (video here). It will be interesting to see the new insights into the questions at hand as this debate has matured and developed.

The debate is hosted by the American Freedom Alliance and will take place at the prestigious Saban Theater in Beverly Hills on Monday, November 30, at 7:30pm. Dr. Meyer and Dr. Shermer will be joined by Dr. Richard Sternberg and Dr. Donald Prothero, respectively.

For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

Posted by Anika Smith at 9:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

At last week's ID legal symposium at St. Thomas University School of Law, Peter Hess, a theologian with the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), gave a talk titled “Creation, Design and Evolution: Much Ado about Nothing.” Nearly all of his objections to ID were theological in nature, as he stated that ID is “not only not science” but also “poor theology” and “blasphemous.”

The NCSE is increasingly turning to religious objections in their campaign against ID, pitting one particular religious view (theistic evolution) against ID’s science. This is of course their right to do, but it's amusing since the NCSE regularly attacks ID on the grounds that the ID movement allegedly unnecessarily pits one narrow religious view against the science of evolution. Now they are doing that very thing against ID.

Indeed, many of Dr. Hess’s objections were based upon fundamental misunderstandings or misconstruals of ID.

Refusing to Acknowledge ID’s Research Program
The main non-theological objection Hess made was his claim that ID “does not yet have a working research program.” ID critics like Dr. Hess are more than welcome to disagree with ID, but if they’re going to attack ID, they may wish to at least make sure their arguments are defensible and sound.

As was repeatedly pointed out to Dr. Hess throughout the rest of the day, ID does have a working research program, as seen in the work being done at the Biologic Institute and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, among other examples.

Misconstruing ID as Disallowing Any Evolution
The most fundamental problem with Dr. Hess’s argument was his mischaracterization of ID as never permitting the action of evolutionary processes. Hess thus stated: "Intelligent design cannot allow that evolution is a process chosen by God." That’s absolutely false: ID doesn’t claim that evolutionary processes can never be at work in the world around us. Indeed, ID proponents readily adopt arguments for cosmic design based upon observations that the laws and constants of the universe appear fine-tuned to support advanced life-forms like humans. In such instances, ID embraces the laws of nature as evidence of specified complexity integrated into universal laws.

What ID says is that some features of nature may be best explained by modern evolutionary biology, and others are best explained by intelligent design (and perhaps other features still by other material mechanisms). Thus, ID in no way rules out the possibility that neo-Darwinian processes have been part of the story of life. What ID claims is that such material mechanisms aren’t the entire story, and that in many important instances intelligent design is far superior an explanation to Darwinism.

Hess and the NCSE, on the other hand, constrain both science and theology to claim that material mechanisms must be the entire story. Dr. Hess has it exactly backwards. He says (wrongly) that "intelligent design cannot allow that evolution is a process chosen by God,” but it would be far more accurate to say that theistic evolutionists like Dr. Hess and the NCSE “cannot allow that intelligent design is a process chosen by God."

Since Hess's objection to ID was framed theologically, in this case a theological rebuttal is most appropriate: Hess and the NCSE are the ones constricting science and theology, not ID. ID allows for the possibility that Darwinism was at work and says we should test for whether ID or Darwinian processes are the better explanation. But the NCSE and Dr. Hess say we should assume from the beginning that intelligent design was NEVER a process at work, and exclude ID from our explanatory toolkit. It is Hess who is restricting our ability to explain things—not ID.

Making God the 'Great Evolver' Does Nothing to Solve the “Problem of Evil”
As noted, Dr. Hess’s reasons for excluding ID from the explanatory toolkit were all theological.

His main objection is that ID, by “insisting on God as the cosmic designer who periodically intervenes periodically to propel evolution in propitious directions, inevitably lays the responsibility of concomitant suffering squarely at the feet of the designer.” He thus claims that ID “flounders on the shoals of natural evil.”

Keep in mind that Hess is a theist and said at the symposium that he is a Roman Catholic theologian. Hess thinks that if God used neo-Darwinian evolution to create life rather than some process involving ID, then that somehow solves the problem of evil.

Hess’s “solution” does nothing to solve the problem of evil. It just pushes the question back one small level. Making God the 'great evolver' does nothing to absolve God of any alleged “responsibility” for suffering in the world. It changes absolutely nothing.

Some students I spoke with at the symposium quickly recognized Hess’s fallacy and were unconvinced by his argument that an ID-based view somehow makes God more responsible for evil, whereas a theistic evolutionary view somehow gets God off the hook. If God is God then He's still in charge either way. They saw no difference and no solution to evil by making God the great evolver rather than a designing intelligence.

The reality is that the "problem of evil" is a theological problem, and theologians have had answers to it for millennia. The solution here to the "problem of evil" lies in theology, not in choosing one scientific paradigm (neo-Darwinism) versus another (ID).

NCSE Theologian Goes All-Out Ad Hominem Against ID
And this brings us to the theologian’s charge that gives this post its title. His exact statement was as follows: “A third problem with intelligent design is that its practitioners are either ignorant of science or seriously deluded or fundamentally dishonest.” (Click for mp3.)

I asked Dr. Hess which of the three options I was, but he refused to answer my question. In fact, he tried to backpedal and claim that he was only discussing certain ID proponents who advised a Catholic cardinal who supported ID--not everyone in the ID movement. But the context of his original words clearly indicates that this was one of his main gripes (the "third problem") with ID in general.

In any case, it seems that the NCSE’s theologian has been spending too much time with Richard Dawkins, who similarly charged that doubters of evolution are either “ignorant, insane or wicked.”

I think that many in the audience found Peter Hess’s talk unpersuasive. That's certainly how I felt.

Postscript: In a post on the conference, Josh Rosenau claims I accused "NCSE and the science community in general of all manner of dishonesty." That is a false claim. The word "dishonesty" (and its cognates) were used at no time during my presentation. Nor did I make any implied accusations of "dishonesty" whatsoever against the NCSE or the "scientific community" in my talk. One can make scientific arguments and criticisms without stooping to make charges about "dishonesty"; this is the approach I always prefer to take in this debate. If Rosenau took my scientific critiques as evidence that someone I was critiquing was dishonest, that's his own inference, but is not something I said. I was merely using mainstream scientific articles to make factual counter-arguments to the claims of various evolution lobbyists, and was not trying to paint anyone in the modern evolution lobby as dishonest. As seen above, however, one NCSE presenter (not Mr. Rosenau) took a different approach, making direct charges that ID proponents are "dishonest". This was most unfortunate as it detracted from the otherwise high quality presentations at the conference.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Signature in the Cell makes 2009 list of top ten bestselling science books

Today Amazon.com announced their bestselling books of 2009 and Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer made the top ten in the science category. According to Amazon.com, books on its 2009 list of best sellers are “[r]anked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.” The book's publisher, HarperOne, reports that the book is entering its fifth printing in as many months, and continues to sell strongly both online and in stores.

“Here we are, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, a book mistakenly assumed to have killed the design argument in science,” said Robert Crowther, director of communications at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which is the intelligent design research program directed by Dr. Meyer. “Did Darwin refute the design argument? No. And here’s a book about the science of intelligent design that shows how the design argument is being revived with powerful new arguments relevant to our culture.”

In Signature in the Cell Dr. Meyer shows that the digital code imbedded in DNA points powerfully to a designing intelligence and helps unravel a mystery that Darwin did not address: how did the very first life begin? He weaves together a journey of discovery with an argument for intelligent design and explains how intelligent design can be formulated as a rigorous scientific argument using the very same method of reasoning that Darwin used.

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In America, where Darwin's writings on morality and race have come under particularly intense critical scrutiny because of the enduring creationist debate, he has been accused of fostering moral nihilism and scientific racism, and even of promoting an ethic that found its ultimate expression in the Holocaust. Most startling of all, a connection has now been drawn between Darwin's theories and a rash of school shootings.

The connection between Darwin's ideas and the Holocaust remains hugely controversial, not least because many creationists try to reduce it to a crude blame game. The writer David Klinghoffer, an advocate of intelligent design, which many regard as creationism in disguise, claims: "The key elements in the ideology that produced Auschwitz are moral relativism aligned with a rejection of the sacredness of human life, a belief that violent competition in nature creates greater and lesser races, that the greater will inevitably exterminate the lesser, and finally that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the Jews. All but the last of these ideas may be found in Darwin's writing."

Note: Cross-posted from David Klinghoffer Beliefnet blog, Kingdom of Priests.

