Evolution News & Views

In American Spectator, Bethell Interviews Stephen Meyer

2012-05-16T22:03:32Z

]]> Our friend Tom Bethell has a nice piece in the Spectator where he reports on Steve Meyer's recent talk at the University Club in Washington, DC, and talks with Meyer about the intellectual and scholarly ferment that's bubbling to the surface in biology, centered on doubts about Darwinism. It's not only intelligent-design advocates who are in on the action but others with no ties to ID, or evident sympathies for it, who are breaking free of evolutionary orthodoxy.

As Meyer (Signature in the Cell) points out, they are in a scientific tradition extending back to Newton and Boyle:

"Leading U.S. biologists, including evolutionary biologists, are saying we need a new theory of evolution," Meyer said. Many increasingly criticize Darwinism, even if they don't accept design. One is the cell biologist James Shapiro of the University of Chicago. His new book is Evolution: A View From the 21st Century. He's "looking for a new evolutionary theory." David Depew (Iowa) and Bruce Weber (Cal State) recently wrote in Biological Theory that Darwinism "can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory." Such criticisms have mounted in the technical literature.

At the same time, most draw the line at accepting intelligent design. They insist it is "not science," maybe a "science stopper." Science, they believe, can operate only by invoking material causes. But as Meyer has written, scientists earlier felt no such constraint. Newton argued that the arrangements of the planets and the stability of their orbits could only have arisen as the result of "an intelligent and powerful Being." Robert Boyle, the 17th century chemist, invoked the activity of a "most intelligent and designing agent."

Dr. Ben Carson at Emory University: Watch the Video!

2012-05-16T20:13:54Z

]]> Emory University posted a video of Ben Carson's Commencement speech from Monday -- you know, the one that led to Emory president James Wagner's assuring faculty that henceforth the university would institute a background check on honorees like Dr. Carson, lest another Darwin doubter or other undesirable escape detection.

In the end, President Wagner introduced Dr. Carson gracefully. Carson gave a beautiful speech (no notes or text either), funny and inspiring and eloquent. I got choked up when he talked about Francis Scott Key composing the words that became the lyrics of the "Star Spangled Banner" as he observed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814. Key saw how the American troops, defending Baltimore Harbor, would not let the flag fall despite being showered by upwards of 1500 cannonballs along with rockets and mortar shells, a lesson in persistence. But I'm not doing justice to the way he tells it. Watch for yourself.

Yes, he addressed the evolution flap and gently but firmly put his critics in their place:

I know there was some controversy about my views on creation and somebody thought that I said that evolutionists are not ethical people. Of course I would never say such a thing and would never believe such a thing nor would anybody with any common sense. So that's pretty ridiculous.

How could the four professors who drew up the petition of complaint seriously think he meant to say Darwin believers are morally defective, as opposed to acknowledging what's obviously true -- that Darwinian evolution undercuts any coherent defense of moral principles?

Better still, later in the speech and without referencing the Emory dustup, he made an unapologetic pitch for reasoned debate over enforced dogma. "Political correctness," he said, "threatens the prosperity and the vitality of our nation."

Many people came to this nation and they were trying to escape from societies that tried to tell them what they could say and what they could think and here we come reintroducing it through the back door. And we need to remember that it is not important that we all think the same thing and the emphasis should not be on us all saying the same thing. The emphasis should be on learning how to be respectful of individuals who have a different opinion.

That's one of things that made America great, the ability to engage in dialogue. And I've always said if two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn't necessary. We need to be able to understand that if we're going to make real progress.

There was a time in the history of the world when there was great intolerance for anybody who thought differently than the mainstream. It was called the Dark Ages. And there are some things that can be learned even in places and societies where we think we know everything, because if you look over the course of time you will find a migration of what is thought to be the truth. And if we all engage in appropriate intellectual discussion I think we will get there much faster.

That's a quite a statement, even without making the slightest allusion to intelligent design or Darwinism. He's saying that history amounts to a groping yet persistent search for truth. To assume you've got it all figured out is naïve. "Appropriate intellectual discussion," an unhindered airing of competing views, will speed the search even as suppressing opinions you don't like impedes it.

Great stuff. Take that, academic bullies.

Dr. Carson described his personal intellectual and professional trajectory, one that led from a Detroit childhood of dire poverty and challenges to his own self-esteem, to medical breakthroughs as a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. He talked about separating a pair of conjoined Siamese twins at South Africa's only black teaching hospital, a triumph that left black South Africans exultant and full of well-deserved pride. When the surgery was successfully completed, people were literally dancing in the streets. This month, Dr. Carson said, the twins will graduate from ninth grade.

What a wonderful story.

"True success," he told the Emory graduates, means "using the talent you have to elevate other people." That too is a thought on which his critics, who are very good at tearing people down, would benefit from meditating.

Samuel Butler's Anti-Evolutionist Satire

2012-05-16T13:00:43Z

An email correspondent writes to us here and laments that the contemporary ID movement lacks humor. Where is the Mark Twain or Grouch Marx of intelligent design?

As an example of what he misses, he points to the writing of the 19th-century anti-Darwinian writer Samuel Butler whose famed novel Erewhon satirizes evolutionary thinking, among other things. In the story, the protagonist visits a fictional dystopia called Erewhon which provides an occasion for Butler's sending up various aspects of Victorian culture, including Victorian science:

I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant.

"Sir," he answered, "this organ is identical with the rim at the bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its purposes must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find. if you were to look up the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function its present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir," he continued, "if, in the course of time, it were to become modified still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly, while in some cases, it will become extinct."

