Evolution

[From a colleague who sometimes posts here in the comments:] Like fresh meat tossed into a pit of jackels, Jonathan Wells’ newest book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design has sent the Panda’s Thumb crowd into a feeding frenzy. Right now there are at least 4 opening posts devoted to taking the book, apparently, chapter by chapter, and “demolishing” (or is it “destroying” or perhaps “eviscerating”) nearly every sentence Jonathan wrote (or so it seems). I find it very telling that they attribute so much power and influence to Jonathan that nearly every sentence in his book simply must be shown to be wrong. To join the fun, go here: http://www.pandasthumb.org and see for yourself. Simply amazing.

I can’t begin to describe the amount of mileage I’ve gotten out of Mt. Rushmore for the cause of Intelligent Design. It appears that this well is about to run dry (taken from thebrites.org):

Right now this is how Darwinists are selling their product:

Watch this video:
http://www.accolo.com/Accolo-Rethink-Recruiting.wmv

This is how they need to sell their product:

Go here: http://www.spicyparis.com/index.html.

Here’s what recruiting the right people means to an ad campaign (which is what Darwinism has become): Read More ›

================ Excerpt from Current biology Volume 16, Issue 16, 22 August 2006, Pages R619-R620 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.041 Copyright © 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Q & A: Roger Hendrix Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute and Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA Available online 21 August 2006. ================= …. Q: Given the prominence of the evolutionary perspective in your work, can you comment on the current efforts to present ‘Intelligent Design’ as an alternative to biological evolution in public schools in America? A: It is a sorry commentary on the state of public understanding of science that a large fraction of the US population is willing to accept that Intelligent Design (ID), essentially a tarted-up version of creationism, and evolution Read More ›

Scientist: Dolphins are stupid
Thursday 17 August 2006 12:29 PM GMT

Dolphins are not as clever as previously thought. Dolphins may have big brains, but a South African-based scientist says laboratory rats and even goldfish can outwit them.

Paul Manger of Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand says the super-sized brains of dolphins are a function of being warm-blooded in a cold water environment and not a sign of intelligence.

“We equate our big brain with intelligence. Over the years we have looked at these kinds of things and said the dolphins must be intelligent,” he said.

“The real flaw in this logic is that it suggests all brains are built the same… When you look at the structure of the dolphin brain, you see it is not built for complex information processing,” he said. Read More ›

I take a very low view of “climates of opinion.” In his own subject every man knows that all discoveries are made and all errors corrected by those who ignore the “clmate of opinion.” –C. S. Lewis, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

Two replies to the insufferable Jim Downard: (1) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/the_vampires_heart_a_response.html (2) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/anticipatory_erudition_a_respo.html On avoiding design inferences: Before you infer intelligent design, keep in mind that grass-cutting shears share an extremely high similarity with scissors which are used to cut paper. Since a paper stencil was apparently used in the origination of the grass-pattern, it’s likely that a pair of scissors was used to cut the stencil. This makes it plausible to assume that the grass-cutting shears were co-opted from scissors, because both are clearly homologous structures based upon their similarity. Moreover, paper is made of plant material, and grass a plant. This could account for the origin of the stencil itself. Finally, Virginia has metal resources which could account for the Read More ›

. . . from a grain of salt: Dr. Jackson Martin, Director and Professor of the Flagellum Project at the Hoboken Nature Institute, today announced completion of software that successfully demonstrates the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. Critics of evolution have claimed that the flagellum is too complex to evolve using the gradual changes required by natural selection. “The flagellum is very complicated,” said Martin. “Like a motor, it has a rotor, a stator, and complex control mechanisms.” Martin and his students have demonstrated, however, that the complex flagellum can be easily created using the forces of natural selection. “We have not only shown that the flagellum can be evolved, it’s hard not to evolve the flagellum.” In simulation software Read More ›

You may recall that summer of 2003 Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett proposed a new “happy” designation for themselves as atheists — a term that does for atheism what “gay” does for homosexuality (the comparison is theirs!). They decided on the word “bright.” For Dawkins’s and Dennett’s opeds, where they originally made this proposal, go here: www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bright/bright_index.html. A band of D&D devotees ran with their idea of recasting atheism’s image to form www.the-brights.net. Nonetheless, some D&D supporters thought this was a bit much (see, for instance, Chris Mooney’s piece at CSICOP: www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/brights). All in all, I would say Dawkins’s and Dennett’s proposal of “the brights” never really took off — until now. It appears there is a quasi-secret society inspired Read More ›

Terry Mirll sent me the following predictions and anti-predictions related to materialism.