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Monday, Nov. 16th, Stephen Meyer and Chris Mooney will be on The Michael Medved Show (second hour, 1pm PT/4pm ET). Mooney is a diehard Darwin defender that various Fellows here at the CSC have debated in the past, and he's someone we've reported about over the years. His view of science is elitist and arrogant, and he has recommended such things as suppressing dissenting views from the media, to spinning science in such a way as to manipulate public opinion. He considers anyone who disagrees with him to be ignorant about science. It will be interesting to see how he does with Meyer, a Cambridge PhD who clearly disagrees with Mooney on ... well, practically everything.

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

With the anniversary of Darwin's opus nearly upon us, a question that keeps coming up is whether the scientific community is any closer to figuring out the origins of life now than when Darwin published his theory 150 years ago?

To mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, advocates for intelligent design and Darwinian evolution will be squaring off at the end of the month to debate the origins of life, the challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution and the alternative theory of intelligent design. The American Freedom Alliance is sponsoring this debate as a part of their series of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origins this month.

The debate will feature:

• Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute and author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.

• Dr. Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an Adjunct Professor at Claremont Graduate University.

• Dr. Richard Sternberg, evolutionary biologist and Research Scientist at the Biologic Institute and a Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

• Dr. Donald R. Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine.

WHEN: Monday, November 30th at 7:30pm

WHERE: Saban Theater, 8440 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA

Tickets are available for $20.00; students: $10.00 and can only be purchased either at www.americanfreedomalliance.org or at the door on day of event. Co-sponsoring the event are The Skeptics Society, Center for Inquiry, the Saban Theater, and the Temple for the Arts.

Posted by Robert Crowther at 9:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I recently received an email asking if the correspondent correctly understood my views about intelligent design and God. Since I sometimes get similar questions, I’m posting this correspondence for anyone who is interested.

Q: I understand your current position to be that design is detectable in nature, and that design detection is not merely a theological gloss upon the scientific facts, but is actually an activity appropriate for science. I further understand you to be saying that design detection in itself is neutral regarding the way that the design found its way into nature. Thus, if the bacterial flagellum is designed, it *could* be that God took a regular bacterium and miraculously "tweaked" it, or it *could* be that God "front-loaded" the evolutionary development of the bacterial flagellum, in a manner similar to that suggested by, say, Michael Denton. Design detection as a science cannot rule on these things; all that it can show is that Darwinian mechanisms, all by themselves, could not have produced integrated structures such as the flagellum. If there was not direct intervention (tweaking, guiding, steering, etc.) or advance planning ("front-loading"), neo-Darwinian processes would never have been able to produce all the complex varieties of living things that we see today. Have I got your current position correct?

Me: Yes, that's exactly right.

Q: Then there is the question whether your views have changed over the years. Someone I know claims that in your early writings and early conference appearances, you said directly, or gave the strong impression, that some things (A, B, C ...) were brought about by wholly natural processes, whereas other things (X, Y, Z ...) were brought about by design (the implication being that "designed" in your early thought was opposed to "natural"). My acquaintance’s picture of Behean evolution would then be something like this: evolution in the early oceans chugs along on its own, via neo-Darwinian and other stochastic processes, as various sorts of marine worms and sponges and so on develop. But then, during the Cambrian Explosion, God takes a direct hand and literally reshapes marine worms into 30 or so new phyla, after which things go on by natural means again, until the next limit is reached, and God has to disrupt the normal flow of nature again (maybe to create land animals, or mammals, or birds, or man). Thus, there would be a jerky, stop-and-start sort of evolution, with chance/natural law causes alternating with fits of miracles. So, looking at any given creature, science would have to say things like: "Human lungs -- evolved by blind mechanisms from primitive air bladder; human camera eye -- required special intervention from intelligent designer; bacterial cell walls -- evolved by blind chemical mechanisms; bacterial flagellum -- was made by a bolt of divine lightning." Etc. Given this understanding of your views, one can see why my acquaintance or other TEs would characterize ID as "God of the gaps" reasoning. My question is: Was it *ever* your view that ID *required* such a jerky view of evolution, and more generally that it required miraculous intervention (breaking the causal nexus, violating the laws of nature)? Or was it always the case that your view *allowed for* jerky, stop-and-start evolution, and *allowed for* miraculous intervention, but did not *require* these things?

Me: My views have not changed over the years but, as I think for most people, the more you chew over a topic, and the more you discuss it with other folks, the more one realizes there can be depths of nuance that one might not at first blush have realized. In the scenario you discuss above I think a couple issues get conflated, chiefly the question of whether some biological features were or were not intended by God, versus the question of whether science, given the underlying laws of nature, can or cannot determine they required design. Clearly God could intend specific things to happen that science cannot determine with its methods were the result of design. As a cartoon example, suppose God intended a pattern of leaves to fall on my lawn this autumn. However, the pattern had no discernible special feature as far as science could tell. It looked like the result of happenstance. In that case God specifically intended the particular arrangement of leaves, but science cannot detect the design. On the other hand, if God intended a pattern of leaves on my lawn that spelled out the words "Lay off the beer, buster!", then of course science -- that is, the consideration of empirical evidence -- could detect the design. Both patterns in reality were the result of God's will, but empirical methods can only detect one of them. As Bill Dembski pointed out a while ago, one needs both improbability and specification to conclude design from physical evidence.

I think the word "jerky" above tends to bias discussion, guiding readers toward the conclusion that things that can happen by natural law must be punctuated (thanks, Stephen Jay Gould) with designed or guided events. Yet even if one thought that all events fell into either of the two categories "lawful" or "guided," there is no need for any observable history of the world to reflect that. The two categories could be so intimately intertwined that no observation could disentangle the two. Nonetheless, I don't think one has to view events falling into two discrete categories, designed versus not designed. There are some Christians (the über-philosopher Alvin Plantinga is one, I think) who view *everything* as intended. As far as design theory goes, they may well be right. That is, God may indeed have intended each and every event that ever occurred in our universe. However, the question for science is, what events can we from the empirical evidence conclude were designed? That is what ID theory is concerned with.

My own view is that there is real design in the universe and also real contingency. That is, there are events whose outcome, although permitted, was not specifically intended for themselves by God. (Harkening back to the cartoon example above, God may in fact not have intended that specific, apparently random pattern of leaves on my lawn, and I see no particular reason to think that He did.) There are also events that were specifically intended by God, in my view. As I try to explain in The Edge of Evolution, the more we know about nature, the more deeply into life specific design is seen to extend. It may go even more deeply than we can conclude from today's empirical evidence (and I think it very likely does) but I don't think there's any need to conclude that specific design is required to explain the difference between dogs and wolves, or between the different varieties of finches on the Galapagos, let alone the pattern of leaves on my lawn.

Posted by Michael Behe at 2:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Crowley v. Smithsonian Institution is another case where a federal court found that the government does not violate the Establishment clause when it advocates evolution. Yet the reasoning the court used to find it permissible to teach evolution could, if applied fairly, also validate the teaching of intelligent design as constitutional.

1. Summary

Plaintiffs sued the Smithsonian Institution, arguing that displays featuring evolution at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History established secular humanism and violated the constitutional mandate requiring the government to remain neutral in matters of religion.⁷⁰ Plaintiffs requested an order compelling the Smithsonian to “expend an amount equal to the amount extended in the promulgation of the evolutionary theory . . . on the Biblical account of creation found in the Book of Genesis.”⁷¹ The court found that the displays passed the Lemon test because (1) they had “the secular purpose of ‘increasing and diffusing knowledge among men’”;⁷² (2) the primary effect of the exhibit did not advance religion and any effects upon religion were “at most incidental to the primary effect of presenting a body of scientific knowledge”;⁷³ and (3) the exhibit did not excessively entangle government and religion because the Museum dealt with evolution as a non-religious subject of natural history.⁷⁴ Additionally, the court found that the exhibit did not violate the plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion because they “can carry their beliefs into the Museum with them, though they risk seeing science exhibits contrary to that faith.”⁷⁵ Quoting Epperson, the court added that “the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them.”⁷⁶ The court argued that if it granted plaintiffs relief, it would be showing preferential “treatment to the religious views of one group.”⁷⁷

2. Importance and Commentary

This lesser-known case follows Wright and Epperson in finding that government advocacy of evolution does not establish religion.⁷⁸ However, Crowley stands apart from those cases in its high degree of stated sensitivity for the plaintiffs who felt that evolution challenged their religious beliefs. The court told the parties it was “sensitive to plaintiffs' interpretation of the theory of evolution as religion and is aware that they do not stand alone.”⁷⁹ The court thus did not claim there was no offense to the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs, but instead argued that “[e]ven accepting their argument that evolution is hostile to their beliefs as to creation, this impact is at most incidental to the primary effect of presenting a body of scientific knowledge.”⁸⁰ Under Crowley, teaching a legitimate scientific theory such as evolution will not establish religion because the primary effect of such a government action will advance scientific knowledge.⁸¹ Any effects upon religion are “incidental.”⁸²

This doctrine has legal implications for the current controversies over teaching scientific critiques of evolution, and also the controversy over teaching scientific alternatives to evolution, such as intelligent design (“ID”). By the reasoning of Crowley, when teaching legitimate scientific views that dissent from neo-Darwinism, any effects upon religion should be considered “incidental” to the primary effect that would advance scientific knowledge.