Well, it's funnier than Louis C.K., the comedian that nowadays you're required to find hilarious if you want your friends to think you're smart but whose every quoted pronouncement is completely non-humorous.

If James Shapiro Is Right, Materialist Explanations of Life's Origins Are Even Less Plausible than Previously Thought

2012-05-16T01:09:38Z

]]> Our friend and ENV contributor James Barham is engaged in a fascinating dialogue with maverick University of Chicago biologist James Shapiro, likewise an esteemed contributor. Shapiro (Evolution: A View from the 21st Century) argues for "natural genetic engineering" as the non-random force driving genetic variation that, in evolution, is then "purified" by natural selection. This is a provocative alternative to the Darwinian conception, where random mutations are assumed to do the job, and it makes Darwinists very uncomfortable.

Today at his Huffington Post blog, Shapiro responds to Barham's challenge to distinguish his view from vitalism of one kind or another.

Shapiro responds in part:

Unfortunately, scientific vitalism, as championed by serious people like Hans Driesch, acquired a bad name in the early 20th century. Reliable observations definitely indicated sensory and control processes at work in embryonic development, wound healing and regeneration following experimental disruption. But the vitalists had no objective way to describe the cellular "home" of these capabilities.

Molecular biology has pointed us toward solutions by uncovering complex arrays of sensory, signaling, and decision-making networks in all living cells. In many cases we can enumerate network components and interactions, although in no case can we be sure the list is complete.

How these immensely sophisticated analog molecular networks operate is still a mystery. We can look to electronic computation systems for models and ideas. But I am not aware of any truly original conceptual understanding of how cell circuits operate that goes beyond the limits of current digital computers, which have neither the flexibility nor robustness of cell networks (let alone the capacity to reproduce).

The most intriguing take-away point is Shapiro's observation that natural genetic engineering must have appeared "quite early" following the origin of life.

I think the ability to change the genome is a basic vital function. Change is repeatedly necessary to adapt to a dynamic environment, as the fossil record demonstrates so well. Life is the story of organisms that succeeded in changing in response to periodic evolutionary crises.

I took pains in the book to say that origins-of-life questions are still beyond rigorous scientific investigation. We do not yet understand enough about life as we find it. This gap in understanding includes the issues of agency and teleology so fascinating to Barham.

If Shapiro is right about this whole natural genetic engineering idea, which we've debated here at length in the past, that would make materialist explanations of life's origins even harder to maintain than they otherwise appear. Materialists would have to explain a vastly sophisticated layer of "engineering" functionality -- where did it come from? -- whose existence they previously didn't even suspect. Or am I missing something?

I wrote here recently that -- again, if Shapiro is right -- that leaves intelligent design as the sole explanation of life's origin that seems remotely plausible, a major if implicit concession to the case Stephen Meyer makes in Signature in the Cell.

"Creepy," "Ghoulish," "Not the Best Science"

2012-05-15T23:11:36Z

]]> "Creepy," "ghoulish," "not the best science" -- these are a few indisputable descriptions applied (by Wired magazine) to an experiment Charles Darwin conducted in 1868. He was getting ready to write his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals and set out to sample reactions from all of 24 human subjects as they responded to and characterized a series of creepy, ghoulish photographs by French physiologist Benjamin Duchenne. The photos show

a guy being prodded in the face with an electrical current. Darwin then asked his guests-cum-guinea pigs to describe the emotion displayed in each photo. Was the subject happy? Sorrowful? Cheeky? Darwin hoped to determine what universal core emotions exist (if any) and what culturally modified variations branch from them.

Cambridge University's Darwin Correspondence Project was inspired by the experiment and conducted it anew using the same photos but a much larger sampling of viewers, some 18,000 in all.

Interestingly, the experimenters found that, far from being "wired" or somehow part of our animal nature, the way we interpret what facial expressions mean is culturally, not just biologically determined. Less than a century and a half later, for example, the meaning of a certain expression (produced when the "zygomaticus minor (left side), corrugator supercilli" muscles are galvanized) is read as indicating the subject is "confused." In Darwin's day, it meant he was "crying from grief."

Of the emotions, Wired notes that "You might say they've evolved." Yes but not, apparently, in the familiar Darwinian sense.

Image credit: Wikicommons.

Intelligent Design in Action: Archaeology

2012-05-15T18:22:12Z

]]> Archaeology is the study of artifacts that have been designed for a purpose. Our uniform experience of intelligent causes allows us to make inferences about design, even without knowing the identity of the designers. Since ID principles are used in archaeology as they are in various other sciences, what's the problem with applying the theory in biology?

New intelligently designed research tools are allowing researchers to ask questions about human intelligent action in the context of past civilizations, questions that were not even thinkable before. For instance, consider a cuneiform inscription on a clay tablet. The focus has usually been on deciphering the message, but now, through X-ray imaging, scientists can study the technology that ancient people used to create the tablet itself. This was explained in an interesting press release this month from Western University in Canada by Paul Mayne, "Redefining Archaeological Research."

One of Western University's strengths is X-ray CT scanning technology, specifically of objects up to 40 cm in size. This is perfect for digitizing artifacts the size of clay tablets. With the university's microCT scanner, researchers such as Andrew Nelson can render the exterior -- and interior -- of any object.

With the touch of a button, the object was scanned, reconstructed and fully rendered using more than 3,000 individual images, allowing for high-quality visualization and inspection.