If naturalistic materialism is true:

1. We are nothing but the sum of our parts. Our bodies are wholly explicable in terms of nature, and there is no aspect of our bodies that cannot be described in purely naturalistic terms, nor any means of describing ourselves other than naturalistic ones. Human beings are simply organic beings and nothing more, composed of organs which are composed of cells which are composed of molecules which are composed of atoms which are composed of sub-atomic particles (and, if string theory is valid, the particles are composed of various strings of energy), and that’s it. We are thus material beings and not spiritual ones. We have no souls. Consciousness is therefore nothing but a curious offshoot of biochemistry, a higher reasoning function of our brains that has arisen from the natural advantage afforded to us by both the size of the human brain and its level of complexity. It is NOT evidence that Man is a creature imago dei, but rather evidence of the power by which natural selection operating in tandem with random genetic mutation can operate.

THEREFORE, I PREDICT that scientists will one day construct a device capable of transporting a human body across vast regions of space–a device comparable to the “teleporter” as portrayed in the “Star Trek” TV series. It will disassemble a living human body at a molecular or sub-molecular level, transport those small bits of living organic material at high speed across great distance, and reassemble them to their original macroscopic configuration, with no ill effects to the body it has transported.

IF, HOWEVER, after several hundred years of scientific advance no such a device will have been formulated, this fact should be taken as an indication that naturalistic materialism is not true. Read More ›

[From some colleagues:] It appears that, while co-option is reputed to be a valid evolutionary mechanism, it is illegal when based on federally-funded county equipment. “State homeland security officials have warned Vermillion County to stop using electronic emergency message boards [purchased with a grant from Homeland Security] to advertise fish fries, spaghetti dinners and other events.” So if we can show that these primitive structures that were supposedly co-opted into the flagellar apparatus were the product of a federal granting process, then we can show that evolution is clearly illegal and ought not be taught. But then again, when you are really hungry, spaghetti dinners may qualify as an emergency response. And as for the fish fries, well, if you’re Read More ›

[From a colleague:] The species problem is real, but I think that (a) it is way overblown in importance in the phil. biol. literature as a result of our fixation on metazoans; and (b) it may already have a pretty good answer (Paterson’s “recognition” concept). Briefly, on (b): the idea is just that the “glue” holding species together is the fact that members recognize each other as members, which is a fact about their cognitive systems analyzable in terms of pheromones or whatever. Of course, there is also the fact that recognition has to be correlated with reproductive viability, which raises all the usual design issues. But I don’t see that there are any deep problems here that are not Read More ›

Here’s a recent exchange between me and a well-known journalist: Dear Mr. Dembski: I got your email from [snip]. I’m a science writer who has written for the usual suspects: New York Times (book review, op-ed, magazine, week in review), The Atlantic, Discover, Omni, Wall Street Journal, many others. You can google me, but the NY Times and WSJ block search engines, and that’s where most of my journalistic stuff is. . . . I am not sympathetic to ID or creationism, but I’m thinking of writing a piece–not yet sure for whom–about how silly the neo-Darwinists have become, Dawkins and Dennett come to mind. It seems to me the evolutionists have fielded the wrong team, and despite the recent Read More ›

In her last post, Denyse O’Leary commented on how ID has been very, very good to her: Speaking for myself, I was a completely obscure trade mag hack and textbook editor (though a reliable and accurate one) until I began to wonder whether the whole of the history of life can be explained by natural selection acting on random mutations and whether that Brit toff Darwin was really the greatest man in history. Now, all sorts of people have an opinion about me who aren’t even sure of my age, sex, or nationality. She isn’t the only one. While I was still an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, I attended the deposition of Barbara Forrest, who, after Read More ›

Dear Members of SSE [Society for the Study of Evolution], The Joint Council of SSE, ASN and SSB has recently appointed a committee to deal with the issues of creationism and intelligent design to the teaching and funding of evolutionary biology in the U.S. The goals of the committee are spelled out in a document available at http://www.evolutionsociety.org/download/anti-wedge.pdf, and this message is to let the membership know of the existence of the committee, as well as to ask for suggestions and help from the membership. The committee will work together with the education section of SSE, which is already working in this area, as well as with the nonprofit National Center for Science Education (http://www.ncseweb.org/default.asp) which promotes education about evolution Read More ›