[Editor’s Note: This survey of Crowley v. Smithsonian Inst. is an excerpt from the article “Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the Teaching of Biological Origins,” Hamline University Law Review, Vol. 32(1):1-64 (Winter, 2009), published by Hamline University School of Law. This excerpt covers the case Crowley v. Smithsonian Inst.; the full article can be read here.]

References Cited
[70.] Crowley v. Smithsonian Inst., 462 F. Supp. 725 (D.C. 1978) at 726-27.
[71.] Id. at 725.
[72.] Id. at 727 (citing Sch. Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225 (1963)
(defining secular humanism as “affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus
preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe”)).
[73.] Id. at 727.
[74.] Id.
[75.] Crowley, 462 F. Supp. at 728.
[76.] Id. at 727 (citing Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 93, 107 (1968)).
[77.] Id. at 728.
[78.] Id. at 727.
[79.] Id.
[80.] Id.
[81.] See Crowley, 462 F. Supp. at 727.
[82.] Id.; see also DeWolf, West & Luskin, supra note 4, at 46-48.
By the reasoning of Crowley, when teaching legitimate scientific views that dissent from neo-Darwinism, any effects upon religion should be considered “incidental” to the primary effect that would advance scientific knowledge.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The case Wright v. Houston was decided by the lowest level of the federal courts in 1973, and it effectively ruled that it is not illegal to teach just the evidence supporting evolution. This is one case in a line of cases that found that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.

1. Summary

Students in the Houston Independent School District sued their district and the Texas State Board of Education for teaching evolution but not including any other views about origins, such as the Biblical story of creation.⁴³ The student-plaintiffs contended that the study of evolution constituted the establishment of a sectarian, atheistic religion and inhibited the free exercise of their own religion in violation of the First Amendment.⁴⁴ As a remedy for the alleged constitutional violation, the students asked that the Biblical story of creation be required to be taught alongside evolution.⁴⁵ The district court held that the school district’s one-sided teaching of only the pro-Darwinian scientific evidence was constitutional.⁴⁶ Specifically, the court found that the curriculum did not violate Epperson's mandate that public schools "may not be hostile to any religion"⁴⁷ for two reasons: (1) there was no State law or school district regulation which prohibited nonevolutionary teachings, and (2) there was no evidence to suggest that students could not challenge the theory of evolution in class.⁴⁸ The court thus let the curriculum stand without ordering any changes.⁴⁹

2. Importance and Commentary

This case is one of many that found that the teaching of evolution does not establish religion or offend the First Amendment. However, this lesser-known case provides a rare example of candid acknowledgement from the judiciary that “[s]cience and religion necessarily deal with many of the same questions, and they may frequently provide conflicting answers.”⁵⁰ Although the court rightly found that the proper solution is not to avoid the subject of origins altogether,⁵¹ it admitted that it was "hardly qualified to select from among the available theories those which merit attention in a biology school class."⁵² Moreover, the court found no constitutional problems with teaching only the pro-Darwin scientific evidence, stating “it is not the business of government to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine.”⁵³ At the very least, this implies that school districts may express sensitivity to the anti-religious implications of evolution in their policies on teaching evolution, just as this court did.

[Editor’s Note: This survey of Wright v. Houston Ind. Sch. Dist. is an excerpt from the article “Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the Teaching of Biological Origins,” Hamline University Law Review, Vol. 32(1):1-64 (Winter, 2009), published by Hamline University School of Law. This excerpt covers the case Wright v. Houston Ind. Sch. Dist.; the full article can be read here.]

References Cited
[43.] Wright v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 366 F. Supp. 1208 (S.D. Tex. 1972) at 1208.
[44.] Id. at 1209.
[45.] Id. at 1211.
[46.] Id. at 1212-13.
[47.] Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103-04 (1968).
[48.] Wright, 366 F. Supp. at 1210.
[49.] Id. at 1212-1213.
[50.] Id. at 1211.
[51.] Id. “Avoidance of any reference to the subject of human origins is, indeed, a
decidedly totalitarian approach to the problem presented here. Book-burning is always
dangerous, but never more dangerous than when practiced on behalf of young and
impressionable minds.” Id.
[52.] Id.
[53.] Wright, 366 F. Supp. at 1211 (citing Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 505 (1952)).

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Download the full "Truth or Dare with Dr. Ken Miller" Lecture Guide Permission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use.

It is what a philosopher might call the argument from ignorance, which is to say that, because we don't understand something, we assume we never will, and therefore we can invoke a cause outside of nature, a supernatural creator or supernatural designer.

The Positive Argument for Design
At the Dover trial, ID proponents were extremely clear that ID is not merely a negative argument against evolution, but a strong positive argument. Michael Behe refuted Miller’s testimony by stating: "This argument for design is an entirely positive argument. This is how we recognize design by the purposeful arrangement of parts." (Day 10 AM Testimony, p. 110.) Behe also made this clear in the afterward to Darwin’s Black Box:

[I]rreducibly complex systems such as mousetraps and flagella serve both as negative arguments against gradualistic explanations like Darwin’s and as positive arguments for design. The negative argument is that such interactive systems resist explanation by the tiny steps that a Darwinian path would be expected to take. The positive argument is that their parts appear arranged to serve a purpose, which is exactly how we detect design. (Darwin’s Black Box, pp. 263-264 (2006).)

Scott Minnich and Stephen Meyer also explain the positive argument for design:

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role the origin of the system … in any other context we would immediately recognize such systems as the product of very intelligent engineering. Although some may argue this is a merely an argument from ignorance, we regard it as an inference to the best explanation, given what we know about the powers of intelligent as opposed to strictly natural or material causes. (“Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic Bacteria,” in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design & Nature, Rhodes Greece (2004).)

This specified complexity, also called complex and specified information (CSI), is a tell-tale indicator that intelligence was at work. Meyer explains why this makes for a positive — not negative — argument for design:

by invoking design to explain the origin of new biological information, contemporary design theorists are not positing an arbitrary explanatory element unmotivated by a consideration of the evidence. Instead, they are positing an entity possessing precisely the attributes and causal powers that the phenomenon in question requires as a condition of its production and explanation. (Stephen C. Meyer, “The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Vol. 117(2):213-239 (2004).)

Likewise, William Dembski writes that “design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the competence of science and must be left to religion and philosophy," (The Design Revolution, p. 42 (2004)) and explains with Jonathan Wells that “[e]xplanations that call on intelligent causes require no miracles but cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations.” (The Design of Life, pp. 13-14 (2008).)

Similarly, Michael Behe writes that “as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo [to make no hypothesis].” (“The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis,” Philosophia Christi, Vol. 3, p. 165 (2001).)

The reasons why ID merely appeals to intelligence and not to the “supernatural” are principled rather than rhetorical. As explained earlier, we have observation-based experience with intelligence, showing us that intelligence is the cause of high CSI. This allows us to scientifically detect intelligent causation when we find CSI in nature. But we have no observation-based experience with the supernatural, and thus a scientific investigation which detects high CSI in nature can infer intelligent causation, but such a scientific investigation could not go so far as to specify that the intelligence is supernatural. ID is thus a positive argument that, contrary to Miller’s words, does not merely argue that “if evolution is incorrect, the answer must be design.” (Day 1 PM Testimony, pp. 15, 36-37.) In contrast, ID uses a positive argument and respects the boundaries of science: it merely appeals to intelligence, does not try to go beyond what the data can tell us and determine whether the designer is natural or supernatural.

