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How biologists who want science to be worth their trouble can free themselves from the Darwin lobby

Denyse O'Leary
September 7, 2011
'Junk DNA', Culture, Darwinism, News
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Jonathan Wells

In The Myth of Junk DNA , Jonathan Wells discusses the lengths to which the Darwin lobby goes to interfere with new discoveries that do not support their discreditable – and increasingly discredited – cause:

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a pro-Darwin lobby group that aggressively opposes creationism ,intelligent design, and even scientific criticisms of Darwinism in biology classrooms. In 2002, the pro-ID Discovery Institute published summaries of 44 articles in scientific journals and books that “represent dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism (the prevailing theory of evolution taught in biology textbooks), discuss problems that evolutionary theory faces, or suggest important new lines of evidence that biology must consider when explaining origins.” The NCSE then contacted the authors of the articles to ask whether they “considered their work to provide scientific evidence for intelligent design” or “considered their work to provide scientific evidence against evolution.” – (p. 100-101)

Of course, the Discovery Institute never claimed that the 44 articles provided “scientific evidence for intelligent design” or “scientific evidence against evolution” … Nevertheless, the NCSE’s misleading questionnaire evoked angry responses from some of the articles’ authors who were understandably indignant at the suggestion that they were pro-ID or anti-evolution.

Actually, those scientists should have just told the Darwin lobby to go soak their heads.

By taking the Darwin lobby seriously enough to robo-react on cue, scientists imply that they agree with its fundamental premise that it has the right to run supporters’ lives, ruin doubters’ lives, and do everyone’s thinking for them, for their own good. There’s a lot of that about these days …

Back to Wells,

It’s possible that the NCSE or others might resort to the same deceptive and intimidating tactic again in response to this book. So I want to make myself very clear: I am not claiming that the authors of articles I cite in this book on the functions of non-protein-coding DNA are pro-ID or anti-evolution. I argue only that their work provides evidence against the notion that most of our DNA is “junk.”

Jonathan, you’ve made that clear. But many people who doubt the increasing spectral Darwin lobby will fall into line as soon as threatened. No one can help them until they help themselves.

People are never given intellectual freedom. They assume it, and then face life, armed with it. Or not.

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Comments
Evolutionists have often protested ‘unfair’ to quoting an evolutionist as if he were against evolution itself. So let it be said from the outset that the vast majority of authorities quoted are themselves ardent believers in evolution. But that is precisely the point... The foundations of the evolutionary edifice are hardly likely to be shaken by a collection of quotes from the many scientists who are biblical creationists. In a court of law, an admission from a hostile witness is the most valuable. Quoting the evolutionary palaeontologist who admits the absence of in-between forms, or the evolutionary biologist who admits the hopelessness of the mutation/selection mechanism, is perfectly legitimate if the admission is accurately represented in its own right, regardless of whether the rest of the article is full of hymns of praise to all the other aspects of evolution. ~ Andrew Snelling bevets
oops, replied to wrong thread, somehow. Elizabeth Liddle
I think you aren't listening to what they say, Joseph :) For a start, think about what you are saying with those "brackets". Clearly the earliest tetrapods must predate any extant tetrapods. So if there are amphibians dating from 365 mya, then the earliest tetrapods must be older than that. Shubin and colleagues figured out that there should be tetrapods at least 15 million years older than that, and, from the places they would have lived, where they were likely to be fossilised, and where that strata would be near the surface. And they got it absolutely right - they found tetrapods with just the right transitional features in those exact rocks. Finding earlier tetropods doesn't infirm that prediction at all - as it couldn't really, seeing as the prediction came true and they found them! But finding that group of transitional tetrapods certainly doesn't rule out earlier tetrapods. It's how the features fit into the systematics that matters. As Martin Brazeau pointed out:
Before a fossil can be declared "intermediate" between anything and anything else, its relationships must be known. A fossil can do one of two things: fit into an existing classification framework without alteration, or fit into a classification forcing all or partial alteration. Ironically, transitional fossils are often the least interesting fossils from a systematic standpoint because they rarely alter existing schemes of relationship. Rather, they tend to fit neatly into them and cause few or no problems. Tiktaalik is one of those fossils.
Elizabeth Liddle

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