A digital database of archaeological artifacts can thus be made available to researchers around the world -- a huge improvement over storage in warehouses. Speaking of warehouses, the university has intelligently designed that, too. In association with McMaster University and the Canadian government, Western's "Sustainable Archaeological Repository" (SAR) can store 90,000 boxes of artifacts in its 18,000 square foot facility. Digitizing some of the millions of objects catalogued thus far will open these boxes to the world, allowing "anyone at home ... access" to the history of civilization.

Several aspects of this upbeat story are interesting. First, obviously, is the demonstration that intelligent design is already being used in science. Contrary to what critics of ID in the media and academia may say, ID is not some foreign intrusion that certain people with an "agenda" are trying to sneak into science. It's already there -- in archaeology but also in forensics, cryptography, biomimetics and SETI. The debate is not whether the methods and inferences of ID are legitimate, but whether the same methods and inferences are applicable in biology and cosmology.

Well, why not? In the press release, Dr. Neal Ferris, principal investigator for the SAR, noted circular patterns in a piece of pottery. From these he was able to infer the technique the designer used -- even the specific decisions the designer made.

"With the scans, we'll be able to cut sections of the object to see how they were constructed, to see the materials used to make it," he said. "Anything that is ceramic, like the clay tablet or a ceramic vessel, you can now tell how it was made by the image. The tablet looked like there were circular motions to it. It gives us clues into the actual actions of the person and the decision-making process the person is going through. It adds really unique personal dimensions to this object.

"It is no longer a static object, it's the end product of a series of decisions that this individual has made." [bold text added in all quotations.]

Dr. Ferris was able to make such a statement about design decisions without knowing anything about the identity of the designer or that person's religion. And clearly, Dr. Ferris himself had no religious agenda in making the inference. In fact, he believes inferences about intelligent causes can be extended even further:

"You're scanning, for example, a thousand-year-old earthen vessel a woman made in a village during a completely different way of life. You'll get to reveal the entire craft in making the pot," he said. "We're going to be constantly scanning this sort of stuff, so imagine what happens when we have 2,000 of these pots scanned. We'll likely be able to track the history of a particular artisan."

The technology is applicable to intelligent and natural causes, as Nelson made clear:

Nelson said other applications for the microCT scanner are possible. For instance, he has a graduate student interested in primate evolution and primate facial morphology; the Earth and Planetary Science team is interested in scans of their meteorite collections; and a luthier from Sudbury is interested in scanning violins to look at what makes a Stradivarius different from a garden-variety violin.

"This is unbelievable," Nelson said. "To have access to a unit like this, that we can really push to the limits of imaging in the archaeological context, is extremely exciting and will really this facility on the map. There are lots of other applications that we are only really beginning to start exploring."

In short, ID is alive and comfortably at home in science; it's at the cutting edge of new discoveries.

Follow-up thought experiment: If the Earth and Planetary Science team scanned a meteorite and found a message or a molecular machine performing a recognizable function, would they be justified in making a design inference?

Yeah, Teach the Evolution Controversy, but Not on My Campus, Buster

2012-05-15T13:00:26Z

In one enigma -- among the various outrages and ironies -- of the Ben Carson episode at Emory University, there's this. Of the four Emory professors who first raised the alarm over Dr. Carson's views on evolution, one is actually a supporter of a "teach the controversy" approach to science and evolution pedagogy in schools.

Back in December, ENV's Casey Luskin commented on a CNN op-ed by Arri Eisen, professor of pedagogy at Emory's Center for Ethics, Department of Biology ("Emory University Professor of Pedagogy Endorses Teaching the Evolution Controversy"). Eisen's whole speciality involves how to teach about biology. He wrote:

High school educators in Wisconsin showed that students who read original texts from Darwin and intelligent-design scholars, and discussing those texts, critically learned evolution better (without rejection of other worldviews) than those taught it in the traditional didactic manner. Teaching potentially controversial science can work if done in an interactive, engaging fashion and in a rich historical and societal context.

To which Casey replied:

This is what we have been saying for years. In fact, the big secret of the debate over teaching evolution is that leading science education authorities agree that students learn the science best when they learn about scientific disagreements and are allowed to study scientific topics through critical analysis. Many other science education authorities agree.

Has Eisen done an about-face? What's up with that? Professor Eisen couldn't stomach Dr. Carson's giving a Commencement speech (that wasn't about evolution) without also pointing out how Carson's opinion, expressed in a 2004 interview, violated "Emory's ideals." The letter created a fuss that led to Emory's instituting a new screening step to keep from inviting any more free-thinkers to speak at Commencement or receive honorary degrees.

Yet the same Arri Eisen thinks -- or used to think as of last year -- that

Clearly, there are a multitude of reasons for America's polarized politics and decreasing science literacy and innovation that go beyond just teaching science better. But sometimes a little creative wrestling with and engagement in systems and programs that already exist can make a difference.

So exposing high-schoolers to alternative viewpoints is good for education, but exposing college grads to a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon who once expressed a heretical opinion on evolution is a big problem worthy of many grave concerns? Did Arri Eisen change his mind in half a year? If so, why?

Working on a campus so finely attuned to heresy, maybe he was concerned about what might happen if his own background came to be checked.

"Background Checks" for Criminal History, Bad Credit Record, Drug Abuse...and Doubts about Darwin

2012-05-14T22:20:03Z

]]> In the Ben Carson story, the most appalling thing I've seen so far is an email I might have missed were it not for the careful eyes of Center for Science & Culture fellow Cornelius Hunter, who blogs at Darwin's God.