Good scholarship always tries critique one’s opponents’ actual and strongest arguments rather than merely tearing down straw men caricatures. Unfortunately, Dr. Miller is notorious for using the latter approach rather than the former when attacking ID. As Michael Behe observes:

In philosophy there is something called the "principle of charitable reading." In a nutshell it means that one should construe an author’s argument in the best way possible, so that the argument is engaged in its strongest form. Unfortunately, in my experience Miller does the opposite — call it the "principle of malicious reading." He ignores (or doesn’t comprehend) context, ignores (or doesn’t comprehend) the distinctions an author makes, and construes the argument in the worst way possible.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 2:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Tomorrow, Tuesday November 10th, University of St. Thomas School of Law is hosting a legal symposium titled “Intelligent Design and the Constitution.” Participants include Peter M. J. Hess (NCSE), David DeWolf (Professor of Law, Gonzaga University; senior fellow, Discovery Institute), Josh Rosenau (NCSE), Thomas D. Sullivan (Aquinas Chair in Philosophy and Theology, University of St. Thomas), Patrick Gillen (Lead Defense Counsel, Kitzmiller v. Dover), Russell Pannier (Emeritus Professor of Law, William Mitchel College of the Law), and myself. The title of my talk will be “The Constitutionality and Pedagogical Benefits of Teaching Evolution Scientifically.” According to the website:

The symposium, free and open to the public, will bring together scholars to debate and analyze various constitutional and philosophical issues surrounding evolutionism and intelligent design, particularly as they affect U.S. public schools.

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ENV: In the past, you’ve remarked about mathematicians and their opinions of Darwin’s theory of evolution. They were skeptical, you said; very skeptical. John Von Neumann was an example. How do you know that about him and about other mathematicians?

DB: How do I know? Here’s how:

I have been close to a number of mathematicians, and friends with others: Daniel Gallin (who died before he could begin his career), M.P. Schutzenberger (my great friend), René Thom (a friend as well), Gian-Carlo Rota (another friend), Lipman Bers (who taught me complex analysis and with whom I briefly shared a hospital room, he leaving as I was coming), Paul Halmos (a colleagues in California), and Irving Segal (a friend by correspondence, embattled and distraught). Some of these men I admired very much, and all of them I liked.

I had many other friends in the international mathematical community. We exchanged views; I got around.

Among the mathematicians that I knew from very roughly 1970 to 1995, the general attitude toward Darwin’s theory was one of skepticism. These days, I do not get around all that much, and whatever the mathematician's pulse, I do not have my finger on it. But the reactions of which I speak were hardly surprising. Until recently, mathematicians have been skeptical of any discipline beyond mathematics, and I say until recently because attitudes as well as times have changed.

In talking of the mathematician’s skepticism, I mentioned Von Neumann because his name was widely known. I might have mentioned Gian-Carlo Rota. He despised the enveloping air of worship associated with Darwin; he thought biology primitive and dishonest.

How do I know this? I know it because we were close friends, and because he said so. He said so to me.

Gian-Carlo had, in fact, read closely one of my unpublished papers on Darwinian evolution. Written in late 1970, during my stay at IIASA (the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), my essay later made its way into Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic & Luck, stripped by then of almost all of its technical details.

A few mathematicians at IIASA had already read what I had written; they had, after all, encouraged me to write it. When we met later in the year, Gian-Carlo offered me his delighted agreement, which he extended in the spirit of it’s about time; he urged me to keep at it; he considered publishing my essay in his journal; but after some back and forth between us, he decided that it would be best were I never to publish another word on the subject.

Gian-Carlo was a man of very refined political sensibilities.

It is a mistake to read back into the recent past the political and emotional structure of discussions now current.

Reading things backwards is vulgar as intellectual history and false to the facts – vulgar because it assigns an aspect of permanence to our own obsessions; and false because it distorts the play of forces playing just a few decades ago.

In the first part of the 20th century, Darwin v. Dissent had not yet acquired its riveting incarnation as a melodrama of intolerance. No heresy, no heretics is a useful proverb, and using, say, 1950 as a reference point, there were no heretics among the mathematicians because there was yet no heresy. Darwin's theory was not then considered totemic; and his touch was not widely understood to cure erysipelas. Darwin v. Dissent is of our time and place.

Now Von Neumann turned from pure mathematics in the 1940s and the early 1950s. Like so many other mathematicians and physicists, he regarded the theory of evolution as a place holder, the full and so the real theory waiting somewhere in the wings of time.

When Erwin Schrödinger published What is Life? in 1944, he electrified the mathematicians and the physicists; and he influenced profoundly biologists such as Francis Crick, the latter a form of Rural Electrification, I suppose. Schrödinger’s impact is easy to understand: He gave biologists a set of ideas that they had been unable to give themselves.

“How can the events in space and time,” Schrödinger asked, “which take place within the spatial boundary of living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry.”

These words were written in 1944, just sixty-six years ago.

“The preliminary answer which this little book will endeavor to expound,” Schrödinger went on to say, … “can be summarized as follows: the obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events is no reason at all for doubting that they can be accounted for by those scientists.’’

I have placed in italics words that establish Schrödinger attitude. I do not know which word to stress more: The obviousness of an inability, or the inability of an obviousness.

So I have stressed them together. They reflect the attitude of mathematicians and physicists toward biology during the 1940s, 1950s, and at least a part of the 1960s.

Having asked for a clue, Schrödinger found one on his own. He predicted the existence of a code script, one governing heredity. Just eight years later, Watson and Crick published the first of their two great papers on the structure of DNA.

Everyone took notice, the biologists because Schrödinger had been prophetic, and the mathematicians and physicists because Schrödinger had been one of their own.

These remarks belong to the considerable category of things that must be kept in mind.

So keep them in mind.

What was it that comprised Von Neumann’s skepticism about evolution?

It was an attitude in three aspects. Von Neumann, in the first place, saw what mathematicians had seen since Darwin first published his theory. The theory required life to clamber over some very sobering improbabilities; indeed, it seemed to require miracles. Other mathematicians were making the same point. “[T]he formation within geological time of a human body,” Kurt Gödel remarked in conversation with Hao Wang, “by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.”

Note the word geological. Gödel, like everyone else, quite understood that Darwin’s theory played out over long stretches of time. He might even have grasped the concept of natural selection, commonly said to be too difficult for all but a handful of initiates. He was skeptical nonetheless. It was precisely to do battle against this kind of skepticism that Richard Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker. His proximate target may have been the physicist, Fred Hoyle, but his general target was a whole climate of opinion current among mathematicians and physicists.

Von Neumann, in the second place, thought Darwin's theory inadequate. He thought the theory inadequate because the theory did not yet exist. This is as inadequate as it gets. What did exist lacked the fundamentals. It answered no questions. It had no depth. And it was largely anecdotal. This sense of anecdotal has nothing to do with the idea of just-so stories made popular by Lewontin and Gould. Darwin’s theory was anecdotal, Von Neumann suggested, because it lacked the rich and productive concepts that only mathematicians could provide the sciences.

Writing in the 1967 Wistar Symposium, Murray Eden offered a fine sense of the way in which mathematicians and physicists thought Darwin’s theory inadequate. “…[T]he continuity of evolution does not demonstrate that natural laws are operative, for the laws are not known.”

Murray then added a most useful analogy. “It is,” he wrote referring to Darwin’s theory, “as if some pre-Newtonian cosmologist had proposed a theory of planetary motion which supposed that natural force of unknown origin held the planets to their courses.”

Just so. This is what Darwin’s theory is like; and it was how it appeared to a great many mathematicians and physicists.

And then Murray added a demurral. “The supposition is right enough and the idea of a force between two celestial bodies is a very useful one, but it is hardly a theory.”

Far from being controversial among mathematicians in the 1940s and 1950s, a sense of the inadequacy of Darwin’s theory was widespread.

And there is a third and final component to Von Neumann’s skepticism, this one no more than a hint. To say that Von Neumann was skeptical of Darwin's theory is not to say that he was a supporter of intelligent design. I have no reason to think so. I know nothing about his religious views. Yet there is a curious remark he made to Stan Ulam. I suspect that he made the remark at the end of his life. Von Neumann pointed to a house in the distance and remarked to Ulam how absurd it would be to think that the house just assembled itself. The men were discussing Darwin's theory. It was not simply a doubt about improbability to which Von Neumann gave voice: It was a more general susurrus of discontent. The remark suggests that just possibly Von Neumann's sensibility had undergone a change. Ulam never said anything more to Marco and Marco never said anything more to me.

There remains nonetheless that air of intellectual poignancy. Perhaps Von Neumann was aware of his impending death.

So much for what mathematicians thought and think; so much for what Von Neumann thought and thank.

I now pass to the point of this exercise. Where did I get my information? Let me tell you. I got my information about Von Neumann from the horse's mouth, the horse one step removed from the horse himself.

Quite obviously I did not know Von Neumann personally. He was too old and I too young ever to have met. So what I know of views I know at second hand. I know it from my friends.

Stanislaw Ulam was close to von Neuman – very close; and Ulam was also close to Marco and Gian-Carlo Rota – very close again. They were close enough to share their views. I knew Marco and Gian-Co very well; and they were close friends of mine.

Since Marco and I were writing a book together about evolution, our interest in Von Neuman's views was natural. Natural, but not consuming. It was a part of the chatter, and it would be wrong to suppose that our curiosity was anything more than curiosity. The subject came up. What had Von Neumann thought? We discussed it. Von Neumann stories were told, as they always were.

Let me fix the time and place:

The winter of 1979 - 1980.

Paris.

And again a year later in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, where I gave a lecture and Gian-Carlo acted as my host and the source for further stories.

When this issue first emerged, I was asked for references. I am not a Von Neumann scholar, and I have not consulted any of the sources. What I know of Von Neumann's views, I know from his friends. But what I know is entirely consistent with the development of his own ideas. Von Neumann's work on self-reproducing automata is an interesting attempt to make good the deficiencies of a theory that he understood had deficiencies and needed remedying, a demonstration of the thesis, left unremarked, unanalyzed and unstated in Darwin's theory, that a self-reproducing automata is logically possible. It fills one hole.

Ulam's paper 'On some mathematical problems suggested by problems in biology,' fills another hole. In it he introduced what he called a "biological metric space" into theoretical biology. The date is 1970. The place is the Rockefeller Institute. And the idea, by the way, is pure Marco. Ulam's paper marks his indifference to the dominant paradigm of Sewell Wright's population genetics. Gone are both Euclidean metrics and Wright's very elaborate apparatus of differential equations.

Whether a theory with quite so many holes in its plush is worth mending is another question entirely.

When the issue of Von Neumann's views appeared in the Bogosphere, Douglas Theobold, a contributor to the Panda's Thumb, much occupied in discharging his indignation, wrote a little post. Von Neumann had apparently said something: "I shudder," Von Neumann wrote in a letter to George Gamow, "at the thought that highly purposive organizational elements, like the protein, should originate in a random process."

Having shuddered, Von Neumann apparently got hold of himself. "Yet many efficient (?) and purposive (??) media, e.g., language, or the national economy, also look statistically controlled, when viewed from a suitably limited aspect. On balance, I would therefore say that your argument is quite strong."

"This," Theobold writes, "may be the ultimate source of many of the claims that von Neumann was anti-evo."

It may well be, but it is not my source as I have explained in detail.

Still, what lends to this exchange its lurid aspect is that having shuddered, Von Neumann might have kept right on shuddering, for if Von Neumann was criticizing Gamow's theories about protein formation, he was right to do so because Gamow's theories were wrong.

And there is the final, the inimitable, touch. I have never claimed that Von Neumann was "anti-evo."

What an idea. No one is. What I did claim is that like so many others, Von Neumann was profoundly skeptical about Darwin's theory of evolution.

And I have just said why.

Check out David Berlinski's newest book, The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays, here.

Posted by David Berlinski at 7:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Download the full "Truth or Dare with Dr. Ken Miller" Lecture Guide Permission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use.

While these qualities make for an enjoyable lecture, they have no bearing on whether or not the arguments and assertions of Dr. Miller are factually correct and true. Those familiar with Dr. Miller know that he regularly uses the same arguments against intelligent design (ID) when he lectures, and unfortunately, his arguments are not only weak, but they are rife with misrepresentations of ID.

Dr. Miller has been informed about many of these errors before, which makes it unfortunate that he continues to promote them. The purpose of this Guide is to help you understand, navigate, and critically evaluate common claims in anti-ID lectures by Ken Miller. Whatever opinion you come to hold, don’t let yourself be hoodwinked: check the facts for yourself and dare Dr. Miller to tell the truth about intelligent design.

I. Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?
Ken Miller styles himself as a Catholic theistic evolutionist, leading one critic to observe that he is sometimes presented as if any potential conflicts between evolution and religion are “reconciled, as it were, in his person.”¹ Dr. Miller has the right to believe whatever he wishes; there is no need or desire to question his personal faith. What we do seek, however, are straight answers from Dr. Miller about inconsistencies in his evolving statements on this topic.

Five editions of Miller’s textbook, Biology, stated that “evolution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected.”² At the Dover trial, Dr. Miller admitted on cross-examination that this description “requires a conclusion about meaning and purpose that I think is beyond the realm of science.”³

Why did this language appear in his book? When pressed, Miller has offered two suspect explanations: He testified he “immediately took it out of the book” after the third edition, even though the language actually remained for all five editions.² Dr. Miller may legitimately blame this mistake on a memory lapse, but there is more.

Dr. Miller also tried to blame this language on his co-author, Joseph Levine, stating that “this was a statement that Joe inserted.”⁴ This sounds plausible, until we read in Miller’s own book Finding Darwin’s God (no co-author to blame here) identical language to describe neo-Darwinian evolution:

“random, undirected process of mutation had produced the ‘right’ kind of variation for natural selection to act upon” (p. 51)

"a random, undirected process like evolution" (p. 102)

"blind, random, undirected evolution [could] have produced such an intricate set of structures and organs, so brilliantly dedicated to a single purpose" (p. 137)

"the random, undirected processes of mutation and natural selection" (p. 145)

"Evolution is a natural process, and natural processes are undirected" (p. 244)

Finally, both the 1991 and 1994 editions of Miller & Levine’s Biology: The Living Science left readers with a striking passage on the implications of evolution: “Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless--a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”⁵ Ask Dr. Miller to explain this one, too.

References Cited:

[1.] Josh Gilder, “There is no religious bias in the PBS Evolution Project because Ken Miller says there isn’t"

[2.] Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine, Biology (1st ed., 1991), p. 658; (2nd ed., 1993), p. 658; (3rd ed., 1995), p. 658; (4th ed., 1998), p. 658; (5th ed. 2000), p. 658. For details, see

[3.] Day 2 AM Testimony, p. 4.

[4.] Day 2 AM Testimony, p. 7.

[5.] Joseph Levine & Kenneth Miller, Biology: Discovering Life (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed. D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161. Emphasis in original.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 11:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Q: Many of the most important and lengthiest essays in The Deniable Darwin were originally published in Commentary magazine. How did that fruitful partnership, or patronship, come about? Did you encounter any resistance from the Commentary readership?

DB: My association with Commentary was a stroke of good luck. I wanted a wider readership. Who doesn’t? So I wrote [editor] Neal Kozodoy a letter. It was 1994. Neal, for reasons of his own, thought it important to broaden Commentary's intellectual horizons. We had been struck by the fact that science as an institution lacks for critics. To a very surprising extent, it gets a free pass. So our association began. I've never known a better editor. “The Deniable Darwin” provoked a great deal of controversy when it was published. It still does. Bloggers still feel obliged to waddle into Blogginess with a counter-critique. Some readers found my Commentary essays difficult, especially those dealing with the origins of life and the evolution of the eye. They objected, perhaps rightly so. They are difficult. But Commentary, you must remember, is a Jewish magazine, and it was the thought that I might in some way be offering encouragement to Christian evangelicals that some of Commentary’s readers found troubling. They were fearful that in the very next issue I might be found speaking in tongues or eagerly handling snakes.

The story is very complicated. I have not done it justice. I do not know all of the details. But Commentary is now in other hands and I no longer have a home there. I am, in fact, pretty much homeless. The editor of The New York Review of Books once wrote to tell me of his interest in my work. He was all of an oleaginous eagerness. On discovering who I was, he very quickly lost interest, my own letters going unanswered.

Robert Silvers is a man not much inclined to snakes either. I understand that he breaks into a rash whenever he handles them.

Posted by David Berlinski at 12:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There's a narrative that should be familiar to most of us by now: a man is considered the great hero of the faith, a sign of hope for every true believer as he advances its claims, but secretly he struggles with his doubts about what he's preaching.

This time, there's a twist to the old story: the faith the man espoused publicly was Darwin's theory, and the man was the brilliant Stephen Jay Gould.