What got this whole Carson controversy started, you remember, is the letter written by four Emory University professors and signed by close to 500 Emory faculty, staff and student, published in the Emory student paper. They were protesting against (and distorting) Carson's thoughts on evolution. Well, in the comments under the article, Hunter found that a reader had reproduced an email that one of the four professors, Jacobus de Roode, addressed apparently to signers of the original protest letter. It was a follow-up.

Dr. de Roode reports that Emory president James Wagner met with the university's Faculty Science Council and discussed, among other things, the matter of how Ben Carson, famed pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University who has admitted to being a Darwin doubter, came to be invited as Emory's Commencement speaker where he would also receive an honorary degree. There's no indication that Dr. Wagner directly apologized for honoring Dr. Carson but he came very close:

President Wagner explained that the committee who had invited Dr. Carson and recommended him for an honorary degree (in Humane Letters, not Science) had not explored fully Dr. Carson's views on evolution. He explained that the University has already implemented an additional background checking step in the procedures that will lead to commencement speaker invitations and the awarding of honorary degrees in the future. Overall, President Wagner thanked all those who signed the letter for bringing up this important issue, and for starting a valuable discussion among the Emory community. He expressed his hopes that this discussion can be followed up in the fall, with a College-wide discussion on truth and systems of belief.

A "background checking step"? Wow. Wow. So they are going to screen future Commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients for doubts on Darwinian evolution -- along with, presumably, other unsavory views, arrest record, bad credit rating, drug use, and so on. You don't do "background checks" for things that are innocuous, even merely eccentric, or otherwise up for debate. Obviously, you screen for illegal or unethical associations or behavior, anything that would entail shame, reproach, or danger.

I assume that Professor de Roode's account is authentic and accurate. I wrote him an email to check and will let you know. (UPDATE: Yes, it's authentic.)

Again, think what this means for Dr. Carson. Professor de Roode wrote the email, according to his heading, on April 30. The meeting with President Wagner happened, according to the email, on April 26. So more than two weeks before Commencement, faculty and administration together allowed it be known, on the website of the student newspaper, that if Emory had it to do over again they would have "background checked" Dr. Carson for dissenting evolutionary views. Even though he was never going to breath a word in his speech about evolution!

By clear implication, had his views come to light before Emory issued the invitation to Dr. Carson to be honored at Commencement, the university would have not have invited him to speak.

Otherwise, what point would there be in a background check? You find something suspect, and you go ahead and invite the guy anyway? I don't think so.

I imagine that Ben Carson is a man of the world and doesn't get his feelings hurt too easily. But this is a heck of a thing to know about your hosts as you're flying down to Atlanta from Baltimore to receive an honorary degree and speak at Commencement: that the university president who will hand you the degree and introduce you as Commencement speaker regrets having invited you and has told the science faculty as much? That the president and faculty allowed this to get out, in the student paper, is almost unbelievably shoddy.

Talk about Southern hospitality!

But as we've said all along, the main point to take away from this whole business is the message it sends to scientists and scholars who are more professionally vulnerable than Ben Carson. It says that you should regard any doubts you have about Darwinian evolution as a mark of poor character, a stain on your intellectual record, that will hinder you in any academic associations you seek to forge or maintain for yourself.

Want to get a job in academia, and keep it once you get it? Better hope your heterodox thoughts on evolutionary theory don't get out. Better still, much better if you are at all risk averse, just go ahead and adjust your opinions in line with evolutionary orthodoxy. Even if you don't intend to teach about evolution. Say what everyone else says, think what they think, and you stand a chance of getting ahead in university life.

Photo credit: TranceMist/Flickr.

When You Wish Upon a Star

2012-05-14T19:24:10Z

]]> Dr. Gerald Joyce is lonely. A researcher at Scripps Research Institute and long-time proponent of the "RNA World" hypothesis, Dr. Joyce confesses to his feelings of gloomy isolation in an article in PLoS Biology. Titled "Bit by Bit: The Darwinian Basis of Life," the paper is an odd mix of Disney-like fantasy and intelligent-design realism. PhysOrg provides a summary in which Joyce audaciously speaks for all of mankind:

"I think humans are lonely and long for another form of life in the universe," says Joyce, "preferably one that is intelligent and benevolent. But wishing upon a star does not make it so. We must either discover alternative life or construct it in the laboratory. Someday it may be discovered by a Columbus who travels to a distant world or, more likely in my opinion, invented by a Geppetto who toils at the workbench."

Even as he wishes upon a star, with a hit tip to Jiminy Cricket, Dr. Joyce knows that as a scientist he must keep his feet on the ground. Astronomers are rapidly approaching the discovery of the 1,000th extrasolar planet, yet no claims of alien life have ever panned out. Joyce continues:

Didn't President Clinton announce in 1996 that a Martian meteorite recovered in Antarctica "speaks of the possibility of life" on Mars? (No, it turned out to be mineralic artifacts.) Wasn't some "alien" arsenic-based life discovered recently in Mono Lake, California? (No, it's a familiar proteobacterium struggling to survive in a toxic environment.) Didn't Craig Venter and his colleagues recently create a synthetic bacterial cell, "the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer"? (No, its parent is Mycoplasma mycoides and its genome was dutifully reconstructed through DNA synthesis and PCR amplification.)