In Suzan Mazur's fascinating new book, The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry, Richard Milner describes Gould as "a popular articulator of Darwinian evolution to a new generation, while privately, his creative and rebellious mind sought to move beyond it." (emphasis added) A personal friend of Gould's, as well as his editor at Natural History magazine, Milner goes on to explain that "Gould took issue with those who used natural selection carelessly as a mantra, as in the evidence-free 'just-so stories' concocted out of thin air by mentally lazy adaptationists."

So here we have a picture of a man committed to his creed ("The universe is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be") who was nonetheless unhappy with the easy answers of reductionists such as Richard Dawkins.

As David Berlinski noted:

In The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Gould came very close to expressing the obvious but forbidden thought that while variation and natural selection bulk large in evolutionary theology, they should weigh little in evolutionary theory. If this is so, what then remains of Darwinism as a doctrine? It was a question that Gould declined to ask, perhaps because criticism at the hands of his intellectual inferiors made him sensitive to the distinction between fearlessness and folly.

Correction: This post originally attributed the quotes above to Stuart Pivar.

Posted by Anika Smith at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Opderbeck, Professor of law at Seton Hall University School of Law, has in the past offered some insightful criticisms of the Dover ruling, including the facts that Judge Jones:

"misrepresents key ID arguments by stating that they are only negative arguments against evolution rather than positive evidence for design"

"went far beyond the case / controversy at hand by giving his primer on whether ID is ‘science’”

used “criteria for determining what constitutes ‘science’” that seemed “muddled and dangerous”

“misrepresents the merits of key ID arguments, in particular irreducible complexity”

It seems clear from the trial record that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board officials who promoted the ID curriculum did so in an effort to support their belief in a particular form of direct creationism. Although ID is ostensibly a religiously neutral theory, the local pro-ID school board officials in Dover appeared to have specifically religious motives for introducing it into the curriculum. This was enough reason, I think for Judge Jones to have rejected their efforts.

That doesn’t mean that ID should have been declared unscientific and unconstitutional to teach under any circumstances under the “effect” prong of the Lemon test.

As I co-wrote in Montana Law Review with David DeWolf and John West:

Under the disjunctive Lemon test, all that was necessary to determine that an Establishment Clause violation had occurred was to find that the Dover school board members had predominantly religious motivations for enacting their ID policy. Longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent suggests that in resolving constitutional issues, a narrow holding (such as a finding that the school board had religious motives in adopting the policy) is preferable to a broad holding (concerning the definition of science, the motives of the “IDM,” or whether ID is science); in Village of Euclid v. Ambler RealtyCo. the Supreme Court pointed out that it is the “traditional policy of this Court” to decide only the legal question most directly at issue, not all possible legal questions raised by a particular controversy …

Judge Jones had no trouble finding extensive and unambiguous evidence for the religious motives of the Dover Area School Board, which would have disposed of the case under the Ambler Realty principle. Instead, he tried to settle an array of the broadest questions possible, including the proper definition of science, the motives of the “IDM,” the compatibility of Darwinian theory with religion, and even obscure scientific minutiae such as whether the Type-III Secretory System could be an evolutionary precursor to the bacterial flagellum, and whether inductive reasoning provides a quantitative argument for design.

(David DeWolf, John West, and Casey Luskin, “Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover,” Montana Law Review, Vol. 68:7 (Winter, 2007), internal citations removed.)

Even if Judge Jones wasn’t playing the “activist” judge by finding religious motives of the Dover School Board members, he was playing the activist when trying to settle far more expansive issues unnecessary for the holding in the case. Indeed, Judge Jones later expressed his “fervent hope” that his ruling “could serve as a primer for school boards and other people who were considering this [issue].” That’s pretty much the textbook definition of judicial activism, as we explain in Montana Law Review:

Judge Jones suspected that his broad holdings would lead to accusations that he is “an activist judge.” He therefore inserted a pre-emptive defense to this charge by noting that “[t]hose who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge” but “they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.” In a post-decision interview, Judge Jones reiterated this point, accusing his critics of calling him an activist simply because “an activist judge is a judge whose decision you disagree with.”

Proclaiming that one is not an activist judge does not make it so. And claiming that those who charge “judicial activism” simply disagree with the ruling and have nothing better to say does not mean that reasonable arguments cannot be raised that Judge Jones’s ruling intruded into inappropriate territory or had factually incorrect findings. Judicial activism is not just a meaningless epithet; it is a term applied to judges who succumb to the temptation to “increase their impact as policymakers.” Judicial activism has the tendency to displace other branches of government, or other institutions in society, that are arguably better equipped to resolve a dispute. When Judge Jones described the breadth of his opinion as being the result of a “fervent hope” that his opinion “could serve as a primer for school boards and other people who were considering this [issue],” he admitted (apparently without realizing it) that he was a judicial activist. Nonetheless, because we have described Judge Jones’s “activism” in detail elsewhere, there is no need to do so here: readers can decide for themselves whether Judge Jones’s ruling tried to settle a controversial social issue by deciding matters far beyond the necessary legal questions he had to address.

Despite Judge Jones’s apparent desire to have the final word on ID for the judiciary, future jurists encountering efforts to address the topic of ID will have not only the right, but the obligation to think for themselves and determine whether the reasoning used by Judge Jones is accurate, necessary, or even relevant. Indeed, future courts may do well to read the balance of this article, which outlines the key errors of fact and law made by Judge Jones in his opinion.

(David DeWolf, John West, and Casey Luskin, “Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover,” Montana Law Review, Vol. 68:7 (Winter, 2007), internal citations removed.)

But Professor Opderbeck’s current statement, “I don't think Judge Jones was playing the role of ‘activist judge’ in the Kitzmiller case,” all but contradicts his original critique of the Kitzmiller ruling, which charged that Judge Jones “went far beyond the case / controversy at hand.”

Does Professor Opderbeck no longer feel that Judge Jones “went far beyond the case / controversy at hand”? If he does feel the judge went too far, what reason (apart from political concerns) is there to deny that Judge Jones' ruling was “activist”?

Posted by Casey Luskin at 11:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to various live-bloggers, you can read summaries of all of the University of Chicago Darwin 2009 conference presentations. The conference organizers have also promised to make video podcasts available of all the lectures shortly. By contrast, what follows below is -- as they say in sports television -- color commentary. This will be a longer post, because much was said that calls for comment.

Bottom line: this was an outstanding conference, where any ID theorist would have enjoyed himself, and learned a lot, if he didn’t mind a bit of mocking laughter along the way.

2009 in the Light of 1959

While both lauded Darwin, the 1959 and 2009 celebrations at the University of Chicago were strikingly different affairs. 1959 was a longer, much larger event, complete with a specially written musical and wide-ranging panel discussions for the lay public, instead of the more technical lectures of 2009.

But it is instructive to note other differences as well, and how various themes were amplified, or modified, by the 2009 event.

1. The bad guys in their black hats were not invited, but we know they’re out there.

As the video podcasts will show, in addition to the talks by Ron Numbers and Eugenie Scott that focused specifically on “anti-evolution” (which meant anything other than undirected, fully materialistic evolution), several speakers brought up ID, or dissent from Darwinian theory, if only to ridicule it.

This attention to the black hats was, I think, considerably greater than what was said about “anti-evolution” in 1959. In her detailed study of the 1959 conference, historian of science Betty Smocovitis observes that the organized attention give to doubts about Darwinian theory amounted to minor “sideshows” in 1959 (1999, p. 294). Instead, “the supremacy of natural selection was a dominant theme in all panel discussions bearing directly on the subject of biological evolution” (1999, p. 298). Evolutionary theory was seen as completely unified around natural selection and inexorably expanding in its sphere of cultural triumph.

There is something of an irony in this. One wonders what the 1959 panelists, now all deceased, would have said, not only about the Numbers and Scott 2009 lectures –- “anti-evolutionists” exist in the year 2009? are you quite serious? is it really necessary to address this? -– but the frequent jabs at ID in the other 2009 lectures. At the 1959 event, Julian Huxley predicted the demise of the idea of a transcendent personal cause of the universe, to be replaced by the “new religions” that were evolving to the fore. Goodbye, design.

Didn’t happen. (The fact that you’re reading this blog -– well, you can do the math.) Smocovitis notes that the 1959 Darwin centennial prompted the rise of “scientific creationism” in the United States:

...the Darwin centennial had at least one noteworthy but unexpected consequence. While it promoted the respectability and legitimacy of Darwin’s evolution by natural selection to a wide audience, it also drew attention to a theory of longstanding unpopularity and controversiality. The excessive attention and promotion given to evolution by natural selection at the Darwin centennial galvanized into action the very group that most opposed it on religion, philosophical, and moral grounds. One outcome of the Darwin centennial was a regrouping of Christian evangelicals, led by individuals like Henry Morris, into the movement that came to be known as scientific creationism. No longer would they accept the rhetoric of scientific legitimacy given to evolution by means of natural selection; evolution was to remain a problematic concept subject to scientific, as well as religious and philosophical, criticism. (1999, p. 322)

When a theory is defined by what it is not -– e.g., Darwinian evolution holds that a transcendent intelligence did not design living things -– then that theory cannot help but cart its opposition around, wherever it goes. “Yes, I know he smells bad,” says Theory Q regretfully, about supposedly refuted Theory P, who is sitting in the back seat picking his nose, “but I am defined in opposition to Mr. P, so he has to come along, whether we want him around or not."

Is it possible for modern evolutionary theory to wean itself from its theological predecessors? Perhaps not, if for no other reason than lampooning "creationists" is always good for a laugh to move a lecture along [see, for instance, the video podcasts of the 2009 talks by Michael Ruse and Phil Ward when they become available]. The deeper question, of course, concerns the content of the theory itself, not its rhetorical framework.

2. While evolutionary theory might have been unified in 1959, today it isn't.

Example: Michael Ruse opened his lecture by saying that I had tweaked him, via email, about a new article by NIH scientist Eugene Koonin. Koonin argued that "the edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair." Ruse then said that I was in the habit of doing this -- tossing problems with neo-Darwinism in his path, in a nah-nah-nah, ID wins fashion.

Not exactly. In fact, my point was exactly the opposite. Michael's announced lecture topic was "Is Darwinism Past Its 'Sell-By' Date?" I thought he would be interested in seeing a recent expression, by a non-neoD-but-very-much evolutionary scientist, that the answer to that question was Yes. For the record, here is our email exchange, with personal material excised:

From: Paul Nelson Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:05 PM To: Michael Ruse Subject: Re: FW: Evolutionary Theory proofs

[...]

I look forward to saying hello next week, at the U of C's Darwin’s 150th event. Your talk won on my schedule, over Joel Kingsolver on natural selection, your direct competitor in the 2:15-2:55 Sat 10/31 time slot. Attached for your amusement is Eugene Koonin’s argument that the Modern Synthesis is most certainly past its sell-by date: “all major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution” (p. 2).

Does that leave you two fighting over the metaphorical milk carton at the kitchen sink? What am I going to pour on my breakfast cereal if Koonin has his way? ;-)

[...]

From: "Michael Ruse"
To: "Paul Nelson"
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 11:41:04 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: RE: FW: Evolutionary Theory proofs

It seems to me that koon is way over the top --- more than that, if he is true little comfort there for you

See you next week

micahel

From: Paul Nelson
To: "Michael Ruse"
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:05:06 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: Re: Evolutionary Theory proofs

[...]

seriously: allow me a measure of sophistication in these matters. The landscape of theory has (far) more than two options: thus ~neo-D does NOT equal ID, or special creation, or whatever. I've belabored this point, in fact, while sharing a dais with you, at schools here and there. Some of the most outspoken critics of neo-D -- such as Lynn Margulis, Stuart Newman, or Jim Shapiro -- are equally contemptuous of ID. The landscape ranges 360 degrees from almost any interesting point of contention. Plenty of room to wander.

It is likely you will hear from U of C audience members who doubt neo-D, but have zero interest in promoting ID, and actively oppose it.

Just so you don't miss it: ~neo-D does NOT equal ID. ~Democrat does not equal Republican (I'm not a Democrat, nor a Republican, but a registered independent). What seems to unify evolutionary theory today is (mostly) its opposition to ID, very much in evidence in the 2009 talks.

But I don't want to end on that sour note. So, here's a preview of (some of) what to watch for when the video podcasts become available:

3. Recorded a Wow in the margins of my legal pad

-- David Jablonski, on the reality and uniqueness of the Cambrian Explosion.
The event took 10-15 million years, tops, Jablonski argued, and is unparalleled in the rest of the history of life. This interval is equivalent (temporally) to the isolation of cichlids in Lake Tanganyika, or to only five times the interval estimated for the speciation of the Galapagos finches (3 million years). "But give the finches more time," continued Jablonski, "and they'd still be finches." What was different about the Cambrian Explosion? Jablonski also stressed that the geological record is, pace Darwin, more than "good enough" for us to draw robust inferences from it.

-- Phillip Ward, on the pervasiveness of convergence.
Among the many Myths of Talk.Origins (tm), probably none is as influential as the so-called "Twin Nested Hierarchies," according to which molecular data reinforce, or corroborate, the classical historical signal from morphology. The evolutionary trees built on the basis of anatomy have now been supported by molecules, says the myth, and a pretty little myth it is indeed.

Well, the hierarchies are nested, except when they're not. After lampooning creationists -- like I said, the chuckles can be useful to move things along -- Ward gave several, some of them downright astonishing, examples where molecular data busted up long-accepted clades, based originally on morphology, and "distributed the groups all over the tree." Convergent evolution is thus very widespread: "We were simply, greatly misled by morphology alone," Ward stressed. After another example of unexpected convergence, in the insects: "We were grossly misled by morphological similarities."

-- David Kingsley's entire lecture on sticklebacks
At a post-conference reception, chatting with PZ Myers, I agreed with his judgment that Kingsley's lecture was hands-down the best of the conference. Just over ten years ago, Kingsley's lab at Stanford selected stickleback fishes as a model system in which to study evolution, and they've succeeded to a remarkable degree. Using a combination of population genetic surveys, experimental (genetic) manipulation, and DNA sequencing, Kingsley and his co-workers have been able to isolate the genetic changes (in regulatory elements) leading to dramatic phenotypic changes, such as the loss of pelvic structures, pigment, and the like.

Great talk -- beautifully illustrated, full of testable implications. If more evolutionary biology were like this, the field would have a much higher reputation among other biological disciplines.

But here's where PZ and I didn't agree. (He told me that, as usual, I was confused.) The evolutionary changes that Kingsley et al. have illuminated are all losses. Freshwater sticklebacks, for instance, often lose pelvic structures, and in fact have done so in parallel (with the same regulatory elements being involved) all over the world.

But really interesting macroevolution can't be losses of this and that. Gotta build novelty, not jettison it (when the latter happens to be advantageous). Mike Behe and I have talked about this quite a bit -- his reaction to the Cold Spring Harbor Darwin symposium lectures of this past summer was, "Paul, it was all breaking things and losing things."

In any case, don't miss Kingsley's talk. I also recommend, for its clarity, Elliott Sober's lecture on the structure of Darwin's argument, and Jane Maienschein's talk on the often unhappy relationship of embryology and evolution, for her wit.

It's a heck of a lot of fun to attend a conference like this, if you don't mind being the butt of jokes.

Posted by Paul Nelson at 3:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Evolutionists have long sought mechanisms for the origin of reproductive barriers between populations, mechanisms which are thought to be key to the formation of new species. A recent article in ScienceDaily finds that “Junk DNA” might be the “mechanism that prevents two species from reproducing.” Basically, so-called “junk”-DNA is involved in helping to package chromosomes in the cell. If two species have different “junk” DNA, then this prevents the proteins in the egg from properly packaging the chromosomes donated by the sperm. The organism does not develop properly. As the article, titled “Junk DNA Mechanism That Prevents Two Species From Reproducing Discovered,” explains:

during early development, the proteins required for cell division come from the mother. The researchers speculate that the heterochromatin of the male D. melanogaster's X chromosome has rapidly evolved, such that after mating, the machinery involved in DNA packaging from a D. simulans mother no longer recognizes the D. melanogaster father's "junk" DNA, Ferree said.

Posted by Casey Luskin at 10:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

NewsBusters has a great interview with David Berlinski by Kevin Mooney, who praises The Deniable Darwin as "a series of mind-bending essays." Proving once again that he is a skeptic's skeptic, Dr. Berlinski addresses the lack of criticism in science:

“In the U.S. you have the separation of powers that keeps different branches in check, but this is not true for science, where there is now a lot of corruption,” he observed. “Science needs its own critics. The same skepticism that is used in research now needs to be turned back onto science itself.”

But there is nothing wrong in principle with scientific endeavors that are infused by faith and a sense of humility toward larger possibilities, Berlinsk said.

“We are not going to adopt sharia law because an astronomer who is open to these ideas begins to make important discoveries,” he observed.

The rest of the interview is available here.