Why are we so confused (or so lonely) that we have such trouble distinguishing life from non-life and distinguishing our biology from another? A key limitation is that we know of only one life form, causing us to regard life from that singular perspective.... We see life as cellular, with a nucleic acid genome that is translated to a protein machinery.

In her summary of the paper, Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience agrees that the hype about habitable zones and Earth-like planets is just that: hype. She reports that Joyce feels such breathless over-reporting can backfire:

"I just worry that we cry wolf too many times, and people are going to start tuning it out," Joyce told LiveScience. "Let's just cool it on these false alarms," he added.

Science can't make an inference from a sample size of one, and Joyce knows it. In a subsection called "Rolling the Dice," he asks:

What, in fact, is the probability that a temperate, rocky planet will generate life? Science cannot say. That is because, based on the one known example of obscure origins, even a Bayesian would not want to assign a probability to such an event. The probability assessment would be more meaningful if there were even one more genuine example of life, whether discovered in space, on Earth, or in a test tube.

Reverse-Engineering Darwin

Conveniently defining life in Darwinian terms, Joyce continues:

Life self-reproduces, transmits heritable information to its progeny, and undergoes Darwinian evolution based on natural selection. Life captures high-energy starting materials and converts them to lower-energy products to drive metabolic processes. Life exists on at least one temperate, rocky planet, where it has persisted for about four billion years.

Yet, incongruously, Joyce speaks primarily of the minimum amount of information needed to comprise life. What if a system had some of the above functions, but could not evolve new functions? Would it be alive? He frames the question, again, in terms of information:

When faced with such real or hypothetical situations regarding alternative life, it is useful to frame the question in terms of information: How many heritable bits are involved, and where did they come from? ... Biological systems are distinguishable from chemical systems because they contain components that have many potential alternative compositions but adopt a particular composition based on the history of the system. In this sense biological systems have a molecular memory (genotype), which is shaped by experience (selection) and maintained by self-reproduction.

By doing some bitwork accounting and asking information-based questions, Joyce came up with a formula for the information content required for a system to be considered alive: it has to encode "more heritable bits than the number of bits required to initiate its operation." Self-replication is insufficient, he notes. A living system must have the ability to derive new information intrinsically:

Suppose one has a molecule that self-duplicates indefinitely, directing the ordered assembly of building blocks to produce additional copies of itself. That would be an interesting chemical process, but unless there is the opportunity for alternative compositions to arise and similarly reproduce -- that is, for Darwinian evolution to occur -- the bit content would be zero. Suppose one has a complex reaction cascade, perhaps even an autocatalytic cycle, contained within a growing and dividing physical compartment. That too would be an interesting chemical process, but it would not involve any heritable bits. Suppose one uses the genetic information from a preexisting biological organism to construct a facsimile that, going forward, can evolve alternative compositions. New bits could accrue within such a system, but all of the bits that were provided at the outset would have derived from the preexisting organism. To be considered a new life form, the majority of bits must be self-derived.

Life derived from a pre-existing life form would have a "privileged beginning," he says, whereas life on Earth (which he believes evolved from a primordial soup) started with zero information. He gives some examples of derivative life, but it's clear he is more interested in how to get information from the ground up.

How many bits are necessary? Joyce imagines RNA chains with 80 bits of information; that, unfortunately, would require that warm little soup to have 27 kilograms of RNA to get all the possible combinations. Things are a lot simpler, he argues, if 40 bits is considered sufficient as a starting point. Then, "a lucky milligram might contain the seed of life."

But other problems quickly mount. There's no natural selection without self-replication, and copies must be accurate enough to avoid error catastrophe. In addition, harmful cross-reactions tend to gunk up the works. (These problems were all described 28 years ago in the early ID book by Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin.) Joyce writes:

In the laboratory one can prepare milligram quantities of random-sequence RNA molecules containing 40 or more subunits. One can provide an endless supply of activated nucleotide building blocks and control all aspects of the reaction conditions. Stacking the deck in this way, why haven't we witnessed the origin of RNA life experimentally? Because even a lucky milligram of RNA is insufficient. In order for a seed copy of replicating RNA to germinate, it must produce additional copies of itself faster than the existing copies become degraded, and it must operate with sufficient fidelity that the accurate copies are not overwhelmed by error copies. The requisite rate and fidelity of replication might reasonably be achieved in a pure reaction system that contains only the replicator and its corresponding building blocks. However, in a complex mixture of almost entirely mismatched parts, what process singles out the rare matching components? Darwinian evolution can enrich one molecule in a milligram, but before the onset of Darwinian evolution there would be only chemistry, and the chemistry of complex mixtures of cross-interacting molecules is very messy.

Show Your ID, Please

The situation seems hopeless. Dr. Joyce injects some hope by describing his own work on self-replicating RNA molecules that appear to evolve in a Darwinian fashion. But he deflates his own story by admitting he snuck information into the system:

The population of evolving RNA enzymes constitutes a synthetic genetic system, but it is limited in two important respects. First, the molecules contain only 24 bits (12 base pairs) of heritable information to encode function. Second, replication depends on 60 bits (30 defined nucleotides) that are provided at the outset and are not subject to mutation and selection.... Thus of the 84 total bits required for the system to replicate and evolve, only about one-fourth can be counted as part of the system's molecular memory. The synthetic genetic system is not a new life form because it operates mostly on borrowed bits.