Posted by Anika Smith at 3:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Epperson v. Arkansas was the first case regarding the teaching of evolution to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision was handed down in 1968, where the Court effectively declared it illegal to ban the teaching of evolution.

1. Summary

An Arkansas statute descended from the Tennessee “Monkey Law” made it a criminal misdemeanor for teachers in state-supported schools to teach evolution and to use textbooks that taught the theory.²⁸ Despite this law, in 1965 the Little Rock, Arkansas School Board gave biology teacher Susan Epperson a new textbook containing material on evolution.²⁹ To avoid criminal penalty and dismissal, she sought a declaration that the Arkansas statute was unconstitutional.³⁰ The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Epperson and held that the prohibition against teaching evolution violated the Establishment Clause.³¹ The Court found that the law existed because evolution conflicted with "a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group," and thus it unconstitutionally tailored the curriculum to fit with the teachings of a certain religious viewpoint.³² The Court wrote:

The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group.³³

Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite.³⁵

2. Importance and Commentary
Epperson effectively made it illegal to prohibit the teaching of evolution, as such an action would be viewed with severe suspicion as having been motivated by religion. Epperson’s inquiry into the religious motives underlying the Arkansas statute also provided precedent for the “purpose prong” of the Lemon test that was constructed just a few years later. Additionally, this case provides the oft-quoted or rephrased language regarding the importance of preventing Establishment Clause violations in public schools: “[T]he vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.”³⁶

In his concurring opinion, Justice Black foresaw that the failure of courts to recognize that evolution conflicts with the religious beliefs of many Americans would cause much public controversy over this issue in the years to come:

A second question that arises for me is whether this Court's decision forbidding a State to exclude the subject of evolution from its schools infringes the religious freedom of those who consider evolution an anti-religious doctrine. If the theory is considered anti-religious, as the Court indicates, how can the State be bound by the Federal Constitution to permit its teachers to advocate such an "anti-religious" doctrine to schoolchildren? The very cases cited by the Court as supporting its conclusion hold that the State must be neutral, not favoring one religious or antireligious view over another. The Darwinian theory is said to challenge the Bible's story of creation; so too have some of those who believe in the Bible, along with many others, challenged the Darwinian theory. . . . Unless this Court is prepared simply to write off as pure nonsense the views of those who consider evolution an anti-religious doctrine, then this issue presents problems under the Establishment Clause far more troublesome than are discussed in the Court's opinion.³⁷

Epperson’s requirement of “neutrality” in matters of religion may also have implications for those who favor promoting evolution by exposing students to pro-evolution theological views in the science classroom.³⁹ Simply put, teachers who favor theological views that support evolution likely violate Epperson’s mandate that public schools maintain “neutrality between religion and religion.”⁴⁰

Finally, the Epperson majority explained that “the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them.”⁴¹ While such language is undoubtedly partial towards lawsuits against religiously motivated policies that oppose the teaching of evolution, one can also imagine this language being quoted in a brief opposing an atheist plaintiff alleging that teaching scientific critique of evolution, or the teaching of alternatives to evolution such as intelligent design, established theistic religion. Would courts accept such an argument?

[Editor’s Note: This survey of Epperson v. Arkansas is an excerpt from the article “Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the Teaching of Biological Origins,” Hamline University Law Review, Vol. 32(1):1-64 (Winter, 2009), published by Hamline University School of Law. This excerpt covers the case Epperson v. Arkansas; the full article can be read here.]

References Cited
[28.] Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103 (1968) at 99.
[29.] Id. at 100.
[30.] Id.
[31.] Id. at 110.
[32.] Id. at 103.
[33.] Epperson, 393 U.S. at 103.
[34.] Id. at 105.
[35.] Id. at 103-104.
[36.] Id. at 104 (quoting Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 487 (1960)).
[37.] Id. at 113 (Black, J., concurring).
[38.] See infra notes 194-195, 347-349, 366-370 and accompanying text.
[38.] For example, in 2007 PBS-NOVA released a Briefing Packet for Educators, available at to the NOVA docudrama about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial that instructs teachers to introduce religion into science classes with discussion questions like “Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion? A: Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false.” Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education similarly recommends that teachers expose students to theological views that favor evolution. See Eugenie Scott, Dealing with Antievolutionism, see also John G. West, Darwin Day In America 227-230 (2007).
[40.] Epperson, 393 U.S. at 104.
[41.] Id. at 107 (quoting Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 505 (1952)).

Posted by Casey Luskin at 9:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

More than a thousand people attended the second day of the Legacy of Darwin ID Conference this weekend in Castle Rock, Colorado. Saturday morning started off with a strong talk by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, who synthesized the main points of his books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution. Behe, in his usual winsome and accessible style, drove home just how much empirical evidence has accumulated in recent years demonstrating the sharp limits to the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random mutations.

During the question period that followed, two people offered long-winded “questions” to Behe that seemed to come straight from the talking points of the National Center for Science Education.

The first person offered a laundry list of the ways Judge Jones and the Darwinist witnesses in the Kitzmiller case supposedly refuted intelligent design (including the shibboleth about the Type-Three Secretory System). The second person read off a list of scientific organizations such as the AAAS that have denounced of ID and then demanded to know how ID claims could be scientifically tested.

Behe patiently explained how Darwinists in the Kitzmiller case far from refuted the evidence from intelligent design and described how Judge Jones uncritically cut-and-pasted his inaccurate analysis of ID from a brief written by lawyers for the plaintiffs. Regarding the ritual condemnations of ID by “scientific” lobbying organizations, he pointed out that science isn’t determined by political statements; it’s determined by the evidence. As for how to test ID, Behe noted that his ideas about irreducible complexity could be tested by genetic knock-out experiments. During my later session, I added my two cents, pointing out that Judge Jones’ opinion was riddled with errors and misstatements—such as his phony claim that ID scientists have not published any peer-reviewed publications. I also mentioned how University of Idaho biologist Scott Minnich presented evidence at the Kitzmiller trial of his own genetic knock-out experiments corroborating Behe’s ideas. I suggested that people read Traipsing into Evolution or some of the other responses to the many urban legends that have grown up about the Kitzmiller case (see here, here, here, and here for additional responses). Regarding the AAAS’s well-publicized denunciation of ID, I mentioned how I had surveyed AAAS board members at the time about what books and articles they had actually read by ID proponents before issuing their statement. Of the four board members who responded, none could cite a single article or book, although one board member did say that she had perused various unnamed sources on the internet! (Wikipedia, perhaps?!)

After Behe’s session came Stephen Meyer’s lively discussion with the irrepressible David Berlinski. In the wide-ranging conversation, Berlinski poignantly talked about his grandfather who died at Auschwitz and his journey to come to terms with the beliefs of his parents. Berlinski also discussed the back story to his famous essay published in Commentary on “The Deniable Darwin,” now the lead essay in his new book The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (just published by Discovery Institute Press). He further talked about his motivation for writing The Devil’s Delusion in response to the scientific pretensions of “new atheist” writers like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. Berlinski’s barbed and witty comments brought down the house.

Following a break for lunch, I presented a lecture drawn from my book Darwin Day in America, outlining the real-world consequences of Darwinian materialism. Despite the fact that Darwin himself was a kind man who personally espoused conventional morality, I explained how his redefinition of morality and his effort to apply natural selection to human society had far-ranging consequences. At the end of my talk, I discussed the growing efforts to intimidate and censor anyone who disagrees with Darwin—including the outrageous campaign to vandalize and shut down the website of the group that sponsored the Colorado conference in order to prevent people from registering. I called on Darwinists to repudiate such efforts and return to the much more open and fair-minded approach modeled by Charles Darwin himself, who patiently and civilly discussed objections to his theory rather than demonizing and censoring his critics.

The last session included Stephen Meyer, Douglas Groothuis (of Denver Seminary), Michael Behe, and myself discussing practical ways to challenge Darwinian materialism among the next generation. At the end of that session, the conference speakers received a standing ovation. It was a humbling—and encouraging—end to a wonderful conference.

As I noted at the event itself, I am thankful for the fine people at Shepherd Project Ministries for sponsoring and organizing this event and inviting speakers from Discovery Institute to participate. Each year DI Fellows speak at dozens of events sponsored by a wide-range of groups—public and private, academic and general, friendly and hostile, secular and faith-based. We are always happy to present our views when people sincerely want to hear them and are willing to offer us a fair forum. In this case, the staff and volunteers of Shepherd Project Ministries had to surmount an incredibly vicious campaign of disruption in order to hold their event; I am grateful that they persevered.

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