At the end of the paper, under the heading "Prospects," he discusses how his loneliness might be cured. Astronomers might find alien life around another star. Evolutionists might find a new life form that derived from pre-existing life. Or, they might find life derived from bit-free chemistry. Most likely, though, he thinks, intelligent designers will reverse-engineer Charles Darwin:

Between these two extremes lie the possibilities of starting with a modest number of bits, whether by the luck of combinatorial chemistry or derived from preexisting life, then accruing enough bits within the system to be regarded as new life. Perhaps the first true alternative to terrestrial biology will be found on an extrasolar planet, in a rock from Mars, or within an extreme environment on Earth. More likely, it will be the handiwork of an intelligent species that has discovered the principles of Darwinian evolution and learned to devise chemical systems that have the capacity to generate bits on their own.

Meanwhile, scientists persist in wishing upon stars. "We can take pure chemicals in a test tube and stack the deck like crazy to try to get something replicating and evolving, and that hasn't happened yet," Joyce says. "Right now the jury's out on whether it's hard or easy." Until and unless that happens, he feels "researchers should 'hunker down' and avoid the temptation to overhype the possibility of new life forms."

And why are they tempted to overhype? "To me, it's something kind of fundamental about human loneliness," he said, speaking for all humanity again. "We just wish it to be, so that we're not alone."

As benevolent psychiatrists, let's diagnose Dr. Joyce's condition and see if we can help.

Etiology: Loneliness caused by wishing upon a star and knowing it's all hype. Symptoms aggravated by thoughts that life in the real world is information-based and runs on machinery. Condition becomes acute when pondering that Geppetto and Craig Venter are intelligent designers.

Prescription: Daily meditation on Dembski's No Free Lunch and Meyer's Signature in the Cell.

Of course, to benefit from treatment, the patient first has to realize he has a problem.

Thank You for Supporting Ben Carson and Academic Freedom!

2012-05-14T09:30:28Z

Many thanks to readers who signed our petition in support of Ben Carson and the freedom of scientists and scholars to think dissenting thoughts on the subject of Darwinian evolution. We delivered more than 2,700 signatures to Emory University president James W. Wagner on Sunday, gathered in under a week.

Some 500 of Emory's faculty and students have condemned pediatric neurosurgeon and Commencement speaker Ben Carson for doubting Darwin. He's scheduled to speak at the campus in Atlanta and receive an honorary degree this morning sometime between 8 and 9:15 AM. In seeking to cast him in an embarrassing light, the professors used the familiar tactic of attributing to Dr. Carson beliefs, patently foolish ones, he does not hold. Emory's administration supported the professors and, as far as we know at this moment, has said nothing in favor of Dr. Carson's right to think for himself.

This shoddy treatment adds to what's often called a "chilling effect" on other scholars, less well armored by fame than Dr. Carson is. If even a star like him can be subjected to the indignity of this unwelcoming welcome, then think of what a less well known figure in academia would experience if he publicly voiced similar views. Intermediate-school students have their way of bullying; adults who are professional academics have their own methods. It's how they keep genuine skeptics in line.

That's why it was so important to communicate this message in a timely fashion.

Following is the letter from Center for Science & Culture associate director Dr. John West to Emory's president, Dr. Wagner:

May 13, 2012

James W. Wagner, President
Emory University

Dear Dr. Wagner:

Attached to this email I am forwarding an electronic petition gathered in the past few days by Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture and now bearing more than 2,700 signatures. The signers share a strong concern about the unworthy treatment that has been accorded to Emory University's Commencement speaker this year, Dr. Ben Carson, by Emory faculty and students.

We ask that you, as Emory's president, speak out promptly and unambiguously to affirm Dr. Carson's right to hold a dissenting view in the debate about Darwinian evolution. As you know, approximately 500 Emory faculty members, students and staff published a letter of their own not merely disagreeing with Dr. Carson on certain scientific and moral aspects of conventional evolutionary theory -- a position to which they are certainly entitled -- but grossly distorting Dr. Carson's published views and, in the process, making him appear foolish and disreputable.

The story has attracted national media attention. In public comments, an Emory University spokesman sided with the professors and said nothing in defense of Dr. Carson's right to express a different view. This had the effect of undermining the honor and welcome that normally go with the distinction of delivering a university's Commencement address and receiving an honorary degree. The signers of our petition believe that Emory's teaching staff has dishonored Dr. Carson.

This alone requires the courtesy of a statement of clarification from the university. However, even more important is the message that recent events at Emory send to scientists and scholars who are less prominent and therefore less "bullet proof" than Ben Carson.

There is a genuine and fascinating scientific debate going on about Darwinian theory -- specifically, about the explanatory adequacy of natural selection (operating on random variation) to account for the history of life's evolution, as compared to an alternative theory, that of intelligent design. The debate has important scientific, moral and cultural ramifications. Yet, for all that this is a scholarly discussion that needs to take place, scientists with doubts about Darwin are under the perpetual threat of intimidation and retaliation. As a result, many choose to maintain silence.

Distorting the views of opponents has been a key strategy of Darwin advocates, who seek to maintain the pretense of a freely determined scientific "consensus" on evolution. Responsible leaders in higher education need to take a firm stance and demand that science allow an open, no-holds-barred debate on evolution, where no one needs to fear that his name will be besmirched and his thoughts misrepresented in an effort to silence him.

The signers of this petition respectfully ask that Emory University offer a public statement calling on the scholarly community to refrain from intimidating dissenters in the evolution controversy and, instead, to allow an unhindered search for scientific truth.

Sincerely yours,

John G. West, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Center for Science and Culture
Discovery Institute, Seattle

Weikart in the Baltimore Sun: Ben Carson's "Thought Crime"

2012-05-14T03:29:33Z

Richard Weikart's op-ed today in the Baltimore Sun nicely explains some of the significance behind the shoddy welcome that Darwin-doubting neurosurgeon Ben Carson has received as Emory University's Commencement speaker. The Emory faculty and students who protested against him seem ignorant of what evolutionists from Darwin down to today have said about the way Darwinian theory undermines any coherent account of moral principles:

Almost 500 Emory University faculty and students have expressed their dismay that their commencement speaker on Monday does not toe the ideological line when it comes to evolutionary biology. Yes -- gasp -- the renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not believe in evolutionary theory. Not only that, but biology professors at Emory and their supporters also accuse Dr. Carson of committing a thought crime because he allegedly "equates acceptance of evolution with a lack of ethics and morality."

Since I am a historian who has studied and published on the history of evolutionary ethics, I was rather surprised by the Emory faculty's consternation over Dr. Carson's belief that evolution undermines objective ethics and morality. Last summer, I attended a major interdisciplinary conference at Oxford University on "The Evolution of Morality and the Morality of Evolution." Thus, I am well aware that there are a variety of viewpoints in academe on this topic. Nonetheless, many evolutionists -- from Darwin to the present (including quite a few at that Oxford conference) -- have argued and are still arguing precisely the point that Dr. Carson was highlighting: They claim that morality has evolved and thus has no objective existence.

Read the rest here.

Homochirality, a Puzzle in Biology that Remains Unsolved

2012-05-12T14:00:46Z

One of the big chemical conundrums in biology is figuring out how nature selected only "left-handed" amino acids and "right-handed" sugars for our bodies, even though synthesizing these compounds gives a mixtures of both the right- and left-handed ones.

By way of a mini-chemistry review, carbon atoms bond in a 3-dimentional, tetrahedral, fashion. So methane, CH4, looks like a carbon with four hydrogen atoms bonded around the carbon such that the hydrogen atoms are the points of a tetrahedron. If there are different things bonded to the carbon atom, then there are two possible bonding orientations around this carbon.

One of those orientations is called left-handed and the other is called right-handed. Just like your left and right hands, these molecules are mirror images of each other. When a molecule has this mirror-image property, it is called a "chiral" molecule from the Greek word for "hand." (See an ENV article, here, for more on chiral molecules and homochirality in nature.)

Usually, when you do a reaction in the lab that will give you a chiral molecule, you end up with a 50/50 mix of left- and right-handed molecules. For the most part, these molecules are chemically equivalent. So when we find that nature only uses L-amino acids (left-handed) and D-sugars (right-handed) in organisms, there is something odd about this.

Again, laboratory syntheses of amino acids and sugars typically yield the expected 50/50 mixture. This means if we assume a purely chemical origin of life, then there must be some mechanism that selects one molecule over its mirror-image counterpart. Unfortunately, for Darwinists anyway, scientists have yet to identify a physical mechanism for selecting one chiral molecule over another.

Or have they?

A Nature Communications article is being touted as bringing us one step closer to solving the chirality mystery. In this article, the researchers sought to determine if a fundamental property of chirality and crystallization could be discovered by analyzing the behavior of a bunch of simple, microscopic, geometric figures (equilateral triangles) at various densities.

Basically they are looking at the flow and orientation of these 2-dimensional, microscopic triangles on a surface to see how they orient themselves. The idea is to find out what might cause achiral (that is, "not" chiral) molecules to form a chiral macrostructure.

The authors used equilateral triangles (achiral shapes) to study the possible emergence of chirality. The researchers chose triangles because they are the simplest of the geometric shapes, and relatively few studies have been done with them. These are 2-dimensional triangles, not 3-dimenstional shapes such as a tetrahedron or a trigonal pyramid.

Using microlithography techniques, the authors studied what combination of geometry, density, and Brownian motion can cause achiral triangles to order themselves into a chiral macrostructure. They eventually found localized chiral centers, or localized ordering. They explain this localized ordering by demonstrating that at a certain density, the shapes prefer order because it gives them more "wiggle room" than when they are in a very dense, disordered state. In technical terms, this is entropy-driven ordering.

By way of analogy, think of a very crowded room where everyone is standing. It is not organized, and people are all squashed together. At some point, the number of people in the room (the density) becomes so great that an individual would actually have more room to move his arms or legs or just look around if everyone were standing in lines, or in an orderly fashion, rather than all pushed together.

On a molecular scale, this "wiggle room" is one type of entropy, and molecules tend to act in such a way as to maximize entropy. The authors of the research found the particular density of equilateral triangles that would cause them to spontaneously order themselves to maximize their "wiggle room."

While this finding might interest those who wish to explore entropy-driven crystal structures, it does not seem to have any application beyond the exact system that the researchers were studying. In other words, what does this have to do with 3-dimensional molecules? Two-dimensional properties do not necessarily translate into three-dimensional properties. As the authors point out, even properties between two different 2D shapes do not overlap:

Entropy-driven ordering in dense multi-particle systems can be strongly influenced by particle shape.

[...]

Although interesting and rich, the observed phases of squares and pentagons do not provide any clear predictive power for the phase behaviour of dense 2D systems of regular triangles [emphasis added].

Thus there is no reason to assume that a system of 2D regular triangles translates into a system of 3D molecules. Even if we assume a molecule is a tetrahedral shape (not all are, and protein shapes are even more complex), since the behavior of other 2D shapes do not translate, why would we assume this research works for molecular structures?

Yet in their conclusion the authors state:

The emergence of two types of triatic liquid crystal phases, including one that exhibits LCSB [local chiral symmetry breaking], indicates that the subtle combination of geometry and entropy may combine to produce yet further surprises for other shapes, whether in two or three dimensions.

Certainly, with a given set of parameters, we might see different behavior. That's obvious. And as these authors demonstrate, by doing experiments designed with certain parameters and geometric constraints, we may see different behavior than what is observed with different parameters, which would be an argument for design, perhaps. Even so, this experiment's applicability is very limited.

Lastly, this demonstration, while it may have some application for understanding ideas about a certain type of crystallization, provides no solution to the enigma of homochirality in biology. While there are regions of local chirality in the triangle system, the authors state that "the systems as a whole is a racemic mixture of small chiral domains." Which is exactly what we see in the lab, a 50/50 mix of the left-handed and right-handed molecules. (Racemic means a mixture of left- and right-handed molecules.)

Furthermore, looking down on a 2D plane, we see a particular handedness, but from underneath the plane, that handedness switches (it is a mirror image). If we consider all of the planes of symmetry, something important when dealing with molecular structures, we see that in three dimensions this is still an achiral system.

It seems that the "problem" of homochirality in nature is still a mystery. Thus far, there is still no naturalistic explanation for nature's preferences for L-amino acids and D-sugars.

We've Got 2,262 Signatures on Our Petition Defending Ben Carson. We Need You to Sign Now!

2012-05-11T23:34:44Z

]]> At last count we had 2,262 signature on our petition calling on Emory University to reaffirm the right of Commencement speaker Dr. Ben Carson to hold a dissenting view on Darwinian evolution. In a published letter to the student newspaper bearing just 500 signatures, professors, staff and students have misrepresented Dr. Carson's position on the scientific and moral issues raised in the evolution debate.

Whether from willfulness or just sloppy self-righteousness, they have ended up smearing their own Commencement speaker. This is yet another instance of academic bullying by Darwin advocates, and it has received national attention in the media. Yet Emory University still has not responded with a statement affirming academic freedom.

Dr. Carson will also receive on honorary degree. Some honor!

We're delighted to have those two-thousand plus signers on our side and we'll be delivering the petition to Emory's president, James W. Wagner, by Monday morning, which is Commencement day at Emory. This is your chance to make a difference in the fight for academic freedom. Please take a moment and sign now! Tell your friends and email lists to do likewise!

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

In the Darwin Debate, the Peril of Seeking "Positive Results"

2012-05-11T17:09:45Z

Writing in Nature, Arizona State University's Daniel Sarewitz points out a source of bias in science to which, in the context of the Darwin debate, I think we here have paid insufficient attention. Sarewitz writes about the disturbing evidence of a prejudcie toward "positive results."

Early signs of trouble were appearing by the mid-1990s, when researchers began to document systematic positive bias in clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Initially these biases seemed easy to address, and in some ways they offered psychological comfort. The problem, after all, was not with science, but with the poison of the profit motive. It could be countered with strict requirements to disclose conflicts of interest and to report all clinical trials.

Yet closer examination showed that the trouble ran deeper. Science's internal controls on bias were failing, and bias and error were trending in the same direction -- towards the pervasive over-selection and over-reporting of false positive results. The problem was most provocatively asserted in a now-famous 2005 paper by John Ioannidis, currently at Stanford University in California: 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False' (J. P. A. Ioannidis PLoS Med. 2, e124; 2005). Evidence of systematic positive bias was turning up in research ranging from basic to clinical, and on subjects ranging from genetic disease markers to testing of traditional Chinese medical practices.

How can we explain such pervasive bias? Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. The belief is that progress in science means the continual production of positive findings. All involved benefit from positive results, and from the appearance of progress. Scientists are rewarded both intellectually and professionally, science administrators are empowered and the public desire for a better world is answered.

This is interesting. It's not only a rigid predisposition in favor of materialism that skews most evolutionary science but a magnetic predilection in favor of positive explanations, period. Instead of being comfortable saying, "Look, we don't understand what exactly lies behind or guides the directions that life's history has taken," Darwinists feel compelled to say, "We've got it all figured out. So everyone else shut up." That's naïve and false, and it produces misleading science.

Intelligent design -- unlike Darwinian theory, and unlike creationism which is in many ways Darwinism's twin -- is willing to say "We don't know yet. It looks this way -- there's evidence that points to genuine intelligent agency as the best explanation of the appearance of design in nature. But the enigma of the genome, the mystery of who or what is responsible for devising the machineries of the cell, and much else, these are questions that science is just not ready to answer yet."

This is something that can be frustrating about ID -- we naturally want positive answers, and now not later -- but it's also much truer to the evidence currently on offer.

Nature as a Guide for Efficient Design

2012-05-10T21:55:26Z

]]> A few blog posts back we provided a link to a beautiful video describing the Fibonacci series. The image above is from that video.

Now researchers have found that one of the patterns derived from the Fibonacci series that is present in sunflowers provides the most efficient arrangement for mirrors in solar power generation.

The title of the article from The Economist? "In matters of clever design, nature has often got there first."

Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now devised a better and more compact way of laying out arrays of mirrors. Slightly to their chagrin, however, and somehow appropriately, they found when they had done the calculations that sunflowers had got there first.

Pretty cool, huh?

Cross-posted at Biologic Perspectives.